I have cruised with Carnival before- and have been quite pleased with the experience, but I'm not sure now if I will choose Carnival again- at least NOT a ship that doesn't offer anytime dining. I was told by our Carnival agent that the Splendor would be offering anytime dining by the time we sailed- it didn't- so we were given the least requested time of late seating- I was traveling with my 3 adult daughters (their first cruises)- 2 of whom are pregnant- and the late dining just about killed us. We met with the Maitr'd the first day and tried to get changed, but of course NO-ONE wants to trade from early to late- If our Carnvial agent had let us know- we would DEFINITELY have chosen early- . We tried the lido for one of the evenings, but there really wasn't much choice- the choices on the lido were great for breakfast and lunch, but not at suppertime. Since we had late seating, then we were relegated to the late show time- I am a musical person, and enjoy real talent- I was so disturbed by the first Vegas style show "The Beat" that I couldn't force myself to sit through another one. The whole purpose of the show seemed to be to see how many costume changes they could fit in to 50 minutes. Then add as much skin as possible and still call it only a PG show- stir in a bunch of high kicks and frenzied running around the stage- a whole lot of screaming and not much showcasing of talent. I'm sure the group of dancers could dance, and the singers maybe could sing- but the show did not give the audience an opportunity to see or hear it. We found that the main non-smoking areas smelled of smoke most of the time, which seemed weird to us- even the library wreaked of smoke. Since this is a "Fun" ship- I guess they think that NOISE equals FUN- it was definitely noisy- we found that we had to hide out on the upper lido area- inside- because the noise level was too high elsewhere- even on the serenity deck, where they have the huge noisy air circulation fans running. I am disappointed that my daughters' first experience was on a ship that I feel was my worst experience- One place that I did enjoy, was the sauna in the gym washroom- it had a nice big ocean window- there are also 2 shower/steam stalls there. We just found both the sauna and steam stalls on our own snooping excursions- so some of you might want to check them out. I used the gym and running track almost daily- it was never too busy at the times that I was there- lots of mats in the one room and free weights and machines also- enough treadmills and elypticals.