Sorry for the length I tried to be informative.

Hi! We recently returned from a five-day cruise on the Fascination out of Miami. There were four of us who went, ages 24-27. We live outside of Jacksonville, FL and took this cruise to just get away and relax. We choose a Carnival cruise because when we looked into a Royal Caribbean cruise, they didn't offer any discounts or upgrades. My husband and I have cruised on Mariner of the Seas (RC) and Celebration (CC). I did not enjoy Celebration because it was such a small boat and plus I was spoiled with my first cruise on Mariner. (Huge boat) I didn't want size to get in the way of enjoying my vacation away from my two-year old and my four-month old.

Mon: We left at 6:30am for our drive to Miami. It really wasn't a bad drive, straight down 95 and it took us around six hours. The cruise terminal was easy to find. I just used the directions off the Carnival website. Miami isn't the most attractive port, but I wasn't there for the port. We drove up to the terminal for the Fascination and unloaded our luggage. I would definitely recommend doing this because the parking garage is a good walk. I saw several people having a hard time getting all their bags to the terminal. A porter helped us load the bags on a cart, while I filled out tags with our room number. We tipped the porter, $10 (all we had) and loaded up and headed to the parking garage. Parking was pretty easy. You get a ticket that said to hold on to it and pay before you leave. Parking is $20 a day. Read more