We booked our cruise on the Fantasy from a local travel agency, and we saved about $65.00 (total for the family) off of the Carnival prices. It's not much, but hey, $65.00 paid for one shore excursion, plus we felt like we had some type of liaison.

This was our first cruise, and I will start out by telling you that I loved it. I won't make it all "peaches and cream" and not tell you the one negative that I can recall. I will be honest, as we first entered the ship on the Empress Deck I was a good bit disappointed. Having never cruised before, I was expecting too much of this 15 year old ship. This area of the ship I felt was quite run down. I even saw a piece of the ceiling falling down. As I walked around a few minutes, I began to smell stale smoke, and I myself am a smoker so you wouldn't think that I would pick up on that, but I did.

Anyway, now the bad part is over. I had about 30 minutes to come to grips with the fact that I was not sailing on the fanciest ship in the world. Do you know what I did-- I got over it!! We had a blast and I never thought about any of the imperfections anymore. The service more than made up for it, and by the way many areas of the ship are very updated, so don't be scared. If you have small children, mine are 6 and 3, Carnival is an awesome way to cruise. Read more