cibumcupio

We're staying at the Sheraton Fort Lauderdale Beach Hotel for several days before our cruise in January that leaves from the Port of Miami. I've been on this board looking for ways to get from our hotel to the port, but it seems like all of the good shuttle services (SAS, QLS, goshuttle) pick up only from the FLL airport or from nearby hotels, of which our hotel is not on the list.

In that case, what is the cheapest way to get from our hotel to Port of Miami? We are two people. I heard taxi is around $80 for that trip. I've thought about taking a taxi from our hotel to the FLL airport (they say about $20-25), then taking one of these shuttles, which will come out to $55 total for that trip. But is there a better way?

Hopefully they'll be available on my cruise so I can understand all the hype about them.

 

Snails are among the cheapest foods and easiest to cook so I really don't understand why everybody on CC is so excited about them :confused:

At least where I am, snails are rather expensive foods. And once, I found real live snails, and they were the hardest things to clean and remove from their shells. I also found that Wegmans has frozen escargot with herb butter at a reasonable price. You just bake them, and it smells like a cruise :D

Yeah, I had them for the first time on a cruise, and I've been wanting them ever since. I went from one order the first night to three orders on the last.

Yeah, I agree, it's hard to pick a chain restaurant that a large ship's food is like. I also don't think it's useless to make these comparisons. Yes everyone's tastes are different, but just like for movies where everyone's tastes are different but knowing the general consensus is still helpful in picking out what to watch for the night. That's why sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor are still helpful when in comes to picking out restaurants. It's not the final word, but it is still helpful.

All in all, the closest thing that I can think of on land that is like the MDR is a hotel banquet meal. Everything looks like it's plated like fine french food. Even something that tastes very plain will look very fancy. Some of the dishes will be really good. Up to par to what it looks like. By the way, I found the lamb and the pork to always be very good. And some of them will be really good, but not to your taste. And a few, I would say maybe 20% or so would be very bad. As in improperly cooked, not fresh, poorly seasoned, or something like that. So the biggest surprise I had with the MDR is that kind of inconsistency. Normally a restaurant on land will be either good, mediocre, or bad, and pretty much the same throughout. In the MDR, you really have to try everything. You never know by the menu if something will be good or not. So I wouldn't even compare it to Applebees because even though Applebees is not that great food, it is consistent. When you go there you know what your food is going to taste like. Think of the MDR as that fancy restaurant in town that is having an unpredictable night. Some things come out delicious, and some things look like someone messed up along the line.

As for the Oceanview buffet, I thought it was extremely similar to what my college dining hall was like. I went to a college that was rated top 5 for food (why I went there, heehee), so I'm not saying this about the buffet as a bad thing. Celebrity tries hard to give you lots of options that look and usually are pretty tasty. It's not gourmet, but you will not go hungry.

OP, I think you're forgetting that the MDR isn't really free, but you are paying for it from your cruise fare. That means the specialty restaurant isn't just $40 or something but $40 plus whatever you already paid for the MDR. For example, if I were to eat at a land restaurant like Qsine, it would cost a lot more than $40 per person, so that's why people say that it's a steal. I think it costs Celebrity $12 per person per day for food or something like that; though the quality of the meal, in my opinion, if you were to pay for it in a land based restaurant would be about $30 per person. So then it's more like should you pay $30 to eat in the MDR or $70 to eat in Qsine. And $70 for something like Qsine on land would be about right, or even cheaper than what you would expect.

So I think the reason people say the specialty restaurants are not overpriced is because rarely would you find the same quality of food on land for the same price as the fee for the specialty restaurant. It would usually be double that. So then it's a matter of would you rather pay X for the MDR or X+Y for the specialty restaurant. And on some nights the 4 star quality MDR is perfectly fine, and on other nights you want to pay that little extra for the 5 star.