Background information: This was my ninth cruise with my last five cruises on Carnival's Conquest and Spirit class ships. Previous cruises also include 2 on Celebrity and 1 on the Princess Grand class. This would be our fourth cruise to the western caribbean. This is my husband's seventh cruise. We are me (47) and husband (69).
Pre-cruise stay: Was at the Fort Lauderdale Holiday Inn at Sunrise Blvd. and AIA. One word: Dump. You can do much better than this place.
Embarkation: We arrived after a 45 minute ride from Fort Lauderdale about 10:45am. There was the usual chaos in trying to drop off your luggage while departing pax were still coming out of the terminal and the buses, taxis, etc. We finally got parked and got in line to get on the ship about 11:15am. Several lines later (not bad at all) we were at the line to board the ship. We were told we did not have a "blue dot" on our card and we had to backtrack to a line to get our picture taken for security. It took until 12:15pm to officially walk on board. They were very strict about not going to your room until 1PM. Went to lunch buffet which was extremely crowded, chaotic, and not that great of a selection. We managed to find something to hold us over until sailaway.