I went on the Carnival Paradise as part of a large group, so I had no choice in the selection of the ship or cruise line. I had a great time with my total group, and the dance band at night was exceptional! The comedian was awesome, too. But there didn't seem to be as many fun activities during the day as on some other ships. Also, there was no production show on 2 of the 5 nights. When there was a show, the singers and dancers were very talented, BUT the majority of the music was just taped and not live instrumentals AND the last night the singers just got up from stools and sang -- so there wasn't really a show except for just singing. The worst part of this cruise was the food. It was not very tasty at all -- in fact, some of it was horrible! There wasn't much of a selection in the buffet area, and the lines would get super long for the grill area -- so we quickly found out that the grill by the pool was serving a lot of the same breakfast foods and some reasonably tasty lunch foods. But in all, the food in the buffet especially, and some of it in the main dining room, was not nearly the taste or quality of what I expect on a cruise line. And in the cabin bathroom, the only shelf was one above the sink, so I had to carry items in there every time I needed to get ready for the day or for dinner. A plus is that the beds were very comfortable. I almost forgot to mention that Carnival was VERY disorganized for the muster drill. We had a very hard time trying to find out where we were supposed to go, and they didn't have people directing you to the correct rooms.