BACKGROUND INFORMATION- This was my wife and I's third cruise, however it has been twelve years since the last time I cruised. The other two cruises were on now defunct cruise lines Regency, and Commodore. We brought along our 5 year old daughter. This was a test the water cruise with our daughter to see if she liked it.

TRAVEL TO PORT- I'm an airline employee so Carnival gives special rates to Airline/Military personal, so we took advantage of that. We flew into LAX from PHX early in the morning the day of departure. Flying standby on my airline pass incentives can be stressful so we left early out of PHX on an open flight and arrived in LAX by 8:30 am. We took Supper Shuttle to the pier, it was $16 each way per person. Because we arrived so early there was an early check in location that took 30 minutes to get processed. HOWEVER we then had to stand in another line with ALL other customers to board ship who didn't check in early, so the early check in process was a waste of time, there was no advantage to using it!

SHIP- The ship was huge in our eyes, keep in mind that the Fantasy class ships weigh in at 70,000 tons, and the last two cruises, twelve years ago were on ships that were 20,000 tons or less. The atrium was beautiful. With the map that was provided, the layout was pretty easy, however I don't understand why some of the elevators don't go all the way from top to bottom floors, while others do. Read more