Star Princess- Transatlantic repositioning cruise- Venice to Ft Lauderdale, Oct, 2004 (17 day cruise) (Note- ship was fully booked)

Embarkation & Disembarkation -- Boarding & Ships departure from Venice -- Excellent. No line ups. Excellent commentary over the ships loud speaker system describing the sites as we cruised down the Grand Canal and out to sea = a memorable experience.

Disembarkation -- Disembarking 2600 plus passengers is going to be a delay. They try to minimize the discomfort by allocating baggage tags with different disembarkation times. We had arranged early departure and were given red #3 baggage tags. Procedure -- Directions were to wait on Deck 7, but deck does not have sufficient public areas resulting in people standing and sitting on the floor. We avoided by waiting and relaxing in the public area on Deck 14. Disembarkation in Ft. Lauderdale was a smooth procedure where we were quickly processed thru Princess exit machine using security card they provide you on Embarkation followed by swift processing thru immigration and then directed to waiting luggage. NOTE: They never checked our departure luggage tags to ensure we were getting off the ship when we should be; and all luggage appeared to be on dock. Read more