JamieLogical

Oh for sure I would not recommend walking to the terminal if you weren't physically capable or had a ton of luggage. We both just had one carry-on sized roller bag and one backpack each. Our roller bags are the spinner type that roll easily.

I have seen several (including and upside down pineapple!) on our deck! Our own cabin door has a Canadian maple leaf "stain" on it? Like maybe someone put a sticker on there that didn't completely come off?

You can purchase Princess gift cards from AARP rewards in $500 and $100 increments for an 8% discount. So a $100 gift card costs $92. You can then use those gift cards to pay or cruise fare balances or apply them as OBC to your folio onboard. They are electronic gift cards that are delivered to your email have a unique number and PIN. Printing them out is essential if you are using them onboard because the guest services person needs to enter that long unique number and PIN in order to cash them in. There isn't a simple bar code or QR code that they can scan.

So for anyone who hasn't followed my previous Live Blogs, this is usually how they work once I am onboard. I will make one text post and one photo post each morning with the full report/photos from the previous day. The text post will be in all bold because I work in Google Docs and when I copy/paste into CC, it always comes out bold. If I try to paste as plain text or paste into Notepad first and then copy/paste into CC, I lose all of my line breaks. So you will just have to deal with the bolded text. I will also try to remember to post my drinks log at the end of each text post. So, without further ado, here is my report from yesterday: Yesterday was embarkation day. I already posted a bit about the experience, but I will briefly recap the stuff I posted about. Woke up early yesterday morning, both anxious for our cruise. As I explained, the lighting in the bathroom was basically non-existent. Every time I walked in there, I reached for the light switch to turn on the lights only to remember they were already on. There was a light built into the edges of the mirror that was about as bright as a standard night light and that was it. So, when I went to attempt my shower, I played around with trying to add light with my cell phone flashlight. Pointing it at the mirror was not effective, but pointing it into the front of the shower from the top of the toilet, propped up by the tissue box, did add a bit of light. It turned out that the lighting was the least of our problems as the water pressure and temperature were completely unpredictable. I was at least able to complete my shower and just deal with the fluctuations, but by the time my husband was trying to take his shower, the issue was much worse. The water pressure went down to near zero to where it was less than a little trickle and then when the water pressure strengthened for any amount of time, the water was scalding hot. He was trapped, because he had already gotten wet, so he tried to persevere, but every time he did something like soap up or put shampoo or conditioner in his hair, he would just have to wait for the water pressure to pick up and get scalded as he rinsed himself. His whole shower took about 45 minutes instead of the usual 15. Turns out we weren’t the only ones with these issues as everyone was complaining about them at breakfast. They clearly need to upgrade their plumbing system to function when you have dozens of people all showering at the same time. We had decided we were going to leave for the pier at 9:40 because Google said it was a 16-minute walk and we had to check out. After we checked out, we pulled out our phones to check the route on Google Maps and the guy working at the desk overheard us and volunteered that we could not walk to the pier. This was counter to everything I had read online about terminal 2, so I ignored him and we proceeded to walk anyway. I think he was partially correct because there were three ships in port yesterday. Two of them were docked inside the secure area where you would have to pass through the security gate in a car. But terminal 2 is before the security gate (as I had already learned in my online research), so you could walk directly to it. So depending on the ship, you may not have been able to walk. I wouldn’t have wanted to walk anyway if I were docked on one of the other ships, as it is a MUCH longer walk to those terminals. It took us pretty much exactly the promised 16 minutes to get in the line after dropping our bags with the porters who we passed on the way to join the line. There was quite a long line outside. There were signs all over that said doors opened at 10:15, even though our boarding passes said 10:00. But the doors had clearly opened before 10:15, because we were already through the long outdoor line and into the terminal at 10:15. As I described yesterday, security was a pain, especially when they pulled everything out of my backpack which I had very carefully packed tetris-style in order to squeeze everything into it. Trying to get all that stuff back into it without holding up the entire line even longer was very stressful. Once through security, we got in the green lane and moved quickly. The blue lane was short and it looked like had you needed to pick up your medallion, you wouldn’t have needed to wait long either. We were surprised that we were then able to just walk right onto the ship since the green lane people made it sound like we would have to wait to board once we got through that area. I guess they didn’t know boarding had already started? We walked onboard at 10:33. First stop was Good Spirits where we had our first drinks of the cruise, mojitos. We were given a slip of paper in the green lane that listed what venues were open for lunch. The options were Amalfi Dining Room, Salty Dog Grill, International Cafe, Gigi’s, and the buffet. We watched out safety videos on our phones and came up with a plan for lunch. We would try Gigi’s first since we have Princess Premier and it would be free. But if that was too packed and we would have to wait for a table, we would run by our muster station (the theater) and then up to the buffet. Gigi’s was not packed and we had no issue getting a