What to expect when embarking a Carnival cruise ship
Carnival does embarkation a little differently than the other major cruise lines, and not always in a good way. From the paperwork you need in hand to the moment you finally step aboard, day one can feel like a bit of chaos.
TravelHost's Come Cruise With Me Editor in Chief Daniel Kline and his travel agent partner, Postcard Travel Planning's Dennis Post, kept a running diary of boarding the Carnival Celebration and share what surprised them, what slowed them down, and one trick that made getting around the ship much easier.
A full transcript follows below.
Subscribe to our Youtube channelfor expert advice on making the most of your cruise vacation.
Carnival's embarkation process isn't the smoothest
Transcript:
Dan 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 Post Card Travel Planning. We are on Carnival Celebration. Now, Carnival does embarkation a little bit differently. I thought maybe we're gonna do a little bit of a diary on this tour.
Why don't we talk about it? So first things first, you need paper dockings. This is a little bit weird, right?
Dennis Post: Yeah. Yeah.
Kline: What happens if you get there and you don't have a paper printed out docking?
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 docs. 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 by the way ,so don't think we're being negative.
For even more tips and insider secrets? Subscribe to our YouTube channel for expert advice on making the most of your cruise vacation.
Post: Yeah.
Kline: 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 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, little bit of chaos getting on, especially with the- going to get our muster drill done. But yeah.
Kline: 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 stop. 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 jammed.
Want the latest cruise news and deals? Sign up for the Come Cruise With Me newsletter.
Post: Yeah.
Kline: And that's usually the case on everything except the latest ships that have demand elevators. But this, the elevators overall are very small for the size of the ship. It would say up but then it would go down. Very crowded.
A lot of the full elevator. And you get on on deck six I wanna 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 could 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. Hot.
Kline: Overall, very crowded ship. We're gonna come back to that again but we promise in the next video we will talk about some positives of Carnival Celebration.
Post: Having a great time. We're having a great time.
Kline: I am Dan Kline. He is Dennis Post. Come cruise with us soon.
(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 amypost@postcardtravelplanning.com or call or text her at 386-383-2472.
Copyright 2026 The Arena Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved
This story was originally published June 18, 2026 at 8:47 AM.