Boarding:

We arrived at the port of Miami at around 11:00 am. Cruise departure was 4:00 pm so it was kind of early, however we would rather wait sitting down than get stuck standing in long lines. When we first started processing we thought we were going to walk right on the ship. Ticket taking and initial processing took no time at all. We ended up sitting in one room for 10 minutes then got moved to another that had chairs for everybody. Once we moved to this room we had to wait for about an hour. Eventually around 1:30 we were boarding the ship. My experience was that it was great to arrive so early, and I would probably do this way again. Not sure how Carnival could improve upon this as there were still passengers on the ship from the previous cruise, so they could not speed things up.

First two days at sea: Read more