We drove 40 minutes to the port and parked in the parking garage, immediately gave our bags to the baggage personnel, tiped them, stood in line less than 5 minutes and were checked in in no time at all.  Since this was our third cruise on carnival we were immediately taken to the 2nd floor with only about 50 other guests and were the first ones on the ship.  We did not anticipate this at all so we were highly pleased.  We were the first ones in line for the buffet and the food was great.  At 1:00 we were allowed to our rooms, we had gotten a balcony on the 7th deck, Empress, port side mid way aft and it was great.  The only thing that we were disappointed at was we had gotten a balcony so that we could enjoy the sail away from Port Everglades on our balcony, but due to bad timing we were still stuck in the life boat drill.  I thought the timing was a little poor in this aspect but everything else on the cruise was run very well.  We had asked for a table for 2, early sitting but were given early seating with a table for 10.  We went to the dining room and by the next night they had granted our request and we were very happy with our table. We had great dining room waiters, Igor and Ronald were exceptional and could not have been nicer.  Our room stewards were also very nice and kept our room spotless.  We got morning coffee delivered to our stateroom on 4 different mornings and they were on time every time.  We enjoyed coffee on our balcony.The pool area, of course, gets very crowded so we always got there by at least 9:30 and after a couple of hours in the sun we returned to our stateroom and went to the dining room for breakfast and lunch.  Less crowded and the people are alot more civilized.  The weather was very good and we only had about 2 days that the seas were rough.  The weather was great in all the ports.  WE did the Panama Canal tour through Carnival and enjoyed it very much.  Then in Costa Rica we did the Caribbean Adventure of bus, train and boat and that also was very enjoyable.  We did a private excursion in Belize, cave tubing and that also was wonderful.  The food in the dining room was good most of the time.  We only ate in the buffet for dinner once and it was pretty good.Everything was very well organized especially the excursions much more than on other cruise ships.The cruise director was very good and we enjoyed him very much.Disembarkation was also very easy as we did the self-assist and were off of the ship by 7:45 am and home by 9:00 am.We will definitely cruise with Carnival.