Our family booked our 2nd cruise with Carnival on the Triumph. (1st cruise on the Inspiration was great too!) We signed on for an 8 day Eastern Caribbean cruise. My husband an I were traveling with our 2 daughters, ages 12 and 14. Our cruise left on May 24 and we flew down on the 23rd in order to have a little extra time before leaving. We were meeting up with the rest of our family members in Miami. We flew from Atlanta to Fort Lauderdale because it was alot less expensive than flying into Miami. We rented a car from Dollar Rental Car in FLL and drove to Miami where we stayed in the Embassy Suites located near the Miami airport and not far from the Port of Miami. Embassy Suites was great! It was very clean, very nice, the food at breakfast was good, and the staff was very helpful. I would definitely recommend this hotel. We met up with the other 4 family members at the hotel on Friday. On Saturday, the 24th, we dropped off the rental car at Dollar and then took a shuttle to the Port of Miami. Embarkation: We got to the Port around 1:00. The lines were already really really long, but they moved fairly quickly considering the large amount of people. It probably took between an hour to an hour and a half before we were on the ship. We ate lunch on the Lido Deck, which had good food. We started out exploring the ship. The Triumph was in great condition. I know it is an older ship, but it was extremely clean and looked great. It is a bit difficult to learn your way around. The decks are situated so that you can't go straight through. They are broken up so that you have to go up or down and around. It was a challenge finding our way around. Dining: We were assigned late (8:15) seating in the Paris Dining Room. We had WONDERFUL waiters! Chet, from Nepal, was our head waiter, and Mpfariseni, from South Africa, was our assistant waiter. They were the best! They went out of their way to accommodate us, even bringing us extra entrees of food they knew we liked! The food was fantastic every night. My daughters also especially loved the tricks that Chet did for them.
Sunday was a day at sea. We and all our party spent the day lying on deck enjoying the sun and waterslide. We ate lunch in the buffet restaurant on the Lido Deck. The buffet food and 24 hour pizza bar were great, and the 24 hour ice cream was INCREDIBLE! The lines were a little long though. I do wish Carnival had a separate station for the salad bar so if that was all you wanted, you wouldn't have to stand in a long line. We had dinner in the dining room and went to the show, Wonderful World, afterwards. The dancers and vocalists were amazing and it was very Broadway-like. We all enjoyed it.
On Monday, we enjoyed the sun and food. I went to the gym that morning. The gym is fairly good sized and has pretty much everything you could want in a gym. There are windows so you can look out while you are working out. At 5:00 we docked in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Since it was so late in the day, we didn't book an excursion since there really wasn't a lot to do there. We mainly just walked around in Old San Juan, did some shopping, ate, and got back on the boat fairly early.