Having never cruised Princess I was really looking forward to it. So here we go! Hubby Jim (51),myself (50), Dan our 18 yr old son-(we are seasoned cruisers} and first time cruiser Richard age 18 , Dans friend. Left Wisconsin April 7th at 6am arrived in Ft. Lauderdale about 1:40pm Both flights with "Northworst" pretty uneventful-thank goodness. Had reservations with Sleep Inn Dania. Got our bags and called from the hotel board in the baggage area. Took the guy about 15 minutes to arrive. We had a room on the 3rd floor which was kind of scary at first with all the reviews from this board about how dirty it was. Signed up for the 9am shuttle to the port (was a bit early but all of the 10 and 10:30 slots were already taken. Our room was quite large, 2 queen beds and a pull out couch. I did the bedbug check and everything looked A-ok! Went down to the pool area to start my tanning process and met up with fellow cruise critic members HightownCO and Lori-N-NY and their gang. We planned to meet up at 9pm for drinks, but didn't quite make it. After walking over to the Publix across the street to stock up on soda, got a pizza from the little pizza place right there in the strip mall(was very good). FYI- Publix only has a wine section-if you want hard liquor you have to drive about a mile and a half to the nearest liquor store. At 9am we loaded our bags in the free shuttle and off to the port we went.

EMBARKATION- We were one of the first groups to arrive and there was mass confusion with the debarking cruisers and porters all around. We were told to wait against the wall with our bags until the porters finished with those cruisers. About 10:30 porters asked us to follow them to the large baggage cages to load up all of our luggage, just leaving us with our carryon stuff. Again back to the wall we went to wait. A little while later we were ushered into the customs waiting area, we were given a form to fill out saying none of us were sick and handed a #2 card. After asking how long before we were sent to registration we were told that it wouldn't be until at least 1pm since they had to clean the ship. This was odd since we met up with a great family that cruised the CB before and were always on the ship by 11am. After 2and a half hours of sitting we were finally told that boarding of wheelchairs would commence. Got onto the ship about 1:30-1:45. Check in was painless and we zipped right by the picture guy.

STATEROOMS- we had mini-suites E729 for the boys and E731 for ourselves. Our luggage already beat us on the ship by the way-first time in cruise history-that was very nice! Our stateroom was very large the twin beds were made into a queen for us, but the boys also had just one queen. Our balcony was huge due to being the last stateroom on the starboard side. It could fit 2 loungers, 2 regular chairs and a small table-the boys were quite envious! I had ordered two liquor packages before the cruise to be in our rooms upon arrival. No where in sight. That took two days and numerous calls to the font desk and room service to straighten out. Along with birthday arrangement for the two boys and casino credits to be straightened out also. We were not impressed with the handling of any of that!. Our room looked as if it was only half clean. Carpets weren't vacuumed, bathroom had a dirty floor, No ice in our cabin. Come to find out by our excellent room steward Hector Reyes, that Norwalk broke out on the cruise right before ours. He said about 300 passengers and crew came down with it and that was the reason for the delay in embarkation. The CDC came aboard the ship and demanded that every deck, every stateroom,every inch of the ship was to be sanitized thoroughly before the next set of passengers step foot on the CB. That is also the reason for no ice in the rooms unless you specifically asked for it and no vacuuming the carpets so the virus wouldn't be kicked up. Every morning the steward had to spray down the halls with disinfectant (poor guys had to wear masks to protect themselves from so much chemical stuff they had to use. There were also a lot of deck loungers that needed replacing-they were very worn and dirty. Read more