I took the Ruby Princess to the Western Caribbean on January 31st and what a wonderful week I had. With one of us flying in from Boston and the other from Indiana we went down a day early just to give us plenty of time to get to Florida if there was any snow in either city. Luckily all went well and we were both there on time. We spent the night at the Seminole Hard Rock in Hollywood which I have stayed at several times before and really enjoy. There we met a couple from Cruise Critic for lunch which we had arranged ahead of time and we hit it off so well that we ended up spending the day together and having dinner there as well. Actually we spent the majority of our week aboard together and I already miss them.
Saturday we got to the ship at 11:40am and being platinum with Princess we were able to board right away. There weren't any lines at all seeing how they were in between calling numbers for the next group. But to anyone else who is taking this cruise; before we told the people outside in the line that we were platinum we were given number 24 as a group number for boarding the ship. After we had checked in and gotten our cruise cards/keys we heard them call out group #2 - so we would have had a VERY long wait. If you are not big on lines or sitting around then you would probably be better off to show up later in the afternoon.
I had previously sailed on the Crown Princess and the Ruby is laid out exactly the same so from the minute I was onboard I knew where everything was. We went right away to sign up for the Ultimate Ship's Tour and were the first two on the list. But we were told that it was now being done by a lottery system and we would find out later in the week if we were picked. Luckily for us we did get chosen - I believe we got our letter telling us that we had been and when it was on Tuesday. For those of you who are sun-worshippers this tour is done only on days at sea and it's in the middle of the day so it would cut into your tanning time. For our cruise the weather wasn't the best so it turned out just fine that we had the tour from 2:00 - 5:00 that day.
Nice midship location. No elevator noise at all. Typical Princess mini-suite.