The day of travel for the starting this vacation finally arrived. The week prior to today seemed to go by slowly as we finalized our plans and packed for the trip. Packing was a little difficult since we had to have a combination of some warm weather clothes for a few days at the start of the cruise, but mostly colder weather clothes for the majority of the trip as we get toward Europe. We got our bags to weigh in just under the 50 pound limit for flying on Delta.
It was a short night last night, we did not get to bed as early as we had wanted, and the alarm was set for 3:15 AM so we could leave for the airport at 4:00 AM for our 5:45 AM flight to Atlanta. Mom met us at the house for the ride to the airport, and we made it without incident, there is not much traffic on the roads that early on a Sunday.
Check-in went smoothly and our suitcases each officially weighed 49 pounds on the airline scales, just under their limit. There was a bit of a line at security, but within 30 minutes of arriving at the airport, we were at our gate waiting to board our flight.
The flight to Atlanta and the flight from Atlanta to Ft. Lauderdale were both on time and smooth.
We had a bit of a scare in Ft. Lauderdale with Stephanie’s suitcase. Mine came out on the carousel but we never saw Stephanie’s suitcase come through, and then the belt stopped and the small door closed, indicating all of the bags were out. We started to panic a little before we realized that someone with the airport staff had been taking the bags off of the carousel and stacking them off on the side. This was on the opposite side from where we were waiting for our luggage, so we did not see this happening. Once we got over to where the bags had been placed, we saw her suitcase mixed in with many others. That was a relief!
We headed to find the shuttle bus to the port, thinking that it would be located outside in the pick up area. This was our first time flying into Ft. Lauderdale for a cruise, we had previously only driven a rental car or our own vehicle. We knew there was a shuttle at the rental car area, so we hopped onto a bus that went to where the rental car companies are located at the airport. Once there, we knew the location of the shuttle pick up for the port.
Once at the rental car facility, we headed over to the shuttle bus pick up area and waited for the shuttle. We did not realize that the shuttle was only for use by persons who had a receipt for rental cars. No one had ever checked a receipt before when I had used this bus previously. The bus driver asked for a receipt, and we told him we had not rented a car. He told us that we would need to take a taxi to the port, so we asked where we could get one, and he just decided to let us ride the shuttle bus anyway. Of course, we tipped him for helping us out.
The shuttle to the port was really slow, we first had to go by the Royal Caribbean’s Allure of the Seas ship to drop passengers off there, and we then even picked up some people heading to the rental car facility after their cruise on the Allure. Finally, we headed to our ship at the other end of the port, and the traffic was already backed up in the drop off area. We picked up more passengers that had gotten off the Regal Princess from the previous cruise, and then we had to wait about 15 minuted just to go about 200 feet to the drop off for passengers going on our cruise. This “free” shuttle took over an hour to get from the airport to our ship, I guess we should have just paid for a taxi.
Once we finally got off of the shuttle bus, and handed over our luggage to the porters, and we got in line to check in. We were quite surprised that the line was already very long, even though it was only 11:00 AM. They were trying to segregate the passengers into two lines, one for normal check in and the other for preferred status check in. However, it was clearly apparent that there were many more “preferred” guests on this cruise than normal, which is what we have seen for transatlantic cruises. The normal check in line was much shorter, so they started to tell people just to get in either line, there was really no difference after getting into the building to go through security.
The line moved along pretty quickly, and security was fast and efficient, and then we headed over to the check in desk and got our boarding cards. We were heading to the “Elite” waiting area when we saw that boarding had already begun, so we just got into that line and boarded the ship. All in all, it was not too bad, it took about 2 hours from the time we got our luggage at the airport until we were in our room, and most of that was the shuttle bus ride time.
Our cabin steward, Mary Jane, was not quite through with vacuuming the room, so we had a short wait until we could drop off our small bags and head to the buffet for lunch.
We ate lunch and headed to the Skyview bar to try and meet some of the bartenders that were friends with a bartender we had on our last cruise, Rommel. Stephanie is friends with Rommel on Facebook, and she had asked him about the bartenders on this ship. He informed us that he was good friends with two of them, Franz and Juan Carlos. He had also told them we were coming on this cruise.
We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the ship and having a few drinks, it was a little too cool and very windy to really sit outside in the sunshine.
We were a little late leaving port, leaving about 5:30 PM instead of the scheduled 4:00 PM departure time. It has been windy all day, and was even windier once we finally left the port. It was quite rough out in the ocean, the wind was blowing about 25 mph from the NE, with higher gusts. Luckily, the Captain did change the route slightly, heading to the southwest to go around Great Abaco, so we were not heading directly into the waves.
We ended up eating dinner in the Pizzeria on Deck 6 called Alfredo’s, which has become one of our favorite places to eat. You get to order fresh made pizza, and have a full wait staff, but the dinner is casual and quicker than getting ready and going to the dining room.
After dinner, we headed to the Vines wine bar to have some of our favorite red wines. It was really nice that Princess offered us the incentive of a free beverage package on this cruise, so we planned on taking advantage of that. We did stick to our usual first day schedule of having beer for the beverage of the day until we leave port, then we had the wine.
We did not stay out late since we had not gotten a lot of sleep last night, and travel days are tiring anyway, both mentally and physically. We headed back to the cabin about 9:00 PM, and had a slight run in with housekeeping. For some reason, they claimed that they did not offer dry cleaning to passengers, it was part of an environmental program, and said they were unable to dry clean my tuxedo. This was a first, and even the paperwork that we have to fill out for laundry had a long list of items to have dry cleaned. They took the tux anyway, but we were not sure what they were going to do, but, at a minimum, it needed to be pressed after being folded up in the suitcase. I guess we will find out, but we were puzzled about this, not having ever been told or informed that dry cleaning was no longer an option. This was not an issue on our last cruise in October, on the sister ship to the Regal, the Royal Princess. We will have to find out what the true story is.