We sailed on the January 9-16 sailing of the Carnival Valor. My review got pretty long - I guess I have to re-live the vacation now that I'm cocooned inside to avoid the snow outside.

I'll start out by saying our first cruise was on the Nov. 7 sailing of the Carnival Splendor. That was the ship and sailing that incurred an engine fire. After being assured that such an incident was quite rare, we decided to try again, using the credit that Carnival provided us. So this cruise became our free makeup cruise. And overall, it did make up for our 4-day ordeal with a memorable experience that let us realize cruising is a fun and affordable way to visit some exotic locations. The Western Caribbean itinerary was great, and included stops in places I had never before considered visiting -- Grand Cayman, Cozumel, Belize, and Roatan. So we got to visit four Caribbean and Central American countries in 7 days. To describe a little about us -- we are in our mid-30s. My wife is expecting (we met the pregnancy deadline by one day). We travelled on both the ill-fated Splendor cruise and this cruise with our kids ages six and eight.

We opted to fly to Orlando the day before and rent a car. The airfare was nearly half of what it would have cost to fly directly to Miami, and the car rental was only about $50. So that added up to quite a bit of savings for the four of us. After driving the car to Miami International, we stayed at the La Quinta Inn East near the airport, and took the free shuttle to the cruise port the next morning. Read more