Chose this cruise because the port is only 30 mins from home. Found out later that all cruise ships out of Port of Tampa are usually older and smaller. The reason for this is the Skyway Bridge that spans the entry between the Gulf of Mexico, and the Tampa Bay. The newer and larger cruise ships are simply too large to travel beneath the Skyway Bridge. I will say that it was really cool being up on the top deck and watching as we cruised beneath the bridge. It appeared as though there was only a few feet of clearance between the ship's top antennas and the underside of the bridge. I wonder if they have to time these departures and arrivals based on the tide.

Because this ship is older, it shows it's age a bit. The rooms do not have refrigerators, and it is not all brand new and shiny clean. We had an interior room for this trip, and that actually worked to our advantage. No sunlight beaming in through the cracks at bedtime or in the morning; so it was much easier to get the kids to bed and to keep them in bed until we were ready to get up. When I booked this trip about a month before departure, I was not given the option to choose a dining time. On the Carnival website, I could not change the dining time; I was assigned an 8:15pm dining time. This was only our 2nd time cruising and we were not aware that if you do not book way in advance, all of the early dining slots will be booked. We usually eat dinner very early, like 4:30-5:00pm... so even the earlier dining option would have been a bit late for us. So we had to settle for the alternative buffets and other dining options. With all of the elderly we see out at the "early bird" specials in restaurants, I'm surprised that these cruise operators haven't taken notice and adjusted their dining schedules. I'm sure they could accomodate more people by offering 5p & 7p options, as opposed to the 6p & 8p they currently offer.

This ship had a Camp Carnival for the kids with supervised activities that worked very well for us. Our 8 & 10 yr old had more fun than a Disney Cruise we took 6 months ago. The pool on this boat was so small, it was pointless. On the days at sea it was standing room only with guests in chest deep water holding their arms up to keep their drinks above water. The water slide looked nice, but we didn't bother with it. Our cabin, though small was decent. One king bed, with two fold down from the wall bunk beds for night time. With the bunks down, it became quite cramped and everybody bumped their head at least once on the hard corners of the bunk. Additionally, being only about 5" thick, the bunk beds had very hard foam mattresses that were only slightly softer than pavement; surprised they haven't put a thick memory or gel foam pad in these to improve comfort. The room had ONE power socket! Knowing this in advance I brought a power strip, a couple extension cords, multi socket adapters, etc. It looked like a mess, the jumble of wires, but we have several tablets and phones, and a laptop and they all require chargers. Which brings me to the internet... this cost extra of course, but it wasn't as bad as I expected. For the entire trip, their premium internet package was $70; but this only allowed one device to be connected to the internet at a time. In order to have our 3 tablets and 2 phones connected simultaneously, I would have had to purchase a separate internet package for each device. Instead, I brought my Windows 7 laptop along, connected to ship's WiFi with the laptop and logged in to my premium internet plan. Then I enabled ICS (internet connection sharing) in Windows 7, with the wireless connection as the shared connection, and the ethernet port as the "shared to" connection. From there, I connected a TP-Link travel router ($15 on Amazon) to the laptop via ethernet cable, and re-broadcast the internet connection to my cabin, with my own SSID and password. A lot of trouble, yes... but it served our needs well. Overall, the internet in the cabin was weak and slow - even on mobile sites. Read more