Let me start out by saying that we have cruised on Carnival before, both small and large ships. We went on this vacation to get away from work and were fine spending lots of time in our cabin. It was myself, my wife and my 2 year old son (his 2nd cruise).

When booking this cruise, I noticed that it would be the first cruise after dry-dock. From what I read, it was to receive upgrades for the new playlist productions, punchliner comedy club, red frog / blue iguana bars, new lighting and bedding. We chose this ship over one leaving from Tampa because it was closer to us (St. Augustine FL) and because it was to be "just refurbished". We did not see a punchliner brunch, or the red frog / blue iguana bars. We were told by crew that they ran out of time and that it was too expensive to do. Take that with a grain of salt...

On Thursday night, January 18th, we received an email alerting us to the fact that the ship would be very delayed leaving dry dock. It said that the ship should arrive in Jax at 3pm and we would be able to board at 5pm-8pm. Bummer, but no big deal. We made changes to our travel arrangements and went on about our business. The next morning we awoke to find out that weather would delay the ship even further, it would now arrive at 6pm and we would be able to board at 8pm-11pm departing at midnight. At this point, we cancelled our car service and decided to drive ourselves to the port and leave the car, just in case something else happened. Turns out we did the right thing. Read more