Background Info: My 2 Friends & I just came back from a 7 day cruise on the Carnival Triumph. Our ages are: 25, 26 & 26. This was my 3rd cruise and the 2nd for my 2 friends. Overall, all 3 of us were a little disappointed with the un-organization of the crew, bland food and the weather but the ports of call made up for it and saved our vacation.

Hotel: We stayed at the AmeriSuites/Miami Airport West. I work at an AmeriSuites hotel so I took advantage of our great employee rates so we could drive down a day early and relax before the cruise. The rooms at this location were clean & spacious. The staff was extra friendly, especially housekeeping who put up with us constantly asking for extra's of everything. Our hotel was only a 10 minute drive to the port of Miami so that worked out excellent for us. We were fine while at the hotel but we had a big language barrier when we decided to venture out to try to find a car wash and get the dreaded Florida love bugs off of our car. We drove around for 3 hours and could not find anyone who spoke English, even in a Walgreens. Luckily, I brought my portable G.P.S. & after 3 failed attempts we finally found a car wash that was still in business. We gladly paid $19 for the cheapest car wash just to be able to get the bugs off of the paint and to rest at the hotel again. If I had to do it over again I would try to learn some basic Spanish before I go. I didn't think it would be that huge of a problem not knowing Spanish in Miami but maybe it was just the area around the airport.

Embarkation: We arrived at the port of Miami @ 10:30am. The port is very large and there was a little confusion where to go but people kept pointing us in the right direction. We drove up to a porter and an empty steel framed crate where we loaded our luggage in. The porter did not help us lift anything out of the car or put it in the crate but when he acted like he wanted a tip we tipped him a little anyway just so our luggage would remain in that crate in one piece. I was disappointed with the service of the porters at this port. In Tampa the porters not only unload your car, they wheel everything to the crates for you. We parked the car and walked into the building to start the embarkation process. The line was not long but we found the women at the desk to be rude & only allowed us to fill out our forms 1 at a time because they said they didn't want us stealing their pens. I found that funny that Carnival can't buy these people a bag of pens when we pay so much for the cruise. We also found it odd that we were past guests and they did not give out the gold sail and sign cards for past guests. We ended up with the same sail and sign cards as everyone else. I guess they ran out. After going through the security checkpoint we were told to wait in a line that was relatively short at the time. After reading reviews we thought we would only be waiting for maybe 30-45 minutes before boarding the ship. We ended up standing in line for 2 1/2 hours. We were not told anything, just pushed closer together in the lines until they could not fit anyone else in the room and even the security checkpoints were backed up at that point. When we finally were allowed to board the ship we were angry to see a room filled with empty chairs on the opposite side of the room we were standing in. There was absolutely no reason why they couldn't have let us sit there; however, we were not going to let this ruin our trip. When we boarded the ship we immediately went to the shore excursions desk and booked a cabana for Half Moon Cay without a problem & met our maitre D, Manuel who gladly gave us the table we wanted. Read more