This was our 3rd time on the FOS and was unlike any cruise that we had ever experienced. If not for the dedication of the RCCL employees that we had on our side when we encountered a bad situation for the 1st time on any of our previous 11 cruises (3 with Celebrity and 8 with RCCL)…..this review could have been much less fun to write.

We drove down to Port Saint Lucie from Greenville on Saturday, December 17, staying at a very nice Residence Inn. It was a short drive down to Fort Lauderdale for embarkation on Sunday the 18th. This is my least favorite Port to board a ship when driving. The parking garage when leaving from berth 29 is a royal pain in the rear, even more so on the day when you leave the ship (more about that later).

We arrived about 11:30am, found short lines to enter the port area, meandered through the area in our vehicle to berth 29 and dropped off our luggage with port personnel. We then meandered back through the port area in our vehicle to the parking garage finally finding a space on level 5. We made our way out of the garage, caught a shuttle bus over to the dock and got into the security scanning line prior to entering the check-in area. The security line moved rather quickly and was relatively short. We proceeded to the check-in line for Crown and Anchor Platinum status members and were boarding the ship in about 10 minutes or so from when we entered the line (skipping the photographers in the process). We were happily on the ship by noon. Read more