The cruise did not start off on a good foot. We left our house on Long Island around 10:30am hoping to be at the cruise terminal by 11:30am. Everything was going well till we got to Manhattan. Almost every road was at a standstill from traffic. It turns out that on May 20th, there were numerous street fairs, closing many roads that were crucial for us to get to the West Side piers. We finally made it to 53rd street when a cop redirected us to 59th street. We were on this road for at least an hour as we slowly inched up to the cruise terminal. We finally made it to our ship porters by about 1:30pm. We gave them the luggage, parked our car (they do take credit cards now), and returned to the terminal.

We were in line at 1:40pm. Carnival had set up a huge waiting area with about 30 rows of chairs. We were lucky enough to get one of the last available chairs. 5 minutes after we arrived they closed off the seating area and forced people to stand in long rows to wait for us to be called to head through security this way they could sit down. Several minutes later, our row was called, and we passed through the usual security lines. Next we took our embarkation picture. Why they took the picture before check-in is beyond me.

Next was the grueling task of check-in. Carnival apparently smartened up and now does things differently. Each deck has its own check-in line and they all appeared to have overflowing zigzag lines. We found the deck 7 line, and to our surprise, not a single person was waiting to be checked-in. We walked right up, settled the Sail & Sign account and got our cards. We immediately proceeded to the A-Pass security systems, where the Legend Dancers logged us in to the ships computers, and we then crossed the gangway at 2:40. This was by far the quickest and most efficient check-in process I have ever been through and we were still in the first 40% of the passengers to board the ship. Read more