We sailed out of Port Canaveral on May 9th and was the first cruise to Aruba, Curacao and Grand Turk. This was an 8 day cruise with 4 sea days. I have always traveled Royal Carribean but because of the great prices my kids and I decided to go Carnival for Mother's Day. We did not book it until the Sunday before we left and got excellent prices for us.

Even though the cost of the cruise was very very reasonable we did incur expenses I did not think about. If you drive yourself and need to park your car, the parking fees are $135 at Port Canaveral. They collect the money as you are leaving from dropping off your luggage. I did notice there are other cruise parking locations outside of Port Canaveral that are much cheaper after we left. You may want to look into these before arriving to save some money. I also did take my own sodas. You can take 12 20 oz. bottles of soda per person. We just put them in our suit case and then I kept them in the fridge on the ship. You can buy a soda card but it is around 60.00 I believe. Drinks are usually around 8.50 each and a soda from the bar is 1.97 for a regular class plus they are going to automically add gratuities on top of that.

Also, they automatically put on your Sail and Sign Card a fee of $92.00 for gratuities. We did have some issues with some of the staff and I actually went to the Guest Services and had a small portion of these fees removed. If you choose to pay the gratuities to the staff yourself you can just let Guest Services know and they will remove them from you Sail and Sign card. If you receive poor service in any area you can change the gratuity amount. Read more