So glad to be cruising again

Definitely one of the best ever. Very little waiting. The changes made (most likely in response to Covid) really expedited the process of getting onboard.

We used Horizon's Restaurant and Lido deck for most of our dining. Both were excellent. The Lido deck restaurant had such an awesome variety of amazing food to choose from. I was really impressed with the desserts and breads because traditionally in our past cruises the breads were harder and the dessserts less sweet than we usually eat them (yes, I know it's not a healthy behavior but we dearly love our breads and sweets so hats off to the chefs in the Lido. All of the staff were friendly, exceptionally helpful, friendly, and so, so clean--all the time clean. Cannot praise the 24 hour ice cream enough and judging by the number of people who frequented the ice cream station, I am pretty sure lots of others appreciated it also. One suggestion is to have Apple juice or fruit punch or something like that instead of 2 lemonades in the Beverage stations. Now, for Horizons--absolutely elegant, yet comfortable. EVERYONE was friendly and smiling. The food was delicious overall but the meat was outstanding. Whoever the chef is that cooks the meat is a talented individual. You need to hang on to him/her (don't know who it is but I do appreciate the results of his/her efforts). Everything was excellent in presentation and very appealing to the eye. But, in the end, it's the amazing taste and flavor that keeps people coming back and this restaurant has that in abundance.

We did not do a lot of the activities but enjoyed watching others using them. It was a little too cool for the pools most days and we are too old and not physically able to do very many of the activities.

I give this a top rating because I appreciate talent even if some of it is not my personal taste. For example, we are not fans of rock music but the performers were exceptional singers/entainers. It took us more than one day to explore the different shows and musical entertainment. Our top favorite was Romaine on the steel drums. What skill he has as well as an innate talent. This was our first time to hear/see this particular type of steel drums and were very impressed. Romaine was very personable and humble about his abilities--he would come sit at different tables interacting with people in the audience. Always smiling and friendly and even remembered us in a different setting. We love piano music but felt that the musician would have been better to just play the piano than sing. Lots of other people seemed to enjoy him but it was not our taste. The Vista Rockband were super talented and even though we were not fans of all the music presented, they clearly had the ability to sing a huge variety of music so we did find quite a bit of their music that we enjoyed. The DJ's were excellent--again, not all of the music was our taste but a lot of it was. I don't really know how to tell if a one DJ is better than another but both of the ones I heard seemed skilled. Their music made me feel like dancing or at least swaying to the rhythm. The guitar player was also easy to listen to and knew a variety of music.

No children with us and didn't interact with anyone else's children.

Our stateroom attendant Wijaya was superb. He contacted us on the first day to introduce himself and ask when was the best time for cleaning our room (I think this is brilliant because no one has to guess when is the best time to not interfere with the other person's plans. He remembered our names whenever he saw us and I have to admit that with the masks on I was not so good at recognizing him in the hall. I did get better toward the latter part of the week. We loved the family of towel animals that we accummulated over the week. And perhaps the best compliment I can give him is that he did everything so efficiently and smoothly so that we knew he had been in our room but the only times we saw him was when we encountered him in the hall. I do believe that is the perfect description of a stateroom attendant. Next, our favorite photographer Purna impressed us so much with his ability to make us look a whole lot better than we actually are. He posed us in the most positive ways getting us to relax and smile naturally with his comments and interactions with us. There are a lot of really good photographers on the ship but Purna's photos simply stood out and so we purchased them. We had a superb dining team in Horizon's Restaurant: Juliarta and Jorge and I can't remember the third name. They kept our water glasses full all the time (excellent water, by the way), personalized the experience by smiling and interacting with us, and generally making us feel special and appreciated because we chose to dine there. They are top notch. I hate that I cannot remember and that I can't find where I wrote the name of the young lady from Columbia who greeted us and spoke to us every single time we went to Horizons. She took the time to teach me how to use the Carnival Hub to schedule our dining time. She had the most beautiful smile and never once made me feel as incompetent as I knew I was with this technology for eating. Savanah, the Cruise Director was fun and absolutely entertaining. She minimized announcements so that we received the information we needed but our rest was not disturbed. She was very good at getting people to interact and planned a variety of entertainments so that everyone could find something that would suit them. Our first show we thought the entire cruise was going to be rock music and we were dismayed but as I mentioned before, we found things that made us happy so I give her high praise for doing such a good job and making a difficult/challenging job look easy.

I always get lost on every cruise I have been on but having the layout of the ship's floors at the elevators was a tremendous help. Everything was clean--and I do mean everything. Staff were cleaning railing with a toothbrush (or it looked like one). I loved the central atrium and the casino display which had such awesome and varied colors (tried to get a picture of each one). I could just stand and watch them because they were just so beautiful.

We love inside cabins because we like to sleep in the dark and quiet not to mention the gentle rocking of the ship. We are also happy with the size of the cabin--it met our needs. Again, I say that EVERYTHING was clean.

Best we have had. Everything was well organized and so efficient. I REALLY liked not having to handle passports and just using the facial recognition to speed up the process.