This was the 2nd Carnival cruise for the wife and I. We also brought along our 8 y/o for his first ever cruise. Overall, had such a good time, that we were planning our next cruise before we got home.

First, embarkation was quick and painless. We parked, caught a shuttle, and arrived at the terminal at about 11am or so. We had FTTF, and had no one in line in front of us at check-in. Going through security was a breeze, but did take a couple a minutes of checking our cases of sodas....no big deal, but the cruise before barely even looked at our sodas. Minutes later, we were going upstairs to get our S&S Card. There is where we saw what seemed like several hundreds of people in line. With FTTF, we were ushered to a counter with NO line. Got our S&S cards in only a couple minutes, then as we finished, they were calling for Priority & FTTF....so we boarded right away! All in all, from the time the shuttle dropped us off, it was maybe 30 minutes until we walked on the ship.

We picked an interior on the 7th floor, that way there were rooms above and below us. We also picked a room as close to the center of the ship as possible. Our room was nice, no complaints at all! Yes, it was kind of small, but that made it cozy. Plus, it's not like we spent a whole lot of time awake in the room. Read more