Let me start by saying it's time for the Fascination to be refurbished. I was on this boat 3 years ago and we had the time of our life. At that time it was a 7 day Southern Caribbean and it is now much much different. Our cabin was on the Empress deck and we were upgraded which was very nice. We had 5 in a cabin but still had room to move around. This is our 7th cruise, 6th with Carnival. This one was a little disappointing because it wasn't as nice as I remembered it to be.
Embarkation was very smooth. My daughter uses a walker to walk with and everyone was very helpful in getting us through the crowds as quickly as possible. I think we were on the boat in 45 minutes. We had lunch and unpacked immediately so we can enjoy the short time we had.
At dinner the first night we had some problems with the wait staff. The waiter was doing double duty as the busboy was never anywhere to be found. We had dirty dishes on our table for a long time and by the time the sour cream came for the baked potato, we were done with the prime rib. I complained to the head waiter and he promised us a new busboy the next night. This did occur and our dining experience improved 100%. It was nice to see they took care of the problem immediately.