NewPennCruiser

We are actually on this sailing and have not received any notification of staggered boarding. (yet)

Dave

It was controlled chaos today at Port Everglades. Weather was chilly but sunny. Did you see me waving from the Emerald Princess. ;-)

I'm sure you're being kind when you say it was "controlled chaos". :) Have a great cruise!

According to the beam dimensions quoted for the Grand Class ships, the Diamond/Sapphire twins are about 5 feet wider than the others. This probably accounts for the slight increase in tonnage. Dave

While it is not too unusual to have 3 Princess ships in Port Everglades together, I found it interesting today to see that the 3 sister ships are actually all there together and was thinking this probably doesn't happen all that often. In fact port load today in PE is well over 25,000 passengers so it's a busy day! Check out the port everglades webcam for what should be a fun sail away this afternoon. Dave

NewPennCruiser just noticed you are in our neck of the woods (sort of). We are in Hagerstown, MD.

Yep....we're trying to escape the same crappy winter weather. :) Although it was 50 today in Western PA and I'm not complaining about that. Dave

I'll shoot you an email and congratulations on your anniversary. We're doing an Azamara cruise in June to celebrate our 20th. But first things first; we're really looking forward to spending some time away from this winter weather next month! Dave

This cruise is getting closer and just thought I would check in to see if there are any others on the Board joining us on this sailing. We're really looking forward to exploring the new ship. Dave

The Queen Mary 2 was in NY Harbor yesterday and folks have shared some pretty incredible pictures over on the Cunard board. There is a reason that most cruise lines don't cruise out of the Northeast in January!! Where ever you go in the Caribbean, I think you'll all be fine. :)

I live in PA and checked. They quote $229 like yourself. However we get emails from an online website that offers cruise discounts and we actually got an email today that quoted $149. I believe the discount agency is based in Florida. It seems odd that you're not getting the rate if others are. Dave

We've booked everything from interiors to suites and the Mini Suites on the Grand Class ships really hit the sweet spot for us. Many times they are not a lot more than some of the Balcony Rooms but they are usually significantly cheaper than the true Suites. It is correct that you don't get any of the "suite" perks but the added space is wonderful, especially on a longer cruise. The additional seating area with a sofa and second TV really adds a lot of space to the cabin so you can spread out and not be on top of each other. Someone else also mentioned the larger bathroom and the tub/shower combo which is much nicer than the small standard showers where you have to "spin and rinse" while fighting with the shower curtain.

The actual balcony of the Mini's on the Ruby are also pretty huge to most standards and larger than all the standard balconies except for those on Caribe deck. You'll definitely get differing opinions on here but it all just comes down to how much space you want. Dave

I agree. I checked out a couple of the 9 day cruises earlier this year, but yes, they are 4 and 5 day cruises put together. The problem with these "combined" 9 day cruises is they all return back to Ft. Lauderdale and finish the 4 or 5 days. That seems like such a waste of time when you could probably do all 9 days without having to return to Ft. Lauderdale in the middle of the cruise. Princess needs more cruises to southern Caribbean.

I was disappointed to see they are dropping the 7 day Southern route next year but I'm sure it's very costly for them to go that distance for a week long cruise; at least in fuel. These 4 day cruises are probably very efficient for Princess because I know on our 4 day Western we averaged 14 knots going and 17 coming back and half the time it seemed like we were barely moving. Heck, they can pretty much row to Princess Cay and back in 4 days! Dave

Do you think Princess has made a mistake trying to market itself as a 4 day cruise product, do you think they will continue to offer this type of sailing.

At the moment, if you look out 12 months, they are scheduling these same 4 and 5 day cruises out of Fort Lauderdale on the Caribbean Princess. I suppose they have time to change their mind but right now they plan on doing it for another year. We don't live in Florida but took advantage of the 12/14 cruise and had a great time; but that said, for folks outside of driving distance to the port there isn't much of an advantage when airfare can be pretty high for what amounts to being a long weekend. Dave

From what I understand Hawaii Pacific University now owns the Aloha Tower Marketplace and they intend on moving some University facilities to the site along with adding housing, retail and restaurants. It does not sound like they are doing anything to the actual cruise terminal and mainly focusing on the Marketplace itself. Dave

Someone obviously uses them because they give out the $150 at the end of each cruise. I actually purchased a Citizen watch a year or so ago and there was a coupon for an additional 10% off and a coupon for a drawing to win a watch. I didn't have the book with me but they gave me the discount and had a form for me to fill out for the contest. I actually won the watch so I was probably the only entrant in the contest. :) In either case, we didn't even look at the booklet on the cruise we just finished. It just kind of is what it is and hasn't changed much since we started cruising. Dave

We're staying at the Alhambra in February 2014 for two nights pre cruise. Has anyone stayed there?

This is our favorite places to stay in Fort Lauderdale although we have never stayed pre-cruise. They do host many people pre and post cruise though. It has old Florida charm with a great pool, fantastic location and very personal service. Matt the owner will pretty much greet you at the gate. Read the reviews on TripAdviser and they are all pretty much spot on. This is a great hotel! Dave

We just experienced this change in terminals (embarked terminal 21 - disembarked terminal 2) on the Ruby and there were quite a few people that parked in the Midport parking garage near Terminal 21. Shuttles were available between terminals after we docked at Terminal 2. The other option would be to just park offsite at a place like Park 'N Go and then it doesn't matter that you changed terminals. Their mini buses were everywhere. Dave

Did you get free drink vouchers for every day or only 1 free drink the entire cruise?

