This was my 3rd cruise. The first cruise was 25 years ago. The second was 4 years ago, on the Carnival Paradise. We absolutely loved that cruise, which was part of the reason we decided to book this cruise on the Elation, since it's a sister ship.
There were 14 of us traveling together, including my wife & I, our 3 kids (20, 18, and 14), my mom, aunt, uncle (all 70 +), and a bunch of other relatives.
We chose to fly into Ft. Lauderdale, and got shuttled to Miami. The airline lost several of our bags, which could have been a disaster. But Carnival was right on top of it, helped track down the bags, and took responsibility of getting them, and delivering them to the ship. We were very impressed when it worked out smoothly!