Wow, Our 15 night Panama Cruise on the Island Princess was amazing. Our trip experience was further enhanced with a surprise Princess upgrade to a balcony cabin on the Baja deck the week prior to embarkation :) We were three adults traveling together.
We flew in two days early and stayed at the Comfort Inn Airport / Port Everglades Cruise Port. We had a free ride from airport then again to the pier. (Also included free breakfast). We payed $70 per night.
CHECK IN/EMBARKATION- was a wee slower than our previous cruises, although we still were checked in and up on the Lido deck within an hour! We arrived at 12pm. In Ft Lauderdale, you enter a waiting area at the port and are handed a number. When your number is called, you enter a much larger area to find people waiting in lines categorized by their cabin deck assignment. Our deck, Baja, was the only line with less employee's checking us in (which slowed our progress), so our line was double the length of the other decks! Eventually someone else showed up to help check Baja people in. Once we received our sail-n-sign cards, we were off for our embarkation picture and boarded the ship with no further delays. We were allowed to drop off our things in our cabin even though it was only about 12:50. By 1pm we were on the Lido deck standing in line for food. The line for the buffet was long, so we went to the burger line. It was shorter, but only two guys working there, it was about a 15 minute wait in the sun. We found out that even though the buffet line was longer, it actually went much quicker. If you do try the hamburger line and only one guy is on the grill and one at the "window" on embarkation day, it may be to your advantage to do pizza or buffet!!! :)