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Carnival Cruise Lines

Married at Sea

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Mathew of Orlando FL (6/4/03):
My wife and I became engaged on the Carnival Fascination in April of 2002, after being together for 7 years. We enjoyed our vacation so much that we booked our wedding onboard the Carnival Fantasy on May 11/03, going to Freeport and Nassau Bahamas. Because our families are on tight incomes, my wife and I saved up and paid for 22 of our family members and friends to come with us on the cruise to help us celebrate our wedding.

We booked 11 cabins for the cruise at our expense, along with paying over $1800 for the wedding package, $350 for the videographer, $300 for floral upgrades, and over $1000 for the photographs.

Well, first, Carnival lost my tuxedo. The dining arrangements were wrong and the category 12 suite with the balcony that we paid for had torn walls, scrapes and dents along the walls. The plug at the bottom of the tub was broken and we had to use tweezers each time we wanted to get the plug out. On the first day, I filled out one of the laundry service slips and left several shirts in a bag by the door to be pressed. The cabin steward, that day, told me that that ship does not have laundry service. Two days later, I discovered that they did in fact have laundry service.

Before the wedding, we had written arrangements for the officiant and the wedding coordinator to meet with us for a rehearsal about 15-30 min before the wedding. Neither of them showed up. The officiant was late and so was the wedding coordinator. We had no idea where to stand, what to do or how to do it. Because they were late, they rushed our wedding, messing up the pre-arranged written vows, prayers and blessings we had agreed upon in writing. The officiant was so rushed he even forgot to say, "you may kiss the bride".

We had paid for a one and a half open bar as part of our written contract. The reception was beautiful. At least, during the 15 minutes we got to enjoy it. The photographer pulled us and all of our guests out into the main lobby to do photos. By the time he was done, we had 10 minutes left of our pre-paid reception. The piano player we had paid extra for was gone, the bar was closed, and the food lay on the tables going to waste.

To top that off, on our last night, we were filing our complaint with the ships Chief Purser, when we had to take a break to get our pre-arranged group photo taken in the lobby. Not to our surprise, the photographer did not show up. Even though the Chief Purser had a copy of our contract showing we had arranged the group photo shoot, they had to wake up the Photo Manager to find out why nobody had shown up. Fortunately, they found a photographer to come and do out photo.

The wedding was a disaster. The floral upgrade we paid for was the wrong size and the wrong flowers, not to mention that the boutenniere for the groom was the wrong color, even though we paid extra for the color change. We contacted the Carnival Wedding Dept and they have stated they would reimburse us for the cost of the videographer, and the wedding ceremony. They are blaming the photo department for ruining our reception, so they are insisting that that department pay for the reimbursement. We have to attempt to get reimbursed for the flowers through an outside contracted company.

But to top it off, Carnival itself has told us that despite the documented mistakes, despite the 3-hour meeting we had on the ship with the Chief Purser, and despite the fact that they are reimbursing us for most of the costs so far, they refuse to either reimburse us for the cost of our trip (cabin) and their offer of a 15% discount and chocolate bon voyage gift on our next sailing, which was a complete insult, shows that Carnival Cruise Lines does not have a very friendly customer service policy.

The best evidence we have about all of these problems are the Carnival video itself and the photos taken by the 22 guests and the Carnival photographer...right down to the stained white carpet my wife and I had to walk down, and the terrible music at the wedding, that they played over a $30 portable radio (the person who had to play the music never showed up).

We spent over $22,000 paying for the cruise (11 cabins), the airfare for our families to come down from Canada, their accommodations before and after the cruise, along with the transportation for 22 people to and from Port Canaveral. We lost our entire wedding because of these and other problems during the cruise.

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