We sailed on the Carnival Victory cruise which embarked in Miami, Florida on 10/21/06 with scheduled port calls in Cozumel, Mexico; Limon, Costa Rica; and Colon, Panama.

Our flight from Baltimore to Ft. Lauderdale on AirTran was right on time, and we had no trouble finding the Carnival representatives in the baggage claim area that would direct us to the bus and take us to the Port of Miami. The Victory had ended a cruise in Charleston, SC the day before and was sailing empty to Miami. We arrived at the Port of Miami around noon, and the Victory was nowhere to be found. Carnival was processing passengers and then sending them upstairs to a waiting area. They offered to sell us water, hot dogs, and chips for $1.00 each, with the proceeds supposedly being given to the United Way. The Victory finally arrived at the port about 1:30PM and it was after 2:30 before they started the process of handing out Sail and Sign cards and allowing passengers to board. In fairness to Carnival, the cruise documents noted that sailing was not until 7PM and that embarkation would be from 4:30 - 6:30PM. However, at the time we booked our flights, sailing was scheduled for 4PM and we booked our flights accordingly. With the anticipation of getting on the cruise, the extra wait time seemed like forever.

Once we finally boarded, we stored our carry-on items in our room, and headed for the Lido deck for some lunch, as by now we were starving. The food on the Lido deck was similar to what we've had on other Carnival ships, and was more than acceptable. While eating lunch, we looked over the shore trips for Cozumel and discovered that the trip to Tulum would indeed be offered on this cruise, despite Carnival representatives having told me beforehand that it would not. This was quite pleasing, as we have been to Cozumel twice before, but had never visited Tulum. Read more