How far would you drive to get to your port on departure day !!

[grandmarnnurse]

1 hour ago, electro said:

If I were you I would rent a car and drive myself the night before. Why should you have to be stressed out because of your DH's choices?

Lol! You don’t make it to 50 years by doing things like that. This our 50th Anniversary cruise, and we have a very traditional marriage. He is the king of his castle. That’s just the way it goes. A great man, a good father, and now a great grandfather, and I respect him. No, I would never go ahead of him. We are in this together. I will deal with my stress level by leaving our rental at 5am for port. That should be more than enough time to drive the 4 hours.

[Underwatr]

Three and a half hours from Daytona to Fort Lauderdale. I'd drive it, but use a GPS app that is traffic-aware, like Waze or Google Maps.

[pacruise804]

22 hours ago, Cruise4Twos said:

Two hours at the most. Leave no later than 7 am. With parking fees since we do long cruises, we like to take public/group transportation.  Boscov's travel in our area has a cruise + transportation deal with the local ports (Baltimore, NJ, Philly, NY). I'm fine with being driven 4 hours to a port that morning. Amtrak is the most relaxing for me but I will take a bus if the deal is right. If your city has parking fees at the station, typically the next town a few miles over has free parking. Since most cruises depart from ports other than what's local, we take the train to a big city in order to catch the flight unless we get lucky on a flight deal from the local airport.

For Boscov's do you mean the department store?  Which location are you near?  Susquehanna Mall is closest for me, I never thought to check there for transportation.

[Cruise4Twos]

27 minutes ago, pacruise804 said:

For Boscov's do you mean the department store?  Which location are you near?  Susquehanna Mall is closest for me, I never thought to check there for transportation.

Yes they have travel depts in both the Colonial Park and Camp Hill locations. You just missed their cruise show on 1/19 but AAA has a free travel show on Sat 2/1 at the Western Premier on 800 E Park Dr. I like getting the cruise booklets ( a little old school) and freebies. Typically they give out a brochure that speaks to this but I don't see one in this year's brochures which is not a good sign. Regardless, I would still check. 

[ed01106]

19 hours ago, grandmarnnurse said:

 a good father, and now a great grandfather, 

"great grandfather" as in a really good grandfather or as in the grandkids have kids? 

[grandmarnnurse]

4 hours ago, ed01106 said:

"great grandfather" as in a really good grandfather or as in the grandkids have kids? 

A good grandfather, although we have a few that could technically become parents! Two 21 year olds, and one 20 year old. 

[MCC retired]

Feel very spoiled living in Florida.

1 hour to Tampa 

2 1/2 hrs to Port Canaveral

5 hours to FLL or Miami ( which wife declares much too far)

 

[dreadpirate3]

I'm also in the Orlando area, and we drive on departure day to Tampa, Port Canaveral, Fort Lauderdale, or Miami.

 

Port Everglades is our favored port and we have found third party parking that we like and is a fair price. It doesn't hurt that they drop us in a different area than most at the terminal, so we don't stand in lines very long.

 

We generally leave home around 7, stop once for coffee and rest rooms, and are at the port around 11.

 

We used to get a room that included parking and a shuttle but were not very pleased about the hotel last time so we changed to driving down same day. The only cruises on the horizon that require flying are Alaska in 2022. We very much enjoy the freedom to take detours on the way home from the cruise.

Edited January 28, 2020 by dreadpirate3

[Aplmac]

On 1/26/2020 at 3:22 PM, cruiserking said:

From Manhattan it's a 15-minute drive to the west side cruise terminal,

a 25-minute drive to the Brooklyn terminal

and about a 25-minute drive to Cape Liberty, NJ. 

 

We love cruising out of the New York/New Jersey area it's very convenient.

 

We have learned not to cross over before 55th. Street

when trying to connect to that fast West Side Hiway

approaching from South side, Lower Manhattan.

There simply is no access.

[Garf]

On 1/26/2020 at 6:19 PM, grandmarnnurse said:

Lol! You don’t make it to 50 years by doing things like that. This our 50th Anniversary cruise, and we have a very traditional marriage. He is the king of his castle. That’s just the way it goes. A great man, a good father, and now a great grandfather, and I respect him. No, I would never go ahead of him. We are in this together. I will deal with my stress level by leaving our rental at 5am for port. That should be more than enough time to drive the 4 hours.

Great comment grandmarnnurse....Congrats on your 50th years Anniversary cruise. The young people are not lasting more than a couple of years married. I have been married now for over 31 years, they need to start following us more.Too many hot heads getting married.

[grandmarnnurse]

8 hours ago, Garf said:

Great comment grandmarnnurse....Congrats on your 50th years Anniversary cruise. The young people are not lasting more than a couple of years married. I have been married now for over 31 years, they need to start following us more.Too many hot heads getting married.

Thank you! Yes, a long term marriage usually means you learn how to compromise. He won this battle, but I won a month long vacation with a B2B cruise in it! 😉

[pacruise804]

We will celebrate 25 years this October.  My husband and I are usually on the same page, but when we aren't I rarely mind deferring to his decision - it takes the weight of responsibility from me if something goes wrong 😉 I try not to view things as battles between us but rather challenges to face together.  An attitude of your spouse being good intentioned and wanting the best for the marriage helps a lot when they choose differently (and often better) than your path.  Having your voice heard and respected - even if it doesn't change their mind - does help a lot too 🙂 

[flamomo]

In a couple of weeks we're driving to FLL the morning of boarding. We're about 3 1/2 hours away and live within 3 miles of I-75. We'll be monitoring traffic continuously via the Google map app and will leave early enough to allow for possible route changes as we go along. We have reservations for parking at Park & Go.

Keeping fingers crossed that this works out okay!! It's the first time we have tried this.

[electro]

16 hours ago, Garf said:

Great comment grandmarnnurse....Congrats on your 50th years Anniversary cruise. The young people are not lasting more than a couple of years married. I have been married now for over 31 years, they need to start following us more.Too many hot heads getting married.

I am the person she was responding to and just wanted to say for the record that I'm not a "young person". In my mid 50's, happily married 22 yrs. Might get to 50 yrs if we live that long.  That "he's the boss" relationship wouldn't work for us.

My parents marriage wasnt like that either and they were happily married for 37 yrs when my mom passed.

 

grandmarnurse, I'm glad that style of marriage has worked for you, Congrats on your 50th. I hope you are not too stressed out the morning of your cruise.