harryfat1

I’m curious on what is the earliest check-in time people have received for Port Everglades. Has anyone gotten the 10:30 or 11 AM check-in time? Do they even exist for the regular cruisers without the suites or other paid perks? Without getting too far ahead in the trip report, when we disembarked on 12/31 (the same day you guys are coming on board), we got off at 9:30 and I head security said there were still 100+ people remaining on board that needed to get off so there’s a limit on how early the people can get on the ship while waiting for cruisers to get off. Terminal 18 at Port Everglades is huge as it was designed to seat passengers on an Oasis-class ship. As such, they can afford to let in people ASAP and just have them wait in the large waiting area. Whereas some other ports like San Pedro have at max 200 seats inside so they are very strict on enforcement of the check-in time.

Yeah, I would imagine a 50-pound hard-sided suitcase falling 20 feet and smacking into people below can cause some injuries. Good safety measure. Oh, Princess Cruise. Which ship and what itinerary? We were on the Majestic Princess to Alaska in 2022. Nice cruise with better food than RCI but the entertainment was nonexistent. We were bored to tears on our sailing at nighttime. Princess has the medallion concept instead of a regular sea pass. The sensor at the door will recognize who you are when you are about 6 feet from the door and your picture will show up on the screen of your door and the door will automatically unlock for you. Very convenient if you are holding drinks or food in your hands. If your picture is really old, people walking by will think you are breaking into someone else’s cabin My favorite joke on the difference between Princess and RCI cruises is the dance parties. Whereas RCI has the 70s and 80s parties on the Royal Promenade (or 270) whereas the Princess has 70s and 80s parties at their atrium as well – except they meant the people dancing are in their 70s and 80s… Princess dance party RCI dance party Yeah, for my kids, it’s a no-brainer to be on RCI instead of Princess

Actually, we bought a photo package from a previous Black Friday sale. I will talk more about the package once we are on board. Here’s our onboard picture as my wife bought a photo frame to mount the boarding photo. Since my wife and I are both Finance people, we think differently about our uage of money. Without getting too much into “accounting talk” where I would lose half of the readers, when we use money, we like to buy “assets” instead of spending it for temporary satisfaction. For us, getting photos is a long-term asset that we will treasure forever. So we spend money on photo packages for long-term satisfaction. We are not anywhere close to the Diamond level so we don’t have the perks of the photo and drinks on our cruises. Maybe someday after I retire and have more free time to vacation, then we can get to a higher tier. But with my luck, by then my doctor will tell me I’m too old and need to cut back on the alcohol consumption…

Haha, no, not boarding the ship just yet. We are just sitting down and waiting at the cruise terminal. You should know by now the time warp difference between cruise reporting time and actual reality time when I upload the next set of photos. Just a tad more to go. These rideshare apps are useful to have an idea of the cost of the ride before leaving home so you can judge if a rideshare is better than a professional shuttle service. My wife doesn’t like the family being split up into different vehicles as we used to take taxis at other ports when we had 6 people (with the inlaws) and almost always one driver thinks he knows the “shortcut” and takes off in a different direction. Then half of us is dropped off at one part and the other half shows up later at another location and we have to somehow meet up. In the upcoming December cruise on the Carnival Jubilee, we are looking at 11 people total going to Galveston and most likely we will do a shuttle service that fits all of us instead of 3 rideshare vehicles to split up everyone in the group.

After going upstairs, the first area you will see is the suites area. You can tell as they have nicer seats and are partitioned off from the rest of the rift raft cruisers like yours truly. Being CFKACD, I’m sitting on the other side of the fence and chilling with my ghetto homies over at the cheap non-suite seats. In looking at the section to the left of us, those are the people who got here before us. Probably less than 100 people. The timestamp of this picture was 10:50 AM after dropping off our luggage at 10:30 in the earlier post. So less than 20 minutes from curbside to sitting down and waiting to board was super impressive. So for those who will be sailing from Port Everglades, I would suggest arriving early if you want to board the ship earlier and wait inside the massive terminal instead of waiting in your hotel.

Guess Port Everglades doesn’t want you to overload their escalators with big suitcases or maybe a safety issue in case it tips backward and hurts people behind/underneath you? Anyway, for those people who insist on taking their big old luggage with them instead of giving it to the porters, take the elevator up instead. We don’t want to deal with the big luggage and we don’t even have a small carry-on. Just the backpack for each person and we are good to go. Especially since we take a picture every 20 steps or so, having any luggage gets in the way of picture taking.

