My husband and I decided to take a long family vacation with the kids this year so we spent a week in Orlando and decided on a short cruise leaving from Port Canaveral due to the close proximity to Orlando. EMBARKATION: We drove to Port Canaveral, arrived around noon, and was on board the ship on the Lido deck for lunch by 1 pm. We had no problems at all checking in...very smooth and quick. OVERALL ATMOSPHERE: For me, the ship never felt too crowded, there was always room to get a beach chair and relax by the pool, there were no really long lines to wait for anything - it was definitely more laid back than I'm used to on a cruise. My husband thought it was a little too laid back, which, to him translated to ignoring the passengers. I somewhat agree but I'll get to that later. CABIN: Our cabin was on the Empress deck which was great for us because everything on the ship was in close proximity. We slept four in the cabin - me, husband, 2 kids - with 1 upper and a rollaway bed. Surprisingly we had enough room where we didn't feel too cramped. There was ample closet space and the bathrooms were larger than I expected. We lucked up with some good movies showing that we hadn't seen before. DINING: We had Your Time Dining and the one time we decided to use it in the dining room we had to wait about 20 minutes before being seated. I guess that was our fault considering we arrived during the late dining time. We were not impressed with the meal in the dining room so we ate the rest of our meals in the Seaview Grill and the Lido deck. The best selection of the day was breakfast. Lunch and dinner selections were standard fare, nothing really special. The pizza was pretty bland but the kids loved the 24 hour ice cream availability. They also had a sushi bar which was surprisingly good. If you don't expect 5 star food you won't be too disappointed. The one thing I didn't notice until someone asked was that they didn't have the wonderful ice and fruit sculptures every day like RCL. CREW: The crew were like pasteboard characters - they were there but they weren't. Now our cabin steward Arnold was the greatest - very personable and we saw him at least twice a day and he ALWAYS asked us if we were comfortable and needed anything. Other than that, I don't think I ever heard crew members talk...except to each other. They also didn't smile. My husband was really annoyed by the fact that on the 1st day someone spilled some salad that stained the carpet and he walked past it every day while on the cruise and noted that they still hadn't fully cleaned the carpet spot. KID ACTIVITIES: Our 2 children - ages 2 and 14 were registered for Camp Carnival and Circle C respectively. Based on the schedule of activities, it appeared that Camp Carnival had many fun activities but we really didn't need to use it for our little one. Our son, however, LOVED Circle C... he's still talking about it. This was his 1st cruise. He said he met a lot of new people and the activities were a lot of fun. He didn't want to miss a thing - and he didn't. We were told there were 865 passengers 17 and under but I'm telling you wouldn't have known that, so I guess they were doing something with the kids. PORTS: We had a good time at Freeport and a great time in Nassau. We didn't expect too much from Freeport based on the reviews but we got lucky and were put in the wrong taxi with another group who wanted a tour. We really couldn't do excursions that we might have done had we not had our little one but we lucked up with a taxi driver named Denise who was supposed to take us to Port Lucaya for shopping but she ended up taking us on a tour of Freeport - history and all. It was wonderful. In Nassau we did Atlantis for the day. We booked a room through Comfort Suites for about $200, including taxes and fees that included the use of Atlantis for all four of us. The Dig was absolutely wonderful. Everyone had a great time. We went to Arawak Cay for dinner and our taxi driver dropped us off there, waited for us, and took us back to the ship when we were done. DEBARKATION: One word...GREAT! Got in line for self-assist at 7:15am and left the parking lot at 7:44 am All in all everyone had a wonderful time but my husband said he definitely prefers RCL and wouldn't rush back to Carnival anytime soon. I, on the other hand, would give them another try...I mean, it was a cruise to the Bahamas. If it were a longer cruise I might feel a little differently.