First, here's a little information about us. My husband & I sailed on the Fascination for our honeymoon in 1995. We have two girls, ages 11 & 9. We took a family cruise in 2005 on Carnival's Imagination.

Embarkment: We arrived at the port around 10:00am. We went thru the metal detectors and went directly up to the counter for ticketing. No lines! They gave us our sail & sign cards which are now also the room keys. We then were directed to a seated waiting area. We had to wait until 11:30am. At least we were able to sit. We watched the lines fill up fast. FYI: People that were arriving at 11:30am had about 50-75 people in from of them to check in. At 11:30, they called the VIP and special needs to board. Then they called us by group numbers, which are assigned in the order you check in. We were group #1. We then went up stairs, got our photo taken and then onto the ship we went. We went to the Coconut Grove to eat. Kid friendly food, but good. We then walked around to check out the ship. At 1:30pm we were able to go to our room. We were upgraded. We paid for an inside guarantee and our room was E208. Our room was near the back of the ship. Yes we heard the noises when we were getting near ports, but nothing worth complaining about. Because we had our two daughters along, we had a room with our bed and two bunks. There is enough room in the closets and dresser drawers for all of our clothes. The bathrooms were nice with the upgrades. The new bedding Carnival put in was nice except for one problem. The pillows and comforters were filled with feathers and I am allergic to feathers. The sad part was that they had no back up! I ended up sleeping on a blanket my daughter brought along and sneezing and having watery eyes most of my vacation.

Dining: We went to the formal dining room three out of the four nights. Our servers were great and the food was very good...especially the lava cake! The staff remembered all of our names and always welcomed us with smiles. A deli has been added since our last cruise. My husband loved it. Casual dining food was good, but sometimes had the trouble of finding a place to sit. Key West: We did "The Big 3" for an excursion. They shuttled us from the port to another pier area and then we got on a smaller boat (about 20-25 people). We went out into the ocean and saw dolphins in the wild. There were about 14 of them total. That was neat to see & my daughters loved it! We then went over to another boat that was anchored and got on kayaks and paddled over to an island. We were on our own for about ½ hour and then we headed back to our boat. We then got on our snorkel gear and snorkeled for about 45 minutes. They pointed out where we were to go and we saw some sunken crab crates, a sunken ship and a sunken boat. That was really neat to see. We then got back on our boat and headed back to shore. The whole time we were on the boat, they had free unlimited cans of soda and on the trip back, they offered Rum & Cokes. My only complaint was that when we got back, we only had 25 minutes before the last shuttle left to go back to the ship. That wasn't much time for our girls to do some souvenir shopping. We wished we could have had a couple more hours in Key West. Read more