My husband (28) and I (28) decided to go on a cruise to celebrate a big achievement for me at work and for my husband's birthday. Since Carnival is now sailing year round from Charleston, we decided to book the cruise and drive to the port which is only about 4.5 hours from our home. Much better than flying to the port, in our opinion.

Embarkation: This went fairly smoothly. We were dropped off by friends of ours and arrived at 11:15 at the boarding area. There was an unexpected hitch when the police officer told us our large bag (which was basically a large rolling pullman bag) was too large to carry on board. We have carried it on board previously on Carnival Freedom from Miami, but they told us that "things are done differently in Charleston." We then left the bag with other bags there and had to get a luggage tag from the Carnival representative. We boarded the shuttle bus which drove us about 3 minutes to the loading area. I don't know why they have shuttle buses. You could easily walk this distance, and they make you walk this distance during debarkation. The security and check in with Carnival was very smooth! We were lucky and were the first two people to board the ship - that was exciting! Rooms were available at 1:30 PM but many food stations on Lido deck were available for lunch as soon as we got on board the ship. The luggage situation was annoying because we did not know we would have to leave our larger bag behind. It did not get delivered to the room until about 5:15 leaving very little time to get out our clothes prior to dinner, and leaving us with almost no clothes and missing our one camera and film until the suitcase arrived. If I had known the bag was going to be not allowed as a carry on bag, we would have packed differently. This was the only annoying thing at the Charleston port.

Ship: We have previously cruised on Carnival Freedom, and I have cruised on Holiday. We were impressed with the ship! It does look slightly older than Carnival Freedom, but it is not over the top in its decor. In fact, we thought the common areas were more classy compared with the other two Carnival ships we were familiar with. The ship seems like a great size. We did not normally have any problems getting a chair to relax in on either the Lido deck or in the Serenity area. Some people were reserving chairs, but even though they said there were 2200 people on board, we still could always find a spot to be either in the sun or in the shade. We really enjoyed the Serenity adults only area and the water slide. The Serenity area is really great compared with the rest of the deck areas because the chairs are so much more comfortable and it feels like a very private area compared with the main pool area. Read more