My first cruise experience was not necessarily a bad one, but I can think of several improvements or things I wish had gone differently. The first issue is with the Cheers program. It is $50 a day and if one person in a cabin buys it, the other person must do so as well. Well for an eight day cruise that will run a couple just under $1000 by the time you add gratuities and tax. Yikes! Impossible to get your money worth especially with four of those days in ports and another one only a half day at sea. Fortunately we found a way around that and were able to split that cost with another couple. So four drank for the price of two.

While in Grand Turk we had some issues with the ship and were unable to leave as scheduled. We left three and a half hours late and so we missed out on some time in St. Thomas which was a much more fun port than Grand Turk. The beach was nice in grand Turk, but very rocky once in the water. So st. Thomas was a port where we did not leave until 9:00 pm, however the food once back on ship was very underwhelming. Every other night the dinners were great, but this one was awful. We had early dining time at 6:00 pm, but with the late leaving time in port we missed our dinner time and decided to hit the buffet. It was practically empty by the time we got there and they were not refilling it. The food was not hot and no other options were available besides cardboard pizza. That was the only bad divining experience of the trip, the rest were great. Guy's burgers, blue iguana burritos, fish and chips and all the seafood at dinner were great places to eat. The desserts were all fantastic as well.

We did an excursion through carnival in st. Thomas. It was a kayak, snorkel and hike at Cas Cay. It was a great experience minus a couple of very loud and obnoxious kids whose parents need to stand up to their kids and put them in their place. Fun time and worth the money. Read more