Nights Before: Night 1 was at the Cocobelle. It was great as always. Night 2 was at Mariott Harbor Beach. This place was excellent and very close to the port.

Embarkation: Our recent Emerald Princess cruise (our 5th cruise and 3rd on Princess in 3 years) (9/12/10 - 9/19/10) was excellent. We are two 31 year olds, married with no kids. We brought along our two 31 year old married friends as well. We planned months in advance to get in line at Port Everglades at exactly 10am. This would ensure that we would be one of the very first non-platinum, non-elite cruisers to enter the ship when the doors opened. We left our hotel room at 8am on Sunday morning to get our bags and my wife to the rental car terminal, to pick up our friends at their hotel, to drop off the car at the rental car terminal and then to make it to Port Everglades at 10. We succeeded! We were the 10, 1, 12, 13th person in line with a purple card #1 in the terminal. We were excited.

So here we are, 12pm on Sunday the 12th of September. Group 1 is called. We rush through the gates and get our boarding passes. We go up the escalator and bypass the boarding photo area, scan our cards and calmly but quickly walk to the sanctuary. We get there and there are 2 in line in front of us. Ok, no big deal. As we look around, many of the Sanctuary seats are already filled with people in their bathing suits. We were in the first 15 people on the ship and took 10 minutes to get from the waiting area all the way to the Sanctuary. So, we stood there thinking, ok, no big deal. Then, the first person in line walks away and the attendant says to the person (married couple with Elite status) in front of me "I'm sorry folks, but the weekly passes are sold out." WHAT???? We planned everything perfectly and were one of the first on the ship. How could this happen? If this wasn't bad enough, the attendant kept repeating himself. He just kept saying that all of the passes were sold and we could come back at 8 am each day. I did the 8am thing each day the last two times. I actually did the 6am thing because I wanted to ensure my wife had a seat. Every day we were somewhat uneasy about the following day and whether or not we would get the pass. Read more