Background: My family and I went on a 7 day western Caribbean cruise debarking from Tampa, Florida on December 27th. Our group consisted of my parents, with an outside extended balcony suite, myself and my two siblings with an inside 3 person cabin and my sister and her husband with an inside cabin. This was our 5th cruise as a family and third on Carnival. Several of us have been on cruises without the family, as well.
We spent a few days prior to leaving in Tampa so that we could spend Christmas with some family members. We stayed at the Homewood Suites, just next to the airport because of the convenient location, large suite (two bedrooms and a living room/kitchen with a pull-out sofa) and continental breakfast (also continental dinner/snacks, but we only did that once). Overall, it's very nice and close to the International Plaza Mall, where we tried to get some post-Christmas deals.
On the 27th the embarkation lines were among the longest I've seen to board a ship, but as my parents were in a suite we were able to use the VIP lines which made it relatively painless. We were onboard the ship within an hour.