I am writing this review for those who have either already booked or found a "great deal" and are looking for some good perspective on this cruise. I consider myself a fairly experienced cruiser; I have status with Disney, NCL, Royal Caribbean and Carnival so I will start with my perspective. We got a great deal on this cruise for a last minute get away for Memorial Day. For us Charleston is much closer than sailing from FL or MD so we set our expectations as "it's a 4 day cruise, how bad can this be?" We are also not particularly picky people, we are relatively easy going and since we are used to Carnival cruises, we know the food quality is not Disney, and we don't expect it to be. We realize you get what you pay for, so we weren't going in expecting to have a vacation of a lifetime but, again, we felt that the cost was low for cruise fare.

Charleston is tricky. They thankfully started to let you walk and from the boat, and don't require you take the bus but this boat is bigger than the others that sail from Charleston and it was a little bit of a mess getting on to the boat. We waited over 40 min to get into the lot - just sitting in park on the streets of Charleston. That's neither here nor there, but I do recommend getting to the port before noon as that seems to be when the trouble begins at the port going in.

Overall it was fine. There's an onboard app that gives you the happenings on the ship and for $5 per person you can chat for the entire trip. That came in handy, no need for walkie talkies anymore and while most other cruise lines this is free, it is Carnival so we were OK since the base fare was lower. Read more