This was a cruise with my wife and I. We selected this cruise because the ports of call looked good and at some point we wanted to "try out" a cruise on Carnival.

Embarkation: We had left out of San Diego before so when kind of knew what to expect. A nice city with a somewhat unorganized port. I do not like this as much as going out of LA, but I thought it might be different this time since we were using a different cruise line. NOPE. They had two ships leaving on the same day. This port is not great for this. There is only one building, so they cram everyone from both ships into the same building. No porters at the curb...you have to take your luggage into the terminal and "drop it off" with the porters. Then, because there were two ships, there was only half the seating and that made the wait long if you had to stand (We did). They finally got us on to the ship about 12:15 and we made our way to the lido deck for some food. (more on this later)

Ship: The ship appeared in good condition and didn't look too bad on the inside. After hearing about the decor in most Carnival ships, I had prepared myself for the worst. It wasn't too bad, but I did see what one reviewer meant when she talked about the amount of Artwork on the ship with topless women. Some may not notice it, but I found that funny since this cruise line caters to and has many families onboard. It didn't bother me, just interesting. The layout of the ship is nice. They basically put everything on the same floors. What I mean by that is that floors 2 and 3 have many public areas, shops, casino, ect...while 4-8 have only cabins and then 9-11 have more public areas. it makes getting around the ship nice. You only have to remember a couple of floors. I did like that. The ship did appear to be in good condition and we never felt too crowded and there were several nice places to sit. Read more