Overall great cruise. The embarkation process seemed very chaotic. We stayed overnight at the Residence Inn - Long Beach the night before. There are free shuttles that run from outside the Mayan hotel to the cruise terminal. Once there, we had absolutely no idea where to go - no real signage -had to ask a few people to get clear directions on which line(s) to be in. The ship was late coming in, so we didn't begin boarding until 3:30pm. Unfortunately, due to a medical emergency, a week later, we didn't get back in until 3:30pm and they didn't even start boarding until 7:00pm. We've sailed Carnival 4 times previously and found the Splendor to be a nice addition to the fleet. We had three kids and got side by side cabins, which worked well. Our 4 year old loves the kids program and spent a lot of time there. My 9 and 11 year olds were just OK with the kid's offerings and checked themselves in and out, but didn't spend a lot of time there. Food was on par with other Carnival ships; I did like the Indian food buffet as another option. We had a very full ship with 1200 kids and on non-port days, you feel the crowdedness, especially in the buffet dining areas. Even after several cruises, it took a few days to figure out how to navigate our way around the ship. There are several decks that you can't go from one end to another on, so it became a guessing game of "what deck do I need to go to to get to the elevators that lead to..." We found deck 6 to be the universal connector, often finding ourselves having to back to 6 to get anywhere else on the ship. The service and cabins were pretty standard - very adequate. Ports of Call: The ship was really smooth the entire cruise until Saturday night when they cranked up the speed, trying to make up time. Then, it got pretty rough from 9pm until about 8am the next morning. The finally racheted the speed down because many people were feeling sick. Disembarkation was smooth -we were in the first group out as we had a 5:30pm flight out and we just made it on time.