We were 3rd time cruisers (Carnival Inspiration - 1999, Disney Magic - 2002), 30's traveling with a 1 yr old & 4 yr old. We drove down from Chicago as my wife is not much of the flying type and we both enjoy driving. We booked our cruise with skyauction.com (great site) and paid about $1550 for the four of us. The room was small, but about what we expected (inside cabin on the Riviera deck; which if you get sea sick is where you want to be). The room was clean, and the steward (Sorvio from India) did a nice job to keep it clean; he wasn't much of a chatter, but was nice, just not helpful in answering questions... I'm not sure how great his english really was as it seemed that he didn't understand too well. All the same though he made some great towel animals and did keep the room clean, and did a fantastic job at doing stuff while we weren't around (enough said... this is a crap shoot on any cruise at who you are going to get and either way it was not going to have that big of an impact on our cruise; only the tip that we leave).

Embarking... we arrived to find that the parking by the ship was full and had to park at a local garage for $12/ day (by the ship was $10). That was somewhat annoying but oh well... we dropped off the luggage and I took the car to the garage and hopped their free shuttle bus back to the ship. Then we waited in a fairly long line which only took about 15 minutes to get through. Once through that line we got to move to the next line which was for the welcome aboard family photo which took another 20 minutes or so... from their it was on to another line waiting to get onboard that took another 15 minutes or so... somewhat long, but it seems like this varied by the time of your arrival... ours was a bit later arriving around 1:45 pm (if you are traveling by car, I believe arriving around 11:30 will get you parking by the ship).

We went upstairs and got some FOOD: The one thing I like about Carnival is that they make food VERY available, especially compared to the Disney Magic. The quality... well... it is OK. The one gripe I have about the Cezzane rest (which is their upstairs restaurant - buffet) is that they put the omelette stations at the end of the buffet line which made for some long waits or rude cutting for those that didn't want an omelette... I found that annoying; they should have either been off on the side like they were on the other 2 cruise we took; or put them at the beginning of the line. Read more