One lady dockside worker noticed us taking pictures of everything and offered to take pictures of the fam so here’s another picture to show everyone. My older son and I have Christmas theme shirts on I ask you – is there a happier sign than seeing the “To Ship” sign at every cruise terminal as you are just one escalator ride away from boarding the ship? You have traveled hundreds/thousands of miles to get here and you are about to start your cruise vacation. How much happier can you get? This being the Christmas Holiday season, they had these out for the kids (or adults like us) to snack on while waiting to board the ship.

In less than 15 minutes after dropping off the luggage, we were having our onboard pictures taken. Ahhh, yes, the onboard photographers. You can’t sail on any major cruise lines and not see onboard photographers offering to take pictures of you and your family. They are literally everywhere. One photographer was actually in the water at Labadee taking pictures of my boys while he was waist-deep in water! That boggles my mind given how expensive these SLR equipment cost... Anyway, as readers of my trip reports will tell you, that I have a special name for taking pictures with the photographer – visiting uncle in prison. I use this term because years ago when more cruisers were writing about their cruise experience, virtually nobody talked about the shipboard photographers yet they are a big part of many cruisers' experience. Especially for the first-time cruisers or family cruisers or big group gatherings during the holiday cruise, they all want their pictures taken at these special moments and the line to wait for a photographer can be very long on formal nights. But this process was seldom on anyone’s trip reports. We all know they exist, but we don’t talk about them. It’s similar to having an uncle in the family who committed a crime and brought shame to the family and henceforth, that person’s name is stricken from the dinner time/family gatherings. If you ever mention “Uncle Bob”, your mom will give you the death stare right before your dad smacks you on the back of the head and says, never mention his name at the dinner table. Yeah, that Uncle Bob. To me, shipboard photographers are like Uncle Bob in prison. We know he exists but we never talk about him in the open but we do still love him as he’s still part of the family, so we do occasionally visit him in prison to see how he’s doing. For the rest of this trip report, I’ll use the term “visit uncle in prison” to mean shipboard photography-related event. This must be a parole hearing date as many families are visiting their uncles in prison as well with many photography displays are set up for the onboard pictures. Somewhere out there Brian @luvtoride and his clan will show up and take the lovely family picture that he uploaded back in post #51.

So where were we? Oh, yeah, at the check-in area where the agent took a picture of our passports on her tablet as all the agents there wanted to know "Who are you" to all the cruisers... Queue up the first music video (I had forgotten to play Hotel California when we first arrived at the hotel on day minus 1...) In the “old days” (a few years ago), they used to make people walk up to the desk area behind the counters to check in and they would issue you the room keys. Nowadays, it’s tablets in the outside area and you get your cabin keys at 1 PM in front of your cabins. Supposedly this speeds up the check-in process as they don’t have to “go to the back” and look for your key and I think most cruisers will agree that their check-in time is pretty quick. There are enough workers that there was no line to speak of to be processed.

Good to know we are not the only people with photo retaken. Started to take it personally when all of our pictures were considered unacceptable. Yeah, my wife had to have her picture taken the second time on the Navigator as they had a second checkpoint at the Gangway after the escalators at San Pedro and the lady didn't like the picture after scanning our sea pass again at the top. This reminds me of something - I don't recall Port Everglades having a second checkpoint on the walk to the ship. The only checkpoint I remember is downstairs. Does anyone remember seeing anything upstairs?

Yeah, good thing there's Wi-Fi at the terminal. I'm much more anal. I opened the phone app and had the sea pass running in the background before we arrived at the terminal so it was just a matter of switching between the camera and the app on the phone. I print out hard copies of every reservation we make - airline/hotel/tours. Old man thinking in not trusting technology 100% of the time.

After a quick scan of our sea passes and stuff, she took our pictures again. Now I must be a crappy portrait photographer as I took everyone’s pictures on the phone app from home weeks ago as part of the check-in process. The same thing happened with the Navigator check-in back last August where they had to re-take everyone’s pictures again. Same with the Odyssey, all 4 of us had to have our pictures taken again even though we did it on the App previously. Is this common for y’all? I would love to hear about your experience if you had your sea pass picture re-taken at the terminal.

