This is my 9th cruise, 4th with HAL, but the first on the Eurodam, which as most know, is a fairly new ship, first setting sail in 2008. This is only my 2nd time on a cruise ship that was under 1 year old, as I also was on the Zuiderdam when she was still under a year old as well. My previous 3 cruises were actually all on the Zuiderdam, while the rest of my 9 were on either carnival or RCCL ships. This was a first time cruise for my DF, so I tried to spoil her as much as possible.

Travel: I live near Savannah, GA; and my DF near Tampa, so we met at DeLand Fl, and left my car with some friends; whose house we stayed at before getting an 8AM start heading to Ft. Lauderdale. I used AAA to pre-reserve parking at the Park N' Fly, arriving there just before noon. We dragged all our luggage out, and managed to get a shuttle bus to the cruise port.

Embarkation: As always in HAL, it was a breeze, we were on the ship in about 15 minutes. We checked on the Culinary Center menus as soon as we got on, and unfortunately, found that the actual "classes" were only on port days, and wouldn't work with our schedule. At that point, we went up to have lunch in the Lido, as rooms were not yet available. We managed to snag a 4 person table, and have our lunch while we waited on rooms to open up, as they did right around 1:30. Read more