Fun for the money

Overall, I did not expect 5 star service for the price we paid.  We had fun, and that was the point.  The food in the Lido dining area was good - not great - but good and plentiful.  The kids enjoyed the pizza and ice cream that was always available. 

Good: small ship and the family learned the way around fairly quickly.  Food in the Elation dining room was very good, except the prime rib, which was very fatty - 4 of us ordered the prime rib, so it wasn't just me. Service was excellent throughout the ship.  Our cabin steward was wonderful, as were all the wait staff in the dining room. My kids enjoyed the teen clubs to a point. 

Bad - or just items to work on:   It seems that, for all the staff the ship had, they were short on clean up staff.   Dishes were always laying around in the hallways and most especially on tables in the Buffet dining areas.   We liked to eat outside on the aft Lido deck, and there were usually several open tables; unfortunately they often were laden with dirty dishes and cups that seemed to sit there for hours before being cleaned up.  We had to clean our own tables quite a few times.  Upstairs in the aft pool area - there were empty drink glasses and buckets that would sit around a while before being cleaned up.  When they had someone up there to pick up, they got picked up immediately.   But, there were times that no one was there.  

Entertainment - meh.   Very cheesy and some of the singers Could NOT Sing. The female lead one night could barely hold a note without being pitchy or off key. I don't know why she was chosen as the lead.  In the comedy club -- not funny.  Terrible.  Not every joke needs to be about sex.  Don't get me wrong- I am not a prude, but the jokes were all sex the whole show, and just not funny. 

Teen clubs:  As stated previously, my kids enjoyed the teen clubs to a point. The problem was that there were barely any organized activities to hold their interest.  The doors were only open to the teen areas at night, and it seemed they only had something organized on the first night.  This is in stark contrast to Camp Carnival - for younger kids - which always had an organized activity. Obviously, teens can come and go as they please, but they can sit around at home playing games on their phones too.  It would have been nice if they had something planned that would hold a teens interest, since they can't go in the 21 and over areas with the adults at night.  

Excursions: The tindering to Grand Cayman was a mess.   It took over an hours to get off the ship. We had to be assigned a group number (we were 20).  It was a least an hour before our number was called - which shortened our already short time in port.  We waited in line to be tindered  back to the boat with the other 2000 passengers for a least an hour.  They didn't start taking people on shore until 8:30, and we had to be back by 2:15 - they were very specific about being back by 2:15 or you would be stuck.  I think we had a total of about 4 hours on the island.  

Cozumel was easy - walk off, walk on and in port longer.    We did plan our excursions through Carnival for either location, and that worked out just fine. 

The ship was fun for what we paid.  Our next cruise with the family will probably be on a newer ship that the Cruise line is putting more love into. No disrespect to Carnival, as we would take a Carnival cruise again.