About us - DH is 50, I'm 51, and we sailed with our two younger sons 15 and 11. Oldest son has been sailing on cargo ships since early March as part of his studies at the US Merchant Marine Academy. When we spoke to him the day we sailed, his ship had just returned to Houston from a Panama Canal transit. More on DS1 toward the end of the review....

This was our 15th cruise, all on Carnival. However, it was our first cruise on a Fantasy-class ship. Most of our cruises have been on Conquest- or Spirit-class ships. So why Fantasy? Mostly because we had never visited Charleston, and Fantasy offers the only 7-day cruise on that class of ship. All the other Fantasy-class ships sail 4 or 5-day itineraries from Southern ports, and if we're going to travel a distance for a cruise we're going out for at least 7 days. So we decided to book the 7-day itinerary to Nassau, Half Moon Cay and Grand Turk and add a couple of days to each end of the cruise for travel and sightseeing.

We had a really great roll call on Cruise Critic, and we planned a number of activities together during our cruise. More on that later, but I'll just say for those of you who sailed with us, thank you for a really great time and I'd love to cruise with you again! Read more