1 drink for the cruise

For your cruise, your ship was due in at 7:00am for disembarkation. What time did people actually begin to get off, and how long would you say the process took. I'm looking at flight schedule now for my trip, and would like to know whether I can make a 10am flight with just carry on for the January cruise. Based on the bookings, this cruise does look quite full though.

You know, I think they started pretty promptly right after 7. The ship actually was dockside very early and by the time they got to the Walk Off 7 group that we chose to exit with at around 8:05, they were right on schedule. Also, no matter how efficient Princess is, you still need to deal with Customs and they were awful. There were 3 maybe 4 tops processing people and the line backed up numerous times where Princess had to actually delay the process because the line stretched to the escalator. We got through customs in 30 minutes but I'm sure others who left later were delayed. Get off as early as you can.

If you are getting back on a weekday, you might be fine with an early flight, but weekends at FLL can be a real hassle as well with the large crowds. We had 2 other ships in port. We were at Terminal 2, Coral at Terminal 21 and I think Eurodam maybe at Terminal 26 or something out in the channel. Traffic was still light and the airport was not busy. Dave

We were on the cruise as well and agree with a lot of your comments. I'm sorry we missed the Caribe balcony display.... Ok well maybe not, but thanks for the visual that's in my head now that I can't get rid of!! We also didn't see much of the bad behavior either so I'll consider myself lucky. There were a couple of times my partner mentioned something like "what are they doing?" but we would just move on and usually go find a quiet place to relax. And that was pretty easy to do if you wanted to since the ship wasn't crowded.

We weren't sure if we would like the short cruise and really the great deal sucked us in but like you mentioned, we would definitely do it again. We had a great time. Dave

The disembarkation process of all walk-offs was a new and different but made sense in that most pax on for just the 4 days probably wouldn't have much luggage, plus this was a much younger crowd than usual. The instructions gave you the time for your disembarkation plus the option to switch to the regular service of having your luggage picked up the last night. There were quite a few who took advantage of this since there were several in-transits who had made the TA crossing so had a lot of luggage. We went to the Elite disembarkation lounge because we were in no hurry to get off. The CC hostess announced that you couldn't just walk off anytime and should go at your assigned time because this was the order of passengers on the manifest given to US Immigration. According to her you were supposed to show your disembarkation instructions form that included your name & time when you disembarked.

 

Also according to her, there were some Elites that thought that Elite priority disembarkation meant you could leave whenever you wanted by just showing your card. She went on at length about how the process was supposed to work. Have no idea whether or not people were able to get off whenever they chose to do so. There were problems and slow-downs with the disembarkation because again, according to her, there were only 4 agents so the lines through immigration/customs were going slowly. They did close the gangways a couple of times stopping the process until the congestion cleared.

We actually thought the disembarkation went very smooth except for the slowness of Immigration as was mentioned. From Princess' side of things I suspect they will think this new process was a success, especially for one of these short sailings, but as quickly as everyone was getting off the ship, it just caused longer lines at Immigration.

As sometimes happens, this is also another example of getting different information depending on who you talk to. We really didn't speak to Bernadette about this but did go to the desk they had set up on the last sea day for questions or group changes. In our case we were assigned a late walk off time and needed to leave early so we asked about being changed to a different walk off group. We were told we could just basically leave when we wanted and we did not need to be reassigned as long as we were ok with Walkoff and could carry our own luggage.

Even though Bernadette said you needed to show folks your disembarkation form, the instructions didn't say. (I don't think) It just said that if you actually had colored tags and Princess offloaded your luggage, then you should show that color tag like always. So in our case, we picked a time that was better for us which was actually walk off group 7 (we were assigned group 14) and just left when that group was called. Nobody asked us to show them anything and we got right off. In fact we left the ship at around 8:10, took about 30 minutes to get through immigration and were at the airport via taxi by 9.

I do certainly understand that even if you assign most of the ship as walk off, that you still need groups since having everyone trying to leave at once would just not work. Maybe they should just give you a tag to show, or something identifying your group. As we can attest to, it was very easy to just leave when you wanted to but it seemed like most waited for their pre assigned group.

We were told it was the first time trying this process and it would probably be tweaked. It did seem a little confusing, especially for longtime Princess cruisers expecting to get tags, etc. but it was actually very simple and if you did need assistance and couldn't carry your own luggage, you could still arrange that and leave the ship the usual way. I suspect if you were new to Princess, you probably just thought it was pretty simple and didn't think much of it.

Now back to reality. It was fun finding my car encrusted in ice back home at the airport. (should have done a b2b!) Dave

Which pier did the Ruby use today ?? thanx

We came back into terminal 2

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NewPennCruiser, did you happen to catch a performance of Colors of the World? It's a new show, I believe...

Yes, it was very good. The other show was new too but don't remember the name. It was about Broadway.

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Thank you everyone for taking the time to post a report! We are desperately trying to get to the ship:( We left at 8am from Sarasota and got stuck in a two hour traffic jam. We finally made it to Naples but still have an hour and a half to go :( Way to much stress to handle the day of a vacation. Do you think with the health inspection the boarding will be late ? Thanks

Hope you get there on time. Disembarkation went quickly but the health inspection does sometimes delay things. Port traffic should be light considering only 3 ships are in port. Good luck and have fun.

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Do you know if E-Z Check is still available on the shorter cruises? Thanks.

Yes it was.

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Just heard they are going through a public health inspection this morning.

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