Sorry this is kind of late. And yes, I tend to get lengthy so I'm apologizing in advance. Take a deep breath, readjust your monitors so your eyes don't glaze over, and dive in!

This is our seventh cruise; fifth on Carnival. My husband is 44 and I'm 34 from the Northern New Jersey area. We took this cruise with our daughter who is four and my mother who is 57 (ooooh, I hope I don't get in trouble for publishing that). It was the third cruise for both my mom and daughter. I always go to the boards when getting ready for a cruise and this time was no exception. There was an extensive discussion about the Victory and bad experiences but about the same number of good experiences so I knew not to board the ship with pre-conceived notions.

The ship has a reputation of being hard to navigate as a passenger and I understand what is meant by that. BUT, if you take about 10 minutes to review the little card with the location of everything, AND keep in mind that you cannot walk bow to stern on decks three and four, you should be fine. One thing that tripped me up twice was which elevator to take when needing to be in the back of the ship. Let me elaborate: my brain could not process that the Atlantic Dining Room was not located forward, but more like mid-to-aft. So, when I would attempt to take the second bank of elevators down, I would end up in front of the Atlantic Dining Room. If your stateroom is six or higher and you're eating in the Pacific Dining Room, you will need to walk all the way to the back to the last set of elevators in order to be dropped off in front of the Pacific Dining Room. That is also the slowest bank of elevators on the ship; probably because they take you right to the buffet as well. I advise not using this elevator bank. Read more