table. I am sorry that I forgot to take a picture of the menu. We ordered champagne from their limited drink menu. Why not? We had Princess Premier! For lunch my husband had the ravioli, which was veal and parmesan ravioli in a veal sage sauce. He said it tasted like Thanksgiving. He clearly didn’t know what to make of it at first, being such a non-traditional Italian/pasta dish, but he decided he really liked it. I got a pepperoni pizza, which was huge. I literally only ate ¼ of it. Now we know to share! We did share the antipasti appetizer and the dessert. We had the Tiramisu and it was funny because both of us were so stuffed already, we said we would each only take two bites, but it was so good that we ended up eating the entire thing! While we were at lunch, they announced that our rooms were ready, so we headed to our muster station to quickly tap our medallions and them up to our room. As I had posted before when we got our room assignment, we are in one of the forward-facing mini-suites on deck 15. These are not the Reserve Class mini-suites on the corners with the GIANT wrap-around balconies, but they are still pretty cool. The room is basically square, instead of long and skinny. We have a crazy amount of storage space. Kind of a laughably abundant amount for a 7-day cruise. It would be great for a 21-day cruise! Usually, my first step on any cruise is to write a note for our room steward to bring extra hangers, an extra towel, and empty the minifridge. In this case, the minifridge was already empty and we had plenty of hangers, so I just needed an extra towel. I remembered that you could order extra towels through the app, so that is what I did. We had decided we would go deal with our Guest Services issues and then go up on deck and find a spot for drinks and sailaway. We got about halfway down the hall between our room and the forward elevator when my husband changed his mind and decided that he wanted a nap before sailaway, so I proceeded to guest services on my own. I had two tasks I wanted to accomplish at guest services. First, we had booked our Crown Grill reservation online before we had upgraded to Princess Premier, so we had been charged $78 to my credit card. After upgrading to Premier, I was told that could be refunded to our folio as OBC once onboard, so I wanted to get that sorted out. Secondly, I had bought some AARP gift cards that I wanted to add to our account for my casino-ing. As expected, the line was pretty long with it being embarkation day. A lot of people whose medallions weren’t working and a lot of people who couldn’t get connected to the wifi or figure out how to use the app. The line moved decently quickly. I got up to the desk and was able to get my dinner charge sorted without *too* much trouble though it did take longer and FAR more mouse clicks and keystrokes than it should have. However, when I asked about the gift cards, the girl helping me pointed me to another woman and said she was the only one who could process gift cards, so she sent me over to wait in line directly behind the folks that woman was currently helping instead of back to the main line. The two people ahead of me, who I believe were a father and daughter traveling in two separate cabins, were the bane of my existence. They each had multiple gift cards (woman had 6 or so and the man had 4) with random balances remaining on them and they had NONE of them printed out. They were having to search for them in their email on their phones and forward them to this woman, who was then having to receive the forwarded emails and print them out herself. The man clearly had forgotten his reading glasses as he was struggling to see and navigate his emails to find his gift cards. And, of course, both of them accidentally forwarded the same email more than once (because the emails all look the same) or didn’t forward one they thought they had. The entire process for them too over 40 minutes and they were already there when I got there, so I have no idea how long they were there in total. It was completely insane. I don’t know why you would come so completely unprepared and expect the poor Princess employee to jump through so many hoops to accommodate you. The poor employee was as patient as a saint, but she was getting paid to be, meanwhile, I was PAYING to be there so I was MUCH less saintly. The worst was when she looked at me and apologized for the 8th time and motioned two me that she only had one more left to process and then the daughter found another gift card in her email and they had to do a whole other one on her account after they had already switched to her father’s account. Finally, it was my turn and my three printed gift cards took 7 minutes to process from start to finish. People, have some consideration! Don’t waste everyone’s time by coming unprepared and if you expect guest services to spend 40+ minutes helping you, maybe don’t go there during the busiest time on embarkation day! Princes, let more than one of your guest services people have access to the system(s) required to process gift cards! By the time I was done at guest services, it had been a full hour since my husband went back for his nap. Oh, I forgot to mention, I had ordered a bottle of water from the app while I was in the initial guest services line, and in all that time, it had not been delivered. I headed to the International Cafe for some afternoon coffee and called my husband telling him that if he wanted coffee before sailaway, now was the time. He said he would head down, so I ordered him coffee as well. We drank our coffee and listened to the singer performing in the piazza and then we headed up to deck 17 to see if we could get a spot for sailaway. Still no water delivery, btw. I wanted to go to the seating area above the Wake View bar, but it was already packed and smokey, so we went down one level and found a shaded table off the back of the buffet. I learned that when the room steward had come to deliver my bath towel I had ordered through the app, he opened the door, saw my husband sleeping, apologized, and left without dropping off the towel, even though the app said it was delivered. So, I ordered another towel through the app, but it got combined with