My group of 10 chose this cruise out of NY because we wanted to take a break from flying to Miami. This was a big mistake. The last four years we have been on the Dream once and the Breeze twice. The Sunshine can not compare to these ships. We knew we were going on a smaller ship, but we did not expect it to seem so small. Let me explain. The first sea day when I went out in the morning to get 3 chairs for my daughters and I we could not find a lounge chair anywhere on the deck. The deck area on this ship is extremely small. There was either a towel, a book, or a bag or whatever on EVERY chair on the deck. It was crazy. People were not in the chairs, lots and lots of towels. Carnival should not allow this. The three decks in the Serenity area was the same situation, but there Carnival employees were putting stickers on the lounge chairs and if you were not back in 40 minutes your stuff was taken off. They needed to do this on deck 9 & 10. My husband was up at 5 in the morning and said that is when the people were putting their towels on the chairs. Who wants to get up that early on vacation??? Not me. We tried to find sun someplace else, but the only other deck was deck 3. There was a time of day in the morning where you can go on one side of the ship but when the sun went up you would have to wait till late afternoon until the sun went down to go to the other side of the ship on deck 3. This is the deck under the lifeboats. It was either this or on our balcony. The only place we got sun on this cruise was on the islands. Either on the island or on the ship when everyone else was on the island.

We played a lot of trivia in Ocean Plaza because we couldn't go outside. The shake shack always had a line. They really need more than two people behind the counter. There are way too many people ordering specialty coffee and shakes for just two people. I felt really bad for the workers there.

People did complain about the layout of the ship when going to dinner, but all you have to do is walk down the hall to the right elevator and take that down to the dinning room so I didn't find this to be a problem. The food in the dinning room always came out well done. That was great for me because that is how I like my food. But my husband was very disappointed because he likes his food rare. The Steakhouse was amazing. Read more