I chose the Carnival Liberty based on the price, the ports, and the good reviews received on cruisecritic. I will admit that I was very wary about cruising on Carnival but, now, I don't where Carnival got its negative reviews. I thought that everything was as good if not better than our previous cruises.

I booked two pre-cruise hotels from priceline.com. We live ten hours away from Miami so we opted to travel to Orlando and visit Downtown Disney. We stayed at the Doubletree By Hilton Orlando At Seaworld. What almost turned me off to priceline was when I called the hotel to request a non-smoking room, the operator told me that I had to call priceline for my requests. I did, and the priceline operator said that if I wished to specify a non-smoking room, that I should have used their regular online price instead of the name your price option. I let it go and decided to do just but with another online travel service. When we arrived at the hotel however, the nice gentleman at reception asked me if I had requested a smoking room and two beds. I said, no that I would prefer nonsmoking and one bed. And that is what we got! We paid $75 for a truly beautiful room. That night, we went to a wonderful burlesque comedy dinner show called Treasure Tavern. The food was good and the show was great! We then went to Downtown Disney where we window shopped and listened to outdoor entertainment. The next morning we drove to Fort Lauderdale to stay at our next pricelined hotel, Ocean Sky Hotel and Resort. The only thing that I was looking for in Fort Lauderdale was an affordable hotel on the beach. We paid $99 for this hotel. It was older hence the cheap price. The hotel rooms need serious updating and the bed was very uncomfortable but the hotel fit my needs to be on the beach so that I could look for shells. I fail to mention that I had to pay parking for both hotels but I think that is par for course nowadays.

We got up the next morning and drove the short way to the Port of Miami. We arrived around 10:30 and parked in the parking garages at the port. It is worth it to me to have my car right there at the port when I get off the ship. But for that privilege, it costs us $20 a day. I will say that the Port of Miami is easier to get into than Port Everglades. At Port Everglades, you had to show your boarding passes before you even permitted entry into the port. At the Port of Miami, we just drove in. Read more