We have just arrived back from our 7 day Carnival Miracle Western Caribbean trip. We are Pedro age 51, and Lucy age 43. We live in Alberta, Canada and this is our third cruise. The other 2 cruises were with Disney and we had our son now age 16 and our 2 daughters ages 14 and 10 along. We are generally fairly active but quiet people and were a bit concerned that Carnival would be a drunken party boat. Pedro in particular is price conscious (okay he likes to think he's cheap).

We wanted to see how a cruise with a less expensive Cruise Line would compare to Disney and if our impression was favourable, we would probably book our next cruise with Carnival. Lucy's parents looked after the children while Mom and Dad cruised this time. We arrived in Tampa on the Saturday before the Sunday departure as we always have to factor potential winter storm delays in our plans. We stayed in Sailport Waterfront Suites close to the airport which we had booked through Hotwire. This was fine and when we come to Tampa next with our children we will probably stay there again. We rented a car so we could do a little shopping which we did at the International Mall. This is fairly upscale and we did not buy much there. We went back to the hotel on Saturday night, had a meal at a good restaurant called the Rusty Pelican and watched a fair number of fairly looped wedding partiers.

The next morning we shopped at Target and Wal-Mart where we got some pop (soda in the U. S.), Powerade, sunscreen and some waterproof sealed pouches which we later put in Pedro's Bathing suit to keep the Sail and Sign Card and the cash money dry. This worked very well. We took a taxi for a flat rate of $20.00 (plus tip) from the airport to the port on Sunday morning after returning the rental car. Better than the $18.00 per person transfer with Carnival and we didn't have to wait for anyone else. Read more