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on their card. We didn't give our kids charging privilege but just in case you do Last, there are a few channels on your room television that offer "family" movies. I know the kids watched the Chronicles of Narnia and Big Momma's House 2 a couple times. Also, we did one pay per view movie at $8.99. I wish my kids weren't such big TV watchers, but it's how they wind down for bed, so I was glad for the options.

Disembarkation: We had too many bags to do self-assist debarkation, so packed up our bags and left them outside Saturday night. After the self-assist debarkation passengers were done, they began calling the different colored luggage tags to disembark. We got up Sunday and went to breakfast in the dining room around 8:30. After breakfast, we headed up to the video arcade and the kids played games until they called our luggage tag color. Our luggage tag was called around 10:00 I'd guess, and we found our luggage (this is a mad house), got through customs, found our ride, and were home by 11:45 am. Not too bad.

Needs Improvement: Just a few minor gripes: (1) Hair Dryers are in the rooms, but don't have an on/off switch. Instead you have to hold down a "trigger". It was just a pain to hold the hair dryer a particular way and hold that trigger and dry my hairI missed my own hair dryer. (2) Lido deck lines the food on lido deck is fine, but during peak times (i.e. breakfast) the lines are just ridiculous. Hard to really enjoy the breakfast buffet when you have to wait in line for 15 minutes then search for a clean table to sit down. A side note the omelet line is long, but worth it! Yummy! (3) Photo prices the Carnival photographers are everywhere and take great pictures. But, most are printed up as 8x10's and cost $21.99 each. I don't know about everyone else, but I just don't need that many 8x10's of myself and my family. If Carnival would print some smaller photos and price them reasonably, they'd make it up in volume! I bought two 8x10's and there were other nice photo's there, but for me $44 was enough to spend on pictures. Also, due to the size of this ship and its 3,000+ passengers, the photo gallery is often a madhouse with people searching for their photos. Do yourself a favor and go to the photo gallery when you see a break in the madness.

Best kept secrets: Sur Mer restaurant this is a seafood restaurant above the lido deck that has great bouillabaisse and awesome fish and chips. Never saw it crowded up here. If you don't look for it you won't find it with all the other offerings on lido (buffet, Chinese, deli, pizza, etc.).

Things to bring:
Hair dryer reason mentioned above
Alarm clock we thought we'd rely on our cell phone clocks but when we got out to sea our service switched to some international carrier and the times on our phones changed to something crazy
Bungee cord if you have a balcony, bring a bungee cord to hold the door open the sounds of the ocean are so soothing
Booze OK, Carnival says no alcoholic beverages, but we did sneak a few. We took a twelve pack of beer and a bottle of rum. It's just nice to mix your own rum punch and have a drink on the balcony under the stars. (Hint: Fruit punch from Lido deck with a shot of rum = great rum punch.) And, our cabin steward seemed more than willing to keep our beer on ice for us.
Electric strip cabin has one outlet. We needed the strip for our cell phone charger, curling iron, digital camera charger, etc.
Highlighters handy to highlight activities you don't want to miss in your Carnival Caper

Overall, we had a great time and I hope this review will be helpful! We liked this cruise so well I'm going to try to get a group together to do this cruise again in about 18 months!

Learn more about this author, Lynda Mckendree.
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