Let me start by saying this is 6th cruise on Carnival and the first one with my boys, age 7 and 9. There were good and bad things about this cruise in general, but the cruise itself was great, especially to see it out of their eyes.

Embarkation: We did not stay in Tampa the night before because we have family in the area and stayed with them instead. We got to the port about 11:00 and dropped bags off at the curb. Parked and walked up to the port and got in line. We were probably on the ship by noon, but I did not check. There was a line to get into terminal and a line to take photo of embarkation. The line moved along well and did not seem to bottleneck except at the aforementioned spots. We went and ate lunch and then dropped out carry-ons by the room before 1:00. The doors were not locked and we walked down from the Lido deck (we were on Deck 8). As an aside, we took 2 bottles of our own wine, but could have taken more as they did not check baggage, just scanned for weapons. The thing to do is carry on...others who packed theirs had it held until the last night.

Room: The room itself was small. Having 4 people in the room was fine; having 4 people's luggage was snug. We loved the extended balcony and took advantage of it all the time. The kids took their laptop out there and watched movies on sea days. Our room steward, Sumatra was very nice. We loved being on the 8th deck, mid-ship. I did not hear anything overhead (we were under Lido pool) except on the second to last night when we stayed up late and slept in until 9:00. We heard some deck chairs moving around, but that was it...nothing to make me not choose that deck again. There was a Lido party one night and we could hear it blaring in the hallway outside our room, but nothing once we got in our room. Read more