My husband and I booked this cruise relatively last minute, after finding a fantastic deal on the cruise fare. This was my third cruise with Carnival and his fourth with Carnival, seventh overall, so we left for our trip with realistic expectations of this being on par with our prior cruises.

The Embarkation process could not have gone more smoothly. We flew into town early that morning and planned to spend the day with family in town. We arrived at the port at 3:15pm and were sitting in our room by 3:30. We dropped off our carry on bags and headed out to explore the ship. The Imagination is the smallest ship I've ever cruised on, and while I appreciated being able to get between any two points on board within 3-4 minutes, it started to feel a bit cramped by the end of the trip.

Throughout the cruise, we ate in the Pride dining room (your time dining). I'm not sure if there was a problem in the kitchen on the first night, but we waited nearly an hour for our food, and when it came, we were not impressed. The flat iron steak I ordered was not edible. Given the wait times, we asked to take dessert to go, and our waiter eventually agreed, but only after informing us that we would be required to go out the back, curtained off exit when we left the dining room. The main dining room meals did improve throughout the cruise, but the food was never really impressive, with the exception of the lobster on elegant night. The pizza on this ship was not very good, but luckily we found the sandwich station early on, which turned out to be the best bet for tasty food. I suppose a plus side(?) to this was that this is the only cruise I've taken where I haven't gained weight. Read more