We arrived in Ft. Lauderdale a day early, (Saturday the 6th) and had reservations at the Holiday Inn Express Air/Seaport, 150 W State Road 84, Fort Lauderdale, FL. There were 12 of us traveling together on this cruise but just eight of us staying at this location. (I highly recommend you to travel a day in advance, when we were leaving to go home, there were bad storms and we heard that several people from the next cruise were going to miss their cruise because of bad weather and delays/cancellations.)
After we arrived at the airport my husband called the Holiday Inn Express to let them know we would need their shuttle service to come pick us up. He was told to call AFTER we had all of our luggage. So... we did. We were instructed to go outside and walk down to the HOTEL SHUTTLE WAITING AREA and they would be there in about 10 minutes. ABOUT AN HOUR LATER the shuttle guy showed up. Once we knew it was him.. we discovered he probably had made three or four trips around the airport passing us by. He never came out and identified himself and there are other hotel names on the shuttle so you aren't sure if that is your shuttle or not. You will see soooooooo many. That was rather irritating and my husband was not happy about that at all. But he got over it.
Once we finally got to the Holiday Inn, we were able to check in and have a few cocktails (this is when my husband got over it.. HA HA). We brought our own liquor in our checked luggage and between the 12 of us we could have probably opened up a small store. The men walked across the street to Winn-Dixie Grocery Store and bought a case of water, margarita mix, pineapple juice, limes, and snack foods. We all had rolling ice chests so that is what were used to transport the grocery items back to the Holiday Inn. There were fast food restaurants across the street also, but it was after 10pm and they would only serve you if you went through the drive through. Kind of hard when you don't have a car. We ordered a pizza and it was delivered to our room.