We picked this cruise mainly for the departure port (near our home in Baltimore) as well as the time of year when we had available vacation.
That said, I can provide a decent summary of a lot of things that might help folks:
- Leaving on a Sunday makes getting to the terminal, parking and embarkation much easier in my opinion. If you opt for Saturday departures or mid-week traffic could be an issue. Takes about an hour for us to drive and we left a couple of hours prior to our boarding time which was at 2pm and parking was fine.
Our steward Rory was EXCELLENT! He made sure our rooms were always cleaned, ready and to our satisfaction. He remembers everyone's names too which we were quite impressed with. Definitely shows how much he loves his work and meeting people.
It was only 3 of us so enough room for the time when we were in it.
Parking and check-in process was good for us
We just took a tender over, found some beach chairs under some trees for shade and did a little swimming...very refreshing. Would be nice if they had more umbrellas available for shade but you can "rent" them via some other packages I think. Wasn't worth it to us though. We did get a rainstorm for about 30 minutes or so but once that passed we walked to the food area where Carnival provides lunch. Usual buffet type fare. Good eats. Then we did some quick shopping for T shirts at Maragaritaville and even got some free drinks at a bar for the purchase of the t-shirts( cool).