We live in Central Florida so we are able to drive to any of the Florida ports in 5 hours or less. This made it easy to decide to look for a reasonably priced short break from work viaa one of the multiple cruises available in the ports near us. We saw the price drop to a good rate for the cruise to Key West and Cozumel in the weeks following some of Carnival's problem cruises so we booked the cruise and quickly started planning shore trips. Many of our friends asked if we were sure about booking Carnival, but we just joked with them about taking big paddles with us.

Both my daughters, their husbands, and my 16 month old grandson were going, and the itinerary seemed to suit us quite well--long enough to relax a bit and short enough for my grandson to tolerate without too much difficulty.

On embarkation day, we drove to Miami. I'm not a big fan of the port at Miami, but it was better this time than when we were there a year ago. We chose to park at the port and pay the $20 per day fee. Last year we tried off site parking and waited over an hour for the shuttle when we got back. This time we decided it just wasn't worth the small savings because we would be dealing with a toddler during all that wait time. Embarkation went fairly smooth. We arrived at the port at about 11:30 and were on the Lido deck by 12:15. A couple of the security agents were rather difficult and not understanding about the extra time it takes to get a toddler and his cargo all the security checks. One was pretty pushy about making us separate and take the baby on upstairs as he was calling for his mom, who was still gathering his materials from the x ray machine. Surely a little understanding could be shown, but that's just the way some agents are. Read more