We were on the February 13th sailing of the Coral Princess for a 10 day Panama Cruise from Fort Lauderdale. Not taking any chances with winter weather, we left Halifax on the Feb 10th and had no problems reaching Florida. We had chosen the Comfort Inn near Saw Grass Mills for a few days which gave us an opportunity to do some pre-cruise shopping. A few visits to Lauderdale-by-the Sea for beach walks, shopping til you drop at Saw Grass Mills and great eating at places like Outback and Cheddars saw three days pass quickly.

Cruise Critic Friends www.cruisecritic.com We joined a February 10th thread/chat group, started many months ago by Dogasia (Lynn) from Orlando. The group of forty or more participants had become cyber friends by the time sailing day rolled around.

We were a diverse group ranging in age from 29 - 70 from Canada and the US. We had agreed to meet shortly after the ship sailed and for a formal "meet & greet" on Day 2 in the Wheelhouse Bar. On our final check of our thread the day before we sailed, we learned that there would be a four to six hour delay in boarding Coral because of the number of Norwalk virus cases on the prior cruise. The ship would undergo a thorough sanitization before it would leave. We called the Princess hotline and this was confirmed. So we ended up having another few hours in the sunshine before returning our rental car to the airport and grabbing a shuttle to Port Everglades. There were about eight of us on the Shuttle and three are fellow CC er's. Linda and Charlie from St. Louis and Linda from Ontario. Read more