This is my second cruise and I absolutely loved it! I went with my mom and brother (it was a gift to her from us) and they had never been cruising before. The experience was so great, that our only regret was how short it was. We booked a mini-suite with a balcony and found the price to be extremely cheap. To comment on an earlier reviewer, I am obsessive when it comes to vacation planning. It was clearly stated on the internet that the cruise boarded at noon. As soon as we were on the cruise ship, we read the cruise newsletter and learned about making dinner reservations. These were only required for the specialty restaurants. We called in our reservations without a problem for the Mexican place, which was great and with no cover charge (which is why we chose it!)

After the excitement of checking out our suite/balcony/ etc. we headed to lunch at the buffet. After having cruised on Carnival, I was pleasantly surprised with their buffet options. The variety was great and the quality was above average (as good as any buffet can really get). After lunch, we found a great spot at the back of the boat to watch the ship sail away. It was fun passing the Statue of Liberty and sailing away from the New York city landscape. We hung out and do agree with the previous poster that the pool area was way overcrowded. We only went once to get a few drinks and then avoided that section. Luckily, none of us are much into pools, so we enjoyed having most of the ship to ourselves!

My brother found a group of guys to play basketball with, while my mom and I enjoyed just relaxing by the ocean and later exploring the ship. We all met up again for dinner at the Mexican restaurant. The food was wonderful. We had tapas, appetizers, and an entree. We were so full, we definitely didn't have room for dessert. The service was outstanding, friendly and fast. After dinner, we went to the show. We absolutely loved it. It was definitely better than the shows I had seen on Carnival or at all-inclusive resorts in the Caribbean. The ballet/acrobats portions of the show were spectacular. We were there early and got great seats. Though most seats had a decent view. After the show, we went to the bingo event. We only played the free game, since the bingo cards were outrageously expensive!! They had some bingo machine players could rent that cost upwards of $50!! No thanks. After Bingo, we went to have drinks, passed by the Karaoke to amuse ourselves, and ended the night with a movie at the cruise's cinema. The sleeping accommodations were wonderful and we awoke for a few minutes at around 5:30am to watch the sun rise from our balcony. Priceless!

Our only complaint comes from the next day. At around 7am, the disembarkation of the boat was extremely disruptive. We had asked a few workers the night before what time we had to leave the ship and were told noon! Imagine our surprise when we heard that all passengers had to be off the ship by 9am!! We rushed out of our cabins at 9am only to find that the boat was still full of people. At that point, we went to have a leisurely breakfast and ended up leaving at around 10:30 leaving many passengers still on board. All in all, I would definitely recommend this cruise. Given the low price, you definitely get your money's worth!