This is my 8th Cruise and 5th on Carnival and my husbands 3rd cruise. I must start by saying it was my favorite ship. It was most like a merge of Carnival meets RCL beautiful ship with a unique charm and theme to it. It is a smaller ship with only 2100 passengers and thought that was so much better then some of the larger ships such as the Splendor or the Glory. I felt the ship was more quaint due to its size and the lines for different activities including the buffet were much less annoying then on some of the larger ships. It was a much quieter cruise and it was nice.
We had an obstructed balcony room we booked late and it was one of the few options available with a balcony. At first we were not so sure about it but after being in the room it was not so bad we could see slightly off to the left side to the water but the rest you cannot look down just out but it was cool anyways (life boat comes up to bottom of floor). We are scuba divers and it was a great place to leave our equipment to dry off or to have a glass of wine and read a book. We are in fact booking the same room next year on a cruise out of NYC. We save money and it works for our needs.. we just like to see the ports as we come in and leave...:) So looking forward to next year.
The food was good..would definitely recommend Nick and Noras was most excellent! The buffet had decent selections however was not so impressed with the pizza bar as the pizza was kinda of icky and the service was not so great.. dinning room was nice had nice service and meet some nice couples.
We had an obstructed view balcony (room 5190) it was fine. We were leery at first but found that it suited our needs. The obstruction was not that bad life boat comes to the floor of the balcony and in this room you can see to the water looking down in the left hand side other then that you can clearly look out. The room itself was nice a standard balcony room bed was comfortable, linens were always clean and the pillows were just fine. The stewards kept the room clean and we would actually recommend the obstructed view to anyone who does not mind or wants to save a couple of bucks. We are booking the same room on our next cruise. I would rather have a massage then spend more money on an unobstructed view.