I wanted to write this post to give a firsthand account of my first cruise experience and hopefully answer some questions that other people may have when considering taking a cruise for the first time.
My wife and I decided 6 months ago that we should take a cruise. We thought it would be a unique experience and invited another couple along. We had been to the Caribbean before and loved it, so we decided on Caribbean ports, St. Thomas, St. Maarten and Princess Cays. My wife is a teacher, and therefore has certain weeks off before the summer and we wanted to go before it got too hot in NJ. Therefore, we decided to take the Caribbean Princess out of Ft. Lauderdale on 4/22/06 because she was off that week for spring break. I hadn't done too much research before this, but it fit into our schedule and we were happy to just be getting away. The four of us booked our cruise and anxiously awaited. In the meantime, I read almost every posting on the Cruise Critic message boards, and am very glad I did. You guys were a tremendous help! I will break everything down, and my apologies if I don't use proper "cruise terminology." We're still learning.
Our flight arrived in Ft. Lauderdale at 11:30 am on the day of the cruise. We booked the cruise line airfare just for the peace of mind that if the flight were delayed, we would be able to meet up in the next port. The 4 of us took a taxi to the port ($10+tip.) It was a very quick 10 min. drive. We were let off in front of the terminal and were helped with our baggage. We tipped the usual $1 per bag and the porter took our luggage to be checked. We then got on what appeared to be a line of 1,000,000 people that snaked outside of the terminal. Because of my research, (Thanks Cruise Critic) I knew we wouldn't be on this line for too long. Sure enough, within 20 minutes we were inside the terminal and being broken down by which deck our stateroom was on. We were staying on the "Aloha Deck" and we got in a line of about 10 people. When we got to the counter, we were politely greeted by the Princess rep. and gave her our information. I explained that I hadn't given a credit card # because I wanted to open up my shipboard account with cash. I was told that this was not a problem, but I would have to open it up on board at the Purser's Desk and would have to leave a minimum of $300 per person. She said that I had 24 hours to do this and suggested that I wait until the next morning to do so because it would be too crowded that day. She gave us our shipboard account cards and said that we were free to use them even though we hadn't opened the account yet. We then got on a fairly large line to board the ship. Again, it went very quickly and within 10 min. we were on board.