Have your cruise sea pass out either on your handy dandy phone App or print out hard copies if you are old school. I learned from my previous cruise report that someone suggested taking screenshots of the sea pass in case your phone’s Internet/Wi-Fi is not very good. That was my backup of backup of backup as my wife and my son also have it on their phones on top of the hard copy. Did I mention that I’m 9.2 on the anal scale? At 10:40, there weren’t too many people in line after we went past security and walked up to the first available agent with no wait. I had the phone app out and opened it and had it in front of my face as I walked up to the lady with the tablet checking us in. She smiled when she saw me walking up to her with the phone/sea pass facing her and said, “I guess you have done this before”…

Anyway, after rounding the corner, just go WAY past the lady in the orange dress and you will see the cruise terminal opening. If somehow you get lost, there are signs as well as workers there to direct you. Now the moment of truth arrives, if they are being strict on enforcing the official check-in time, they would ask you at the door when is your time slot. No one asked and so we just kept on walking. No need to fret over the check-in time assignment. At least not on our sailings. I think every once in a while, they have some Customs inspection and that will delay your boarding time.

Onward with the trip report... +++++++++++ Now remember to have some small bills to tip the porters after dropping off your suitcases. In my previous trip report on the Navigator, a cruiser commented that the porters never placed his luggage in the bins after he gave it to them. Never did hear back from the cruiser on what happened so not sure how valid that claim was. Nevertheless, being paranoid, after I tipped the porters, I stayed around to make sure all 4 suitcases were placed in the luggage carts before I turned the corner to the upper part of the “L” where we would enter the cruise terminal. Didn’t want my suitcase to be sitting on the curbside as I was eating lunch inside the Windjammer. Way back in the pre-cruise planning stage, I lamented that I could not obtain a better check-in time slot than 11:30 even though I checked in within 20 minutes of the window opening. But I had read that FLL typically doesn’t enforce the check-in time so I timed my arrival to be around 10:30 with the thinking even if they are strict on enforcing the check-in time like in San Pedro where they let in 2 groups at a time, my worst-case scenario is a 30-minute wait outside. I would rather wait 30 minutes at the cruise terminal than 30 minutes at the hotel lobby. But that’s just my anal-aggressive personality speaking. Other people might prefer to wait in a hotel instead. Personal preference.

Oh, you are very kind in your compliments. You have made my day with your praises as it’s been a tough week at work. I spend time after work nightly to write these posts to help take my mind off the reality of work. Much more fun to talk cruises and luggage tags than Accounting… Very nice to be sailing in Europe this Spring. That’s on my bucket list to visit Greece on a cruise one day. Just need to wait for my kids to be done with college as between their school and my work schedule, the only time we can cruise in the summer is August. I wouldn’t want to go to Greece in August in the heat and with a gazillion tourists. Need to go early in the season like you guys. If you remember, after your cruise, come back here and share some pictures of your travels so I have something to look forward to in my future cruise planning. Although you might be premature in giving me praises at this very early juncture of the trip report. As @KmomChicago stated above, we haven’t even boarded the ship yet (after a whole week of talking gibberish since I started this trip report) so if the rest of the report while we are on the ship sucks, you may be regretting giving high marks early in the process… As for the 70’s party, yeah, my family loves the RCI parties. Loads of fun and energy. Especially now with CC allowing large video file uploads, I can share more videos than previous cruises. Here is one more video for you and your group. Get in on the “Love Train” at the party. My wife and boys were part of it as I video them from above (Side note – I keep wanting to type the word “videotape” even though there’s no “tape” involved in video recording anymore on the cell phone. Just another old person’s expression that dates us old folks): 20231229_232303.mp4

Mark, I think you should do a YouTube video on this process. Call it “RCI Luggage Tag Saving Hacks”. You should get at least 50,000 views. Heck, I will watch it 10 times myself to help bump up the viewing counts. With the money you made from the video, you can then afford to buy a new ream of paper and ink and print the extra pages on the side. Now that I’m thinking about it, we can all carry the money savings concept to the extreme: · Some hotels have free computers/printers for use in the lobby. We can print the luggage tags from the hotel’s free printer, borrow their stapler, and even borrow their pen at the front desk to write our names on the luggage tag in the hotel lobby. Saves on paper/toner/ink from using our own pen by doing it this way. Exactly zero cost. · If you are lazy (and cheap), can you ask the porters at the terminal for luggage tags? I recalled asking porters for luggage tags years ago for one of our sailings because we never received them in the mail. Back in the old days when they still mail things out. So if we can get the luggage tag at the terminal, that would work as well. Has anyone gotten luggage tags from porters at the cruise terminal lately?

