Wonderful Ports Ok Ship

Embarkation is awful, long lines even though we were there at our arrival time, first we stood outside in a line then you go inside and sit and wait again for your number to be called, it takes too long and they should do something to make this process smoother.

Let me preface this by saying I am a complete foodie, I know good food and enjoy it, if you are not and consider Wendys a good burger than this probably is not a good food review for you. #1 They should separate out the food and drink experience into two categories, buffet/dining room and specialty places. The dining room food isn't that great except for breakfast, this is your best bet for breakfast, the buffet food is horrible, head to the dining room or to the Mexican and have a nice sit down. Also, if you want to hit up the dining room on formal night, it wasn't that bad. The lido deck food is nothing better than your low scale local buffet. So just save yourself the disappointment and skip the buffet altogether. Now lets talk about what is good! Of course Guys Burger joint and Guys BBQ! were both amazing, the collard greens at Guys BBQ were the best I have had in my life, we at the BBQ twice, its only open on sea days. JiJi Asian is incredible, I at there for lunch one day, you just go up and check off a list of whatever you want on your stir fry and they make it for you, its really good. I also ate here for Dinner. I am very highly against paying for food on a cruise that I already paid for but the dinner was given to us by the jewelry store as a gift so we went. It was absolutely AMAZING and I would pay for that again in a heartbeat! The Bonzi Sushi my bestie treated me to, it was very good as well, not a huge selection but what we had was delicious. But hands down the best decision we made the entire cruise was to pre-book the CHEFS table!!! WOW! that's all I can say, if you enjoy great food and an amazing culinary experience, book the chefs table without giving it another thought! we requested it early on in the cruise so we would still be excited about food (you know how you get towards the end of a cruise) and I think that worked out very well too! The chefs table is everything a great foodie can ask for and is followed up by and demonstration of how to make the carnival melting cake and a copy of the recipe!

The sky ride was really fun and a great once in a lifetime experience. I also did the ropes course which was fun. The kids liked the water slides. We spent probably 6 hours total in the casino, its horribly smoky, we aren't smokers, its pure torture in there....

I went to one show early on and I thought it was your cliche' cruise ship dance show and I wasn't impressed so id didn't do any of the other shows. This is my 15th cruise and I just think I have high expectations in this area, if you haven't seen a lot of shows you will probably like it.

My girls are teenagers 13 and 14 I basically let them run around and enjoy the cruise with their new friends, they had fun.

All of the staff on the ship are really nice, courteous and friendly.

The ship was really clean.

We had a balcony room for 4. Beware there's not a whole lot of room for your clothes, we basically had to leave a pile of my daughters clothes out of the closet. but we are hardly in the room so it wasn't a huge deal for us.

we checked our bags the night before and then when you get off the ship they come on a conveyor belt like the airport---so simple....nice job!