We had a great time and brought back lots of memories from both Grand Bahama and Nassau.  It is true that the ship is older and showing it's age, I noticed it mainly on the staircases.  It smells a little musty in certain areas, but overall it was ok for us.  Our cabin, an oceanview on Empress Deck, was in great shape and  very clean.  I was worried about smelling smoke everywhere, but the only place I noticed it was walking by the casino and near the bars/lounges.  I did not smell any smoke in any hallways to the cabins, so that was a relief.  The service was excellent, with the exception of one server in the dining room.  Advice: go with assigned dining.  We did and the service was fabulous, but they accidentally moved us when they were switching lots of people around after the 1st night's dinner....they put us in anytime dining...the service was just "ok" compared to our assigned dining, so we complained that it was their mistake, we'd made no request to be moved and we wanted to be put back in assigned dining.  The mistake was understandable I guess, since they said they'd had over 300 requests for changes after the 1st night's dining.  The ports:  It seems to me that many people complain about Freeport, Grand Bahama.  This is their own fault.  The port is industrial, there is nothing there...but we did our research and were determined to get away from the crowds and to Lucayan National Park, Gold Rock Beach and Banana Bay restaurant, which are further east on the island.  This excursion was not offered through Carnival, so we booked it ourselves directly through Forbes Charter Service.  My only complaint was we couldn't stay at Gold Rock forever.  It truly is the most beautiful beach with the calmest, clearest water I will probably ever see in my entire life.  Next, they took us to Banana Bay for lunch where the food was pretty good, not the best I've had, but still pretty good but the view was to die for!  Next time we are on Grand Bahama, we will rent a car and go to Gold Rock Beach for the entire day. There were only 12 of us on the tour and we were the only people on this awesome beach.    In Nassau, we had booked the Blue Lagoon beach day (with lunch) excursion through Carnival, which was from 8:30am-1:30pm.  Lovely beach, calm water. We had a great time there. One issue is once you factor in the travel time to and from the island, you really only had 2 1/2 hrs on the island.  Next time in Nassau, we will book this directly through one of the several tour companies that offer it, since they run back to the cruise port several times each afternoon, so that way we can stay on the beach a few more hours.  We did not do the dolphin encounters, but watched a bit.  After we got back from Blue Lagoon, we took the bus to Ardastra Zoo and Gardens.  It's a little walk from where you get off the bus, but the weather was perfect and we enjoyed it.  We fed apples to parrots.  Now that we've seen it, we probably won't go back next time, but it is a great zoo to see some tropical plants and interesting animals.  We are glad we went, but again, it's not something we'd do next time we're there.  From the zoo, we took a taxi back to the cruise port.  We went to the "welcome aboard show" and the "ticket to ride show", both of which we thought were pretty good.  We missed the comedy shows, as we were too tired both nights they were performing.  Seas were rough coming home, much worse than our past cruises.  I did take dramamine 2 days.  It didn't bother my husband.We took our limit of 12 water/soft drinks on board and spent very little on our sign and sail cards.  Overall, we would take this same cruise again.  Just go into it knowing this is not a brand new ship, but it's not some run down ferry either.  It was worth it to us to take the easy 4 1/2 hr. drive to Charleston, so we din't have to drive or fly to south Florida.  Carnival does a great job of always having something fun and interesting going on, the food selection was great (we both gained a few lbs), the service staff for the most part was excellent and the entertainment was ok too.  Have a great time if you decide to book this one!