Wrap-Up: Carnival Cruise Line - Ship Liberty - includes CCL Complaint Responses

Sorry, for the delay in this post,  Life has been crazy and this was a length post.  

Carnival Liberty

January 11th - 16th 2015

Deck:  Riviera 

State Room:  1228

We booked our long awaited Mini-Moon Honeymoon Carnival Liberty Cruise with the assurance that we would have a king sized bed. The stateroom would have two twin beds pushed together.  Heather had doubted the lady she spoke/booked with on the phone.  After a few days of debate and weird feelings she decided to call and check on the type of room we were booked into.  It was a good thing she had, the room we were booked in had a bunk bed. Instead of Carnival correcting their mess up Heather even pointed out that all calls to their call center are recorded and they needed to go back and see that she was adamant that we have a king size bed.  I mean seriously, it is a HONEYMOON cruise.  Our only option was bunk beds or select a different room and pay more.  We went ahead and paid the difference to at least get the king size bed we originally booked.

Jump forward to the cruise....When we went to our stateroom we noticed that it was very hot. The room steward said he could get the air conditioning turned down for us.  We were in the room off and on for about 3 hours waiting for our luggage to be delivered.  Once it arrived we went to an open deck to observe the ship departure from the dock.

We returned about 5 hours after our original complaint about the room was even hotter.  We called the room steward again.  We were told someone would be right over to help. About 20 minutes later a lady (we later learned his girlfriend) arrived with a yellow temperature gauge.  The gauge was digital. She held it directly below the a/c vent in the main section of our stateroom.   The gauge showed 78.9°F.  She stated that 79°F was a minimum temperature for us to contact maintenance and that the only thing that could be done was to provide us a fan.

We got the fan (it was disgustingly dirty) and started to search for any outlets in the stateroom.  There was only one.  It was on the vanity about 8 feet from the bed.  While the search was going on it occurred to us that there was nowhere to plug in my CPAP machine.  I am medically required to use the machine to breathe at night.  The steward provided us an extension cord that was covered with splices wrapped in duct tape.  The cord went across the room and my wife tripped on the cord every night going to the bathroom in the dark.  We were worried the spliced cord might short out, catch fire, and/or damage my brand new expensive CPAP machine.  It would cost us $600-->700 to replace it.  The worst part is if it was destroyed I would have no way to go to sleep.

Our new dilemma became our comfort or the ability for me to breathe at night since we only had a single outlet.  Therefore, our room stayed hot with no air movement.  During the day we used the fan and it was still awful hot.  Plus, when we did run the fan it was so loud that you couldn't hear the TV, the ship loud speaker announcements, or even hold a conversation.

The TV remote was broken and the steward brought another broken remote.  I managed to piece together the two to get us a working remote that had to be held in both hands to keep it together when being used.  Also, we had to keep the curtains closed to help keep the room cooler so we never got to enjoy the ocean view window we paid extra for because we needed that king size bed and this was according to Carnival the only available room.

This was our honeymoon cruise, my wife became a gold member, and it was my first cruise. We had gotten a gift from a family member for our honeymoon, we got beautiful tuxedo strawberries. They were delivered at 2:00pm to our room (it was requested that they be delivered at night.)  When we returned to the cabin from watching the ship leave port we discovered the berries were mushy and melted. This was very upsetting, the heat of the room had destroyed them.

In addition, my wife likes the towel animals that were on the bed every night. She loved to photograph them and collect them in the room during the entire cruise.  Oh No Heather, Not this Cruise! The room attendant recycled the pet and even when she tried to hide the pet on the window ledge behind the curtain he removed them nightly.  Note they were behind the curtain and he didn't open the curtains he just took the animals and left the curtain closed (he was a JERK the entire cruise.)  We even asked the guy not to touch them and he smirked and still did it anyways.  It might seem minor to others but it was a big deal to my wife.  I mean really WHY take the animals?

My wife became a gold member this cruise. She never got any acknowledgment of it.  Not a pin for entering gold member status, or any info on the return guest party, or the ship pin she had gotten in the past. We were never even told Happy Honeymoon by anyone.

The last night we were on the ship, my wife went to guest services to complain again. We were both pretty worked up about the treatment on the cruise. Guest services had no record of our complaints about the room temperature or the room attendant.  They acted real concerned and said that a supervisor would come up to our cabin immediately. They never did.

While talking to them my wife discussed the lack of notice about the gold member status. She was given a couple free drink vouchers at 9:10pm the last night for not having any notice about the party and its kind of funny as neither of us drink alcohol. That was pretty useless.  She was told the were all handed out to past guests on board on one the earlier days of the cruise, Sorry.  We later learned that our room attendant opted not to give her the pin.  It was supposed to be left in the room.

At dinner in the dining room are table companions were talking about there free goodies samples in their bathroom when they boarded the ship on the first day.  We had none...again the jerk room attendant.

Then there was the breakfast room service cards.  He refused to give us cards even after we requested them nightly.  One night we ended up asking a different room attendant down the hall to get some door hanger ordering cards.  That night the room attendant took them out of cabin.  He was being nasty on purpose.

Several times throughout the cruise we found that our personal belonging were moved around in the room.  This made for a very uncomfortable stay.

We also asked for ice throughout the cruise and never had any delivered.  We didn't even have an ice bucket or we would have gotten our own on the Lido deck.  We felt singled out by him.  Maybe he was treating others the same, who knows.

Then there is the ship arriving at Half Moon Cay for about 15 minuted and the Captain deciding that the seas were to choppy and we would do a fun day at sea rather than go to Half Moon.

I guess this is considered rough water!

This was a huge deal for us as this was the one port we wanted to get off and do things at.  It was the main reason we chose this cruise.  The captain didn't opted to go to one of the many other ports near by (heck, even go back to Nassau or Freeport.)  Then he just slowly returned the ship to Port Canaveral.  This was a huge let down for us.  And you guessed it, guest services did nothing about it when we complained.  I was told who was I to second guess the captain.  Hmmmm.  More Nastiness!

The ship had a few broken down Hot Tubs and we were told that is common.  The one's that were working were all jam packed full of people all the time.

Once we returned home Heather checked our checking account and noticed we were charged $37.37 by Carnival.  This was an extra fee and Heather being as careful with finances got right on the phone with Carnival to find out what the heck.  Turns out the room attendant tried for one last jab by billing us for stuff in the room mini-bar which we never even used.  Note:  Carnival did remove those fees. It took about 7 days for the refund to process.

We complained to Carnival Cruise Line and here is the response we got back from them:

If you are looking for a booze cruise, mediocre food, sad entertainment, and rude staff this the cruise line for you.  As for our family, I can honestly say that I doubt we will ever cruise with Carnival, again.