We're a family of five - DH and me in our late 40s and our three sons. Oldest is a high school senior for whom this was likely his last family cruise for some time. However, he has lots of cruising time ahead of him, as he plans to attend the US Merchant Marine Academy for college and wants to go into Marine Engineering. I guess the cruising bug bit him hard! He hung out with kids at Club O2 and we hardly saw him except for meals and shore excursions. Middle son is almost 13 and in middle school. We gave him more freedom on this cruise than on previous cruises and as far as I can tell he didn't abuse the privilege. Mostly he liked meeting other teen guys to play basketball. We bought him a soda card, but he did not have charging privileges on his Sail and Sign card. Youngest son turned 9 during the cruise. He's a Camp Carnival veteran at this point. We kept him with the 6-8 group and he had a great time. There was a male counselor in Camp Carnival for this group on this cruise, which is unusual in our experience, and son thought he was just great.

Pre-cruise: DH was already in Orlando for a conference the week before the cruise. That meant I was responsible for most of the packing, getting the dog to the kennel, and getting the boys and me to the airport the day before the cruise. It all worked well: DH met us at the airport, where we had hired a car to take us to Port Canaveral, and we stayed at the Radisson at the Port. It's a very nice hotel; we had a two-room suite for the five of us, complete with hot tub. The pool area is fun, with waterfalls, a kids' pool, a pool with oversized goldfish (they like crackers), a tiki bar, and nice seating areas. They have parking available for cruise passengers and a shuttle to the port. If you plan to use the shuttle, make reservations early - they fill up quickly. We called the week before the cruise and were on the 12:30 shuttle. It was very well organized, and although we didn't leave the Radisson on time we were at the port before 1:00.

Embarkation and day 1: Since we booked a suite for DH, youngest son and me, our documents gave us VIP boarding, so when we arrived at the port and saw the line we asked the first attendant we saw where we should go for VIP boarding. She looked down her nose at us and said "if you're not Platinum you get in this line," referring to regular boarding. Okay, strike one. The line actually moved very well and when we reached the next attendant we showed her our documents and she sent us to the VIP line. Mostly it moved us up in the security check and gave us a separate check-in desk. It was all very well done, but in the end we boarded the ship the same time that other folks that arrived on the Radisson shuttle with us boarded. In any event, for having arrived at the port shortly before 1, we were aboard the ship shortly before 1:30. We dropped off our carry-on bags and went up to Lido for lunch, and all our checked bags arrived before the muster drill. Disney Magic was also in port, and as we sailed she blew her "When you wish upon a star" whistle. As much as youngest son likes Carnival, he seemed a little wistful looking over at Disney Magic. In a change from our past experiences, the Camp Carnival registration was at 5:15, before dinner. While not a perfect time, it was better than rushing from dinner to Camp Carnival registration after dinner. We had 6:00 dinner in the Golden (midships) dining room; for the first time we had a table on the upper level. We were seated with a mom and three daughters from Saskatchewan - really lovely folks. If we think it's hard to get to a port, try getting to Florida when you live an hour and a half north of Saskatoon. Our servers were Jacobus (Jake) from South Africa and Jarinya from Indonesia - a really great team. I was surprised, though, that this night we were given only two dessert options - the warm chocolate melting cake or the diet orange cake. The regular dessert menu was available every other night. We went to the Welcome Aboard Show at 10:15. Our cruise director was James Charlton, who was subbing for Butch, the regular CD. James was pretty good, although one passenger left him a bit speechless. Being Valentine's Day, he called up on stage some folks who had been married varying lengths of time. The man who had been married 40+ years, upon being asked whether he hoped for romance on the cruise, replied "Well, I brought my little purple (sic) pills with me!" I wasn't sure James was going to recover from that one. Read more