Prior to the cruise, my friend and I the the shut-eye service with jetBlue from California to Fort Lauderdale. The shut eye service was basically jetBlue's other way of saying Red-Eye. In addition to the free blanket and pillows offered by the airline, they also gave everyone an Bliss Spa Kit (Bliss is the spa at most W resorts) that contained various spa products, an eye mask, and ear plugs. Towards the end of the flight, the crew members handed out "hot" towels so that we can "freshen up" prior to landing. In addition to the spa kit, we enjoyed the 2 beverage and snack services and the self service snack bar they set up in the galley. Because the flight was delayed for about an hour, they offered everyone onboard free movies from their Fox Inflight movie service that normally cost $5 on domestic flights. This was a bonus to their 36 channels of DirecTV that was also offered for free. The flight itself saved us a night in a hotel because it was scheduled to arrive early enough that I didn't really have to worry about any delays that could cause me to miss the ship.

When we got to Fort Lauderdale, it was about 6:30AM so we rented a car from Enterprise Rent-A-Car which was a really smooth process, we were on the road and driving around Fort Lauderdale at around 6:45AM. We were not suppose to be at the port till 1PM so we drove around Fort Lauderdale and visited the Seminole Hard Rock Resort where we had a wonderful breakfast. We also took an everglades airboat tour prior to the cruise.

After our little improve shore excursion around South Florida, we returned our rental to the Enterprise Rent-A-Car location at the Miami Airport, boarded the shuttle to the airport terminal where we took a cab from the Miami Airport to the cruise ship terminal. We got to the terminal at around 12PM and was not onboard the ship till around 2PM. Of all the cruises I been on, this was by far the longest, and chaotic, embarkation process ever. Took us a good 2 hours before we set foot onto the ship. Read more