We choose Carnival because we wanted a more relaxed cruise without having to "dress up" a lot for dinner. On elegant night my hubs wore a long sleeved shirt w/tie and slacks and was fine. Many men were wearing jackets, but you wants to pack that? Anyway, I flown in from Oklahoma the day before because we have experienced delays at airports in other travels and didn't want that to happen again. We stayed at Loews Hotel on Miami Beach the night before - very elegant, but very nice. It was a 15 minute cab ride to the port. We arrived at the port at 11:15 and by 12:15 we were on board. Our room wasn't ready until 1:30, but we ate lunch and worked around the ship for awhile before going to our room. We were very happy with our room, very roomy with lots of storage space. We enjoyed having a balcony very much and spent quite a bit of time there watching the sunrises and sunsets. We found the food on the Valor good. I would have liked to see biscuits at breakfast, but I'm southern. We eat at the 6:00 dinner in the Lincoln dining room. One of the best parts of our trip was meeting and visiting with our table couples every night. Evening meals were good. We were impressed. Several reviews that we had read compared it to Applebee's and it was much better than any Applebee's we had eaten! The only disappointment was the fish and chips buffet line. Several reviews had said it was good, but that wasn't our experience. The calamari was tough and chewy, the fried fish and chips were greasy. We didn't go back. The pizza bar and grilled burgers were both very good. Overall, we had a great experience on the Valor. Of course, we had nothing to compare it. The one thing we would have liked is more public restrooms. The only ones we found were near the Ivanhoe Theatre and it was a pain to go all the way to our room to use the restroom. The only bad experience we had with our excursions was in Roatan. We did the snorkeling, clear kayaking, and walk through Gumbalimba Park. It was supposed to be a rain forest, but they haven't even finished planting all the trees. The parrots and monkeys were cages animals (which I oppose) and the park was very fake. The clear kayak trip was over coral, by we weren't allowed to stop and look, we just went out and back around in a circle. When we snorkeled the same area, it was awesome. We just expected more with the kayak trip and the walking trip.