This was my 8th cruise and my wife's 3rd. Last time I was on Carnival was 1989 so it was all new to me with them.

We stayed one night prior in the Hotel Normandie which was nice. It's a cute hotel with a nice pool for swimming and the beach right there as well. Not much to do right around the hotel.

We got to the port at 11.30a and checked in with a very short line...about 8 people in front of us. We got the paper from Carnival saying they were letting us check in early but no chance to get into the room until 2.30p and they meant it as the doors to the hallways were closed. We sat around in the terminal and enjoyed some of the free drink samples on hand. Nice! At 1p they let us on. We were Zone 3 so we got on really quickly. We headed up to Lido and enjoyed our lunch before the rest of the crowd got there. Plenty of good food on hand. After that we played shuffleboard for a bit while we waited until 2.30p to get to our room. The rest of the day was spent exploring the ship. The sailaway party was a lot of fun. Plenty of dancing. More free liquor tasting on the ship. We bought some and came back the next night for a raffle for four bottles of liquor and only one other couple showed up so we split the four bottles (gin and vodka each). Read more