Carnival Legend was my ninth cruise and sixth cruise with Carnival. We had cruised just six months earlier out of Tampa on Inspiration and were looking forward to trying a different class ship out of this very easy port city. In our group were twelve people, including five kids ages 11-16 and one senior citizen.

The week we cruised included a NJ school break, so we expected that there would be families from NJ on board. There were, but not as many as I would have hoped to keep our kids social and busy. The mix of passengers seemed to be mostly empty nesters in their 50-60's cruising without kids.

Embarkation was very easy. We met up with some of our group right outside the port area and we all went in together. My husband and I are Carnival Vacation Club Members, so we had VIP embarkation. This meant separating from the rest of the group, but had no worries since mobile phone service is still live in port we figured we'd catch up with them on the other side. The whole process from drop off to drink-in-hand on the Lido was less than 45 minutes. Read more