This is long overdue, but I thought it was still worth doing.
Last year my husband and I took a 7-day Eastern Carribean cruise on the Emerald Princess. The experience was absolutely perfect.
We flew into Ft Lauderdale the night before the cruise and stayed at a Comfort Inn. The hotel was nice. They had a shuttle that took us to a local Ruby Tuesday for dinner and a shuttle that went to the cruise port the following morning. Shuttle was perfectly suitable and got us to the port well before the crowd arrived.