Background - This is our first cruise, my boyfriend and I our both 26 and from the Philadelphia area. We had read a lot of reviews from Cruise Critic and were excited about the vacation but were getting a little leery from some of the bad reviews. We booked the cruise directly through Carnival and had no problems. We also book most of our excursions through Carnival and had most of them booked early has well. Being our first cruise we wanted everything has hassle free as possible.

Embarkation - We flew direct from Philadelphia on US Air to San Juan Sunday morning and landed around 11 am. We took a taxi take straight to the airport and went right into the lines for check in for the ship and security and so forth. They started boarding the ship at 12:00 but did not allow access to the rooms until 2:30 but you could go to the Lido deck and get lunch. By the time we got checked it, got our sign n sail cards, got through security, and ate lunch it was 2:30. We went to our room, took a little nap and showered and then ventured back into San Juan around 5:00. We browsed around the town for a few hours and returned to the ship around 8 and crashed early for the night. We even missed the shipped sailing away.

Cabin - We had low expectations but were pleasantly surprised. We had an inside cabin and were expecting basically a bed with about a foot of walking space around it. We were pleasantly surprised with the amount of room we had. There was tons of closet space, a few drawers, and a huge medicine cabinet in the bathroom. The room was very clean and everything in it was in good shape and looked brand new. The bed was extremely comfortable, the air conditioning worked well. We could not have been more pleased!! Read more