Carnival Legend
 

Looking at this cruise 10/23-10/30 and was hoping to get some feedback if anybody has done this cruise. Any and all feedback would be great

We did a very similar itinerary in 2005 when Carnival Miracle (a ship of the same class) was on the route. This class of ships is far and away Carnival's best, with much better space to passenger ratios than others in the line. Tampa is also a great embarkation and debarkation port, very fast and efficient and fairly close to the airport. The 7-day trips out of Tampa attract a somewhat more sedate crowd than many of Carnival's other itineraries, and this will be especially true in October.

Legend is currently undergoing a two-week dry-dock for general refurbishment, and to add an adults-only "Serentiy" area. They're also replacing bedding and replacing the old tube tv's with flat screens.

FWIW, I'm also taking the same cruise in July. :)

I was on the legend a year and a half ago and it was a nice ship then, but the TVs were old. I'm not sure your itinerary, but we did the Tampa to Grand Cayman, Belize, Roatan, Cozumel trip. Cozumel was cancelled because of H1N1 but I loved Belize (Lumanai Ruins) and Roatan ( we did the zip line). I can't get my husband to actually fly into a city outside the U.S. so cruises are the only way I can travel with him anywhere outside the U.S.

Thanks for your feedback!

My wife and I took that cruise last year. It was terrific.
The service was great, and so was the ship.

As far as the destinations, Belize was our favourite. We really enjoyed the Altun Ha Mayan Ruins.

In Roatan we went snorkeling, Cayman Islands went to the turtle farm and stingray city and in Mexico we took a tour of a tequila factory and downtown Cozumel.

It was great, highly recommended :)

We're doing this cruise early in December, so please post comments after your trips. We're thinking that it should be pretty much adults since the trip is smack-dab between T'giving and Christmas. Has anybody done cruises out of Tampa the first week of December?

>"Has anybody done cruises out of Tampa the first week of December?"
We did the Legend out of Tampa in December and were surprised at the number of children. We figured they would be in school. But they were no problem to us.
Do check your cabin location to be sure it's not under the bandstand!! Or even the whole deck, lots of chairs dragging.
Our only real complaint was the scheduled dinner seating with another couple who were quite boring and we couldn't change. Hello Room service and the Buffet.

Thanks... Our cabin is pretty good.. we're on a floor which is basically right in the middle ( two floors of cabins above and a couple of whole floors cabins below) so we should have a pretty good buffer...

One more question which I forgot to ask last night. I read an on-line review on cruise critic that complained about the smoke and how bad it was on the ship. From a couple of other things that he said, I suspected that he might be a whiner... However, I also read that the Starboard side is non-smoking outside and the port side is smoking. We got a room on the port side, but am now wondering if it's worth switching. Smoke really bothers my SO and I'm wondering if the smoke carries to the balcony rooms above/below them from the open decks below. Anybody have any experience with this?

Carnival allows smoking in all cabins, but IMHO it's never been an issue there. The casinos on all Carnival ships do tend to smell very smoky, but it doesn't bother me.

As for dining, Carnival now offers a version of anytime dining.

Had my first cruise in January on the Legend, as mentioned above its a Spirit class so very similar to the Miracle although the colors and decor are a little less 'wild'. Reading the stories behind each of the 'legends' photos in the stair cases was fun.

We got a good price on an extended balcony. Its the regular width but 50% deeper which gives you more room if you plan to spend time outside. A word of caution though is the extended balconies line up with the sections of ships that have lifeboats a few decks below. So although you see the water fine, if you were to look straight down you see the tops of the lifeboats. We only paid about 40$ more for the extended balcony, if it had been more I would have preferred a regular balcony where there are no lifeboats.

You might want to look at cruisedeckplans.com to overlap deck plans and see just what is below and above you. I always try to make sure I have rooms above and below to limit the noise and not take a deck right under the buffet for example.