Some background info....This was our 4th Carnival cruise. We sailed twice on the Miracle and once on the Freedom. This was our first time on the Inspiration and also our first 5 day cruise. The others were 8 day cruises. I'm 43 and DW is 41. Our son Matthew is 12. We were cruising with friends of ours who have two sons ages 12 and 9. Flew into Tampa the night before and stayed at the Crowne Plaza Tampa - Westshore ... pretty nice hotel for the money. Nice pool and lounge area. Walking distance to a mall where we picked up last minute things and had a very nice dinner at PF Changs... Cab ride from hotel to port was reasonable ..... Getting out of the cab I was excited to see we were FIRST on line....Had our fun pass info all printed out and ready to go. Check in took us less than five minutes. Got our zone one card and waited to be called. They started with a wedding party...VIPs and special service people. Than they called zone one....I ran to the gate as I wanted to be FIRST on the ship....I know I'm 43 but still act 12 LOL.

Went up to the Lido deck for a bite to eat and a DOD.....Lido deck was crowded as you would expect. The ship was at full capacity so we figured lines would be long. All in all was not too bad. Started out to explore the ship and let the kids check things out. None of the kids wanted to do Circle C or Camp Carnival which was fine by us. Our rooms were ready fairly quickly and luggage arrived not long after. Muster drill was handled nicely. They had passengers sit in different areas of the ship and show us how to use the life vests....Much nicer than standing in the hot sun trying to see the instructor. After the demonstration they took us to where our muster station was and that was the end of muster.

First night we explored the ship...tried the casino and hit the water slides. After a very nice dinner we went to the shows. (More on those later) Went to a couple of the lounges for some drinks and called it a night. Read more