We thought our Carnival Splendor vacation was awesome! The food was good, the shows were great, our cabin was spacious, the staff was perfect. We could not have asked for a better cruise. The Carnival Splendor decor is not as bad as some people think. Yes, its very pink but I liked it alot. The pictures along the cabin hallways were cute. Like old fashioned pictures from the 50's or something. We spent most of our time in the casino and sports bar on sea days. Our weather was not as warm as we would have liked so we only spent one day by the pool in the jacuzzi and thought it needed to be a little warmer. Sept is the perfect time to cruise, the weather was nice and not alot of kids running around. We only had 31 kids on board and probably only saw three of them. The ship itself is very nice although our group decided we liked Royal Caribbean's Voyager class better. The Splendor seems to have alot less deck space since they use alot of it for the retracting roof. I think this would make a good Alaska Ship since the majority of things to do are indoors. Even the Lido pool seems to be indoors when the roof is retracted. The adult only pool in the back was crowded the whole time. I was surprised by how many people were in the pool. I would have thought the water would have been very cold, but I never tried it. The water slide looked fun but not as big as some of the other carnival ships and the water park area was hidden between two walls and I never saw a single child playing in it. One of our few complaints from my boyfriend was that the Sports bar did not show any american sports. The bartender said that the satellite wasn't able to pick them up. So we watched skynews the whole time. With it being football season we had one unhappy camper in our group!

Embarkation and debarkation were both a breeze. We did their self-disembark and basically were the first 4 people off the ship. Totally the way to go if you can carry your own bags.

We did do the Pinnacle super club and thought it was a little overdone. The food was good and if you're into all the presentation of food etc you'll like it. We all ordered the surf and turf and my boyfriend wanted the larger NY strip steak instead of the 4 oz filet and they wouldn't budge on that so he went away hungry. The Lobster had a good taste but it was tiny. We all thought the ceasar salad in the main dining room was better then the one they fixed in front of you. The deserts were ok, but nothing that special.. Boyfriend ordered apple pie thing and said he thought the apples tasted bad. My desert had four little dishes and they were pretty good. I can't remember what it was called. The ports of call that we had were Lehavre, Vigo, Lisbon,Malaga, Barcelona, Cannes, and Livorno. Vigo is probably the prettiest port of all. Tall hills on either side with lush trees and doesn't look industrial like the other ports at all. We did a tour of Vigo and Bayona which was alot of fun. Lisbon we just walked around the shopping district and got bored and ended up back on board early. Malaga we did a panoramic and tapas tour. It was good. Barcelona we hung out on La Ramblas people watching and drinking beer. Cannes we did a tour to Nice. It was nice but rainy. Livorno we did a wine tasting tour which was a load of fun. Read more