June 2012 Carnival Fantasy Review With Pictures

This is my first attempt at writing a review. I hope you enjoy it and if you have any questions please feel free to ask.

Our family consists of me (41), DW (29 & holding), DD (17), and DS (14). We booked this cruise some time back in October of last year and its hard to believe that it is almost here. This cruise is a celebration of my DD's graduation that I promised her a long time ago "IF" she would graduate. LOL, she did very well (4.0gpa) and will be starting college in the fall. :) I am very proud of her.

The wife and I sailed on the Fantasy last year in June '11 and enjoyed ourselves very much. The only other cruise that I had been on prior to last year was back in '08 when the DW and I sailed on the Carnival Glory for our 15 yr anniversary. The Glory was a wonderful ship and we had some great POC's but we had to travel about eight hours to Port Canaveral to embark. The Charleston port is less than two hours away from our home so it is convenient for us to sail from there.

Like I stated earlier we booked this cruise way back when thru Carnival Cruise Lines (CCL) with early saver and past guest promos. I opted for the prepaid tips which I am glad I did because CCL went up on this not long after we booked our trip. I always get the insurance from CCL because I would hate to have something come up and we lose all the money we put into it. To keep our costs down I booked a interior room (E299) which would accomodate our family of four. After about five months of just feeling happy about our price and what we would be getting for our money I called CCL one day curious about any rooms that might be still available. The rep told me that there were rooms available and I had the opportunity to upgrade OR I could take an onboard credit to the amount of $413.00. Well I about fell over when she told me this because money has been super tight lately. I told her we would stick with our room and take the OBC. I had to fill out a form online which was painless enough. Now we had some spending money. Heck ya! I had forgotten that they matched the prices unitl I saw on the Cruise Critic (CC) website about this.

I'm trying to post these pics....thought I had it figured out....pics to come soon...I hope.

OOOOOO! A new Fantasy review. Subscribing! And letting my roll call know!

OOOOOO! A new Fantasy review. Subscribing! And letting my roll call know!

All4fun, I am going to try to get the pictures going soon. I uploaded pictures with facebook as a trial before. Trying to use picasa this time but having no luck...:confused:

OK, I think I got it...

Oh I can't wait! A new review, great. where is it? I love the Fantasy, was on her in Feb, and will be aboard her for our Christmas cruise. With just a little cruse in between..lol

Come on, figure it out, we want photos.. and words.. lol

You got it! Success!

First Day of Our Cruise.

Our drive from Columbia to Charleston was under 2 hours and we arrived at 10:10 at the terminal gate.

The wife was all smiles

The kids were pretty excited too....

This was our first look at the ship....

The guard at the entrance said we could drop off our luggage and embarkation would start around 11:15. We dropped off our luggage and proceeded to another point where port security checked all of our passports and boarding pass. They said we could pull forward or exit the parking area if we didn’t want to wait for another hour. I figured we could wait, so we pulled forward to get in line with about four other cars at this point. Our money was collected ($75.00 @ $15.00 a day) and at 11:30 we were moving to the parking garage.

This is the maze you have to go thru...the entrance is to the far right.

This is the place where they collect your money....

This is where they had us enter the warehouse...

This is us waiting on the buses that take you to the terminal.

Great start so far. Want to hear more of your review.

The port uses some old warehouses for a parking garage, nothing fancy but could use some paint. I think Charleston is supposed to build a new port in the future but I don’t know when that will be. Maybe they will do it up nice and more ships could port here J. After we parked our truck we walked to a place just outside of the warehouse where a small bus picked us up and drove us to the terminal entrance. This seems unnecessary but if I had a hard time getting around I would be appreciative.

This is us riding the "short bus"....

Going up to the ship....

The time to go thru security was relatively quick and we were having our first Drink of the Day (DOD) at 12:20.

Its "Official"

Woo-Hoo! A Fantasy Review!!!!! I'm subscribing right now!

