Why Yes, and No? The Sunrise is a ship that is not new, but is new, a refurbished ship with many new amenities and also many new cabins which means more people. Unfortunately the cabins were put in at the expense of public areas. So, why Yes and No? It's not a great ship but not nearly as bad as some of the reviews are making it out to be.

We were supposed to embark in Manhattan, NY but were notified by Carnival a month before that the pier was being closed by Port Officials due to repairs, so we would embark in Brooklyn, NY after the ship disembarked passengers from the previous cruise in Manhattan and repositioned to Brooklyn. As we live on Long Island and Brooklyn is actually on Long Island, it was not a problem for us, but for others coming from out of the immediate area it posed somewhat of a logistical problem. But this was not Carnival's doing nor fault.

The repositioning also caused a two hour delay in boarding. Carnival gives a choice of boarding times and we had chosen 12:30 to 1:00 PM, now making it a boarding time of 2:30 - 3 PM with sailaway at 6 PM. After speaking to a Carnival agent we were told to stick to the original time of 12:30, then another agent told someone on our CruiseCritic forum to go with the two hour delay. At this point I figured it would be a free for all as people would be arriving at all different times, and I was right. We unloaded at the baggage area at 1:14 PM, and we were on the ship by 1:56 PM, less than 45 minutes. We are not Platinum or Diamond VIFP and did not have FTTF. It went pretty smoothly, very organized, all the staff was helpful and friendly. Read more