How we got there.

They say that getting there is half the fun. I don't know about that, but I know it's certainly most of the aggravation. We have used various methods to book our voyages, and I have some general notes and comments regarding those methods.

For our 1st cruise on Carnival Victory in 2003, we used a West Penn AAA travel agent. Never again. This person only managed to get one thing correct on our trip and that was the ship. We had wanted to sail as a part of the Rusty Wallace group, since at the time, Rusty was Crystal's favorite NASCAR driver.  We also booked airfare through the agent, who used CCL's program. This was a bit of a mistake. We had to change planes in Charlotte, NC and although Carnival was not at fault for the fact that the US Airways captain decided the three de-icings were needed before leaving Pittsburgh International Airport, there was a VERY small window on our connecting flight to Miami, Florida. We managed to make our flight, but only because the US Airways crew held the flight for us. Needless to say, we got some very disgusted looks from the folks on the plane who had to wait. Anyway, to continue, we thought we had made our wishes clear to the travel agent, about being in the Rusty group, but only when we got onboard the ship, did we find out that we were not included. A rather upsetting turn of events, to say the least. However, we did manage to have a good time on the cruise. And when we wrote to AAA after we arrived home, we got absolutely no response from them. All it would have taken was an "I'm sorry", and we would have been OK, but nothing. Needless to say, we haven't gone to them since.

Our 2nd voyage aboard Carnival Valor was in order to right what had happened on the 1st cruise. On a trip to a NASCAR race at Pocono, we had stopped at Rusty's souvenir trailer, and saw a flyer there from Lynch Race Tours and decided that we would talk to them regarding out next trip. They were very helpful, and got us on the ship, in the group, and set up with a hotel to boot.  I did however, book the air myself this time and used American for all flights. We had a bit of a wait for the MIA to PIT flight, but overall, we were pleased with them. I highly recommend both Lynch Tours and American.

For our 3rd Caribbean voyage, Crystal told me that it was my choice of who and when and where we sailed. So, I decided that this time that I would make all the arrangements for myself. Now being somewhat... shall we say... picky, I spent a good deal of time researching different cruise lines, and since we already had 2 great cruises from Carnival, I couldn't see any reason to go anywhere else. I looked at online sites such as Travelocity and Orbitz, and decided that I would go directly to Carnival for the booking. This was one of the better decisions I made regarding this cruise. CCL's rep, Pam Hernandez was very helpful and we were booked in September of 2006. I decided that we would sail aboard Carnival Legend on it's 16 December 07 sailing from Tampa, Florida. We were given the opportunity to use Carnival's Sail Aweigh program, but after the fiasco on the Victory cruise, I decided that I would take care of this myself.

After quite a bit of searching, I decided to use Expedia.com for the flights. However, the dates we would need to fly on proved to be a bit of a problem. The return trip from TPA to PIT was on the 23rd of December, and since this was so close to Christmas, it cost quite a bit more that I really wanted to pay, about $600.00 round trip. And, the selection of airline ended up being US Airways again, one that I really didn't want to use, but they had the best combination of schedule and price.

Our choice of pre-cruise hotel was the Sheraton Riverwalk in Tampa. Decent price, free shuttle to the cruise dock, and the rooms look nice, so we'll see how that goes. 

When we get back from the cruise we'll be updating this page so... stay tuned for more!