This was my platinum cruise (10th under old rules) and probably my last trip on Carnival.
I have been on this class of ships, but it was years ago. We chose this cruise for proximity to home and we are able to drive to port. We drove to the port the day of and arrived around 130pm and since we are Platinum, boarded very quickly. I imagine the line to get on would have been about 30 minutes if we had to wait. We skipped the requisite "Welcome Aboard" photo, found our room, dropped off some bags, and went to find some food and drinks. Our room was convenient to the lobby on Empress Deck (deck 7).
Positives: The crew is very friendly from the room steward to the waiters to bartenders. They do a great job. All of our room staff called us by name. And for the three nights we went to the Jubilee dining room, our waitress knew our name and was very cordial. We had to move dining rooms on day 4 and 5 because the crowd around us was unruly and acted like idiots in the dining room. But since we realized we were the ones that didn't fit in, we elected to move to another dining room and were reassigned Your Time Dining. Our matre d in that dining room (Barish) was outstanding. We wished we would have moved sooner.
The cabin is in a great spot. E deck is one below dining, and only 2 below main night activities. If you walk all the way to rear stairs, you are only 3 flights from the Lido deck for food.