We are back on land after a great 10-day cruise on the Emerald Princess. We departed Port Everglades (Fort Lauderdale) on Jan.17th 2012. We had a great time, where we escaped completely. In an attempt to escape completely, we only brought our electronic readers, our MP3 players, a camera and a HD camcorder. all told, we took nearly 1,000 pictures and 2 hours of HD video. No phones, no computer, no email disturbed our day-to-day life. How great it felt!

ABOUT OURSELVES: we are 2 cruising buddies, average age 60. We shared an inside cabin on Emerald deck, 8th floor. I will not bore you with details that are not attributable to Princess. Suffice it to say that we live in Delray Beach (FL), 35 miles North of Fort Lauderdale. On departure morning, we loaded our 2 suitcases into the car and drove to Port Everglades on our own, parking the car at the Convention Center's parking garage. From there, we wheeled our suitcases to the Princess terminal, which is located next door. We left Delray Beach promptly at 9:30 AM, arrived at the terminal around 10:15AM, gave our luggage to the porters and made our way into the terminal. We waited until 10:45AM to collect our keycards and make our way to the ship. We were on board at 11:00AM. We were informed that our cabin was ready, so we proceeded to check it out.

THE CABIN: This was an inside cabin on deck 8 Forward. Three cabins further forward and we would have been outside the ship. Below us was the Princess Theater. We loved the cabin. It featured loads of storage; more that we could use. As you entered, there was a hallway to the left with the bathroom, a cabinet with shelves and a safe and an 8-foot rod to hang our clothes. There was no need to stow our luggage under the bed because they fit very comfortably on the floor, under the hanging clothes. An 8-foot shelf sat above that rod, where the life jackets, pool towels and spare sheets were stored. All this is completely separate from the rest of the cabin. Read more