Bonitadu13

Good morning from Fort Lauderdale

 

Dave,

Thank you, again, for the amazing journey on the Royal. Our December 1st adventure became real at the Cruise Critic members sail away. Even in the rain, the "positive" group enjoyed our sail-away and hearing that ever present Love boat salute leaving the harbor. What a wonderfully positive cruise we had.

Sadly, when we had to go home and got off the ship, we took along a lot of great memories. Your live posts then continued and we lived our cruise over again each day reading your posts.

I must commend you for keeping Everything Royal and our experience positive. Your photos and posts were true to life, and if there was a negative (and I cannot imagine one), you posted the information in a positive light.

I also want to thank you for all you have done on these boards, the organizational skills you possessed, even with the nicely done name tags, and the activities you coordinated. It's hard to understand why people did not show up to the initial meet and great to appreciate all you had done. Although, selfishly on my part, it was nice with our small group to mingle and meet the captain and his staff that attended.

And your photos . . . Words cannot describe. I am thinking Princess needs to purchase these for their brochures!

Safe travels on your journey home and in all your future adventures.

Thank you again. The positive information you provided has been truly appreciated.

Diane and Ron

Thank you David for "Everything Royal"! It was a great cruise and wish we could have joined the rest of you for the B2B. Wonderful people in the Meet and Greet - and we were so grateful the Captain and his staff made a visit to our Meet and Greet. I couldn't imagine them not wanting to meet you. Your idea of the Meet and Greet Pub Lunch was fun and we met some very nice people. Thanks for the little bit of special "Royalty" you added to our cruise. This was our first Princess cruise - and definitely won't be our last. Possibly a Regal cruise in our future - but I would love to see a sequel - "Everything Regal" before booking. :) Thanks David.

We also had a great exerience on RCI. Our waiter was very knowledgeable about Gluton Free. So knowledgeble that he would tell me that the item I wanted was not Gluten Free! My husband wasn't too happy to be told that - but I was glad to know. Our waiter told us to ask for him in the morning, and he made a special effort to order me Gluton Free French Toast. Very impressed with our waiter.

On November 30, 2012 we returned from our cruise out of Miami. We were told to get off the ship early, so we were at the pickup location by 8:00 am. We waited until 10:30 for a van to show up. We called several times only to get a recording that their mailbox was full. We did get through twice. One said there were 4 vans on their way which was at 9am. Not one van appeared. Then we were told to look for the Red Star vans. Found one and he said he was going to Fort Lauderdale. Would not take us.

The security person at the port watched for us to make sure we did not miss it. We were with about 50 people waiting for the van. At 10:30, 2 1/2 hours later, 3 vans showed up. The driver said there were too many ships in port and they were not able to support the people.

We took our older smaller car and I was glad we did. Parking spaces were so close together you could hardly open either car door.

Two and a half hours wait is unacceptable to wait for a pickup. Not one van showed up, even when we were told (when we could get through) that vans were on their way. The pier was almost empty when someone finally arrived and tempers were flaring. Not a pretty sight.

Please think twice before booking this parking. You definitely get what you pay for. There were many other services that kept coming by picking up passengers. We had a service that was working with a group of us that would charge us $4 per person for a van full. Unfortunately, this was after waiting 2 1/2 hours. Just as we all agreed to paying, the Premier vans arrived.

Terrible experience. Definitely not worth the cheaper rate.