Embarkation day is challenging on Carnival Cruise Line

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Carnival Cruise Line has built state-of-the-art ships with its Excel class, but its boarding process remains in the dark ages. The cruise line's system is also confusing and its set-up in Miami uses a sort of honor system where people end up cutting the line without meaning to.

You still need to print a paper boarding pass and the entire process feels more Ellis Island in 1820 than befitting the modern marvel cruise ship we were boarding.

Related: What we liked (and didn't like) about Carnival Celebration

Carnival Celebration, once onboard, was easy to navigate. The muster drill took seconds (when maybe it should have taken a couple of minutes) and finding our way around was easy.

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The elevators are simply too small for the ship and were a problem for our entire 8-day cruise.

Still, once we got onboard, the good of the ship way outweighed the negative experiences we had one day one.

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Carnival could use better technology

Transcript:

Daniel Kline: Hello there, Cruisers. I am Dan Kline, Editor-in-Chief of TravelHost. Next to me is Dennis Post. He is our Travel Agent Partner at Postcard Travel Planning. We are on Carnival Celebration.

Now, Carnival does embarkation a little bit differently.

I thought maybe we're going to do a little bit of a diary on this tour. Why don't we talk about it? So, first things first, you need paper tickets.

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This is a little bit weird, right? Like, what happens if you get there and you don't have a paper printed out ticket?

Dennis Post: That's what they want. So, the app is different than some of the other cruise lines. Most of them have gone automated.

So, you're just looking at an app, look on your phone, pull up the docks. But they wanted the paper in hand.

Kline: If you don't have it, they will march you over to like a printer stand and print it for you. It's very antiquated. They take your picture there.

You can't do that beforehand. And the overall system is very slow. It's very crowded.

There's also a scenario. And there's a lot of things we love about this ship. So, don't think we're being negative.

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We're just starting. They line you up and have a drug-sniffing dog go by. And that to me just felt like a little bit guilty until proven innocent.

I did not like it. It just seems a little arbitrary. Have your dogs, have them quietly sniffing around.

There's dogs on the ship. Then you go through a few more checks. And once you get on the ship, Dennis, what was it like?

Post: So, it was actually hot coming on. That's the first thing that we noticed coming on. Because the doors were open.

We get it. It's Miami. It's Miami hot.

A little bit crowded getting on. A little bit of chaos getting on. Especially with the going to get our muster drill done.

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Kline: But, yeah, muster drill was pretty easy for me. It was right in the theater.

I was the only person there. They actually didn't show me anything other than that was my spot. They didn't run through a life jacket. They didn't run through a safety procedure. There was no video that I watched.

On Royal Caribbean, you watch those videos and they see that you watched them.

Overall, I thought day one was kind of chaos. The elevators, unbelievably chaotic. And that's usually the case on everything except the latest ships that have the demand elevators.

But this, the elevators overall are very small for the size of the ship. It would stay up, but then it would go down. Very crowded.

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A lot of full elevators. And you get on deck six, I want to say. And we're staying on 14.

So, I know people say, oh, take the stairs. There's that many times in a day. I can do deck six to deck 14.

Post: One of the tricks we learned is go all the way to the back. Aft elevators, there was nobody there. The middle ones in the front were loaded.

Kline: Packed. Overall, very crowded ship. We're going to come back to that again.

But we promise in the next video, we will talk about some positives about Carnival. Having a great time. We're having a great time.

I am Dan Kline. He is Dennis Post. Come cruise with us soon.

Related: Viking? Royal Caribbean? Celebrity? What is Dan's favorite cruise line

(The Arena Group will earn a commission if you book a cruise.)

Make a free appointment with Come Cruise With Me’s Travel Agent Partner, Postcard Travel, or email Amy Post at [email protected] or call or text her at 386-383-2472.

This story was originally reported by TravelHost on Aug 21, 2025, where it first appeared in the News section. Add TravelHost as a Preferred Source by clicking here.