Star princess 3/5-3/12

[adw]

This is my first attempt to write a review so go easy on me.

 

Precruise flew in on Friday the 3rd rented a car at Payless Rental. Made the drive to Ramada Beach Plaza Resort on Galt Ocean Drive in Fort Lauderdale heres the situation with this hotel because I have heard horror stories-Dont believe them seriously this hotel was great for a couple nights yes it is out of the way a little but we had a great CLEAN room on the beach with a very nice pool and hottub. If you have a rental car there is no problem driving to the main area. My advice dont drink at the tiki bar way way over priced and this is coming from someone who is willing to pay alot for a drink but this was ridiculous we are talking about 20.00 bucks for two drink (well liquor out of a cup that resembled a dixie cup I am not exaggerating) anyhow this is a nice hotel and we paid a little over a 100 bucks on hotwire and we were on the beach cant really complain...

 

Ok so back to the review we are skipping Sat as we laid on the beach and ate-nothing to exciting and we are moving straight on to Sunday.

 

Dropped off our car at the airport and hopped on a cab (important information here their is no shuttle unless you have rented at Hertz and a couple others but no shuttle for Payless rental) conflicting stories here as two employees said yes thier was and finally we were told no we dont have a shuttle didnt matter to us we grabbed a cab and out the door we went it was now 11:15. Twelve dollars later and maybe 10 minutes we were being dropped off at the pier the porters took our luggage and pointed us in the right directionand wow what a line it had already wrapped into the U shaped and we were in the second part of the U. We prepared ourselves for the wait. Guess what no wait within twenty minutes we were through the line and getting on board no sitting no nothing. Our room was ready so we went straight there to drop of our carry on and grab our swimsuits.

 

More helpful information here...We booked an inside room. Here is the reason why maybe it can help someone make a better decision.

Last year we cruised for the first time with Carnival for a 4 day cruise on Fantasy while it was fun and we loved it we never utilized our room at all and we had a outside cabin window whatever its called. Why would we spend money when we dont use the room was our method of thinking, heck with the money we are saving we will go to Miami after the cruise and stay there a few more days. Bad decision as this cruise we used our room a lot 7 days is alot longer or though it seems and there are times you just want to sit in you room and unwind. Anyhow our room was fine for us not to small had a lot of storage and was set up well I liked the setup better then the window room on Carnival but I did miss the window it was wierd not seeing outside.

 

Ok so we went to the buffet to eat. Now I eat everything I dont care if I have no idea what it is I will try it and there is very little I dont eat maybe nothing I dont eat. I may not be the best person to judge the food but it was good to me and my more picky fiance ate everything on his plate so must have been good. Thus this far things are going great so we begin to explore wow this ship is hard to navigate and we never did figure where things were but we managed just fine. Elevators on the other hand do not cooperate they take forever and we soon learned it was much easier to walk, besides with all the food we would be eating walking maybe would help us from gaining way to much weight.

The rest of the day we relaxed had a few beers a few cocktails unpacked.

Dinnertime was a little wierd the first night we chose to sit with a group. unfortuantly that experience didnt go so good as one of the other couples could not speak much English and as hard as we all tried to talk it was not possible and it made for some uncomfortable silences. I hate to leave people of out conversation but it ended up being us and another couple chitty chatting and the other couple looking bewildered. At some point as dinner was served the gentleman must have gotten angry with his wife and started yelling quite loudly and they left before the main course and I sat there feeling terrible as I couldnt understand a word. Oh well the cruise must go on so off to the Comedy show we went had a few cocktails and called it a night.