talkorpi

I don’t expect anything nor do I really WANT to be compensated. Not the crews fault AT ALL. I just didn’t want to walk around the ship with someone else’s luggage and wanted Guest Services to handle it. They just removed it and will check for identification. Verified that this is in fact my cabin and the other guest must have misplaced the luggage when cabins were not yet ready. Our steward will have to come fix the mini bar because some items were taken. No big deal to me either. Just a rather comical start 😂

Already off to a weird start. We walked into our cabin and found that someone’s stuff was already all over the place. Suitcases, purses, jackets all over the furniture and mini bar already had items taken and placed throughout the cabin. I guess someone came in here when the rooms were not ready and open for the stewards to clean and went in the wrong cabin? Finally got a hold of guest services and they’re sending someone up to figure out what to do. What a way to start the cruise… lol! 😂

Got our specialty dining reserved very easily. Sabatini’s tonight and The Catch tomorrow. MDR for the rest of the cruise after that. Muster is finished and we are ready to go. Of course the cabins aren’t ready because we got onboard so fast - not a problem at all. We are allegedly on a sold out sailing. I’ll try to find the full passenger count a little later and also take photos of the officer board for those who are interested. Felt a little too early to have a dirty banana so I just got a basic rum and coke… let’s get this vacation started!

On board before 11 AM. So fast! Enchanted Princess is such a beautiful ship!

GOOD MORNING!!! ☀️🌊😁

Scenes from last night. Other images are all black. Trying to compress them and will post when I am able to

Good morning and happy embarkation day! We had a great evening yesterday. I was going to post last night, but we had been up since 2:30 AM central time so we fell asleep as soon as we got back to the hotel. The Riverside Hotel is perfect - great location. Right on Las Olas Boulevard and also is its own Water Taxi stop. The walk along the river walk is beautiful. The hotel is one of the oldest in Ft. Lauderdale - very quiet, has a lot of charm, and a great little complex with a great deck on the roof to look over the city. Plus, they’re about to do a complete renovation to make it even classier. Managed to get water taxi tickets at 5:00 and spent the evening doing a water taxi tour. Y’all, I did not realize how much wealth there is in this area. 100+ million dollar homes, yachts EVERYWHERE… If you’re from Texas and know where Port Aransas is, this place makes that look like a slum! 😵‍💫 Had an incredible late dinner at the 15th Street Fisheries. Some of the biggest shrimp we have ever seen, and had some sort of seafood skillet thing that had an amazing sauce. Oh my gosh, what a great way to start the trip - 10/10 recommend. Heading to the port at the top of the hour. Another beautiful day here in South Florida. Excited to get onboard soon! Also, for some reason, like 2/3 of my photos won’t attach… not sure what is going on but they’re all just black screens. Will try again in a separate post.

Walked down Las Olas boulevard. Very nice shops but not exactly in my price range. It’s a beautiful day - 70° and not a cloud in sight! Getting some lunch at our hotel (Riverside Hotel) while we wait to check in. Fun story about the hotels - when I was booking our room for the night before, everything was so incredibly expensive. Like $700-1200 a night average price. I finally found a room at the Riverside Hotel for less than $250 on a third party site and thankfully when I checked in it was legitimate. Turns out, there’s a massive three-day music festival called Tortuga going on. The entire town is practically shut down for it and hotels are so expensive as a result. I’m glad I booked a flight and hotel early! Trying to do the water taxi this afternoon but I have gotten conflicting information - they told me it’s closed and being used as a shuttle for the festival but my hotel said they told them they are operating as normal. I guess we will find out in an hour or two…

Just made it to the Ft. Lauderdale airport. Holy cow, this place is a MADHOUSE. They also lost my baggage at the airport so it took a while to get that sorted out. But at least we made it to Florida! Regal Princess, Disney Dream, Jewel OTS, Liberty OTS, and Oosterdam are all in port today. Even with my dirty plane window, still feel like I got a good picture!

So I just checked my Princess app and a reservation at The Catch is showing for the first formal night??? Neither my mom nor I made the reservation so I have no clue why it is there. Guess I will ask once we are onboard. Weird

Looks like the picture isn’t loading. But it’s just the airport, y’all aren’t missing much

Good (early) morning from the airport!

