Complaint Rating:

My husband and I recently cruised on the Carnival Freedom, a brand new ship which departed from Rome, Italy. This was our dream vacation, a 12-day Mediterranean cruise visiting Italy, Croatia, Sicily, France and Spain. But our dream trip quickly became our worst nightmare. It all began when we missed a connection stateside due to weather delays. We were put on another flight and our bags were lost in transit. When we arrived in Rome, we immediately made a claim with our airline and we did the same thing on-board the Freedom. We were assured that our bags would likely catch up with us in the first or second port. They didn't. In fact, my husband didn't receive his luggage for 10 days!! I never received mine. Upon arrival at the Rome airport on our way home, I was finally able to locate my luggage which according to the airline sticker had been sitting at that airport for 11 days!!

On the Carnival Freedom, we were repeatedly told by the pursers Carnival had agents in the airport checking for bags daily. If that was the case, why were they unable to find ours? Maybe because they weren't actually looking?? My bag had a carnival tag on it with the ships name and my name which was visible from the top of the bag. In addition, there was another tag with my name and address visible from the outside, and a copy of my passport was placed inside the bag. The bag was being held by the Spanish airline, Iberia, who we were originally scheduled to come to Rome on. However, when we missed our connection, we were put on Air France instead. We repeatedly asked Air France agents as well as the carnival pursers to tell their people in Rome to search with Iberia. Apparently, they didn't.

In addition to the baggage trouble, Carnival refused to do anything to make our plight a little more bearable. Specifically, we asked if they would wash our clothes for us since we only had 2 changes of clean clothes, which got a little stinky after a few days. They refused. In addition, while in Venice, we were told our bags had been forwarded there, but the customs agents were refusing to release the bags to Carnival. So we asked if they would pay for a transfer for us to go and get our bags. They said no. We went with two other couples who were also missing luggage and we paid 70 Euros for this trip. We took taxi's. We didn't find our bags there, but the other couples did. Carnival refused to reimburse us.

Upon our return to the States, I wrote two letters, one to Air France and one to Carnival detailing the specifics of our trip and asking for compensation. From Carnival, we requested to be refunded for half of what we had paid for the trip. We just received a letter back stating that they are not responsible and cannot offer any compensation. Typical. Needless to say, we will NEVER cruise with Carnival again!! Not only that, we will make it our life's mission to make as many posts we can and tell as many people as we can how awful our experience was in hopes that they will never cruise Carnival either. We were grossly disappointed with everything about this cruise. Besides the baggage, everything was over-priced, the service was mediocre and the people were often rude. I hope that everyone considering a Carnival cruise will seriously consider going with a different cruise line. We went with Carnival because it was the cheapest. We now know why.

C. N.