Travel to Fort Lauderdale for we Southern Californians is always tiring at start and end of any cruise. 2-hour drive to LAX, 2 hours there plus the redeye flight. This time we flew on Jet Blue and paid the fee for Extra Legroom seats, well worthwhile, and considered the flight much better than on Virgin America returning. Arrived at FLL early a.m., rented a car and drove to Roberts Restaurant, Dania Beach, a short way south of airport. Stocked up on water and soft drinks for cruise at Publix, took a brief nap and went to return car. Usually we rent from National which offers the convenience of a shuttle to cruise port after car drop-off but this time we had a Budget car and discovered for a ride to cruise port we needed to drop off closer to latter. When we got to that point, we learned that last shuttle left at 1 pm so we had to get a taxi.

We boarded Royal Princess about 2 pm. Very smooth procedure, no crowds.

The cruise itself was a pleasant surprise. It was our first one on the Royal Princess after about 20 on other Princess ships. After Carnival Cruise Lines took over Princess and several other lines, we found things to be not as they were and we became jaded. This winter, however, we were in the mood to cruise to decided to try the new Royal Princess. Princess Kate christened this one in 2013 and we found it to be a vast improvement over the older Princess ships; it is very large and holds about 3500 passengers plus crew. We were concerned that getting off and on in the ports might be slow but it went very quickly. We prefer to eat meals in the buffet although these have seemed marginal..Not so on RP. Huge selection of foods. I never knew there are so many breakfast foods, all very good. No soy milk only regular, tho, so I had to pass on cereal, my normal first meal of day, and chose eggs, hash browns and delicious fresh baked croissants instead. My husband added bacon and sausages to his plate and there were even English-style sausages in addition to the American. Lunch ran from 1130 to 330 with again a variety of offerings. From 330 to 630 was what was termed light refreshments which usually had sandwiches, Mexican food and some items similar to lunch. Dinner ran from 630 to appx 1130 and the chef would trot out foods from various countries, I.e. one nite it was German, another Mongolian, then Brazilian. None of those are to our taste but one section would have normal dishes. Desserts were found in the Pastry Shop. Read more