My husband and I had a short window to take our honeymoon (14 months after getting married) so we elected to do an Alaskan cruise instead of going to Europe. Since Europe was the original plan we had saved/budgeted plenty of money to make this trip possible - or so we thought. But I'll come back to that in a moment.

Embarkation was very easy in Seattle. We checked in at 2pm and even then it wasn't that crowded or inefficient.

The ship is nice enough, plenty of food options and entertainment, but the food in several of the dining areas (The pub, some of the buffet options, and Chin's Asian fusion in particular) was pretty lackluster. I've cruised with Carnival before and the food on this line pales in comparison. The best dining was at Moderno (Brazilian - had to pay extra for) and Tsar's for the officer's dinner we were lucky enough to get selected for. A lot of the entertainment was pay extra, like the bingo games, which was kind of a bummer. The theater performances were excellent. We even made friends with some of the gymnasts and they made our sea days and some of the ports more fun. The room itself was a good size for two people with plenty of shelf/drawer space, and absolutely spring for at least a window if you can. It helped with those rough sea days, and I still got to see everything when I was sick while we were in Glacier bay Read more