My friend and I left Hartford on 10/20 and arrived in Orlando at around 11:30pm. We proceeded to the Dollar car rental counter and were denied a rental even though we had a confirmation. Why? They did a credit check and since my credit is not good, they denied me. So, here we are the night before our cruise and no car. Before we freaked, we found another company that would rent us a car, but made us purchase the insurance so we paid over $100 more than expected! We arrived at our hotel, confirmation number in hand, at around 1230am...and guess what...they had given our room away..and had none left! We left there and went next door to the Howard Johnson and got a moldy smelling room.

The next morning we drove to Port Canaveral and parked. We forgot about our previous problems once we had the ships in sight! The Fantasy looked a bit smaller than the Disney Wonder and the Royal Carib. ships, but not too much. It was raining lightly as we got to the port...we gave our bags to a porter and went in to check in. We filled out the one paper that didn't come with the docs and were through the process in about 10 minutes. We proceeded to the line to board, but had to wait about 30-45 minutes since we were a bit early. They went through the line and started handing out the sail and sign cards and room keys before boarding had begun. This was nice! Once they started boarding we were on within 20 minutes. We boarded and immediately went looking for our room on the lowest deck--Riviera. We had a Cat 6A--R100. We quickly found it and when we opened the door, we were surprised to see the room had been decorated with colorful birthday banners, streamers, a balloon, a cake, keychains, and a bottle of champagne on ice! Turns out that the decorations were compliments of my grandmother and the champagne was from a TA at work. The room reminded me of a dorm room. It was plenty roomy for us and was in decent shape. There was a little corrosion around the window, but barely noticeable. The bathroom was very clean and there was plenty of storage space. The beds were scary the first time we sat on them, but we really grew to like them once we slept on them. They were surprisingly comfortable! Oh, I must mention that as we arrived at our deck, we noticed a faint septic odor in the hall and in our room. My friend thought it was diesel (they were fueling up right outside our window), but I thought differently. Regardless, it wasn't bad.

After seeing the room and having some champagne, we scouted out the boat and ate some food. The buffet was ok, nothing spectacular. We were just in awe at the ship itself. We couldn't believe we were actually there. From everything I had read, I expected the ship to be a bright, gaudy spectacle. This was far from the truth. Some of the carpet was wild, but for the most part, the decor was much more toned down than I anticipated. For her age, the Fantasy was VERY CLEAN. The common areas were maintained well. Once in a while you'd come across a stained carpet but that's to be expected. I always hear a lot of complaints about elevators on this board, so here's my take on the elevators--the glass elevators in the atrium were very busy with people and always operating. We used them once in a while. The elevators near the Universe Lounge (a bank of 4) were also very busy. I noticed that a couple were out of service now and again, but not for the whole cruise. We generally used the stairs to go everywhere. Let me tell you, coming up from the Riviera deck to the Verandah deck is a haul by stairs, but that just made us hungry for more PIZZA! Read more