my existing water order, despite having specified I wanted the water delivered to my location and the towel delivered to my room. I got us a round of Rum & Cokes and we sat and relaxed. I overheard a group of guys talking to one of the staff about ordering the drink package. One asked how to track how many drinks you had already had for the day and the crew member just said to ask a bartender, so I butted in and showed them how you could track it on the app. It was at this point that I realized I had already had 9/15 drinks charged to my account (this was 3:00pm) and my husband only had 1. I totaled up the amount of drinks we had had between us and it was only 9, so somehow we had one extra charge and ALL of the drinks we had ordered were on my account. I told my husband that drinks were on him for the rest of the day. So, he ordered us another round of Cuba Libres through the app. For once the delivery through the app was very quick, but unfortunately, the drinks were awful. I don’t know what they did wrong, but they were undrinkable, so my husband ended up taking them back up to the bar and exchanging them. We enjoyed the sailaway for a good while and then we headed back to our room. My water/towel order showed as delivered at this point, btw. Back at our room, our bags were waiting for us, which was great because I had hoped to be able to change before our 5:20 Crown Grill reservation. There was indeed a bottle of water waiting for me in the room, but still no towel. This time, my husband decided to try to order a towel. We got unpacked, hung out for a bit, and then changed for dinner and headed out for dinner. Dinner was a nice pace. We both ordered a Bee’s Knees for our drink. For our meals I had the black & blue onion soup and the garlic shrimp dish. My husband had the lobster cake, the ribeye, a baked potato, and asparagus. We shared the mousse for dessert, but despite there being no mention of nuts in the description, I definitely tasted something nutty in there, so didn’t eat much of it. My dad called while we were at dinner which was a bit awkward timing-wise. He had run a 5k race earlier in the day and was proud and wanted to tell me about it. He’s 82, so that is definitely something to be proud of. After dinner, we hung out in the chairs outside of the crown grill for a bit to people-watch and then we went out on the promenade to watch the sunset. It was very very nice. We then headed in and over to Princess Live where there was going to be Star Wars trivia for May the 4th. My husband tried ordering drinks through the app again and they came quickly again, but once again, mine was undrinkable. I had ordered a white Russian and I have no idea what I actually received. I took it up to the bar and found out that it had been made with whipping cream? I then asked the bartender to make me something slightly different and she made me a vodka and Bailey’s and called it a Milky Way martini? Oh well. It was drinkable at least, even though a little Kahlua would have turned it into a blind Russian, which is one of my favorites. Trivia had already started and I was in a hurry. After trivia, we headed back to our room to see if my towel had been delivered. Once again, despite saying so in the app, it had not. There were three housekeeping carts in the halls near our room with stacks of towels on them and I was tempted to just snag one, but instead, I just loitered until one of the room stewards (not ours) emerged and I could ask for a towel. Finally, I had my towel! My husband and I agreed to meet outside the theater at 9:15 for the comedy show and I headed to the casino for a bit. I was actually up a bit by the time I needed to meet my husband. I am glad we got there and got seats before the show started because the comedians were brutal to the latecomers. The show was pretty funny. Not the best, certainly, but not the worst. After the show my husband headed back to the room and I decided to go back to the casino for a bit. I had hoped to acquire a drink, but there is no bar in the casino on the Enchanted. There were some roaming servers who seemed to have trained specifically in avoiding eye contact with me and generally ignoring my existence, so I stupidly tried to order a drink through the app again. When I gamble, I always have a low and high number that I intend to stop at if I get to it. I got to my first low number and should have just cashed out, but my drink still just showed preparing, so I kept playing. This continued for some time and I finally did cash out and stop playing and just sat awkwardly in the casino waiting for my drink. I really just wanted to go to bed at this point, but once your order is in “preparing,” you can no longer cancel it. This is an excellent strategy for forcing people to stay in the casino and keep gambling! I started a chat with customer service through the app to see if they could cancel my order (it had been 40 minutes since I placed it at this point), but they didn't respond very quickly and I ended up just giving up and going back to my room. At some point, after I was back in my room and getting ready for bed, customer service responded telling me that *I* could cancel the order through the app. I explained that I couldn’t because it was “preparing” and then I had to wait a long while for another response but they did eventually say they would cancel the order. I think I am done with ordering through the app now. I have survived 22 other cruises by fetching drinks for myself, so I will just return to that. I like the *idea* of the app, but it just doesn’t work the way it should. If my drink order is going to be in “preparing” for over an hour, I should be able to cancel it if I want to move on. How it takes hours to “prepare” a bottle of water is a mystery as well. Overall, it was a good day. Embarkation was pretty smooth, we like our stateroom, meals at Gigi’s and Crown Grill were good, trivia and the comedy show were fun… I am looking forward to a relaxing sea day today. Day's Drinks: 1x Mojito from Good Spirits 2x Champagne from Gigi's 1x Bailey's from Good Spirits 1x Rum & Coke from Wake View 1x Cuba Libre from Wake View 1x Bee’s Knees from Crown Grill 1x Milkyway Martini from Princess Live