Hope you had an excellent time! Keep the ship in good shape for us 🙂

LUCKY YOU! Dang! I turned platinum on this cruise so I’m wondering what this “priority embarkation” will end up looking like. My guess: not much…

Time to start packing. Ugh… I hate packing because I never know how much to bring. I feel like I always end up overpacking in hindsight, but when I’m putting stuff in my suitcase, it never feels like I have enough stuff!

The "announcement" also mentions new sailings from New York City. That's why I speculate they could add Bermuda sailings (separate from the Florida announcement). If they do, I will jump on them so fast!

Initial thoughts (from least to most likely) are: - Updates to Princess Cays - Adding homeport in Tampa - Updates to Port Everglades terminal - Year-round shorter cruises - BERMUDA I'll admit that the last one is probably a stretch, but it's what I want to see the most! Too bad I can't attend the webinar since I will be on an airplane at the time.

Well, I'm a week away from sailaway so I think it's time to start up the live thread! This will be a MUCH-needed getaway for me. If you haven't followed along before, I'm talkorpi, a 60 year old trapped in the body of a 23 year old. I have a huge interest in ships and boats, used to run a cringy cruise-themed Instagram account, and still have dreams of working in the industry someday. Now that I have recently graduated college, I am trying to take at least one cruise a year for sanity's sake... being an adult isn't easy!!! I mainly sailed Carnival when I was in school with my family, but once I tried Princess I made the switch and never looked back (even though my first Princess cruise was kind of a disaster... check my signature for that live thread). Booked this sailing because I have always wanted to do the 10-day longer Caribbean sailings, but those didn't work price-wise or time-wise. HOWEVER, I found a great deal on this week-long trip and I am very excited. I'll get around to that longer cruise eventually! I've never cruised from South Florida before so even though Princess Cays, San Juan, and St. Thomas are pretty standard ports, they're all brand new to me. Considering that our call in San Juan is 13 hours long, I am SO excited to see as much as possible! Medallions are in hand, ducks are tagged, and boarding passes are printed out. Now if I can just motivate myself to pack, then we are 100% READY TO GO! Hope you follow along for the week!

Hi everyone. Never cruised with NCL before and wondering when we can expect summer cruises to go on sale for 2026. I would expect them to release in the next couple of weeks/months but not sure as I have never cruised NCL before. I know POA is on sale through the year but we are interested in a Bermuda sailing and all itineraries aside from Hawaii end at April 2026. Any guesses when they’ll release the next block of sailings for later in the year? Thanks everyone!

Okay, thanks y’all. We usually sail Princess but wanted to try Bermuda on NCL. I’ll ask over there.

Anyone know when lines will start opening up sailings past April 2026? Trying to plan a special occasion cruise for late May / early June and wondering when I’ll be able to start browsing. Not sure what month lines typically release their summer schedules for two years out. Thanks!

Only for passengers in certain cabana staterooms if I recall correctly.

Ahh! What a cruise that was. Hope you've had better luck since we were onboard that cursed sailing!

Thanks for the review @bethfelk! I'm also considered somewhat of an infant on this app since I am only 23... we are definitely a rarity here sometimes! Loved this review as I sailed Ruby out of Galveston last year and I am considering booking the Regal's NYE cruise this year... thanks for sharing your experiences!

Ugh. Princess. Your Galveston offering SUCKS! If you want to be competitive here, you need to offer a DIFFERENT itinerary than the same one that CCL & RC have been doing for years. There are basically zero ships that sail to Grand Cayman and Jamaica from Galveston anymore. Why Princess isn't capitalizing on this market gap I have no idea as Regal isn't too big for tender ports. I have no idea why they don't put Regal doing a 6/8/7 schedule: - 6 Day to Mahogany Bay, Cozumel, and Costa Maya - 8 Day to Key West, Princess Cays, and either Grand Turk or Nassau&Freeport - 7 Day to Falmouth/Montego Bay, Grand Cayman, and Cozumel The same freaking Cozumel/Mahogany Bay/Costa Maya itinerary that happens every single week is getting so old. Princess needs to compete on the itinerary from Galveston, not on the ship. Ugh. Guess I will have to fly to Fort Lauderdale to get something different!