Embarkation & Debarkation We flew out of Atlanta to Ft. Lauderdale the day before our cruise was to set sail. We booked a room at the Courtyard Marriott Airport. For whatever reason, it took us longer to get to the hotel from the airport than it took for us to get to FLL. The hotel was only operating one shuttle bus and there were quite a few of us so the shuttle got filled up quickly and we had to wait for him to drop off the group before us and then come back to get us. We loved the hotel. The room was great, the hotel was clean, and the staff was very helpful and friendly. The only drawback to this hotel is that the only dining options nearby are a mediocre seafood restaurant and Subway. If you want something else, you'll have to take a cab. There is also no shopping other than a Bass Pro Shops. The breakfast buffet offered by the hotel is an excellent value and quite tasty. The hotel offers a shuttle to the cruise port and unlike the shuttle from the airport, it was run very smoothly. We arrived at the port a little after 12:00 and this has got to be one of the quickest embarkations ever. There was a line to get into the building but once inside, there was absolutely no waiting. I think we were on the ship within 15 minutes of getting off the shuttle and most of that time was taken up by security. Debarkation went just as smoothly. Once they called our color number to come to the dining room, our seats weren't even warm before we were called to debark. Our bags were waiting in the terminal and the customs area was adequately staffed so we were off the ship in record time.
The Ship The Crown Princess is a beautiful ship. It's very tastefully decorated and one of the easiest ships to navigate in our experience. We liked our balcony cabin but thought it felt a little cramped compared to our cabin on Carnival Legend. I don't think the cabin was smaller. It was just a different layout which changed the feel of the room. I only have three complaints about the ship itself. First, it rocks entirely too much and too severely. The very first night, we experienced a very rocky ride on our way to Princess Cays. There was also an awful rocky ride on our way to Turks & Caicos. This was truly the worst night of the cruise. It made it very difficult to get out and enjoy myself in the evening. My husband wasn't affected as badly as I was but dutifully stayed with me. Both nights, I spent the night curled up in bed because I was just too seasick too move. I threw up twice that night because I was so sick. We went up to the Lido deck the next day and saw that the ship was rocking so severely that most of the water had sloshed out of the pools. They had to refill the pools when we finally docked in Turks & Caicos. The worst we experienced on other ships when they rocked was difficulty walking in a straight line so this experience was very annoying to say the least. It bothered me so much that when we got home, I did some research about the Crown Princess and found that stability on the water has been a problem for this ship since her maiden voyage.
Second, the ship has no real walking deck. There is a track on the Sports Deck but you have to walk around it like ten times to get in a mile. We took the tour of the ship on the first day and the assistant cruise director suggested using the Promenade deck for walking instead. I tried that on the day we docked in Princess Cays. I realized that the deck is not a complete revolution around the ship. You run into some stairs at one end and have to go up and down the other side to get to the other side of the Promenade deck. I don't necessarily have a problem with this but two things interrupted the flow of my walk. First, they cordoned off half the deck for tender operations to shore in Princess Cays so that was half the deck that I could not get to. Second, with the amount of elderly people on this ship, I was constantly running into them trying to make it up or down the stairs. They move slowly so I had to spend quite a few minutes waiting for them to get out of the way. I finally gave up and went to the gym to work out on the elliptical.