This was my 3rd cruise, my 2nd with Carnival. Overall, it was a great time, and I'd do it again in a minute.
I travelled with my wife Denise, in celebration of our 10th anniversary. We flew into Ft. Lauderdale a day early, and met the Carnival greeters back at the airport Sunday morning. From there, we were taken to Miami on a comfortable air conditioned bus for our cruise.
Embarkation was pretty bad. I knew it would be -- I had read many previous online reviews of this cruise -- but it was still bad. I'm not able to stand for long periods of time. We started with a line outside the building, which moved pretty quickly inside the terminal, snaked around for a little, then took us through the metal detector. At this point, I thought we had done pretty well, only to find that this just takes you your next line. The staff tried to be helpful, but the process had me totally exhausted before I ever got on the ship.