Five days after returning from our New Years cruise on the Golden Princess, we decided to book another cruise. We were hooked. We found a good price from an on-line travel agency on the February 26th sailing of the Fascination. The Fascination alternates weeks between Cozumel and Playa Del Carmen (Calica). We were just in Cozumel on the New Years trip so we wanted to see what Playa was like. We booked that cruise.
We flew in from Indianapolis on the morning of the cruise (Monday). We were a little concerned since our area had an ice storm the day before but everything was on schedule, we departed on time and flew into Fort Lauderdale arriving about 10:45 AM. Since the cruise was out of Miami, we needed to get ourselves to the the port. I did some research prior to the trip and decided to just take the Carnival Transfer bus. After we retrieved our luggage, we spotted two Carnival employees who were working the Carnival transfers. We did not prepurchase a transfer, but simply approached the employee and told them we needed to get to Miami for the Fascination Cruise. They directed me to another Carnival employee sitting at a chair. I showed him my "blue book" and he simply wrote me a round trip ticket for my wife and myself. Total cost was $120 dollars. We immediately boarded the bus and with a wait of no less than five minutes, we were on our way to the port of Miami. It was a thirty five minute ride from Fort Lauderdale to the Miami port. This part really could not have been any easier.
When we arrived at the port, the bus driver made us wait in the bus while he unloaded the luggage. Once it was unloaded he let us out and very clearly let us know we should show our "appreciation" to him. He handled three of our bags so I handed him three dollars and proceeded to the terminal. I have read that some people have "heartburn" with this and I understand. We could have gotten off the bus immediately and proceeded to the terminal, but the wait was only about 3 minutes or so . I didn't mind giving him the money.