This is my first time ever posting with Cruise Critic, so bear with me ;) My DP and I have been on 5 previous cruises- 3 with Holland America, 2 with Norwegian. This was our 1st with Carnival. Initially we had some serious doubts about cruising with CCL (i.e. gigantic ships, sub-par service, CCL rep of being "crazy party cruises", etc.) but after reading the mostly positive reviews here we decided to give it a go. The price and itinerary were also incentives for us to go.

We took the 9/13-9/20 Western Caribbean cruise with stops in Grand Cayman, Roatan Honduras, Belize and Cozumel with 2 sea days. To save some money we took a red-eye flight from San Francisco on 9/12 and arrived 11am the day of the cruise- so we were tired and slightly cranky but worked hard to stay positive. When we arrived at port we were pleased to see the Valor. It is a beautiful and very clean ship and not as enormous as we thought it would be.

The embarkation process was fairly quick & painless and we were onboard within 20-30 minutes of arriving at port. The decor of the Valor wasn't as garish as some critics of CCL have said. It's a little on the flashy side but I grew to appreciate it as the week went on. The cabins weren't available til 1:30 pm so we hung out on the Lido Deck and tried to grab some lunch. It was a bit crowded and frantic on Lido and it took us some time to find a table but we were happy to be on vacation & remained positive. Read more