First things first....I just came back from Baghdad. My wife and I wanted to plan a "get away" vacation. Since I'm from Tampa and seeing as how my mom still lives there, it gave us a chance to take our little one to Grandma's while we went on vacation.
The night before we stayed at the Channelside Marriot hotel right down the street from the port - great choice. I remember when this hotel was built and have always wanted to stay there. I booked the room from Iraq and had no trouble checking in and they even provided transportation (yes, I know it was 2 blocks away) to the port the morning of.
Getting on the boat is a snap. We booked the cruise in late November and I did the online fill out thing the next day, so all we had to bring was our passports (or birth certificates - we actually didn't need any of these things we just showed our military ID) and our paper saying we completed the online thing. We waited for about 25 minutes and we were on! I think we got there about 1145 and we were finished with lunch by 12:15.