There were 5 of us on this cruise, all of us in our 60's, 2 first time cruisers and 3 experienced cruisers. My husband and I and been on 6 Carnival cruises - 4 Royal Caribbean and 5 Norwegian cruises. Traveling with us was my sister in one cabin and (first time cruisers), long time friends in another. We parked at the pier, $320 for 8 nights, split 3 ways isn't bad-we traveled together in one vehicle. Embarkation took maybe an hour from start to finish. Relatively simple. On board by noon, headed to Lido for our first Guy's Burger.

After lunch I noticed that we had 3 separate tables for the 8:15 dinner service! Our reservations were linked together online and I assumed our dinner seating would automatically be linked like it has in the past when we traveled with others. I immediately went to the dining room and the maitre 'd was not there so we spoke with the girl there who said it was impossible to change for the first night and they might be able to change it the next day. She said the maitre 'd would be available around 6PM so we went back down and saw him then. He was very condescending and outright rude and said he had very few requests to change and it would be impossible to get us a table for 5 for the late seating. He could give us anytime dining which we ended up agreeing to. It worked out, but we had first time cruisers with us and I wanted them to experience the set dining experience with the same wait staff every night and the shows they perform at the end of the dinner service. We liked our servers the first night and tried to get the same wait staff the 2nd night and they said they weren't available. It was disappointing. We had different wait staff every night and different tables every night. I will say, the staff was excellent and the food was the best we've had on a ship.

We all had balcony cabins on deck 8, very close to the glass elevators. Very convenient location but we could hear a lot of noise from the lobby at night when the parties were going on. The noise did not bother us, I actually enjoyed listening to it but others might find it annoying. The cabins were fine, standard Carnival. Our room steward was excellent. Always present, always pleasant. We asked for twice a day service, with ice please! I think twice a day is what differentiates a cruise from a hotel. It feels special. Really nice, big, flat screen TVs with on demand movies (some have a fee, most do not), one news channel, HGTV, Food Network, Discovery, History Channel (?), Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network and a bunch of Carnival channels including a Map Channel. Read more