We spent our 14th cruise on Island Princess, cruising from Ft. Lauderdale to LA. This was a repositioning cruise that would continue on to Vancouver and then start the summer cruises of Alaska. This was our second cruise with Princess. We've cruise on RCL, HAL, Celebrity, Carnival and on a now defunct cruise line. I've added this comment so that you will know I am not a cheerleader, nor have I left any of these lines because we were unhappy. We book for itinerary, price and date. That has given us a lot more flexibility to get the best cruise for the best price.

Overall, we were happy with this cruise.

We always fly down a day early. For this cruise, we debated it back and forth. There are tons of flights from NJ to FL and it was April 23rd. I didn't think the weather in April would be a factor. However, DH prevailed. He wanted to start the vacation a day early, relaxed. I got a tip from the Cruise Critics FL departure boards and I booked the Hyatt Pier 66 resort for $109 a night. No bidding. This was a special on one of the travel websites that constantly sends me email. They did not have a shuttle, but DH does not like the group shuttles anyway. So with a $20 taxi from the airport and another $10 to the port, we figured we did pretty well. We arrived at the hotel at about 3 and after taking our luggage to the room, we took a long walk around the facilities. If we had gotten there earlier there is a hop on hop off ferry that stops at the hotel. However, it was a one day pass, not a 24 hour pass and since it was already late, we decided not to take the boat transportation. There were several restaurants on the property, but there were limited choices and nothing to our liking. So after a few hours of sitting in comfortable loungers and reading by the beautiful pool we took off for a 1 mile walk over the bridge to the restaurant we had chosen by looking at the concergier's restaurant menu book. We were able to find a suitable, reasonably priced Italian restaurant. It was a lovely walk. We made a few stops on the way back, including a gas station/convenience store across from the hotel where we picked up a few bottles of water. Read more