Friday, May 3, 2024 to Saturday, May 4 2024: Getting to the Caribbean Princess and Embarkation
Preparing for this trip was a little more complicated than a simple cruise since we are planning on touring the UK by self drive tour after we cross the Atlantic on the Caribbean Princess, and do a rail tour of France, meeting up with John and Ciara in Lyon before flying back to the US from Paris. The land tour portions will require extra equipment (car chargers and windshield mounts for navigation), but will also require minimizing suitcases since the rail portion will require lugging suitcases through rail stations and subways. We'll be gone nearly 2 months.
We managed to boil everything down to one large suitcase, two roller carry-on bags and daypacks. We had Price drop us off at the Whidbey SeaTac shuttle. This saves 3 hours of driving to SeaTac and parking. Since we’ll be gone 2 months, parking is a significant issue. The shuttle takes the ferry, which we rarely do ourselves, so it always feels more like an adventure when we take the shuttle.
Check in at SeaTac went smoothly, perhaps because we were taking a red-eye flight. We booked Delta Premium Economy, rather than first class since our past experiences with domestic first class didn’t seem worth the extra money. You basically get more hip room and 2 alcoholic beverages and a meal, but for an overnight 4.5 hr flight, we figured we’d be sleeping, or trying to sleep for the relatively short flight. This did mean we had to pay for our one large checked bag, but we were able to use Delta Mileage credits for that, and they offered free check in of carry on bags because the flight was fully booked, so we got all our bags checked.
Although 2 of 3 TSA screening stations were closed, we breezed through TSA screening thanks to the TSA Pre-Check that comes with our NEXUS memberships. The lines for regular screening looked like over 30 minutes long, while the Pre-Check was pretty much walk through without stopping.
The flight got off 30 minutes late, but we had a long enough lay over in Atlanta that we didn’t have to worry about missing our connection to Fort Lauderdale. The flight wasn’t terrible but neither of us got much sleep. Although premium economy has more leg room than economy, it’s still not comfortable to sleep upright, and for some reason, the flight was quite warm- to hot to sleep for the most part.
We watched the Jason Stadam movie “The Beekeeper”- lots of gratuitous and hardly believable violence with a really flimsy plot, but that’s what sells in Hollywood. We started “The Boys in the Boat” but quit about 30 minutes in when it was apparent we weren’t going to be able to finish it during the flight, and we were feeling sleepy since it was 2am Pacific time. Try as we might we mostly forced ourselves to close our eyes and try to sleep without much success. Fortunately it was a 4.5hr flight and not an 8 hour or 12 hour flight.
The flight from Atlanta to Fort Lauderdale was just over an hour, but we both slept more during that flight than during the longer flight, perhaps because we were simply exhausted. The seats we had on the 757 from Atlanta to Fort Lauderdale were really bizarre. On the seating plan, they look like an exit row, but in fact, on this plane, it is a main entry door, 18 rows back from the nose of the plane. There was lots of leg room but every single passenger boarding the plane had to shuffle past our feet during the loading process, and the flight attendants’ jump seats faced us directly, so it was kind of awkward.
We also got a more intimate view of the process of opening and closing the main cabin doors and maneuvering of the jetway. I wouldn’t recommend these seats to anyone else if they can avoid them, even though they are in the premium economy section. There was no place to place our luggage without getting caught in the stream of traffic to the back of the plane, and then having to struggle to get back to the door. The flight attendant ended up putting our day packs up for us.
There were 3 cruise ships loading up this morning. The Caribbean Princess was the smallest. The Enchanted Princess and the Royal Caribbean Ovation of the Seas were also loading up so there were lots of shuttle buses taking people between the airport and cruise terminal. Janet’s large suitcase came out of the shuttle bus at the cruise port missing a wheel. This was the same suitcase that lost a wheel during the Antarctica trip. The Viking Polaris engineers manufactured a replacement wheel to get us through that trip, then Ben managed to get the manufacturer to send a replacement wheel after a great deal of trouble. Fortunately, Janet was able to spot the wheel amidst the other suit cases as Ben crawled around in the luggage bays of the bus looking for it. There is a retaining pin that had come loose that allowed the wheel to fall off. Fortunately, the pin was still attached, so Ben was able to reattach the wheel and temporarily used some duct tape to keep the pin from sliding out again.
We ended up rolling all our bags onto the ship during check in with no real delays or troubles. We were towards the last of the boarding groups. Once we got up to our stateroom, Ben used JB Superweld UV cured resin epoxy to secure all the pins on Janet’s suitcase wheels to avoid losing any more in the future.
The Caribbean Princess is the same ship we took with the kids on a British Isles cruise in 2016, but the ship has undergone some renovations including revising the main dining buffet with more contemporary modern decor that also feels a little more upscale than the original.
We had booked this cruise on a whim when an advertisement for a “Drop and Go” fare came up. This was one of the least expensive cruises we have ever done but balconies were sold out so this is the second cruise we have done in an obstructed ocean view cabin. Our first was a Norwegian Fjords cruise on the Golden Princess where there was a Marine Evacuation System outside our window. This stateroom E308, is actually between two lifeboats, so we have a view obstructed by cables and a few beams but it’s not a bad view. But the window hasn’t been cleaned in a very long time. At least we’ll know if it’s daylight outside and what the weather conditions are outside.
We were expecting this to be a cruise with tons of Platinum and Elite passengers since these long voyages tend to be preferred by more experienced travelers. There are plenty of Platinum and Elite medallions to be had, but also a lot of first and second timers on board. There are tons of Floridians on board. Americans make up the majority, while there are around 200 Canadians, and several dozens of UK residents aboard.
The Princess Dine My Way system is still pretty broken. It’s impossible to get regular seating set up online (same time, same dining room every evening for the duration of the cruise) if you want a private 2 top. But the head waiter was able to get us set up pretty easily once we got aboard. We also did our virtual muster drill which is simply watching a video in our stateroom and then tapping in with our medallions at our assigned muster station (Crown Grill for us). From there, we hit the poolside grill and pizza venues. The grill now has someone taking orders and handing out pagers, rather than having passengers waiting in line. This seems to work out better, but the pool deck staff had trouble staffing these venues adequately. The ice water and ketchup had run completely out and nobody was around to clean tables so that other passengers could use them right away.
As we finished out pizza and burgers, the Sail-Away party got under way with the Princess Singers and Dancers doing some numbers around the pool and the Cruise director and his staff made brief introductions. We indulged in soft serve cones while watching this.
Fed and squared away on future dining reservations, we hit the bed for some desperately needed naps.
We almost slept through our assigned dining plan, but got down there in time to the Palm Dining room, which is at the back of the ship at the waterline. The ship pushed back from the dock as we ate dinner. Janet had a potpourri of appetizers while Ben opted for Barramundi with mango salsa on quinoa.
We walked the promenade after dinner as the ship sailed away from Port Everglades and the Florida coastline. It was sunny and slightly muggy with thunder showers on the horizon.
The evening’s entertainment was a vocalist Shane Hampsheir from the UK, who did a crooner’s tribute. He’s a good singer and entertainer but we still had pretty heavy eye lids for parts of that performance. We did notice that they had remodeled to expand the casino so now it is impossible to get to the Princess theater on the promenade deck without going through the casino, which allows smoking. You can still sneak in on deck 6 and bypass the casino.
After the show, we made our customary “soup run” to check out the buffet. That’s when we discovered it had been updated. They also took the aft-most area and closed it off as two casual (set fee menu items) dining venues- one featuring sea food and the other BBQ.
We’ll probably sleep like logs tonight. We have a series of sea days ahead of us to get us into the cruise mindset again.
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