My husband and I are what I would call semi-seasoned cruisers. I've been on five cruises and my husband has been on three. I've cruised Princess, Celebrity and Royal Caribbean. On this cruise we went with another couple and had rooms right next to each other. This was our first Caribbean cruise.
Pre-Cruise Stay at Ft. Lauderdale Because we were flying in from Southern California, when we booked through Princess it was a required "forced overnight". We arrived in Ft. Lauderdale with no problem and met our Princess rep. We were bused over to the Marriott North in Ft. Lauderdale. The hotel was nice, but the location was not the best. There was a mini-mall with restaurants, but we were too far from the coast line to just walk over there. I would have preferred a better location for the hotel. However, it was not too big of a deal and the place like I said before was nice. We ate breakfast there and were bused with a bunch of other Princess folks to the terminal. One of the great things about
Embarkation The line was very, very long when we got there, but it went pretty fast. Within 40 minutes we were on the ship. Our room was ready when we got in there, and some of our luggage was already there. We had a balcony room on Baja deck. This was my second time with a balcony and the first for my husband. The room was really nice and we really used the balcony throughout the whole cruise. It was very soothing to open the door and hear the ocean as the ship sailed. We sat there before dinner and early in the morning. We also had our steward open the balcony between our rooms so we could mingle with our cruise mates.