Does Celebrity not do twice daily cabin service anymore?!?!

I tried that first but the mirror was far enough away from the shower that it was more effective to point the flashlight into the shower.

Did you have a working shower? When we went to breakfast, several other people ahead of and behind us in line were also complaining about the shower and the lighting situation in the bathrooms.

Holiday Inn Express Ft. Lauderdale Cruise-Airport 1500 SE 17th Causeway Fort Lauderdale FL 33316 US

We are on the ship! Left our hotel at 9:40 to walk to the terminal, despite the front desk at the hotel insisting we weren't allowed to walk. Since we are at Terminal 2, we are before the security gate that cars have to drive through, so it was no issue at all just to walk right up. There was a pretty mighty line outside and it took us exactly 15 minutes to get through that and make our way inside. Then we had to wait in a VERY slow-moving line to get through security, which included them digging through my WAY overstuffed backpack to get to the bottom just to pull out an EU power adapter and realize it was not a security threat afterall. That all took about another 15 minutes and then we got in the green lane line and through that very quickly to walk onto the ship at 10:33.

We aren't in one of those L shaped ones on the corner. We are one cabin in from those.

Forgot to mention the towels! They only gave us two and they were about the size of the ones they usually give you to use as a bath mat.

We may do trivia. If you wear a woman with glasses and purple hair with a man with grey hair and a beard, that is probably us! Will give you a call onboard about coming to scope out your bathroom.

DO NOT recommend the Holiday Inn Express Ft. Lauderdale Cruise-Airport. The location sucked us in, being within walking distance of Terminal 2, but the hotel is terrible. One of the lights doesn't work, furniture is in rough shape, but the bathroom situation is insane. The only light is the super dim led lighting built into the mirror. It has about the same level of illuminati as a night light. Fine for using the toilet at night, but showering and shaving is a real challenge. I tried propping up our cell phone flashlights to shine towards the shower, but that didn't help much. The shower door made a sound like a dying walrus when opening and closing. But the worst issue was the water in the shower. It just randomly fluctuates from freezing to scalding and the water pressure went from basically no water at all to maybe a light spring drizzle. It particular favored the no water at all mode as my husband was trying to wash his hair. There was a lot of cursing and yelling coming from the bathroom.

Landed safely in FLL only a few minutes late instead of the full hour we were originally delayed. In the Lyft to our hotel now. See you tomorrow!