My husband and I sailed the Carnival Splendor on January 3, 2009. It was a seven day Eastern Caribbean cruise out of Fort Lauderdale and calling on the following ports: Puerto Rico, St. Thomas, Dominican Republic and Nassau. My husband is in his mid 50's and I am a few years younger. This was cruise number 13, our ninth on Carnival. Mr. Cruise Cat is recovering from surgery, and we thought this would be a great way for him to recuperate. It was!

We flew to Fort Lauderdale two days before embarkation and stayed at the Harbor Beach Marriott Resort and Spa. It was fantastic! The view was great, there were several pools, lots of lounge chairs and plenty of places to lounge on the beach. Overall, it was expensive, but worth it.

EMBARKATION - There's no nice way to put this. It was awful! There were too few agents for check in, about half what we usually see, and there were only Celebrity Logos in the terminal. I'm guessing since the Splendor came from Europe and is going on to South America and finally ending up on the West Coast, that this was sort of a temporary terminal. That's understandable, but it took us over 90 minutes to check in and we had to spend the majority of that time in line in the parking lot. I seriously hope they beef up the number of agents when it comes to embarkation for the sailing to South America. It would be a shame to start off a cruise like that on the wrong foot because of understaffing at embarkation. Read more