BACKGROUND My wife and I are fairly young for retirees. She is late 50's. I am early 60's. We both love to travel. Most of the time we take off in our motor home. We also enjoy cruise ship travel. Over the years we have experienced Holland America, Costa, Princess, Celebrity and NCL. Last year we did a narrow boat trip down the Llangollen (glang -GO- len) canal in Wales. Truth to tell, it was hardly a "cruise" experience because in many places the canal was only a few feet wider than the boat and the water was generally less than four feet deep. I mention this Welsh adventure because it was well worth the trip and a very economical way to experience the UK. E-mail me if you'd like more info on narrowboating. You can also type "narrowboating" in your search engine.
Neither my wife nor I are professional cruise ship critic. There are vast numbers of people more experienced in cruises than us. We have been on enough cruises to establish a sort of bench mark on cruise ship offerings. I submit the following as a our opinion of the April 5, 2008 sailing of Princess lines vessel Coral Princess on the "Panama Canal" cruise.
TRAVEL TO PORT We live in North Florida, so travel to embarkation in Ft. Lauderdale (a.k.a. Port Everglades) was a six hour drive. For us this was pretty much no pain (South Florida traffic can be a pain): I-75 south to the Sunshine State Parkway, off in Ft. Lauderdale and a short distance to the terminal. To me, it was key that we not get caught in the Friday afternoon rush traffic. This means getting to where we were going before 3:00. We left one day before the cruise was to embark. This gave us plenty of time for unexpected delays. I found the hotels north of Ft. Lauderdale, i.e. Pompano, Boca Raton to be better in price than those around the cruise terminal. We opted for the Marriott Courtyard in Boca. A very clean three star property. Breakfast available for $12.95 . A short drive to other restaurants serving breakfast. Less than an hour to the cruise terminal in moderate traffic It's South Florida, so if you hotel be sure and take your cruise luggage out of your car. If you have the kind of GPS with a suction cup to stick to your windshield, take the GPS too. Wipe the windshield to remove any mark left by the suction cup. They've been breaking into cars with the telltale suction cup mark looking for the GPS. Wanting to save a few bucks I chose a cut rate car park near the airport, less than 15 minutes from the cruise terminal. This place was Quality Car Park and Auto Rental at 500 NE 32 Ct. in Lauderdale. The $8.00 a day rate was not worth it. Despite their claim that our car would be parked in a fenced area it was actually parked in an unfenced, unguarded area right next to the road in a questionable part of town.