We booked a 5 night on the Carnival Paradise, leaving June 23rd out of Tampa. We also bought a Faster to the Fun....and it was TOTALLY WORTH IT! The night before we stayed at Hampton Inn in Rocky Point and did their Park and Cruise Package. The hotel not only offers parking during the cruise, but a shuttle to AND from the port, as well as breakfast the morning you check out and the morning you get back before you get your car and head home. They were very accommodating. I know there are some reviews with pictures saying it needs to be fixed, but I only saw paint rubbed off on the bottom of the bathroom door and to me that is certainly not a deal breaker. It does have a small pool but it was perfect for us and we practically had it to ourselves that night. We did see many Hampton Inn guests walking to the Holiday Inn right next to us so I don't know if they had a better pool or the two hotels have some sort of deal between them. We also walked to Bahama Breeze and had a very nice dinner the night prior.

The hotel shuttle picked us up at 10:55 the next morning and had us to the port by 11:15. We had told the hotel that we were Faster to the Fun and they made sure we got our money's worth. SIDENOTE: Some people riding the shuttle with us had boxed wine and it was confiscated at check-in in the port. Apparently, that is "wine in excess" and they were not allowed to bring it on the boat. Faster to the Fun had us checked in and on the boat by 11:30 and we were able to go straight to our rooms and dump our carry-ons. After lunch on the Lido, we went back to our rooms and our luggage was outside our door at 12:00ish. We found some loungers by the pool (there were 8 of us in a group) and were in the pool and down the waterside shortly thereafter. We never had a problem with the pool. If you hang out to the left of the waterslide you are not only in shade but you aren't in the crowded end of the pool. We tried out the back pool, but for me the water was too warm and yes it was the pool and not the hot tubs. My theory is that the continuous flow of the waterslide kept that end of the pool nice and refreshing.

Faster to the Fun: As I said before this was worth the money. You only have to buy 1 and the rest of the people in your cabin are included. We got priority boarding getting on the ship. We also got priority tender to Grand Cayman. We got to sit in a nice lounge, not a long line, and then they escorted us to the elevators and let us walk past all the people standing in line. We were one of the first tenders off the ship that morning. For disembarking (we did self-assist) we also got to sit in the REX lounge until 8:30 and we were literally off the ship, through customs, on our hotel shuttle, and back in the hotel parking lot by 8:55....NO JOKE! Had we done self-assist or put your luggage out the night before we would have been one of the last zones called because we were on the Riviera deck (deck 4). Read more