I received an extremely good offer from Carnival to take a cruise in December. I saw that Sensation was going to Half Moon Cay on their 5 day Christmas Cruise. The Cruise left from Port Canaveral which I think is one of the best run cruise ports I have sailed from. I checked in and was eating on the ship within 30 minutes of my arrival at the port.

The Sensation is a Fantasy Class ship and is showing her age. The room that I reserved had a hole in floor of the bathroom which was a true safety issue. After a few visits to guest services I was moved to a room with a solid bathroom floor. The new room was larger than most inside rooms, however there was a stripper pole in the middle of the room which led to a strange arrangement of the room. Also the room had no climate controls and it was extremely cold most of the time. I had to wear a sweater while I was in the room and had extra blankets at night to try to stay warm. The toilet had to be pressed 4 times before it would flush in that room also. The ship also made lots of noises just about everyone on the ship was woken up most mornings between 3-4 Am by loud noises coming from the ships engines. On the 2nd day of the cruise all of the oceanview rooms near my room were flooded I assume by a leak from the rooms above. So for the last 3 days of the cruise heater fans were running full time trying to dry out those rooms There was a meldew smell in the hall in front of my room for most of the cruise.

In spite of these problems with the physical ship everyone on this cruise seemed to have a good time. The crew went out of their way to wish us all Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. There were 3 shows in the main theater on this cruise. Variety was the first and I thought best show, the dancers did a light version of a traditional vegas show which I found entertaining. The second show was called "totally 80's" it was hyped as being the best show Even though I won the 80's trivia contest on the boat I didn't particularly care for that show probably to stereotyped for me. The Third was a Christmas show on Christmas night which had no great production numbers but did do a good job of instilling Christmas spirit on the boat. Read more