My husband and I have been on approximately 25 cruises. This was our third on Princess. We traveled with another couple. All of us are from Central Florida. Instead of driving the four hours to Port Everglades, we stayed at the Marriott Renaissance in Boca Raton the night before the cruise. This is a lovely boutique hotel close to great restaurants, shopping and I-95. We did this so we could get onboard early to book The Sanctuary for the week.

And this is where the bad start comes in:

The couple we traveled with were Elite passengers so we were able to wait in the Elite lounge at the port until boarding commenced. It was very easy. We were in the first group to board. We went straight to Deck 17 to book the Sanctuary. There was one group of six and one other couple ahead of us. We all waited in the hot sun for 20 minutes until someone came out to take our reservations. When our turn came, we were told there was only ONE lounger left to reserve for the week. The “policy” is to book only 16 lounges for the week ($30 per day per person), with the remaining 42 lounges to be booked daily ($40 per day, per person). Despite our protestations, no explanation could be given as to why only one was left when there were only 8 people ahead of us. We later were told that the others were reserved by back-to-back cruisers. Read more