First off, I have to say that I had the time of my life! My husband & I were celebrating our 20th anniversary and sharing the cruise experience with 5 other people......5 of us were on our first cruise. While the ship wasn't everything I expected (I was raised watching "The Love Boat"), it exceeded in many others. I had pictured a much larger atrium, some of the halls were a bit musty smelling and the carpet was in need of some major cleaning, but for the most part, it was a nice ship.

I loved the fact that I could do as little or as much as I wanted. Traveling with a "seasoned cruiser," we were kept busy 99.9% of the time, between the silly games, shows, "Carnival Colors" competitions, etc. Each of us walked away from our cruise with a Carnival medallion for having won some sort of competition. We sang Karaoke on more than one occasion at the Cole Porter Lounge....a real blast! The Blues Brothers show in the Mikado showroom was outstanding......all of us loved it!!! We had a blast learning an Austin Powers dance number, which we still remember to this day! Our Cruise Director, Chris and his staff were awesome. Never a dull moment with any of them.

On the food front, there was only one dinner out of seven where absolutely nothing prepared sounded appealing to me. Four of us broke away from the group of seven and headed to Tiffany's for a 'junk food' dinner of the best pizza on high seas.....possibly the best pizza anywhere! The other three from our group opted to dine in the dining room, which was more than fine by us. The service in the dining room was always outstanding.....by the end of night two our wait staff knew exactly what we wanted to drink, what salad dressing we preferred and how we wanted our steaks prepared without a refresher course nightly. That speaks volumes to me. Read more