My husband and I sailed together. We stayed at the Hyatt Place 17th street the night before. Very pricy but good location. Great shuttle service from airport to hotel and cruise port in the morning. Hotel across street from grocery and surrounded by restaurants in a fairly safe neighborhood. Really cheap and blah included morning breakfast for the rate paid for the room-almost $300.00.

We purchased Faster to the Fun, and this cruise was the first time I felt it was a complete waste of money. It is not Carnival's fault that customs was late clearing the ship at embarkation. Based upon previous cruise reviews going back several months this is a trend for Carnival at Port Everglades. The utter and complete chaos caused by Carnival not taking control of this situation is their fault. What a horrible way to start a cruise. Thousands of people jammed into a small space in the terminal over an hour from 11am until 1230pm. Sitting on the dirty floor or standing. The PA system was broken-a Carnival associate attempted to update the masses and the system quit midway through the announcement. When boarding was called there was no ability to separate out priority boarding.

When we finally got on the ship our cabin was ready-but it was close to 1pm anyway. The muster drill was awful. The crew was terribly slow and the entire thing seemed to take 45 minutes or a bit longer. We were out in the ocean by the time we were released no port side sail away party. I also have read about very poor service on this ship. We did get encounter this on a few occasions. There were not enough chairs by the aft lido pool the first day. I asked if more could be provided and was told to sit upstairs. We ate at 730pm in the dinning room our first night. The wait staff was awful. I ordered a flank steak with chimichurri. Right after we ordered our food the waiter brought out the bread box and plunked a dish of something that looked like pesto next to it (I tried to get him to take our drink order then but he ran off). He walked away-no explanation. Waited 20 minutes after our order was taken, the waiter kept wandering off while I tried to signal him. He finally wandered back over, and I asked if they were still serving drinks-FINALLY he took our drink order. There was no butter on the table so we thought the dish of "pesto" was meant to be used on bread. Well it was the chimichurri. And we didn't get butter until way after our entrees were served. Read more