I plan all of my trips online. I definitely recommend flying out to your port at least a day ahead of time and then maybe spend the rest of your vacation in Florida at the end of your cruise. You want to make sure that you make it to your ship. The most important thing to remember when in port - don't miss the ship. You can go onto youtube and look for videos of people running to catch the ship that is already sailing away from the dock.
I would recommend looking at the website cruisecritic.com. You can find a lot of useful information on the community pages about all things cruising. A lot of people will post reviews when they get back. A lot of cruises will have a roll call where you might be able to make contact with people who will be on the same cruise as the one you book.
I like cruising out of Florida and have cruised out of Miami several times and Ft. Lauderdale once. I wish that I had spent more time in Ft. Lauderdale as there is a water taxi that you can get a day pass and get around easily. Ft. Lauderdale was really interesting on the port departure. We actually had a couple of small naval gun boats escort us out and they wouldn't let any other ships get close to our ship.
I like Miami as well and took the little harbor cruise where you go by a lot of the homes of the rich and famous.
I have cruised on Carnival, Norwegian and Royal Caribbean. The only line I was not that thrilled with was Norwegian. I am personally not that interested in sailing on any of the super jumbo size ships because I think that they are probably adding a lot more pay venues (restaurants and so on) and they are just too crowded. I liked Freedom of the Sea (Royal Caribbean), Miracle (Carnival) and Valor (Carnival - with a great adult area). I like the comedy clubs that Carnival has on their ships now.
As to what type of cruise to pick - it depends upon your interests. Do you want more island stops or more sea days. What type of activities are you interested in? Sea days have grown on me but I love doing water activities. I have gone swimming with the stingrays in Grand Caymans and Antigua, swimming with manatees and dolphins in Couzumel, snuba in St. Thomas and St. Lucia, snorkeling ( in St. Thomas, Barbados, Roatan, Grand Cayman, Belize, Antigua, Curacao, Dominica and St. Maarten) and, zip lining in Jamaica and St. Kitts and even went parasailing in St. Thomas.
My favorite places are Belize (the water is fabulous), Curacao (great beaches and a capitol to explore), St Thomas (great beaches and the snuba was too die for), Dominica (very different, only 4% flat, did a great river tubing excursion there), Cozumel (I always wanted to swim with manatees and I booked this excursion on my own).
I would recommend reading the book Caribbean by James Michener to get in the spirit of visiting the Caribbean.
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