Carnival Valor! beautiful ship. When we were arriving the port, you could see the Valor from a long distance. It's amazing, outstanding! my girlfriend jumped when she saw the water slide from miles away. So, embarkation was OK. Once we entered the terminal, there was a huge line. "Two hours in line!!" we thought, but they proved us wrong when after 20 min we were already walking towards the ship. Once in the ship, we received our cabin keys. Since we've cruised with Carnival Elation before, the Valor looked extremely big compared to the Elation. The layout was very confusing at first, and we couldn't find our room. The Elation was easier to navigate, the Valor seemed very confusing so we decided to walk each deck and see what the ship had to offer. About 1:00pm we tried to find our cabin (Ocean view, main deck #2304). It seemed like a dream! it even had a sofa. It was an adjoining cabin, but we did not hear our fellow passengers at all. After the muster drill(20 min), we just sailed away and spent the afternoon in the pool/slide and jacuzzi. Our dinner time was 8:00pm and we had table #408, only a table for two! yay! it was awesome. Last year we were not very lucky with our table-mates. So, this time, our Carnival vacation planner, really knew how to make us happy with a table for two. Washington dinning room was beautiful and we didn't feel the ship rocking any day, thank goodness for that! First night, you have to try the Creme Brule!!!! OMG!!! it was so good that we made a special request for the last night, so we had another 2 creme brule on the last night.

Day at the Sea: We spent the whole day at the Lido deck, sun bathing, and EATING! yes, the food was out of this world. They had Mexican food one day, french food, american, caribbean, it was great. I'm always pleased with Carnival's buffet. Rosie's restaurant has a lot of options, there is also a Fish and Chips, a Deli, Oriental food, Pizzeria (of course). We never tried the fish and chips but they seemed really good. That night was our first formal night. We ate lobster, which were not as big as last year's, so I ate 3 of them. I ordered the Chocolate melting cake but I did not like it. I ordered it because of my fellow Cruisecritic friends, but it wasn't my cup of tea... I'm sure that if you like chocolate, you'd love it. I'm kinda picky and when I think of dessert, I think of something cold, not warm chocolate, but it was ok. That night we went to the nightclub, where they had Latin hour from 10:00pm to 11:00pm and we had a blast. After 11:00pm it was just regular party music. Lots of fun!!!

Grand Cayman: Tendering was not a big deal since we made sure to wake up early and leave in one of the first tenders. Carnival Legend was also there, but the beach did not seem very crowded. We took a taxi to Sea Grape, which is the "free-part of sea mile beach". The taxi driver told us we would have to pay in order to go any other beach. I did not know! I thought it was all free! but it was ok too. After a while, we decided to go back to the port and buy some things. My girlfriend went shopping but I found "Eden's rock" right across the stores, so I just gave her all the bags and towels and went straight to snorkel. The fish were so big I was even scared at first! my poor girlfriend did not want to snorkel because of the fish's size. When I got tired, we headed back to the ship. Oh, one thing! make sure you know where u wanna go and what u wanna do. Grand Cayman natives have no idea about a lot of things, like when were going back to the port, I asked the taxi driver where was a closest to port-good place to snorkel and he said 'You need to take a boat and go about 40 min, so go and talk to the locals'... I was like what? cruisecritic knows better than that! Read more