This was our family's first cruise. It was myself, my husband, and our 10 year old son. We flew into Orlando and booked the Carnival shuttle bus to the port. Everything went smoothly for us. We had friends that waited in the embarkation line for about 3-4 hours before we arrived. Sucked for them but it was cleared up by the time we got there. We pretty much walked right in.

The ship itself was huge but really nice for the most part. I agree with another reviewer about how confusing it was to make your way from one side of the ship to the other due to being blocked midship by the Northern Lights dining room. One night we walked straight through the restaurant because we got frustrated. Oh well. There were several elevators that were out of order but it didn't cause a big deal. The waterpark is awesome for the kids. We spent a lot of time there. The slides will hurt your back eventually. The seams where the tunnels meet are really rough but they are still fun for a short period of time.

We stayed on the 2nd floor in one of the Cove Balcony rooms. I'm not sure what the reviewers were talking about a poop smell for. We never had any foul odors when we were there at all. The balcony was a nice size with 2 chairs and a small table. Plenty of room to maneuver around. It is nice to look down and see the ocean. The cove balcony also provides some extra shade which was nice. Really enjoyed being out there. The bed was comfortable and so were the pillows. I have 2 complaints about our room. 1) The mini fridge is NOT a fridge at all. We put bottled water in there for days and they were never even slightly cool. When we asked guest services about this, we were told "they are not mini-fridges, they are more like coolers." To which I said, "Well...they don't cool." So nothing was done about it and we got over it. 2) This is my biggest room complaint. We had a really annoying rattle sound that lasted for hours, in our ceiling and floor, every single night. It sounded like a screw or bolt was loose and would rattle around. I swear we had a mouse in there that was carrying it to one side of our ceiling and then "bang," it would drop it. Then pick it up, run it to the other side of our ceiling and then "bang," drop it again. Over and over and over and over. This noise would also happen when docked at port, when the ship wasn't moving but it mostly happened between the hours of 12am-5am every morning. I told guest services about it after several days and he said that they don't have mice on the ship and the next time I heard the noise, they will send someone to our room to investigate it. I really didn't want someone coming in our room at 3am and crawl around in our ceiling so I just sucked it up and didn't sleep for crap. My fault I guess. We had Mr. J as our steward and he was excellent. Our room was always clean when we arrived back to it and my son loved the different towel animals every day. The monkey was our favorite. Read more