Embarkation, 4 ports, 3 days at sea

We woke up fairly early to load the vehicle to return it to FLL and go to our ship. This day was different though, because this was Sunday and the festivities in Miami Beach were starting to heat up. All of the residential streets were closed in Miami Beach so the traffic was crazy getting out. I was in a residential area which was good to keep traffic off of our road but bad when trying to get out.

We finally made it out of our neighborhood and stopped at a CVS next to the apartment to get everyone soda to take on the ship with us. If you cruise with Carnival, each person is allowed to take a 12pk of canned soda on with you. So we took 48 cans with us.

We then headed to FLL to drop off our rental car. No issues there except they thought the car I was returning was the one I totaled. Once I got that straightened out, we went downstairs and out front of the airport and called for our Uber to pick us up. Within 3 minutes our Uber arrived. Eduardo was our driver for our Uber XL which he had a black Yukon which was super nice. The trip took 17 minutes/8.19 miles and cost $29.56. Again that was for an UberXL which we needed a large vehicle to fit all 4 of us + our 4 suitcases + our backpacks + our sodas. A regular Uber would of been around $12. Anyway. Eduardo got us loaded and delivered safely to Port Everglades.

Port Everglades was great. Very secure, very organized. We arrived to the terminal around 10:30am There were a ton of people waiting in line outside, I’d say a few hundred people. However, we had Faster To The Fun (FTTF) booked through Carnival which is where you can pay to have platinum perks. We skipped the entire line and went straight in. We didn’t wait behind a single person at any given point. When we went through security, my handle broke on my sodas causing it to fall. Well, 1 can busted and there was soda everywhere. I was so embarrassed. Thankfully we had a Target bag so I put my sodas in there. We were then lead to the waiting area where we waited until the “all clear” was given to board. We were the first group to board since there was no wedding parties on our ship. There were a few other diamond/platinum guests but not a ton of them, so our entire group went first. It was great.

Once we embarked the ship, we went straight to our room and got our sail & sign card from our mailbox and went in our room to drop off our carry on luggage, wash the drink cans and put everything down. Our luggage came very shortly after. After we got settled into our room, we went up to Lido Deck to meet everyone from our Facebook roll call. We had a roll call on CruiseCritic that had a total of 6 people in it. Our roll call on Facebook had over 160. So on Facebook we all agreed to wear pink and black beads on Lido on day 1. We were able to find some people we had chatted with for the last year and meet them. All great people. Last year we met 1 really odd couple. Well, her specifically. Very strange, lots of drama. They never even left the ship in ports. That’s another story… Anyway we just toured the ship checking things out. We grabbed a bite to eat to kill time until 4pm. Finally at 4pm that emergency alarm we had been waiting on, went off. IT WAS MUSTER TIME!! We went to our assigned muster station which was Muster D. It took about 45 minutes which was hell for me because my sciatic nerve is messed up and I was almost in tears standing there. Finally muster was over, and it was time to get the party started! We went back to lido to listen to the horn blow and watch us sail away from Port Everglades in Ft. Lauderdale!

The confetti shot out, the horn blew, the music cranked up and we were off! Everyone was dancing and I ordered my first (of many) Kiss on the Lips on this cruise. (I’ve had this before, this was just my first time this cruise). I love this drink. We partied for a while before heading down to get ready for dinner. I say “get ready” which meant, using the bathroom and my wife fixed her hair. We all wore what we had on which was regular shorts with t-shirts. Our assigned MDR was The Black Pearl which was nice because it was on level 3 with the entrance at the atrium. We were on level 2 so it was close. We also always get YTD (Your Time Dining)

The first few nights our servers were not the greatest. We had 1 server several times who we did not like. The first night however we REALLY didn’t like our server. He had NO personality. The other guy we didn’t like TRIED to be funny but in his own way. More annoying than anything. The food was much faster on the Splendor than it was the Ecstasy last year. It was also really good. I will say we are all very picky eaters. I promise myself every cruise I will try something different since it’s free and I can order as much as I want. I never do though. I stick to the same thing, 2 appetizers of shrimp cocktail and then flat iron sirloin as my main meal. I of course get the warm chocolate melting cake as desert. If you’ve never been on a Carnival cruise and not had the WCMC, you don’t know what you’re missing. I get it Mickey Mouse style which has extra ice cream. No complaints at all on the food though. It was all great. Even the food up on Lido and other areas of the ship were awesome.

After dinner we just went back to Lido to see who we could find. We all had the Hub app and paid the $15 so we could chat ($5×3 devices) so my oldest son went and did his own thing around the ship. He was gone most of the rest of the day. We didn’t do a lot this day ourselves. We were just tired. I think we just wondered around the ship, getting pictures, talking to people. I know we took our youngest to the kids splash area so he could have fun. Our oldest was up at the basketball court playing basketball. Oh, and eating ice cream, of course.