My wife and our three kids (daughters aged 19 and 17, son aged 13) cruised on the Carnival Liberty for an 8 day Southern Caribbean cruise from Port Canaveral from June 20-28, 2014.. Overall the experience was a lot of fun – but since this is a review – some of my comments may seem a bit harsher than I intend because after all, how bad can it really be when you are on a cruise?

We traveled to Florida from Seattle – so the trip was a long one. We arrived two days early since we wrapped a Mouse vacation around the cruise . The embarkation process was extremely smooth. I dropped the family and the bags at the pier, the porters whisked away the bags – and then I returned the rental car and was shuttled to the pier. The process was impressively efficient. The fact that we were leaving on a Friday rather than the traditional weekend day meant less chaos at the piers – which may have contributed to the ease of boarding.

We had adjoining balconies on the 8th floor. The rooms were really nice – the relatively few bucks to upgrade to a balcony is definitely worth it. On the down side - there was a really bad smell in the hallway for our entire trip – as if the septic system was flawed or malfunctioning? The rooms themselves didn’t smell – and since our room was right near the elevators/steps – we were able to minimize the offenses to our nostrils. Read more