This was my first cruise and my wife's 3rd (all with Carnival) as well as our honeymoon. We sailed 2/27 on the 8-day eastern Caribbean tour. Having read the forums for the past year, I was a little worried because of some of the negative reviews but I must say that overall my expectations were exceeded. Of course there were positives and negatives and I don't have a baseline to compare them to but here is my humble opinion.

We booked an interior cabin well in advance with the Early Saver and got upgraded to Deck 8 aft. Flew in to FLL the day of on Delta-wouldn't recommend flying in day of and will not do it again in the future. We got up at 4:30am for a 6:00am flight and were cutting it close due to heavy lines. Not a big fan of Delta but they were cheaper booked 6 months in advance. We also booked a late evening flight out on return and this was a mistake- did the Everglades tour and still got to FLL about 12:30. Either it was Delta or FLL that had a ridiculous policy that you could not check your bags prior to 2 hours to departure. Needles to say, the front part of the terminal looked like a refugee camp. The lesson here is bite the bullet; spend what's necessary to get better flight times so that you are not stressed getting to the ship or getting home.

We took a cab from FLL to the terminal. It was only $15 and a five minute ride. So, I don't recommend purchasing the Carnival airport transfers. Embarkation was smooth in that the lines moved quickly. We were in Zone 14 for boarding and they had already called our zone as we were finishing up check-in. We were on board by 12:30 and dealing with the bedlam of the lido buffet. Granted, these were the only really bad lines at the lido buffet during the cruise but breakfast lines/crowds were unpleasant (we had breakfast in the Posh 5 out of 8 days and preferred it). Read more