My wife and I just completed the five day cruise on the Carnival Ecstay. I know many people have used this line before, but if I had to find a phrase to describe our trip I would use best trip ever. This was my first, but my wife's third cruise. We arrived a day early and spent the night in a hotel near the airport. The cruise ship had a shuttle from the airport to the ship. I read many reviews about people who upgraded to VIP to bypass the lines for boarding the ship, but I decided not to participate in that. And I am glad that I did not waste the money. From the time that I got off the shuttle to the time that I was on the boat was about 20 minutes. The lines were short and everyone was so nice in helping us. I also traveled with my parents and my in-laws. My mother has a bad leg and my father-in-law just had rotator cuff surgery. Many people offered to help both of them and were extremely polite. Once on the ship we were not able to go to our cabins for about an half hour, but sitting by the pool was a small price to pay. We did pay for a balcony, but were extremely surprised that there were not that many balconies on this ship. Once we got to our room we were greeted by our room steward, Harry. Harry was extremely polite and took care of everything for our room while we were out. They did a turn down of our room twice a day. The room was big enough for my wife and I, and the balcony was the best. I would recommend that if you can afford it get the balcony. Waking up and walking out on your balcony was the best. Seeing the ship dock on your balcony side is also pretty neat to see. And being able to watch the departure from your balcony was one of the best things that I saw on our trip.

Dinner the first night, and every night, was great. We were greeted by our wait staff Roy, Josephine, and Noel. All three were the best wait staff that I have ever seen. They put on little shows each night, and the service that we received was top notch. I would, and will, sail with Carnival again just because of the service. One of the waiters, Iwayan, knew that I drank a lot of soda. So every night when I came to the dinning room he would have soda waiting for me, plus he would never let my glass get empty. The food was also excellent, but the service was the best. As with any cruise liner you can order whatever you wanted from the menu, and Roy would bring it right to you. If you forgot to order something Roy would bring it right to us. I am not kidding the service was the best that I have ever received.

I will say that one of my two complaints comes from the announcement page. They left this kinda newspaper in your room and we missed out on formal night, because they called it elegant night. I know that it is a small thing about wording, but we were a little sad so we made the last night on our cruise formal night. Read more