We got into Norfolk around 12 p.m. and my husband and my cousin dropped us off at Nauticus and received a paper stating that we would be picked up by a shuttle bus when we arrived back and taken to the Cedar Point parking lot for pickup by my husband. This was a little confusing as he is not familiar with this area but the map was helpful.

Once the porter had our luggage and we paid him his fee of $1.00 per bag which we had around 9 -- so it was worth paying him to move all of the luggage and we went up the entrance to Nauticus and were greeted by Carnival staff and escorted to where we checked in. This went smoother than I thought it would. I did take my marriage license and was asked to see it -- but they told me they would have let me on without it.

Took us about 10 minutes for all 3 of us so we found a place to sit and waited for the ship to arrive -- which it did around 1 p.m. What a sight to see her pull into Nauticus. We were told we would be able to board around 1:30 so we got in line and around 1:15 - 1:30 we were let go to enter the security checkpoint and follow the waiting line until we got to the 2nd checkpoint were you went through xray. We waited about 30+/- minutes until this opened and proceeded into the next phase inside where we waited until we had permission to get on board which was around 20 +/- minutes. The waiting time for each was not bad and we were so excited that we did not care about waiting. Once we got through this checkpoint than the next thing was having our pictures taken for the S/S card and then on board we were. Read more