INTRO: The scheduled itinerary was 2 sea days, St Maarten, St Lucia, St Kitts and then 2 sea days. Reality was 2 sea days, St Maarten and then Hurricane Tomas. Carnival did a great job of keeping us from most of the storm and still getting us two great ports of call (Grand Turk, Nassau). Not everybody was satisfied but you have to put safety first and can't mess with Mother Nature.

BACKGROUND: My wife and I are both 50+ and now cruise at least twice a year. We're Princess Platinum and Carnival Gold but hope to try other cruise lines in the future. We're easy to please, use a AAA travel agent and always book a balcony cabin BUT we're always on the lookout for the best deal. We tend to book an aft cabin on a deck or two below Lido and the casual buffet eateries. That way we're close to the food but always use the stairs so we do get some exercise. We paid "Past Guest" rate for this cruise but I checked the Carnival web site for price changes multi times for weeks before departure and found two price drops. We paid $50 p/p less than the original so it pays to re-check prices.

ARRIVAL: We arrived in FLL the day of the cruise. We normally come in a day ahead but due to budget constraints we had to push our luck a bit. The cab from airport to pier was $20 including tip. We arrived a bit before noon and the process seemed orderly (NOTE: make sure you have all your paperwork ready (ID, boarding passes etc) to make things easier. You can fill out your CDC health form while in line so have a pen ready. We were on the Lido deck ready to eat by 12:45 (after dropping off our carry on bags in the cabin). Room was ready by 1:15 and by 3:00 our "big" bags were delivered. Pretty smooth - in my opinion. Read more