We were on the Carnival Inspiration. This was our first cruise and I used the comments from this site. We purchased the Faster to the Fun pass and it was probably the best 50 bucks I have ever spent. Got to the port and from parking to dropping off our carry-ons was a 20 min experience. We passed what seemed like theme park lines of people waiting to board! And debarking on the last day was 15 mins at 7am. Before everyone else with the platinum guests. I will purchase that again until I make platinum. We were in cabin U10 which is a porthole cabin. This was my daughter's 15th birthday Mother/daughter trip and she picked the cabin. Upper deck. I love the location. Yes we did hear the anchor drop at Catalina and that is 20-25 min process, but it wasn't outrageously loud. We were already awake preparing for our day. The room was more spacious that I thought it would be and the shower was roomy too. Our steward, Rupa, was amazing, She has us memorized in by dinner time and always greeted us and seemed truly interested in what we were doing that day. We had early dinner in the Carnivale dining room. Our waiters were wonderful. They joked with us and gave us suggestions when we asked.
There is so much going on onboard that we were tired every night! Constantly moving watching comedy shows, motor city show, hasbro game show, karaoke, groove for St. Jude. We kayaked at laBbufadora. Rebeca, Carlos, & Roberto were so wonderful. They made sure we were all safe and had a great time. That excursion is not 4 hrs like it says. It's 5-6, but it's fun and we have time to eat tacos and get churros at la Bufadora and some got off the bus downtown Ensenada which is just a few blocks from the ship. We were so tired we just went back to the ship and napped. Catalina was good but our excursion time (we don't get to choose it) was right in the middle of the day, o we really didn't have time to explore. Next time we will explore and not do and excursion there. I want to see more of the island.
My daughter is 15 and there were only 3 other teens onboard so there were no plans for the teen club so she stayed with me most of the time. She loved all the activity too. We got our haird done on elegant night, the spa staff were wonderful and we looked great for the inevitable picture taking frenzy that happened that evening. They set up a ton of areas for professional portraits, and we did take advantage and ended up buying just one pic and it was from one of the professional backgrounds. All in all I'd do this trip again and the friendliness of all the crew we encountered just makes me want to travel Carnival. I really think you get what you put in to these kind of experiences. It was great!!
Was roomier than I thought it would be. We did not hear our neighbors at all but we did hear the anchor drop at Catalina (20-25 mins) not super bothersome though. Great service from our steward. We like her so much we took pics with her on debarkation day!