Sailed on the Carnival Triumph on 23 Feb 2008. Took 3 children & spouses and 7 grandchildren (ages 1 to 16), 14 people in all. The ports, all good, Half Moon Cay, St. Thomas, San Juan and Turks&Cacos have already been extensively covered by others so I'll just talk about the cruise. Most people pick a cruise for the ports and find that the best were the Private Island and days at sea, as we did. Don't over look the days at sea!!
All 14 of us left from Detroit, Mi on Thursday, Feb 21. for Ft. Lauderdale deciding to go 2 days early in case we had bad weather in Detroit (imagine that!!). We took Spirit Air. As Detroit is a main hub for Northwest, we thought Spirit would be less crowded and were right. We didn't have to walk 9 miles to get from the ticket counter to the gate. When I called Spirit, all calls handled from the Philippines, to book 13 (baby was lap child) tickets I was told that I could only book 8 & would have to through group travel, quote from them was $450.00 pp round trip. Called Spirit again and asked if I could book 8 and 5 seats, agent said, in very broken English (press 1) that couldn't be done, must call group. Called again and got a super rep! I told her what I wanted to do, she says please hold, a few seconds latter she came back & said the has 8&5 seats held and proceeded to make 2 sets of reservations, the aforementioned impossible 8 and 5 seats. Cost for this was $265.00 pp, big difference when getting 13 tickets. All parts of the flight were on time and seats comfortable, bring snacks!
Stayed at the Sleep Inn & Suites Ft. Lauderdale International Airport, 1500 SE 5th Ave, Dania, FL, US, 33004 | Phone: (954) 874-1800. Cost was $180.00 per room per night. We arrived in Ft. Lauderdale at 3:00 and they picked us up at the airport right on time. The room were clean, we hand been upgraded to suites that had a sitting area that provided plenty of room. The free breakfast with biscuits & gravy, scrambled eggs & the usual other stuff was great. Restaurants, Walgreen's, Publics (a grocery store), dollar store, (go there, lots of stuff; I got a nightlight that worked out great). The next day the kids took a cab to the beach ($8.00 each) and had a great time. These 2 days were great, really made the cruise more enjoyable, conceder doing this!!