12/07/08 Pre-cruise: Drove to Galveston with DH. Best parts: being able to drive down the day before, relax in the hotel and arrive at the terminal early. Also, look around Galveston, stroll on the beach and pick up any forgotten items in town. Met up with nine other friends and family members going on the same cruise. I think they chose this sailing mainly for the price. Stayed at the Hilton right across from the beach, extremely nice. Good view from balcony, luxury linens and spacious room. 12/08/08 Followed Hilton shuttle to parking area (included with one night's stay, a bargain) and off to terminal around noon. Dropped off bags with porter, straight up to the lines, not too long and kept moving, and were on the ship before one o'clock. Ate late lunch on Lido. The ship activities are almost exactly the same as other Carnival cruises I've been on. Ho hum, especially the deck activities, hard to see and hear what is going on. There were some variety shows, pretty good. The cruise director is funny, talks a lot. We went to the captain's reception and the past guests' reception. Appetizers not very good. Drinks were good at captain's reception and terrible at the past guest party IMHO. The service on the ship was good, our room steward kept our room in good order, except the last night, our comment cards disappeared while we were at dinner and we hadn't filled them out yet. I went to purser to ask for more and someone else brought them to our room. We tried to keep our room picked up. I don't think room steward should have to clean up after slobs. Waitress in Wind Star dining room was very nice, Edita, I think. Didn't seem to be a huge number of children on this particular cruise. Saw a few running down the halls a couple of times. One thing I didn't like was the amount of cigar and cigarette smoke. The band was in a smoking lounge and smokers seemed to think they could smoke anywhere on deck. The smoke from the casino overflows down the entire deck and is disgusting. Surprisingly, the cabins did not smell like smoke. I put a review of our cabin in the cabin guru section. U160. Not bad. The rooms are pretty sparse. Nice linens and tv's are now flat screens. Poor electrical outlet. We didn't do any shore excursions through Carnival. We've been to Cozumel many times so we picked somewhere new to try; a beach called Nachi Cocum. You have to pre-book it online before you cruise. It is a beautiful place, but the weather did not cooperate! We went even though it was freezing and windy. The food is good, the drinks are included, plus chairs, restrooms, pool, hot tub. I would go back cuz, I gottahaveabeach! All the water excursions that Carnival had were cancelled that day. In Progreso (we've been there also) rode the double decker bus for $2 just to see the town, interesting. I got hit in the head with a power line! You have to watch out! Then we walked through town, didn't want to go to the Mercado, too hot and crowded in there, plus I didn't want to shop. I like the idea of the Mexican village but the people there will bug you to death to try to get you to buy something, not relaxing at all. We just walked off, telling them no thank you every few seconds, went into a nice little store and bought beer for $1 and they let us use their restroom, too. Went back there 2 more times that day. Went across the street to the beach where they wanted to charge $2 to sit in a broken down lawn chair, but said if we bought 2 45 minute massages for $30 we could sit in the chairs all day for free. So we said ok and got 2 of the worst 30 minute massages ever (I had to take pain medicine after dinner and my spine was sore the next day). We sat in the chairs for a few minutes and they said we had to pay, we told them the lady that sold us the massages said we could sit there, of course she was no where to be found. Then she came back and said no, it was some other chairs (which were all full) and we told her no we would just sit there since we got shorted on our massages. She said for us to go back to the tables for 10 more minutes, ha! We sat there a few more minutes, the sun was warm but the water in the Gulf was ice cold and all churned up, then walked back to town. The only other thing I bought was a little magnet from a little girl on the beach but I lost it, oh well! She was still in her school uniform cute but kinda sad. The ship had one problem that was so unpleasant: many areas of the ship had the odor of raw sewage, yuck! Kinda took your appetite away. Never used the pools or hot tub onboard. Sometimes there were kids in the adults only hot tub. It was too windy to try the mini golf. The dining room food was good, especially the lobster on elegant night. Breakfast was also good. We ate lunch there once and weren't impressed. Ordered room service for breakfast once for a late night snack (after packing!) both were good and so fast, just remember to tip your server. The wait staff had a few things planned to entertain us, same as all the other Carnival cruises. Its sad the last night when they sing to you cuz you know you have to leave the next day. Didn't try the pizza or ice cream, you can get that at home. I don't really like buffets at all. I have to wait on myself at home every day! They did have good whole fruit on the Lido deck at the Panorama restaurant. The fruit in the dining room was my favorite. 12/13/08 We ran into bad weather and got into Galveston late Saturday. Debarkation was kinda slow, they want you out of your cabin early but we stayed in ours a little while since they was nothing left to do and no where to go. Finally we went up to the Lido deck to wait for our level to be called. Got off, picked up our luggage and went through customs pretty quick. The shuttle to our hotel was sitting there and took us to our car around 12:30. Vacation officially over, drove home.