We spent a wonderful week (December 14-21) in the western Caribbean on the Grand Princess. This cruise was our tenth overall and fourth with Princess. We had previously cruised on the Golden Princess twice and the Star Princess once. The major difference we noticed between the Grand and the other two ships is that it is missing the midship stairs. The stairs there only go from the fourth to the seventh floor. The midship elevators go all the way to the Lido Deck (14). Not having the stairs in the middle was a minor inconvenience.

We flew to Fort Lauderdale the day before our cruise. The icy weather forecast for the next day made me glad that I had booked the earlier flight and hotel. We stayed at the Wyndham Hotel (formerly the Hilton) near the airport. It is a three-star hotel that I got through Priceline. It is not as nice as the three-star Marriott Marina, where we stayed after one of our previous cruises, but it was nice enough. Our flight got to Fort Lauderdale around 3 p.m. We took the free shuttle bus from the airport to the hotel. The Wyndham is in the airport zone on Priceline, so people who bid on the downtown zone won't get stuck there. It does have a nice pool area, and we were able to enjoy the pool and hot tub before sunset. The biggest drawback is that it is not near anything. I did walk about a mile to a gas station and bought a 12-pack of Diet Coke to take with us on the cruise.

After checking out from the Wyndham, we took a taxi to the port. There were others going on the Grand who had talked the bell captain into arranging for the shuttle bus to take them to the port. We decided we did not want to wait for all of them to be ready. We got to the port at 10:50 and had to wait ten minutes before they opened the doors to the check-in area. There were a couple of hundred other folks ahead of us, but check-in moved quickly. We were through security quickly and upstairs in the waiting area within ten minutes. It was a 20-minute wait before they started boarding. We were in our cabin at 11:45. Read more