We sailed on Carnival's Panorama to the Mexican Riveria from Long Beach. My husband and I, both in our mid 70's, my son, his wife and their three kids, and my daughter-in-law's parents in their late 70's. I had pre-booked a wheelchair for my husband, who has heart, high blood pressure and is very unsteady on his feet and had written confirmation. The morning of embarkation, we took an early flight from Oakland to Long Beach and waited in the airport for hours. During that time, we were bombarded with emails from Carnival warning us NOT to show up early. Finally, our daughter-in-law said that all the others were on their way to the ship terminal, and we should meet them there.
It took us a while to exit the terminal and figure out where we should be to get an Uber. Before we got in the Uber, we had a message from our daughter-in-law that they were stuck in traffic on the approach to the Long Beach ship terminal, which is owned and operated by Carnival. Our Uber driver immediately warned us that there was bad traffic, but he obviously knew the details of the pattern of that traffic and amazingly, we got to the port significantly before the rest of our group. When we asked about the wheelchair, we were told that none were available. (After the cruise, when I wrote a complaint letter to the office of the Carnival CEO, I got a letter explaining that wheelchairs were provided on a first-come/first served basis and that a reservation was no guarantee of availability!
People were only being admitted to the terminal at their appointed time. We stood in the sun in line for well over an hour and our line didn't start moving until over twenty minutes after the time we were supposed to check-in. We didn't have any water, and none was available. My husband believes we were standing in the sun for over two hours. When we finally got into the huge domed terminal, we saw that most of the space was empty. I repeatedly asked Carnival representatives, why the waiting lines couldn't have been inside and was always told, "The Port authorities won't let us." (After I returned home, I contacted the Port of Long Beach and was told that was not true.)
After I finally got my husband settled in our cabin, I went to Carnival Guest Services to complain about the horribly unsafe boarding procedure. A Guest Services Associate assured me that he would arrange a special disembarkation for us so that we did not suffer again. Twice during the cruise, I returned to guest services to reconfirm that my husband would be taken off the ship in a wheelchair because of the long distance he would have to walk. We were told that a staff member with a wheelchair would come to our cabin between 8:15 and 8:30, take us to the disembarkation deck in a service elevator and provided expedited disembarkation for our entire party of nine.
On the morning of disembarkation, all nine of our group were waiting in our cabin, but the guy didn't show up with a wheelchair until about 8:40 and didn't know how to open it. Finally, he found an abandoned on in the corridor and led all of us to a mobbed passenger elevator, got us on one to the wrong deck and we got separated. It wasn't until we were off the ship that a wonderful member of the port staff, saw my husband struggling and expedited us through to where we could get an Uber to the airport. She warned us to take whatever ground transportation we saw first, because Uber drivers would not be honoring their assigned pick-ups because of the pandemonium at the terminal.
During one of my visits to Guest Services on the ship, we were advised to walk a couple of blocks from the Carnival ship terminal to the Queen Mary and get a ride there. However, the lady from the port told us that was impossible. The Queen Mary was barricaded off in preparation for a rock concert. She took us to the spot where she said we could get ground transportation and immediately we were solicited by an Uber driver, who I later noticed canceled her ride and has us pay her directly by credit card. We felt incredibly lucky to get that ride even though it cost about three times what we paid to get to the ship. The other seven in our group waited for hours at the airport until my daughter-in-law's brother was able to battle his way through the mostly stopped traffic mess.
By then our twelve-year-old granddaughter was feeling very sick. She turned out to have COVID and both her parents felt sick and tested positive as well. They didn't test our six and nine-year-old grandkids, because they weren't complaining of being sick. Our oldest granddaughter was vomiting and having horrendous headaches. Later, my daughter-in-law discovered online that there was a COVID outbreak on the ship. No one had said anything to us and passengers had open access with no sneeze guards to the soft-serve yogurt and ice cream (and the cones were sticking out to be grabbed). There was no enforcement of hand washing in the buffet areas.
The Carnival Panorama has a very nice waterpark, ropes course and skyrider that the kids and their parents enjoyed for the two sea days down to Mexico. However, on the return sea day, the ropes course and the skyrider were closed and few people braved the cold and the wind to go in the water.
We enjoyed family dinners in the Vista dining room, but the service for our group of nine was very erratic. The evening of the second formal dinner was especially bad. The waiter didn't bring the main course for my daughter-in-law's mother until I finally called across the dining room to a waiter I saw just standing. The meals were of wildly inconsistent volume and quality. The portions of prime rib were huge hanging off the plate, but those who request medium-rare got RAW. Those like me who ordered lobster, got a very small lobster tail, a few bits of broccoli and almost nothing else. My dinner was barely enough for a snack. On another prior evening, I had quizzed the waiter about the size of the entre smoked salmon and been assured it was plenty big for a main course. It most certainly wasn't - there were four small bits of smoked salmon and some lettuce. Fortunately, I scrounged some other food from those in our group who had overly large dinners. The waiters never asked if the meals were OK and we were frequently subjected to requests to congratulate the staff on their fine service, when it wasn't.
