I apologize in advance if there are any spelling or grammatical errors. My post is long and I tend to skip reviewing like I should. Enjoy-

Background: My husband and I took this trip together, we do not have children. We are 30 somethings and it was our 8th cruise, 5th on Carnival. We booked the cruise just about 3 weeks in advance. We knew what week we wanted to go, how much we wanted to spend, that we didn't want to travel far to get on the ship and this is the cruise that worked best for us. We were pleasantly surprised that the prices still hadn't really gone up for the "summer busy season" just yet. It was a holiday weekend, Memorial Day, but that didn't "up" the prices any either. It was a sold out cruise, but it seemed like one of the calmest & quietest ones we've ever taken!! We booked so close that they didn't have time to send us paperwork. It wasn't a problem at all, we still did our check in on line and printed our fun pass. That's all we needed at check in, along with our credit card & pass ports. Easy squeezy! We asked for a luggage tag from the porter, not a big deal at all.

Travel Down & Embarkation: We live about 9 hours North of Port Canaveral. We always leave a day early so that we can drive down really close and be sure to get to the port the following day in time, even if we run into traffic problems or anything crazy. We drove down on Saturday and stayed at EXIT #350 in Ocala, Florida. It's a great little town and our 2nd stay at the LaQuinta there. It's very nice, clean, great prices. They have free wireless internet, free continental breakfast and a military rate that we use. There are tons of restaurants at the exit as well: Chili's, Cracker Barrel, Chick Fil A and everything in between. There is a Barnes N Noble and we find it's a great place to waste a few hours in the evening. Read more