This was my fourth Carnival cruise and the 3rd on a Fantasy Class ship but it was my first time out of New Orleans. We had a group of 12 that drove down from Nashville overnight on Friday. We rented a 15 passanger van and a trailer. It made for a long ride. We arrived on NOLA about 7:00 am and parked near Bourbon Street. As we entered Bourbon Street a lot of people were just staggering out from the night before. Looked around a bit and had a hurricane at Pat O'Brians. Arrived at the port about 10:30 and the porters were great, right on top of things and helped keep everything organized and moving. Parked the van and waited in line. They started boarding at about 11:30 and by 12:15 we were onboard.

Our rooms were ready at about 1:15 so we all went to freshen up a bit. My wife and I were the only ones to pack bathing suits in our carry on so we changed and went to the lido deck to hang out and take a dip. Everyone else made it back up eventually and we hung out and checked the ship over. Once we were underway everyone headed back to their rooms to change for dinner but no luggage. The luggage did not make it to our rooms until about 5:50. We had about enough time to find a clean shirt and head to dinner.

Carnival managed to get us all at one table which was nice but a move that they may have regretted the night we went into Cozumel. Wait staff was great, no complaints. Food was typical for Carnival, mostly good but not great. Spent the first night kinda bouncing from place to place just to get a feel of things. Found that Simple Friends was the band playing, they were the band on the last Carnival cruise and they are really good. We stepped in to listen to them several times. Since no one had any real sleep the night before we all crashed a bit early. Read more