The Mardi Gras is totally different from any other Carnival ship. Instead of one deck with shops, casinos, etc the Mardi Gras has 3, decks 6,7,8. All laid out well with a ton of restaurants along with a Tour Time Dining restaurant the Flamingo, and the traditional assigned seating restaurant the Palms. We opted for the first seating although we only ate there two nights. There were so many restaurant options that we had to try other places. Making a reservation was easy on the Hub app. The only caveat was if you have an assigned dinner time, you cannot make a reservation until 8 pm!

Many of the restaurants also serve breakfast, so the Lido buffet on deck 16 was never crowded. Carnival has done a great job with dining options!

Embarcation was a joke! They were not checking times so we waited for an hour and a half to check-in! No Diamond or Platinum priority boarding. Read more