Carnival Fantasy Review
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Our group of eight boys ages 18-21 and three mothers arrived in New Orleans by car from East Texas on Friday August 10. This cruise was to celebrate their high school graduation before six of the boys left for college for their freshman year. The other two were 21 year olds (my son and a friend) who came in place of two other graduating seniors who were unable to sail. We made these reservation name changes about 10 days before the cruise for a $50.00 fee each. Two moms and two boys had cruised previously. We stayed at the Holiday Inn in the French Quarter because it was the cheapest for the location--$79 per room with free parking and 4 boys per room. Check-in was easy and the staff was friendly and helpful but the rooms were very run-down and none too clean. However, the boys didn't care and only slept a few hours in their rooms after spending the evening on Bourbon Street. We felt fairly comfortable letting them stay out because there was a large police patrol presence and we insisted they stay together. And, most of the clubs said admission was limited to age 21+ but, we discovered a few days later, several did not even check their ID's.
We boarded the Fantasy around noon the next day. We had two quad cabins on Level R and a Balcony on Level V. The balcony entitled us to VIP status but since not all of us were entitled, we all entered the regular line. When we presented our documents for check-in, the agent gently scolded me for standing in line and personally escorted all of us to complete our boarding from the VIP area.
Carnival's regulations required that we have a 25 year old in each cabin so one mother was assigned to each cabin. But, we had no problems switching around so that the boys had their two quads and the mothers stayed in the balcony cabin. The only hang-up was our baggage. We had tagged our bags with mismatched names/cabin numbers so we thought we wouldn't have to switch the bags around i.e. CM's cabin assignment was R176 but we tagged the bag with CM's name on it as V22. This resulted in our bags being left by the purser's desk as "lost bags" and we picked them up ourselves around 7:00 pm. We had no problem getting extra keys from the purser's desk.