Let me start off by saying that, overall, our family had the most wonderful experience onboard the Carnival Fantasy in May of 2014. We have never sailed with Carnival before, but will definately be back and will most certainly recommend this cruise line to all of our friends and family.
We are a family of six. Our ages are two adults, 14, 12, 10 and 5. Because of our large crew we had to book two staterooms. This ship does not offer family suites that can accommodate more than five as other cruise lines do, but the value makes it affordable.
Because the price of airfare is outrageous we decided to drive into Charleston from Michigan. Finding the ship was easy. You could see it from a mile away. Getting to it, however, was a different story. Do not trust your GPS. It will lead you to a museum. Finally, after driving some time through downtown Charleston, we saw signs that simply said “CRUISE” with arrows. We followed these signs and ended up in a huge parking lot where our luggage was quickly taken out of our car and our passports were checked. We still didn’t know if this was our cruise, but hoped so since our luggage was taken. We were then told that we couldn’t park for another almost 2 hours. We left and got lost. After two hours we had to stop a police officer to ask where to go. We had no idea where to park. Finally we ended up back in the same place where we dropped our luggage off and were escorted to a huge warehouse where our car was to be parked for the duration of our cruise. This came with a price tag of $86. I guess this is a reasonable price considering parking in Chicago is that per day.