My husband and I have cruised Carnival over 15 times in the past 10 years. We are in our late 40s. We enjoy getting away from the responsibilities of daily life and relaxing at sea. I enjoy catching up on sleep and reading. This trip I finished three novels.

We booked directly through Carnival. We also book our own airfares. We flew Saturday morning from Minneapolis to Miami via American Airlines nonstop flight which arrived promptly at 12:30 pm. Then we grabbed a taxi from the airport to the harbor (approx $35 with tip). We are Platinum so were able to bypass the long lines, enabling us to be in the Lido eating lunch by 2pm.

We paid for a balcony guarantee at a relatively low rate about a year prior to our cruise and were pleasantly surprised with being assigned Lido 9237. This is a good location, toward the front of the ship and high up which maximizes the up and down motion of the sea, that I love. With our balcony door propped open, it almost sounded like sitting on a beach with the waves crashing into the shore...but in this case, the waves were hitting the hull of the ship...almost directly below our room (but some odd 9 floors down!). Read more