Improved Miami Embarkation - Carnival Splendor

We were pleased with our second trip on the Carnival Splendor. Not much has changed since our last visit over 4 years ago.

We had flown in the night before to Fort Lauderdale and rented a one way rental from FLL to MIA from Alamo. We have done this several times before and we find it to be an effective and inexpensive way to get to the port. It definitely takes some planning as you have to allow yourself plenty of time to get to the airport and wait on the shuttle to the port. We went way out of our way to avoid the tolls because we have had bad experiences with rental car processing fees on tolls. I later read that this process has improved and we probably should have just taken the tollways.

We were pleasantly surprised with the speed of the embarkation process. We had picked an early arrival time of 11 am, but we didn't get to the ship until about 1:30 pm. This was not a problem. We forgot our boarding pass but someone from Carnival greeted us at the door and printed a boarding pass for us. We breezed through security and were told to completely skip the check in (because they had scanned our passport photos in security). We carried our bags on ourselves. We'd rather have our things with us than wait on checked bags. They scanned our printed boarding pass as we boarded the ship and we immediately made our way to our rooms which were ready and had our keys in the mail slot. From the time we exited the Alamo shuttle at the port to the time we were in our room was probably less than 30 minutes! This is much better than our previous experiences with any cruiseline.

That was a pleasant way to start a cruise! Enjoy!

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I am glad you found the experience acceptable. I have cruises out of Miami more than a dozen times and consider them a below average embarkation port. Not getting on the ship until 1:30 would be a definite negative to me.

Agree it's much better.

I am glad you found the experience acceptable. I have cruises out of Miami more than a dozen times and consider them a below average embarkation port. Not getting on the ship until 1:30 would be a definite negative to me.

Sometimes USCG, Customs, and or the FDA can hold it up.

Embarkation for the Splendor in Miami was a great way to start a cruise for sure! Got to port about 11, pretty much went right up and then I think we were on the ship by 1230. Much easier and faster. Make sure you keep boarding pass and photo ID in hand till you get on the ship!

Thanks for the feedback.

Same process on the Victory last week - it was great!

Glad to hear about the embarkation process.

Keith

Thanks for this Info which will be helpful and timely for my family today!

I am glad you found the experience acceptable. I have cruises out of Miami more than a dozen times and consider them a below average embarkation port. Not getting on the ship until 1:30 would be a definite negative to me.

I think my post was confusing. So just to be clear we arrived at the port at 1:30 (because our travel took longer than we thought). Within probably 15-20 minutes of arriving at the port we were in our cabin!!