Haha, you must have been one of the impatient kids when you were young and asked in the backseat, “Are we there yet?”

Terminal 18’s drop off/pick up area is shaped like the letter “L” where you approach the building from the lower right (horizontal part). As you get close to the building, the police officer at the end will ask the driver if he’s picking up or dropping off passengers. If dropping off, then he will be directed to go along the bottom (horizontal part) of the L. That’s where all the porters are to take your luggage. See the police officer (in red arrow) and porters (in blue arrow). This is the lower part of the L-shaped area. If picking up passengers post-cruise, then that’s the upper (vertical part of the L)

The Odyssey was using the typical RCI terminal 18 that day. That’s the massive terminal they built years ago to accommodate the Oasis class ship’s passengers. By far my favorite cruise terminal of all the ones I have been to but I have seen YouTube videos of Miami and Port Canaveral ports and those look even nicer. Someday hopefully we will be going there. One and only direct bow photo of the ship

As I mentioned, there were many ships in port that day. That meant a ton of vehicles needing to go to the port to either drop people off or to pick them up. These signs are new to me. They weren’t there back in 2017 when we last cruised out of Port Everglades. You are supposed to have ID/passports out for them to inspect at the checkpoint but maybe so ships in town, they didn't want to cause too long of a delay in getting 23,000+ out and 23,000 in, the person at the checkpoint just looked at the 4 passports we had in our hands but never asked for them for inspection. He just asked what ship we were going on and said Odyssey was at terminal 18 and told the driver where it was and that was the extent of the checkpoint inspection.

We got picked up on a Chrysler van and with a partially folded down seat, it was able to accommodate 4 of us and 4 large suitcases but that’s the max. So if you have 6 people in your party, don’t expect one XL vehicle to carry your entire party and suitcases. You will need 2 vehicles so keep that in mind if you are looking at getting a rideshare vehicle. By 10:15, we were in the Lyft van on the freeway going past FLL airport on the way to Port Everglades.

Another advantage of having rideshare is the App tells you exactly where the driver is and an estimated time on when he/she will arrive. No need to keep looking on the street to see when/if the professional company shuttle will show up. After we order the ride, we can see the progress on the App as to when the driver will arrive as it has real-time GPS tracking of the vehicle. Per the App, our driver is dropping people off at Springhill Suites (Mark’s favorite Dania Beach hotel) down the street and then will pick us up a few minutes after that to go to the port. It also tells you the name of the driver with a picture of him or her and the type of vehicle with the actual license plate so there's no confusion mistake on getting into the wrong vehicle. The area in front of the hotel was a VERY BUSY place at 10 AM with many families waiting for their individual rides/professional drivers picking up their scheduled ride at 10:15.

As posted previously, the hotel has a connection with a shuttle service company if we needed a professional company to take us to port but for this cruise, we wanted to try out the rideshare option as it would be a significant saving. This was the screenshot of the Lyft price going from the hotel to the port as I was testing out the price at breakfast time. Lyft has dynamic prices so the final price might be slightly different but wouldn’t change too much. As you can see, even with Lyft XL (fits up to 6 people not counting the driver) and the $5 coupon Lyft gave me for the holiday promo, it was less than $18 + tip to get the 4 of us there. Significantly cheaper than the per person professional transport company would charge you. This was the first time we used the rideshare service going to the port but it won't be our last. It was economical and you control the time when you want to be picked up versus a shuttle service that has its own pickup time. Just download the App on the phone before leaving the house and you can get an estimated cost of using the shareride service. If it turns out to be too expensive, no big deal. No obligation to use them unless you want to.

After breakfast, it was time to get back to the room and pack, and be ready to head out soon. I bought these luggage tags last year. Very sturdy and handy. Waterproof. Used them for the Navigator and used them again for the Odyssey. In the old days, I always had to borrow the stapler from the front desk of the hotel when I checked out on the last day just so I could staple all the luggage tags before boarding the ship. Now it’s all done before leaving the hotel room to go downstairs. No more borrowing staplers. Being paranoid, we always double/triple-check ourselves to make sure we don’t leave anything of value in the hotel room when we check out. Especially having forgotten my credit card the day before, I was being extra cautious to inspect every area before leaving the room for one last time. Especially if you have little ones that brought along their favorite toy or blanket with them. You had better not forget to take those or else you have to deal with one sad kid the entire cruise as kids have special emotional ties to various objects. However, if you as an adult also have special emotional ties to a given object, we certainly love to hear about your story...