Background: This is our third cruise, second with Carnival. We are an early-40's couple with two children. Our children did not accompany us on this cruise. We booked this cruise about 30 days prior to sailing, as a last minute getaway (early anniversary celebration!).

TRAVEL TO PORT: We actually flew into West Palm Beach International the day before the cruise because the air fare was much less than flying into Miami. Even with renting a car, we saved quite a bit over flying into Miami International. We had a non-stop flight from DC that was crowded, but no problems - landed a bit early in fact. Always a plus. We booked a room at the Holiday Inn Downtown Port of Miami, overlooking the cruise terminals. The hotel is obviously older, but still offers a fantastic view of the terminal! Because DH is a Priority Club member, we were upgraded from our original Queen standard room to one of the King demi-suites on 9th floor overlooking the terminals. What a wonderful sight to see Majesty of the Seas doing the "spin" at 6:30am on sail-away day! Apparently Fascination (our ship) had docked earlier in the morning, and I missed it. The hotel has wonderful accommodations, and we enjoyed our stay there very much. We wandered across the street to the Bayside Market and had dinner at the Bubba Gump restaurant (if you love shrimp, this is the place for you!) and the food was about at the expected level for a chain restaurant, not outstanding, but good.

EMBARKATION: We chose to park our rented car at the cruise terminal, so that we wouldn't have to deal with obtaining another one the morning we docked. Parking was $15/day paid in cash when you park. The garage is a multi-story facility with ample parking. We had no problems finding a parking space. We carried our luggage from the car to the terminal with no issues and then found a porter to get our cabin assignment (we had booked a 4A gty), redid our tags and waved goodbye to our luggage very very quickly. At this point it was approximately 11:30 - 11:45am. Check in was very smooth and painless. I must state that Carnival does do a better job in organizing check-in than RCCL. After preliminary check-in we were directed to the second level to pick up our seapasses. How wonderful to be welcomed back by the representative! While we were seated in the embarkation area, my DH noticed someone sitting a few rows over and swore he knew this person. Turns out he was right! We'd come all the way from So. Maryland to Miami only to run into people who lived 10 minutes away from us! It was great to have people to hang around with on the trip! Probably about 15 minutes after we sat down in the lounge, they allowed the first group to board the ship! We were on our way (after the stop for the required embarkation photo)! Read more