Let me begin by explaining a few things. My wife had suddenly passed away a month before the cruise date. This was a Mah Jong cruise thus making the typical Carnival population much older (and we had many more Jewish passengers than usual).
Carnival would not return my money, I was charged the full port tax for two people, and the travel agency which sponsored the Mah Jong tournaments refused to return the Mah Jong fees even though it was my wife who played and I was traveling alone.
Let me begin with the embarkation in Ft. Lauderdale. It was atrocious. There was a line up to enter the check in area two and one half blocks long and it took over 3 hours in some cases to just get checked in. The reason for this was that they only had two scanners for security. When we finally got on board, exhausted, there was no one to show us to our rooms and we had to find them by ourselves.