My kids love taking a cruise at the holidays, so for 2018 we settled on Carnival Sunshine because of the itinerary. My older daughter read the book "The Cay" in school and wanted to see Curacao and my younger daughter loves Carnival's kids' activities, so it was an easy choice.

We drove to Port Canaveral the morning of the cruise and parked with Lots of Honor, which was a very easy process. The staff there is super nice and it was much more reasonable than parking at the port. The shuttle was prompt and embarkation was super easy. The kids kept asking, "where is the line to get on the ship?" There was no line, we just kept walking and got right on after security. Fantastic.

I was a little skeptical about this ship because of a lot of negative reviews here, but the onboard experience was pretty decent. Lido tended to get pretty crowded and it was hard to find a lounger to lay out in the sun. (LOTS of people trying to reserve them, it was a mess) Otherwise, none of the other public areas felt overly crowded or uncomfortable. During our days at sea, my 10 year old daughter spent the majority of her time at Camp Ocean and she LOVED it there. My 12 year old has hit the grumpy teenage years a bit early and refused to participate in any organized activities, but the preteen/teen areas looked very nice as well. There was often a weird sewage odor towards the aft of the ship by the kids' areas. Read more