A little bit of background info. Myself (Andrew) and my partner (Brad) have cruised once before with Princess last year on the Caribbean Princess. We are in our mid 20's and have traveled extensively throughout the US, Mexico, Canada and Europe. We both work in the service industry (myself in customer relations and Brad in restaurant management & events planning) so service is important to us. While neither one of us are critical or arrogant, we do expect a certain "effort" out of people but no more then we would expect out of ourselves. This covers a broad spectrum of areas.
Pre Cruise: Just like last year, we dropped our doggie off at the Pet Hotel and headed to Fort Lauderdale the night before to stay at the Hyatt Pier 66 again. This time, however, was a completely different experience (read my CB review to see what I mean). We called ahead of time to the hotel and got a really nice girl who looked up our previous reservation and found our room number from our last room which offered a great view. She said that particular room was booked but she would hold a different room with the exact same view on another floor. Once we arrived around 2pm (2 hours before the listed check in time) we were given a key to our room right away and it was EXACTLY WHAT WE HAD THE LAST TIME making the start of our vacation off to a great one. There was no switching rooms 2 million times like the last trip. The view was fantastic and so was the weather. We put our stuff down and sat on the balcony for a half hour just watching the ships in port (Ruby Princess, Celebrity Solstice & Carnival Miracle) then changed and headed down to the pool. That night we watched the Carnival ship leave port and ordered very expensive (overpriced) room service while enjoying the balcony views and Fort Lauderdale breezes.
Day 1 - Embarkation: We awoke to see RCI Enchantment OTS and the Island Princess in port. After enjoying coffee and breakfast on the balcony and reading the paper we headed over to Park n Fly to drop the car off. Everything went off without a hitch and the shuttle had us at Pier 21 right about 11:15. Unlike our last embarkation "experience" there was ZERO line and we went from being outside with the Porters to in our cabin in under 15 minutes. Yes, 15 minutes. We were in our cabins unloading our carry on by 11:30. This was a wonderful surprise compared to our last cruise. We had cabin E736 which was all the way aft. And while the IP doesn't have any true aft cabins this was as close as it comes with a semi wrap-around balcony to enjoy a partial wake view. It was also a much bigger balcony and was the only aft cabin that is covered (along with E737 on the starboard side). We then met Norman, our fantastic and amazing cabin steward. He knew our names after the 1st day and always made sure we had extra ice and even brought us clean wine glasses unlike our last cabin steward who told us she can't provide any and we would have to call room service and clean them ourselves. At 3pm we had our CC meet & greet at Crooners and about 25 people showed up which I'm told is a lot. We met many wonderful people and it was really nice seeing some familiar faces throughout the rest of the cruise. The rest of the day was spent exploring the ship I have to mention that our Captain was Roger Bilton and he was an absolutely class act. During our muster drill he made a wonderful speech over the PA system about being courteous to other passengers by being quite in the halls and keeping TV volumes down and not flushing down "objects" in the toilet. I found this to be a wonderful and classy touch and felt an honest concern for all passengers on board.. After the sun had set and we were on our journey, Brad and I changed into our swimsuits and headed to the Lotus Spa Pool to enjoy the hot tub all to ourselves. Around 8pm we decided we wanted dinner. I thought they had the seafood buffet on the IP but I was wrong. I guess that only consists on ships with the Cafe Caribe. So we showered and changed and headed to the anytime dinning room which had about a 15 minute wait. I found this a bit odd since it was so late but didn't mind waiting. We sat in the middle part of the Bordeaux Dining Room right under an air vent which made it a freezing experience. "Luckily" our service was extremely rushed so we were out of there in under an hour. We decided we were not going to ask to be seated with that team again. We headed back to our cabin and enjoyed cocktails and the wake from our balcony and went to sleep shortly after midnight. I'd like to add that we had a new mattress (I checked) and had an egg crate and while it was firm we slept better this trip then we did the last cruise. Movement was also considerably less in this cabin as opposed to our last cabin on the Lido Deck.