My mother-in-law loves cruising and has cruised with Carnival 3 times now. By some miracle, we all ended up with the same vacation week this June and she booked us the 4 night Carnival Sensation on June 15th. The group is: Grandmother, Grandfather (70s), MIL and FIL (50s), SIL and BIL (30s), me and DH (20s), our daughter (3), our 2 nephews that belong to SIL and BIL (7 and 3).

We drove from NW Georgia to Jacksonville on Saturday and stayed at the Wyndham Wingate. It was lovely with comfy beds and pillows. It was a short 2 hour drive to Port Canaveral Sunday morning. We arrived at the luggage spot easily at around 1030am. The porters were very friendly and helpful. We had to have our funpasses out to even enter security and then FIL was not allowed to enter with his 12x12x12 cooler. He was not happy and I would suggest just leaving coolers at home honestly. It was cumbersome and we ended up taking several cokes and waters off with us after the trip. Several older ladies and gentlemen are there to entertain you as you wait and they make checking in smooth and fun. They are quite exuberant, singing and dancing. The kids really got a kick out of it and it put us in the vacation mood for sure. I thought they were sweet. We did our embarkation picture with a very patient photographer as my little one did not want to put her hands down and look at the camera. She was "modeling" and did not wish to be interrupted. Oh well. Have your stuff out. They will tell you this constantly and they mean it. They also take your picture for your sign and sail card so take off all hats and sunglasses, etc. when you go up the escalator. We ate a fairly quiet lunch at the Lido buffet. It was tasty and not too crowded. We explored the quiet ship and entered our rooms around 1:30. There are several places to rest, take pictures, play cards, read a book, etc all over this ship during this time. I wish I had capitalized on that.

Our room was fine. We had a little trouble getting our steward to put down our little bunk bed/overhead bed thing. He assumed that our small children would sleep with us, but even after explaining that we would like to use that bed space... it took him a while and he seemed reluctant. He was also not good at giving us ice in our little buckets. You have to be in the right place at the right time and ask him for it as he comes around with the ice chest. Otherwise he did an amazing job at cleaning and organizing our stuff. He lined our shoes up and picked up my daughter's toys. It was nice to return to such a tidy room cause we are messy vacationers. PARENTS! There was NO tub in our room. The shower head is one of the removable ones with the tubing. Thank goodness cause our daughter was not happy. It took alot of coaxing to get her in the shower. We now have one of these shower heads in her bathroom though and she loves taking "big girl baths". I make a big deal about this because we looked this info up before we left and it did say on the carnival website that we would have a tub. Oops. We did notice a slight sewage odor by the last day of the cruise. It wasn't too bothersome and it wasn't constant. Read more