My DH and I flew the day before from Phoenix on Southwest and stayed at the Hampton Inn Airport/Cruise in Ft. Lauderdale. It was a great place to stay as it was close the Port Everglades and they had a free shuttle that picks you up at the airport and a free shuttle to take you to the pier. It is just across the street from a Winn Dixie and liquor store so you can all the supplies you need! There are also some restaurants in the small strip mall - We ate at Slackers which is a sports bar/grill and had a great meal of snow crab legs and a very tasty hamburger. There are a few other restaurants - a Thai, Subway, McDonalds and others in walking distance. Hampton Inn offers a free breakfast which was just fine for us as we were looking forward to our first lunch onboard the ship!

We caught the 11:45 shuttle to the pier as we wanted to sleep in. Great service and very friendly staff. I highly recommend this hotel. They unloaded our luggage and a porter immediately appeared and took our luggage to the ship. We headed to check in and breezed through security. We both carried one bottle of wine and some bottled water in our carry ons. No problems. We then proceeded to what we thought would be a huge line and we were first in line! We were in Aqua Class so there was a separate line and were on the ship by 12:45 and were met with a glass of champagne and told to proceed to deck 14 for lunch as the rooms were not ready yet. The buffet in the Oceanview Cafe was very hectic as people were trying to figure out where everything was. I didn't particularly like the layout of the buffet but as the cruise went on I got more used to where everything was located. People were very polite on this cruise. I didn't encounter any rudeness at all.

The demographics on this cruise was very mature. DH and I are 64 and 60 but we felt like one of the youngest couples onboard! There were a lot of Europeans and Canadians and it was fun meeting such a diverse group on people! Read more