Carnival Cruise Line

Carnival sails ex-Australia, and for us that is the whole argument. Four ships are homeported here: Carnival Encounter year-round from Brisbane and Carnival Luminosa seasonally from Brisbane, Carnival Splendor year-round from Sydney, and Carnival Adventure from Sydney with select departures from Melbourne. You board at an Australian port instead of flying to one — which takes the airfares, the jet lag and a good deal of the risk out of a cruise.

We are a Brisbane agency, and half the Australian Carnival fleet sails from our own port. If you are in south-east Queensland, this is about as close to home as a holiday gets: you drive to the terminal, and the holiday starts there.

It is built for families and for first-time cruisers, and it is genuinely good at both. The onboard programme is the product: a broad food offer included in the fare, live entertainment and theatre every night, kids' clubs run in age bands from under-2s through to 17, and enough happening on board that a sea day is the point of the holiday rather than something to get through. Carnival Adventure and Carnival Encounter also run late-night child minding, which is the kind of detail that decides a family holiday.

The value is real and it is why many families choose it. A week aboard with meals, entertainment and the children catered for, leaving from an Australian port, is a straightforward answer to a family holiday.

Two of the four Australian ships — Carnival Adventure and Carnival Encounter — are the former P&O Australia ships. If you have sailed P&O out of Sydney or Brisbane before, you already know them.

Groups are a first-class path with Carnival rather than an exception, which matters if you are travelling as an extended family, a milestone birthday, or a group of friends who want to be near each other on board.

We are a direct Carnival agency. The fares we quote are Carnival's own, and we add nothing to them.