This was our first time embarking out of Miami ( cruised March 8-15) and we arrived a day earlier so as not to miss the cruise in case of bad weather affecting our flight from Toronto,Canada to Fort Lauderdale. We stayed at the Yve hotel in Miami overnight, visited the Bayside Market and had a great meal at Bubba Gumps which was also a first for us. It was easy to get to the pier with shuttle service from hotel and embarkation went very fast and we disembarked ourselves and were off the ship in no time to get an early shuttle back to Fort Lauderdale. Once on we explored the ship to find out where restaurants etc were and over the week we noticed a few similarities to the Valor and some differences. The Serenity area on the Valor was a lot better than on the Splendor( looked like it was a last minute idea on the Splendor,not enough lounge chairs and no hot tubs to enjoy although on this cruise we probably wouldn't have gotten a chance to use them anyway) and the seating for the movie theater was better on the Valor than on the Splendor. The Splendor also had a lot more blocked areas to get from deck to deck outside- had to go to different area to get to another deck area- on the Valor it seemed easier. It was the first time we had tendered and we didn't really care for waiting to get off the ship and waiting in long lines in the hot sun to get back on. Belize was too long of a tender ( they should invest in building a dock) and the Grand Caymans was nice and short but the return wait to come back was way too long. We much prefer getting on and off the ship at docks.

We enjoyed the meals, excursions, friendly staff, and overall experience was good. Never had any real problems with our room other than location and no hot water one morning but that was later fixed for us. We had any time dining which we really liked and enjoyed meeting new people at every meal and found the food to be pretty good.We also found there was lots of options at the Lido buffet- the only negative was how cold they kept the public areas and hot food cooled very fast. We did the Amazing race at Cozumel which was a lot of fun- we teamed up with another couple and we ended up 9th. To place in the top 3 you would have to run the entire time and being in our late 50's we walked it and enjoyed the scenery. Our excursion in Belize was to Xunantunich which is worth the long day if you like Mayan history and ruins. Our sting ray, Hell and turtle farm tour in the Caymans was also interesting and worth while for us although we felt rushed at all the stops.

What really disappointed us was getting woken up every night by yelling and screaming in the halls from 1-4 in the morning. We stayed in the same area of the ship ( forward area deck 1)as we did on the Valor but it didn't work out for us on the Splendor. We were also woken up by the banging and crashing of carts, dishes and glasses till late at night by housekeeping staff. You'd think that they would do something so there wasn't as much noise at night as not everyone stays up till 2 and 3 in the morning. The adult area was pretty well off limits unless you were under 30. We didn't know about the US spring break so we would never go on another cruise out of Florida in March and early April. If it hadn't been for our sleep deprived nights we would have been a lot happier with our experience on the Splendor. I'm glad our first cruise was so good because I'm not sure if we'd return to Carnival is this had been our first experience- the lack of sleep was a huge negative for us.