Background: Hello, my wife and I are frequent cruisers. This was my 9th and my wife's 16th. This is my 6th Carnival Cruise and my wife's 10th. We are big fans of carnival. We feel that they give a consistent product at an affordable price. We absolutely love cruising. We met on the Carnival Victory even. Our saying is that a bad day on a cruise ship is still better than a good day at work. We are positive people. I believe you will find my review objective and positive.

Travels to San Juan: San Juan is a beautiful city in the central northern portion of Puerto Rico. It tops the Caribbean and is a great place to start your cruise. Airport - It is easy and the only hassles may occur when a bunch of people are coming and going at the same time. Coming in a day early and taking a 12:55 noon flight out, we had not problems. Clean and not too big. Our luggage coming in was delayed, but that was due to a tight connection in Miami. We got it on the next flight in 2 hours later. Hotel - we stayed at the Marriott San Juan Casino and Resort right on the ocean. It turned out to be a great location to stay a night. We booked this on our own and had wonderful service. It was close by to some good restaurants - local and chain (Mortons of Chicago, Ruth Cris etc). San Juan people pretty much speak spanish primary and know quite a bit of english. We had no problems. The hotel got us a cab and for $20.00 we went to the Port on Sunday about 1:30pm. The hotel kept our bags since we had to check out. Excellent service there.

Embarkation: Not a problem at all. There were lines. If you are a club member, suite, or a 10+ cruiser then there some shortcuts in the line. Here is the trick, don't show up 2 hours before the ship opens up. It does not leave until 10:00pm. Board at 5:00pm, much less line! Not following my own advice, we got there at 2:00pm. We waited about 30 minutes in total in line. This is typical and is much less than other ports. One thing I will not understand - mentioned on my comment card - is that you put your flight info on the fun pass, I confirmed it with the check in to make sure they would have us on the early flight disembarkation, and yet the ship people never know about this. I brought this to the attention of the front desk. They were nice but did not seem to be taking the advice to heart. Oh well - picky detail. Moving on. I would say this went very smooth. VERY ORGANIZED. Have some singles - the luggage guys can be a huge help when you get to the port. Lot's of locals will be there waiting in line. I'll go more into that later. Read more