This was a wonderful cruise. I truly feel that cruising is a once in a lifetime experience that everyone should get to try. This was our second cruise (Our first was on the Fantasy 4 day in Feb of 2005). So for us I guess it is a twice in a lifetime experience. But it was fabulous the second time around! It was just the two of us, my 76 year old mother and I am 41. We stayed at the airport Comfort Suites in Kansas City on Thursday night (Dec. 7) where we could park and fly, and had a 6:55 flight on Friday morning, so it was very nice to not have to drive 45 minutes to the airport on Friday morning at 5 AM and try to find a parking place etc. It was about 3 degrees Friday. YUCK! We flew straight through to Orlando on Southwest and arrived in 2 hours. We stayed at the Orlando airport Hyatt Friday night. It was a great place to stay, we had a window overlooking the runways and that was very entertaining to us. We love to watch airplanes. Saturday morning we slept a little late, and ate at the Hemisphere restaurant on the top floor of the hotel. It was pretty expensive. I think it was 14.95 per person for an all you can eat buffet. Sounded great! But the food was typical of what you would get for a free breakfast at most hotels - Scrambled Eggs, toast, cereal and fruit. BUT, the fresh squeezed orange juice was fabulous! We left the room at 11:15 to check out and meet the Carnival people. Our shuttle left at about 11:50, we waited in a long line to check in at the port and we were on the ship at 1. They would not let us in the room till 1:30 so we went to the buffet and ate lunch. My mom wasn't feeling well, so she just sat there while I went to see if the room was ready. At 1:35 I went to the room, the doors that lead to the even numbers were not open yet, so I waited a few more minutes and then they let me in. The first thing I did after dropping our purses and carryon bag was look out on our balcony. We had never had a balcony before, so this was exciting to me. I realized that I could see the Kennedy Space Center buildings so I dug out the binoculars (thank goodness I put them in the carry on bag! Our luggage didn't all arrive until about 9 pm) and could see the space shuttle on the pad. That was exciting! I took the binoculars up to the buffet and all kinds of people looked through them to see the shuttle. That is a great way to meet people when you are kinda shy. We went back to the room to get ready for the muster drill. This seemed to take forever! Then went back to get ready for dinner, but again, my mom just wasn't feeling good so I went to dinner alone. Not fun! Especially when I got to the Platinum dining room, and saw our table a table for 2! We had looked forward to meeting people at dinner. But the people at the next table took pity on me sitting alone and invited me to sit with them as their husbands were upstairs waiting on the shuttle launch. Our dining room servers were AJ and Darko. They were wonderful. The food on this cruise was good. I only had one item the whole week that I didn't like and couldn't eat and I am the world's pickiest eater! It was a cheeseburger in the dining room on Thursday at lunch; it tasted like school cafeteria food. That was the only day we did the dining room at lunch. We did breakfast and dinner in there each day though. We tried to get our table assignment changed, but was told we couldn't unless we were willing to eat at another time. We liked the 5:45 time so didn't. But we had a great time anyway the rest of the week. After dinner the first night I went back to the room to check on my mom, she had slept most of the time and was starting to feel better. But she didn't go anywhere the rest of the night. I went up to the 10th deck to see if I could see the shuttle launch. We were about 48 miles from Cape Canaveral by that time the tv said, so I thought we couldn't see anything. But at about 8:45 we saw the sky light up and lots of smoke. It is the closest to a shuttle launch that I will ever be!! I am so excited that I got to see it. The next day was Nassau, she still wasn't feeling good so we spent a lot of time just watching people and taking pictures, then she went back to the room and took a nap and I watched the catamarans and boats sailing by from our balcony. This was also the captain's party and first formal night. So we did that, my mom was slowly starting to feel better so that was good. We went to the show that night. It was nice. Monday was a day at sea, and we played in the casino and lost, and shopped and just relaxed. Tuesday we were in St Thomas. We took the Magens Bay - Paradise Point excursion which was scheduled for 10:45 but I don't think we even got off the ship till after noon because of the immigration mess. We stood in line for over an hour and a half, to just show them our passports. It was a disorganized mess. We finally got going and the driver was very not cautious, driving very fast on 10 MPH roads. But we made it in one piece and had 2 hours on the beach. He would be back to pick us up at 3. I am just not all that fond of beaches and sand I decided but it was beautiful. And the wild iguanas were something else. I am sure that one was posing for pictures! We took lots of pictures and relaxed on the deck of the bar. Then we met the driver and went to Paradise Point where we had tickets to ride the tram thingy. He gave us 20 minutes there. So we didn't even try to ride and then he dropped us off at the end of the port area, where we had a very very very long walk past all the shops and a couple other ships to get to the Glory. That was extra hard on my mom who has problems walking anyway. But we finally made it back, just in time for dinner. It was a long day! But St Thomas is beautiful at night, so I am glad we were back on our balcony to see the sail away. The next morning we were at St Martin. We took the island tour which was about 2 hours long with time to shop at an outdoor market where we got t-shirts at 3 for $10.00 and some other great souvenirs. I loved St Martin and it quickly became my favorite port. It was so beautiful and everyone was nice and friendly. I was very impressed!!!!

The last 2 days were sea days and we played games and sang karaoke and just had a lot of fun. The only real complaints that I had were the amount of time and disorganization at St Thomas, and the cheeseburger on Thursday. Now on Friday we went to the disembarkation talk and they said that if you had an early flight you could meet in the Amber Palace at 7:30 on Saturday morning. They never said anything about changing the tag color on your luggage; they also had it all in writing in our room that evening and again, nothing about changing your tag color. But when we got off the ship and were in the area where we pick up our luggage by 8 we were thrilled. We had a 1:15 flight, and had not checked in yet for our boarding passes so being at the airport by 9:30or so would have been wonderful. But apparently some people were told (I guess at the pursers desk?) that if you had an early flight you needed to have lido deck tags or something on your luggage. So our luggage with the Verandah deck tags did not come down until almost 10. We walked into the airport at 11 and immediately printed our boarding passes, and got letter C. But that was ok.

We took a small tape recorder that I bought at Wal-Mart and every evening we sat on the balcony and recorded our favorites from the day, in the back ground you can hear the waves or the birds or whatever we were by. The night in St Martin, we were docked next to a Princess ship and they kept doing the horn so we got that on the tape and even got the captain telling us arivederci (which I know is spelled wrong) the last night on the ship. It was well worth the 18 bucks I spent on the tape player to always have those memories recorded. My other tip would be if you are traveling with someone who has some problems walking, get them a wheelchair. I wish I would have on the islands, but we finally did at the airport going home and that helped my mom so much. And we preboarded, so that helped too. Now if only we could figure out why there was a little girl on the plane that sat behind me and kicked my seat the entire first hour of the flight. Her dad even told me I should change seats with him because she would do that the whole time!! Ahhhhh! And then there was baby McScreamy in the dining room on the ship each night. Read more