My husband and I sailed the Carnival Legend from July 22 -- 29, 2012. This was our 20th cruise, our 14th on Carnival. We have also previously sailed on Celebrity, Cunard, Holland and Norwegian. This was a seven night sailing out of Tampa, FL. Mr. Cruise Cat has a couple more surgeries coming up, and we thought it would be a good idea to squeeze in another cruise, since it may be quite a while before we can schedule another one.

We drove to Tampa the day prior to sailing, and it was (thankfully) uneventful. Our boarding pass had "VIP" printed on it, as we are Platinum members. We looked for the VIP boarding signs at the terminal, and were all checked in and on board the ship within 10 minutes.

Carnival has made some adjustments to their past passenger perks system. They count the number of days at sea for different levels of priority. It now takes 75 days at sea to reach Platinum status, and there is a new Diamond level at 200 days with Carnival. This didn't affect our status as we already had more than 75 days at sea, and we are looking forward to achieving Diamond status! I do think this change is beneficial to passengers who take longer cruises and spend more money with Carnival. Under the old system it took ten cruises (any length) to make Platinum. That meant someone with ten three-night sailings attained Platinum status, even though they had spent much less money than passengers who had completed several week long cruises and held a lower status. Read more