Background: There were seven of us on this cruise: my parents, my two sisters, brother in law, my husband and myself. This was everyone's first cruise except my husband and myself. Parents in early 60's, the rest of us in our 30's. The kiddies were left at home for this trip. We reserved a 4a guarantee and ended up with 5a rooms. Our rooms were all in a row, which made getting together easy. I was very happy with this, seeing as we had booked the rooms, using two different TA's and a CVP. I just called carnival with our booking numbers, and asked that our reservations be linked, so we would all have the same table in the dinning room. I didn't expect that we would get rooms so close to each other, nice surprise once travel doc's came in.

Day 1: Since I live in the New Orleans area, the rest of my family joined us the night before from various parts of the south. On embarkation day, we drove to the pier in two cars, one we parked at the terminal and one driven by a friend who dropped us off. Parking was easy as can be and we paid $70 for the 5-night trip. We arrived around 11:45 or so and check in went smoothly. Everyone was very helpful and friendly. We were on board by 1pm. We had lunch on the lido deck, then went to check out our rooms. My family was pleasantly surprised by the size of the rooms, they had expected something much smaller. Before we had finished exploring our rooms, our checked luggage started to arrive. We unpacked and headed to the Universe lounge, a.k.a. muster station A for our muster drill. Muster drill was fine, we didn't have to wait for any late shows and we had plenty of time to drop off out life vest before heading up to the top deck for sail away. If you have never seen a sail away in New Orleans, it is very interesting. The ship basically does a 180 in the Mississippi River, before heading down stream. The CBD (central business district) is very nice from this vantage point, and we all had fun taking pics, with my husband's building in the back ground. We had the 5:45 seating at dinner, so soon after sail away we went down to dinner. Silvo was our headwaiter and we all were really impressed with his service and his attitude, he really seams to enjoy his job. Three of us had the soda card so we ordered soft drinks from the bar, and were very impressed with the way the bar tender kept our glasses full throughout out the week. The rest of the folks settled on lemonade, since the water and tea were pretty much undrinkable. My dad could not drink it and he will eat/drink just about anything. Dinner was very good, as it was every night. We ate in the dinning room every night because of the warm chocolate melting cake. That is my husband's favorite part of the cruise. Over all the food was good, but I felt it was somewhat lacking compared to our last cruise last May on the Ecstasy. Nothing major, just a little off. After dinner we went to the welcome show. We thought it was ok as for as shows go. We were late getting there so our seats were pretty horrible. I highly recommend getting there early if you want to actually see the show. There are pillars blocking a lot of the views throughout. My husband took part in the Texas hold'em tourney and was disappointed. He did not like the computer screens they used in lieu of actual cards and chips. After the show we all went on to bed since we had stayed up late the night before catching up.

Day 2: Our first day at sea. We are all early rises, so we were up and at em by 6 am or so. It was very nice drinking coffee out on Lido and waiting for the sun to come up. Since it was my mom and sisters first time to Progresso and Cozumel, we went to the port and shopping talks. Big Tex, the CD spent about 15-20 minuets trying to sell us on the ship shore excursions and very little time on the ports themselves. This is the same itinerary for the Ecstasy, so I was just along for the ride so to speak. My mom did win a watch during the shopping talk. We then spent most of the afternoon lounging around lido deck. We all loved the slide and music. The hairy chest contest was very amusing. This was a very relaxing day. The weather was picture perfect and the seas calm. We attended the afternoon tea in the piano lounge, the scones were very good and cucumber sandwiches were good as well. We had a good time watching the men eat these dainty little treats. Let's just say that tea parties are not their idea of a good time, but the were good sports all in all. This is formal night on the Fantasy, so around 4:30 or so we headed to our rooms to get ready. We took family pictures at the different sets set up along to way. We ended up with one that we all agreed on and split the cost the forced 8X10 so we could all get 5X7 are since that is the size we all prefer. We also split the cost of the 8X10 of embarkation to get the 5X7's. We didn't get any more pictures because all the ones we would have gotten came as 8X10's. I did note on the comment card at the end of the cruise that they would have sold quite a few more pics, if we could have just ordered 5X7's with out purchasing the 8X10 first. After dinner we went to the show, this time we got there early enough to get good seats and spent the time waiting for the show to start chatting and have a good time in general. Us ladies all had pina-coladas, and since we rarely drink, we were quite tipsy by the time the show was over. I don't know if the drinks were strong or if we just can't handle alcohol. We then walked out to the outer decks to look at the stars, only it was misting, so we just hung out around one of the covered tables for a while before heading to bed. Read more