This was my 7th Carnival Cruise (8th Overall) and my fiance's first cruise.... I was so excited for him to be able to experience it and he was not disappointed! Background on us... We are newly engaged, in our late 20's and we live in New Jersey. We flew in the morning of the cruise from Newark, hopped in a cab and arrived at the pier at about 1:30pm. From the time we arrived at the port until we were in our room was about 25 minutes, including a stop at the duty free store to pick up two bottles of wine. Our room was great, balcony on the port side of the ship on Deck 10 which is my preferred deck.. Close enough to the action. I had ordered a case of 12 waters to our room for about 10 bucks... I know there is a CVS but i also knew i would be lazy. Then we grabbed some lunch at Guy's and the Buffet, toured the ship a little, and headed back into OSJ to creep around a bit but it was really hot and humid that day so we grabbed some iced coffee, walked around a bit, stopped by the fort and got back on. By this time, our luggage had arrived which we were extremely thankful for since we felt gross.

This was the first time I tried Anytime Dining.. Usually I am with a huge group so i thought it would be easier to try now. We were always seated right away and we usually arrived between 8 and 9. We loved our waiters Erik and Anthony the first night, and managed to get them about every other day, and the other days we had Rey and Tatyana who we also liked! They were all great and very accomadating! They always asked if we wanted a table for two, which we took, but usually were seated close to others so we could have conversations if we wanted, or not have to and not feel awkward about it LOL. The safety drill was the usual and then we partied up at Sailaway.

In St Thomas, I had booked Sunny Liston’s tour. I had been to St. Thomas a few times but did it mainly for my bf’s benefit… We were picked up promptly at 10 after a little confusion over which vehicle we were in. Apparently we were the only 10am pickup so he had us hitch a ride with Godfrey’s tour group for the downtown shopping port, and then Godfrey told us where to meet Sunny’s Tour at 11:30. We shopped around a bit and then met up with the group for the tour. It was fun, he drove crazy, he sang, took us around to the Mountain Top, we had some overpriced Banana Daquiris, and hung out. Then he dropped some of us off at Coki Beach around 1:30pm and said he would pick us up at 3:30. Around 3, someone else besides him came and gathered us so there was a little confusion there as well. Coki Beach was nice, we rented two chairs and an umbrella for $20 and there was bar and food service on the beach. Read more