Hotel -- We arrived on the 1st and stayed at the Holiday Inn Express on Davie Road using the Park and Cruise package. We were able to leave our car for the week and had two seats on the shuttle to the port. We bought two more passes, since there were four in our party. The shuttle came promptly at 11 am. They tried to sell us return passes for $15 a person but we opted to wait at the port for a taxi instead. The drive to the port was not long but 595 and the entrance to Port Everglades is under construction and the traffic jams took a while to get through. We were glad we didn't try to drive down to park at the port. The hotel has a Publix and a CVS pharmacy near it and not much else.

Embarkation -- We were quickly checked in. This was one of the shortest lines I have ever gone through. We received our boarding number and our ship cards and sat down to wait. There are lots of seats in the terminal and the wait was not uncomfortable. HAL was handing out bottled water and granola bars since we were delayed boarding. The Eurodam came in under code red and was getting a deep cleaning.

We were delayed leaving and didn't actually get away until we were already at dinner (early seating) and having our entree. Not sure if the delay was due to the deep cleaning or late arriving passengers since at 4:30 there were still 6 bins of suitcases waiting to be loaded. Read more