This was my first cruise, and my husband's second (though his first was 8 years ago). We wanted a short vacation, and I had always been interested in trying cruising. I did lots of research on CruiseCritic.com to try to find the right ship. We are 28 & 34 from Washington, D.C. and were looking for something without a ton of families, something short (3 or 4 days) to either the Caribbean or Mexico, and great value for cost. We decided on the Carnival Fascination 3-day cruise from Miami to Nassau, Bahamas.

We flew Spirit Airlines from Washington Reagan National Airport to Fort Lauderdale, FL. I had read about inexpensive transfers from Ft. Lauderdale to Miami, but had not booked anything in advance. When we arrived, we were approached by a Carnival representative and offered a transfer for $24 per person. We declined, and eventually found the transfer for $18 per person. They took us directly to the port without any other stops. It was well worth the money we saved flying into FLL instead of Miami and the transfer was easy. So getting to port was very easy. Once we arrived at port, we were instantly approached and given bag tags (even though we were given tags with our cruise docs, they said they preferred the ones they had - they were sturdier plastic instead of paper). Our bags were taken and we were sent in to go through security. As a first-timer, I had no idea what to expect, but the lines were like that to get through an average airport security line. I would say we were through all lines and checked in in about 30 minutes, and onboard by about 1:00 p.m.

We went straight up to the Lido deck to get some lunch and a drink. I found the lido pool deck food adequate. The french fries were GREAT! The burgers were so-so, dessert was great, and everything in between was in between! We hung out for a while on the pool deck, where I found the drink servers to be slightly overwhelming. There were so many of them, and I feel like our conversation was interrupted every 10 seconds to have to say, "No, thank you" to YET ANOTHER server trying to offer us a drink. That was one of the only annoying things I found on the ship. Read more