My wife and I have been on 15 plus cruises the first was in 1998 on a ship called the Regal Empress. I must admit that crusing is our favorite vacation. We had cruised Carnival many years ago and enjoyed them for the most part. Then our travel agent recommended we try RCL and we were sold. When we were booking our 29 th anniversary/62 nd birthday cruise our travel agent suggested we give the Carnival Breeze a chance. The day before we left I recieved an email from Carnival asking that we don't arrive until after 2 pm. We had booked a Spa Suite and the only real perk that Carnival offers is priority boarding to suite guests. that was a red flag but it seems as if they just sent that to all of their customers I was already beginning to wonder if we had booked the wrong cruise.

We drove from Tampa to Miami the morning of the cruise. We researched Port of Miami and found that parking was 20 $ per day that would have been 160 $ as this was a 8 night cruise so we parked off site at Primier Parking for 60 $ for the week. This was the first time we ever parked off site it surprised me it went smoothly and we were bused to the port and there at 1 pm. The other couple with us needed a wheelchair there was a long line for the wheelchairs and my wife and I went to the priority line and were on the ship in about 20 minutes. Our friends didn't fare so well it took them about an hour to get a chair and get on board it seems that the port of Miami provides a chair to a certian point and then Carnival takes over. There was a bench for them to sit on while they waited but it was full and they were waiting in the sun for quite awhile. The reason I spent so much time on this part of our cruise is it was the hardest embarkation I have ever been through. The Port of Miami is not my top choice for boarding . The spa suite was a bit larger than a junior suite with 2 chairs and a chase lounge on the balcony. The room was nicely decorate and was very comfortable for my wife and I. The spa suite gave us easy access to the spa and we were given conplimentry robes and sandles. Included with the suite was use of all of the spa facilities for the whole cruise and boy did we use them. The staff was very helpful and always greeted us with a smile we used the thalassotherpy pool and the steamrooms daily and my wife fell in love with the thermal tiled chairs. The use of these facilities was included with our suite and I understand it's 40 $ for a days use. I must say it was well worth having.

Our itinerary began with 2 days at sea there was plenty to do on the ship the pools are small and get really crowded early the tired old idea of going out and putting towels on chairs early to save them still works in spite of all of the don't do it signs it's a cruise stable that is never enforced so that's that. They did chase the kids out of the adult only area (once) that was the first time I actually saw that happen and when a fellow cruise crittic member pointed out some kids in the adult area and a staff member asked them to move along. They seemed to make and effort to enforce that rule. The sea days were O.K. the BBQ place is only open on sea days and there was a long line but it was worth the wait and I really was surprised how good the Burgers and the Burritos were. All of the dining venues were very good and I didn't get a bad meal. The main dinning room was the exception. We had "your time dining" and would typically eat around 6:30 pm the food was nothing special and the service was usually slow you could figure about 1 1/2 hours plus per meal. That's too long with lots of time between courses. The entertainment was also typical not great but not terrible. One of the really cool things was the dive in movies each night complete with popcorn it was a really popular thing to do and most of the chairs were full every night. Read more