Carnival Miracle December17-24
It's Christmas eve and we just arrived home from our cruise. I wanted to write this because I received some much useful and fun information prior to our trip from all the reviews and the boards. This was my 17 year son and my first cruise. We left Charlotte NC a day early to go to Tampa and we caught a 9:30 flight out of Charlotte. We booked our hotel with La Quinta Airport because we wanted something close to the beach. We thought it was a dive, it was under renovation and had a sewage smell right outside the room. The good part was it was right next to dollar rent a car. We wanted to go to clear Water beach it was a straight shot from there. The car was only $32.00 and they gave us free shuttle to the port and then picked us up from the port and took us to the airport. After refilling the car we earned $3 by the $20 shuttle savings to and fro. Clearwater beach was very nice and it was great to have an extra vacation day.
We arrived at the dock around 11:00. It was very fast to get on the ship, we had already filled out our fun pass on the Carnival site, so we had no paper work. They took our picture and on we went. My one regret is not picking up our picture earlier, I decided to buy it as we were departing and couldn't locate it.