We are a family of 4 -husband 50, myself 49, daughter 26, and daughter 22, from Nova Scotia, Canada. Our daughters' first cruise, our third, all on Carnival. This cruise was booked in July 2006 using a local travel agent who booked with Carnival using the Fly Aweigh Program. The cruise was good/not great, but the flights and ground transfers arranged by Carnival were very disappointing. We wanted early morning flights, got noon flights putting us in Miami at 7pm. At the Miami airport, the bus driver, helpers and airport porters got into an argument over who was going to handle the luggage of us, 100 Carnival guests, thus who got the TIP. The 2 Carnival reps apologized for the scene, but it sure left a bad impression. The whole experience with the fight times, bus transfers, and the complete DISORGANIZATION of getting to and from the airport/hotel/ cruise terminal, we will NEVER do the Fly Aweigh Program again. Part of the Fly Aweigh Program is an overnight pre-cruise hotel; ours was the Hilton Miami Airport. The Hilton has nice dEcor, very clean, easy check-in/out (15 minutes for 40 people), not bothered by airport noise, nice cafe for a hot breakfast ($12.00 per person). The hotel is 20 minutes from downtown, resulting in a $26.00 taxi ride each way. We went to the Bayside Market which is open till 11pm. The next day we waited in lines for over 1 hour to board the buses to take us to the pier. Carnival does this every week and we expected them to be super organized but they were very lacking in organization.
Embarkation: Left our bags with the porters and headed inside for check-in around 12:45pm with about 100 people in line. Fill out the Fun Pass in advance- it saves time and results in a shorter line. Carnival now makes you line up on the outside of deck 3 to pick up your Sail & Sign card, then line up again in a HUGE line to give your credit card info for your Sail & Sign account. Too many lines, it would be a lot easier to do everything at check-in like it used to be. By 2:20pm we were done with all the lines and heading to our cabins, which had been upgraded by Carnival from inside to outside.
Cabins #2270 and 2272: Plenty of storage (2 hang closets, 1 with shelves, 4 drawers), nice desk/vanity area, sofa, chair, table, tv (view tours, menus, web cam, Sail & Sign account), and a compact but adequate bathroom. Our cabin steward was very friendly. He cleaned the room in the morning and evening when he turned down the bed covers, left a towel animal and candy.