We spent the night before the cruise at the Hampton Inn North Airport/Cruise port, which was very convenient. They kept our baggage the next morning while we went on a Segway Tour on the Riverfront in Fort Lauderdale. This was one of the highlights of our whole vacation! We had no idea that the beautiful Riverfront walk existed, and enjoyed two hours zipping along on our segways past lovely mansions and across the big bridge near the ships. We had time to kill because the Emerald was coming back from Europe to sail the Easter Caribbean, and there was to be a coast guard drill as well as other delays, preventing boarding until after 2pm. Some people had come early and sat waiting for several hours.

Once onboard all of our luggage showed up very quickly, but we noticed that our balcony cabin air conditioning was barely working, if at all. We had repairmen come to our room each day for five days to try to bring the air conditioning back to life. We finally gave up. It worked a wee bit, but made showering and dressing a terribly hot mess. We were told that many cabins were complaining of the same issue, and that the ship was supposed to go into dry dock sometime to repair the air conditioning systems. This unfortunately did nothing to help us. I was also told by a crew member that it is best never to plan a Caribbean cruise on a ship just back from colder climes because air conditioning problems always arise. Remember that! Best to wait a few weeks for them to get the systems working again. No one needs them in Alaska or colder parts of Europe and problems aren't noticed. So the week was unfortunately quite uncomfortable in the cabin, even with drapes drawn all day. We couldn't sleep with the covers on.

Dinner food in the main dining room was very good each night that we were there. The food there has actually IMPROVED since our last Princess cruise in 2011, and staff was very attentive. Excellent steaks last evening. Kudos to Princess there. We also found the buffet to be quite satisfactory as well, without too many lines and decent waiter service as well. Lunch was better than breakfast, however, and late afternoon snacks there were plentiful. Read more