I traveled with a group of family and friends on the Carnival Triumph for the week of Thanksgiving. Overall it was a wonderful experience. We booked the cruise through the groups department at Carnival. The only problem I had with them was that they spread our group all over the Riviera deck of the ship. I thought the whole point of booking through them was (1) to make sure we got a good deal with all those people traveling together, and (2) so we could all be in the same area. We did get a lot of benefits from having a group of over 8 cabins, I will give them that.

Altogether we had 22 people in our group, we started with 28 but sickness and a family death kept some people at home the last minute. We had 10 adults, 5 between the age of 18-20 and 7 under 18 years old so we had a big mix. Eleven of us traveled to Miami from Las Vegas the day before just to make sure everything made it before getting on the ship. We stayed at a hotel that had promised a free shuttle from the airport to the hotel and then from the hotel to the pier. About an hour before it was time to head to the pier they told us that it was actually going to be $10 a person. I found the hotel on my own so I can only blame myself :)

Once we got to the pier checking in was very easy. We got there about 12:15 and I think we were on the ship within 30 minutes. The ship is older and on some parts you can tell. For example, the bathroom has pink tile, I can't imagine them decorating with these colors now, but it was clean and everything worked properly, no complaints! In the group we had several inside cabins, a few outside cabins and one balcony. The couple in the balcony was very upset to find out that the outside cabins were actually bigger then their balcony cabin. So if you don't mind only having a window, go for the outside cabins instead of the balconies. Read more