I went solo on this cruise and had booked a 1A guaranteed. After an incredibly long wait to get on the ship I was shocked at the upgrade when I saw the cabin. It was a handicapped accessible room so it had lots of moving around room and the window overlooked a practically unknown deck at the very front of deck 10.

My cruise was passing one of the last (if not the last) tropical storms of the season so the first day at sea (after a slightly breezy and chilly day in the Bahamas) was very rocky and many people spent the evening and next morning in their cabins sick. I was able to guiltily enjoy a very uncrowded ship. I saw lots of familiar faces onboard among the crew from my May cruise aboard the Legend (pre Cruise Critic membership or I would've reviewed that trip also) and they were all very good at their jobs. I didn't like my tablemates on the first night but the maitre d' switched me to another table that had someone I knew from Cruise Critic. Dinner was a lot more fun then. My wait staff and cabin help were great. I had a lot of fun on my Beach excursion in the Bahamas and my tour of some Mayan ruins out of Costa Maya (our Cozumel alternative) was a long drive but it was definitely worth it. I was disappointed with my Grand Cayman experience though. I signed up for a triple play (Turtle Farm, Hell and Stingray City) The problem was we had to use an alternate tender port (the original was too choppy for the Captain) and the dock couldn't handle the influx from us and the two other ships (Imagination and one of the Princess ships, I think). The first bus wasn't big enough so I and a few others had to wait around almost 1.5 hours for the bus to fill so the driver would leave. He then spent most of his time rushing us through the first 2 stops so that we could catch up to the first group and leave together on the same boat. I was very impressed with the Carnival peoples' response when I lodged a complaint with the Shore Excursion desk. They took it very seriously, asked several questions to make sure they understood, and said they were very sorry and would look into it. I awoke on our last day to get a note from them that they were going to refund 25% of the cost of the excursion as compensation. The ship itself was a weird layout to me. There were decks that you couldn't walk all the way back on because they were cut off by dining areas or galleys (and don't even think about how hard it was to find the internet cafe, nestled between the dining areas). There were also two long walkways on the outside of the Lobby deck that couldn't reenter the ship. That meant that after walking half the length of the ship, you had no choice but to turn around and come back.

The Lido buffet was laid out so that things seemed to not be where they should (ie. bagels on one side and cream cheese on the other). Also, many times that I went there would be long lines at one station and the other stations wouldn't open to try to lighten the load. Read more