Last Cruise: Carnival Paradise - May 2002
Next Cruise: Carnival Inspiration - June 2003

Getting started
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Embarkation in Port Canaveral was pretty easy. We drove down from Virginia on Friday to Orlando and then drove over to the port on Saturday morning. Parking is $70 for the week (they take credit cards as well as cash). There is a drop off point for your luggage before you park. They do a security check there. We used the Skippers Club to do the paperwork. That was pretty easy. We then got in the line to get on the ship. They had not yet started to let people on the ship, so the line was a little long. I think it was close to 12 noon before they started lettting us on the ship. The line went relatively fast. We were at our cabin, 6329 on the Empress deck, by 12:25 (shhhh! don't tell anyone that we did not wait until 12:30 as we were instructed :) Muster drill was at 4:00 and was relatively painless. Appears that the life jackets are a little thinner and did not make us so hot wearing them as others we have used.

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Our cabin
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Our cabin was a Category 11 on the Empress deck at the back of the ship. We had a wrap-around balcony. The balcony was great. Our room was fantastic. We had a sitting room with one TV, another TV in the bedroom (two twin beds pushed together with the king size sheets). We also had a dressing area and a huge bathroom with a tub and shower. Had a little difficulty figuring out how the shower worked. Luckily, we tried it on Saturday afternoon and was able to ask for help.

While the room was great, would not want to do the physical location again. There was lots of soot on the balcony which either got on us outside or we tracked into the room. Also, there was some vibration and noise.

Our cabin steward, Karolina, was excellent!

Was surprised that there was only one power outlet in all of the rooms. When we were in a Category 11 cabin on the Paradise, there were several outlets, so I did not bring my power strip :)

The ship
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We really liked the layout of the ship. Never felt crowded. As for the artwork, not my thing, so pretty much ignored it. The Normandie dining room was very nice. We were on the 2nd level at a table for two on the railing where we could look down onto the 1st level. Seemed a little noisy at first, but we got used to it. We ate all of our dinners there and all but two breakfasts. The breakfasts were in the lower level of the dining room and we ended up in the back. Was really surprised at how much noise and vibration there was from the engines. Would not have liked to have had dinner there with the ship moving. Where we were, was fine. Ate all of lunches in the Mermaids Grille. Carnival has definitely gotten it right with this. The various stations had relatively short lines. The only problem was that there were too many choices :)

Food & Service
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Dinners were really good to excellent. Lunches were very good. Service in the Mermaids Grille was always good. Our dining room waiters, Kris and Abe, were excellent. My wife is lactose intolerant and Kris went out of his way to help with the selections. Since our table overlooked the 1st level of the dining room, we saw that one waitress was really slow. Her tables would be getting their main courses as we were finishing our dessert. We asked Kris about this and he said that he and Abe were a great team and that both of them were really fast. In addition, Radka, the dining room hostess, went above and beyond to work with my wife on the selections and to have them prepared specially. The only negative was that the ship does not carry any non-dairy creamer that we could find.

We noticed that there were lots of tables for two and four. We were at a table for two. Would have liked to have been at a bigger table, but from our observations, it appeared that each cabin was pretty much at it's own table. Thought about asking to be at a bigger table, but then was worried that we would move to a table with the "tablemates from hell" (or we would be the "tablemates from hell" for our new tablemates). As it turned out, we actually enjoyed being at a table by ourselves.

Ports & Weather
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Our scheduled ports were Key West, Belize City, Cozumel and Progresso. We arrived outside the port of Key West on Sunday morning and just floated around. After a while, they announced that because of a storm coming that the port was closed and that we would be moving South. Later that day, the Captain announced that we would adding another port, Costa Maya, on Monday. As it turned out, the storm/cold front caught up to us and we had pretty bad weather starting on Sunday afternoon. The seas were 12' with 50+ knot winds. It made for a rocky afternoon/evening/night. They pushed up the formal night to Sunday night. We made it to dinner, but lasted only till the appetizers and decided that we would be better off in our cabin. My wife used the sea bands on her wrists and seemed to do pretty well with them as far as not getting queasy. I, being the macho man that I am, used nothing, but definitely got queasy. Finally realized that lying down in bed was the best remedy. We both survived the "dark and stormy" night. We even made it to the gym at 6:00 AM the next morning!

The storm seemed to affect us for the next several days as the wind was constantly between 20-30 knots. It was also pretty overcast as well. We did not get off the ship in Costa Maya and definitely did not want to tender into Belize City, though we did talk to people who did. Things got a little better when we got to Cozumel. by the afternoon, it was a little calmer and we even saw some sun. We got off the boat to do some shopping at the pier. Besides the shops right on the pier, they have added an additional shopping "village" right past the pier. That was all we needed. Even while we at these ports, the boat was still rocking somewhat. Also, every time we started sailing, the wind would pick up and the seas would start churning. When we got to Progresso, we finally had the good weather we were expecting. Once again, we only got off the boat to shop at the shops at the pier. The weather on our last sea day, was also good.

Since we are going back to Costa Maya, Belize City and Cozumel with our kids in June on the Inspiration, we really did not plan to do any excursions on this trip anyway. We were looking forward to sightseeing in Key West, but such is life. This was our 12th cruise and the first time we missed a port or had significantly bad weather.

Debarkation
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Getting off the ship was pretty easy. We were the 2nd color called. The only problem we had was that by the time we got to the luggage area, there were very few porters around. Also, it seemed like the luggage area was smaller than I remember, so it was more crowded. Of course, this could all be a result that we were leaving the cruise and so our optimistic thoughts were replaced by pessimistic and cynical ones :).