We arrived in FT. Lauderdale on Friday night late and stayed at the Holiday Inn Express Convention Center. It was nice and provided a breakfast buffet in the morning. It was close to a supermarket, Public, where we purchased some bottled water and wine to take for the refrigerator in the cabins. The Holiday Inn provided an airport pickup shuttle and a shuttle to Port Everglades. We took the 11:00am shuttle to the ship. After dropping off some others at different ships we were dropped off at 11:30am. The luggage was unloaded and Princess had plenty of people helping. We got in line outside terminal at 11:35am. The doors opened about 11:40am and we were at the ticket counter for our deck (Riviera) within 30 minutes. It took about 15 minutes to check in. If you are traveling with children and only one parent is there make sure you have notarized letter from other parent. Princess did ask for this.
We were on the ship by 12:30pm. Embarkation was easy and handled quickly. This gave us the opportunity to find our rooms on the Rivera deck (r707 & r709). They were outside Balcony staterooms and well worth the money. Our teenage kids had one right next to ours. After checking out our rooms we toured the ship to find everything using the pocket map provided. We met our room steward, Ruel, who was outstanding.
Note about the room, bring extension cord to use by desk in the room. The bathroom plugs are non-polarized. The hair dryer is located at desk also and is adequate.