We took our first cruise with Carnival back in February 2014 and I am SO glad we did. We were excited that our ship (The Triumph) would have all kinds of new upgrades after being dry docked the previous year. Everything was just perfect! We got upgraded for FREE to an oceanview which made our first cruising experience even better. All the staff was so friendly and helpful and our cleaning service crew always said hello to us when they saw us walking down the hall, we loved how friendly they were! Our dinner crew was also great and I loved when they put on the fun 'shows' at dinner. Speaking of dinner...the food was GREAT! We really enjoyed trying several new things and the food was just incredible. I will say that although I loved the Mongolian Grill, Guy's Burgers and Pizza Pirate, I was NOT a fan of the buffet AT ALL. I can't say much about the drink service as we only had about 2 drinks the entire cruise...on our upcoming cruise this will be so different, as we saw so many we wanted to try! I think I'm really going to enjoy the rum and tequila bars though! Our cruise director was awesome- very bubbly and fun! She always made our time enjoyable when we saw her. Boarding and debarking the ship was super quick and painless, we didn't have a problem at all. We loved this cruise so much that we are taking another in November 2015 for 7 day on the Freedom...we hope we have just as awesome as an experience as we did on the Triumph if not better.