This was our 10th cruise (7th with Carnival) and our first to embark out of Port Canaveral. We stayed in Kissimmee (Orlando), the night before and had a great time. The drive to the port should have been better planned by me the next morning. Using Waze, we ended up on toll roads instead of I-4. While this did eliminate a lot of traffic, it added to my worrying nature that there would not be enough places to stop for breaks, if needed. Next time, I will plan better.

We arrived on embarkation day in Port Canaveral and I knew from reading the tips here on Cruise Critic, we should not try to park until after 1pm. I knew that would be extremely difficult for me being retired military and planning to be every place early and not one minute late. Well, we purposely stopped to visit Exploration Tower at Port Canaveral around 11am. While the views from the tower are great and the museum itself is full of great information, it provided the distraction I desperately needed to keep from driving 10 minutes to the port and board the ship. We finally arrived at the port at 1:30pm and had the absolute best experience of any cruise embarkation experience, to include Faster To The Fun in New Orleans. We drove straight to the porters, off loaded our luggage and 3 passengers. Then my wife and I drove to the terminal parking area and parked on the top deck. Our late arrival made sure all the inside parking spaces were already taken. Once we parked and met up with the rest of our party, we proceeded straight to the front of all lines. That statement is actually incorrect, because there were no lines. No line at TSA. No line at Carnival check in. No line anywhere. If we had purchased FTTF, it would have been wasted. With our late arrival at the port, our cabin was already open and waiting for us. If we could pack in smaller suitcases, I would definitely just bring them aboard with us instead of leaving them with the porter. Having embarked out of New Orleans, Tampa and Mobile (before the terminal renovations) I must say that PC is my absolute favorite place to drive and board.

The ship is beautiful and the waterworks area is great. The serenity area is also good, but get there early. I did see crew members placing stickers on lounges with stuff but no people in an effort to curb the chair hogs. I also saw the tactics the chair hogs used to defeat this effort. I won't share it here, but, at least Carnival is trying to solve the problem. The Liquid Lounge provided the best seating of any ship I've been on. I was able to sit in an upper seat and not have to peer around, over, or through plexiglass or hand railings to see the shows. Unfortunately, one of the musical shows had the music so loud that the voices of the singers could not be heard. I couldn't believe no one else noticed and fixed it, but, maybe that's just me. We never went back to a musical production. The juggler and the magician were excellent shows to see. Read more