We had been happily anticipating our 10 Day Southern Caribbean Cruise, scheduled for March 27th on the Crown Princess. We had an entire year to look forward to it. We did do a 7 day Eastern over Thanksgiving, however, to break up the wait. You may be wondering why I mentioned this, well, you will soon find out just how this played into our cruise story.
FLIGHTS:
We booked our flights through Southwest, as we really like them. We wanted a direct flight from St Louis, as we needed to fly in the day of the cruise. I know, I know, this can be a problem and we don’t like to do it this way, but we both needed to work on Tuesday, so we didn’t have any other option. Our flight was scheduled to get in at 9:30am, so we had plenty of time in case there were delays. On the Friday before we were scheduled to leave, I was sitting in a work meeting and I received a text from Southwest that our flight was cancelled. Due to the grounding of the 737 Max 8 planes, our plane was rerouted and our flight cancelled. Panic immediately set in! I looked on the app for a different flight, but nothing was showing up that would work, except going in early the day before, which meant taking another day off of work, which was going to be a real hassle. I got on the phone with Southwest (only a 9 minute wait for call back, not bad!) and the rep was wonderful. I explained our dilemma and he put us on a flight that left St Louis at 5:30am going through Orlando. We would be in Orlando by 9, so if there was a problem with our connection, we could rent a car and drive to Ft. Lauderdale. Thankfully, all flights went on schedule and we arrived in Ft Lauderdale by 11:30am. A quick Uber to the port and we would be on the ship!
We booked a BF Guarantee and were upgraded to a BA Balcony on Caribe Deck. The cabin is in a great location and fit our needs. It's big enough for the 2 of us and there was ample storage. Removing the chair made for extra room. The balcony is half covered/half sun.
Went to Megan's Bay for the day. Great beach