My wife and I wanted a short cruise within an easy drive of our home near Wilmington, NC. While we normally cruise with Celebrity we were pleasantly surprised with our experience aboard the Carnival Ecstasy.

We normally cruise in a balcony stateroom but since they were in short supply we opted for an ocean view stateroom since it was only a 5 day cruise, I really missed having a chair to sit on but this was a minor inconvenience and not a problem.

The parking and check-in was a real plus, very efficient. We were quite surprised when the parking lot attendant told us that there would be no charge for handicapped parking, this represented a quick $100 savings. Read more