Loving your review thus far. Can't wait to see more. We were on the Fantasy in March and we had a blast. I hope you didn't fall victim to the comfy couches on the Promenade deck ;)

Yea!!! A Carnival Fantasy review! I'll be on this ship next Saturday, so keep 'em coming! :)

Can't wait for more!!!!

Around 1pm our room was ready and we dropped off our bags. Now I know that the interior rooms are small but this room was smaller than any of the ones I have ever seen before. You can see from the pictures that it was not much room for four people. It didn’t bother me that much and I didn’t plan on staying in the room for anything else than sleeping, showering, storing our stuff. Kind of reminded me of when I was in the Navy and I had to share a berthing area with 75 other guys.

The beds were seperated when we arrived and I put them together to make our queen. I walked across the hall to see how much bigger the room was and it was probably at least two feet more wide.

Had to watch your head when getting up...The kids said the upper beds were comfortable.

Pictures of the bathroom...

Probably should have taken these pictures when we first arrived but I didn't think about it. At least no dirty undies....LOL

Free Stuff....

The kids forgot to bring their bathing suits in their carryons, so to pass the time we ate lunch, walked around, and explored the ship.

DS was excited about the food on the ship. He said he had to have a cheeseburger first!

The family with "The Bridge" in the background

View of Charleston from the top deck....

DW posing for me

I think our checked bags were in our room by 2:30. I was really surprised to find a note in one of the bags that stated they had confiscated an item that is not allowed on the ship. Come to find out they took my multi strip outlet and would be keeping it until the end of the cruise. Thankfully they missed the other prohibited item in the same bag. LOL

For the sail away I had big plans to do a time lapse video of the ship leaving Charleston, but the rain started just before we left port, So we just hung out on the Lido sipping on cold drinks.

rain rain go away, come again another day

"Fun Ship Specials" make it the rain more tolerable. Luckily the rained stopped not long after we were away from port.

DD with an umbrella ....everyone was in great spirits...

My son after eating some chicken tenders....

We tried sushi before our meal on the promenade deck before our evening dinner. I don’t know what I had but it wasn’t too bad. I have never eaten sushi before so I just ate what the server gave me. I can’t remember what they were called but of the three things he gave me one had salmon on it, I think . Now I can say I have had sushi!

The evening dinner was scheduled for anytime dining and we had no wait for our table. The first evening we had great service and had a great meal. I had steak and the wife had some sort of lasagna. Can’t remember what the kids had.

Dinner in the Celebration MDR

My favorite dessert, Chocolate Melting Cake!

Two thumbs up for the cheesecake

We had a great view of the ocean from our table

The rest of my evening was spent listening to live music. First up was Cat’s lounge to listen to a band called Music Boardwalk. The band was recommended by the cruise critic member PinkFloydFan. They did a great cover of Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” that lasted for over 15 minutes. They were very good.

Our kids said "THEY" wanted to Karaoke so we went to the aft lounge called "The Forum". The wife and I had enough liquid courage at this point so we started off the show with our one and ONLY song that we sing, "Picture" by Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow.

After our song the kids got cold feet so we decided to leave for more good times elsewhere. I decided to go to the piano lounge and listen to the piano player “Angela” while the wife and kids went to the welcome aboard show. After the show the wife came and found me and we finished the night out looking at the stars at the front of the ship. This was a very long day for all of us and it was great to finally be on our vacation.

Angela was a great piano player and played just about anything

Made some new friends, just can't remember their names....LOL

The feathers were courtesy of Angela.....

This was the last picture of the night and I could barely keep my eyes open. Must have been about 1am and I had been up since about 5am. The night sky was full of stars and I love to be at the front of the ship when it is all quiet. The wind was blowing like crazy, that's why the sail and sign card is wrapped around my neck.

Great review, wonderful pictures, please more.......

Great review, wonderful pictures, please more.......

Thanks Melodie!

I'm so excited for the rest of the review. Awesome job so far! I can't wait to be on the Fantasy in December!

I'm so excited for the rest of the review. Awesome job so far! I can't wait to be on the Fantasy in December!

Thanks ToriB, I should be able to get most of it done tomorrow.