Our family group of 5 sailed the Costa Fortuna the week of March 7. We booked 3 rooms back in October during "The World's Largest Cruise Night" promotion through a travel agent. This was my third cruise and I have booked three ways- directly through cruiseline, on-line travel agency and brick and mortar agency. This one was through a brick and mortar agency and I would not do this again. We chose Costa for the itinerary and price, as well as a promotion for OBC. They have the best price for singles. Our travel agent had a lot of difficulty dealing with Costa and we did not get our OBC, though we have looked into it and are supposed to be getting a refund for $150 ($50 a room). I also have to say that Costa's website is very difficult to navigate. We did get a small category upgrade, but found out by talking to a lot of different people that many got huge upgrades- inside rooms to balconies for instance and at a lower price than we paid. However, I am not complaining about the cost- Costa delivers a big bang for the buck and we all enjoyed ourselves.

We flew down to Fort Lauderdale the day before and rented a minivan for $44 using a code from mousesaversdotcom. One thing to note is that there is a car rental center at the airport, but unless you come in at Terminal D, you will have to wait for and take a shuttle to it. We had rooms at the Fairfield Inn and Suites Cruise Port. This is a new hotel in Dania Beach, about 10 minutes from the airport. They do have a free shuttle from the airport and also one to the cruise port for $10 per person. We chose to rent the minivan so we would have more flexibility and we had found out that there were no restaurants within walking distance to the hotel. Hotel was fine, clean and basic, also had a free breakfast, though the cruise passengers cleaned it out by 8:00 am. We drove to Las Olas Blvd. for dinner which is a fun place to eat and people watch. Plenty of reasonable parking in either lots or garages, though we had brought our GPS which was handy.

Embarkation Day: We ate breakfast in the hotel, then loaded up the van around 10:30 and dropped off 3 people and all the luggage at the cruise port, which is very easy to do. There were 5 ships in the port that day, and the hotel shuttles were taking people to all 5, which looked like a long process. Two of us took the van back to the airport and then took a $13 cab ride back to the port. We found out when dropping off the van that there is a rental car drop-off at the port, wish we had known about it. Embarkation was a breeze and if you want to bypass the photo line you can. Your ship photo is taken once you are on the ship, room keys are in your room and your credit card must be activated within 48 hours through a kiosk, but that is very easy to do. Sail-away was at 7:00 pm, so we got to watch the other ships leave. If you order a drink while still in port, you will have to pay a port tax in addition to the cost of the drink and the gratuity. Read more