Ben and Janet's Travel Blog

Saturday, January 27, 2018

Saturday, January 27, 2018- St. Maarten

We awoke to find the ship tucked into port at Philipsburg, St. Maarten. There was an empty second cruise ship dock outside our balcony, and a small containership facility beyond this. St. Maarten appears to be made up of multiple cone shaped peaks. There were a pair of large water storage towers on the hillside closest to the cruise ship docks, but one of these appeared to have been smashed in and partially collapsed. Undoubtedly the result of hurricane Irma last fall. The destination lectures included pictures of the cruise ship dock showing a nice large building at the head of the dock housing shops and poorly working wifi. However, when we looked off the bow of the ship, instead of the building, there were piles of debris- another victim of Irma. The temperature was about 80 and there were scattered clouds with a forecast for partly cloudy weather.

We had breakfast in the Horizon Court buffet. Unlike our experiences on Norwegian Cruise Line, where we always had trouble finding a place to sit, there seems to be much less crowding and greater availability of seating in the Horizon Court. The breakfast selection was satisfactory, although I noticed there was no cottage cheese when I was craving some cottage cheese and peaches this morning.

We noticed we were docked next to a fabulous mega yacht named “Eclipse”. Everything about this boat just dripped with money. It had it’s own custom power gangway that retracts into the hull, and a custom landing complete with carpeting with the “Eclipse” logo emblazoned on it. There were two helicopter pads, and the dingy appeared to be as large as one of the Island Princesses tender vessels. The captain made an announcement that this was a private yacht, the second largest in the world, owned by a 51 year old Russian private investment fund owner. I wondered if that really meant “launders money for the Russian mob”.

We had booked our excursion through the iPhone Shipmate App, which processes the orders through a company called Shore-Ex. The printed electronic ticket included instructions to meet the representative of Blue Bubbles by the bronze statue near the tourist information desk at the head of the dock at 9am. We had no trouble finding the spot and arrived at 8:45. 9am rolled around and nobody showed up. We waited until 9:10am, and then called the local contact number, which didn’t pick up, and then the emergency contact number, which ended up being a disconnected number. We were beginning to get a bad feeling about this, but on the second call to the local contact number, someone picked up and instructed us to get directions from the tourist information desk on how to get to where they were. The tour desk person said to walk out through the cruise dock security gate and ask for “Kayum” or something like that. So we walked out of the cruise terminal gate to find a bunch of taxi drivers milling about. I shouted “Anyone here know Kayum? We are supposed to do an ATV tour with him.” One of the taxi drivers put his sign down and had us follow him down the road. There is a lot of debris and torn up infrastructure, including large holes where the sidewalk had once been, and conduit and wires poking out of the ground all over the place. We walked about a half block and then crossed the street to what looked like an alley. There was a small lot surrounded by battered fencing that contained what looked like a bunch of wrecked ATV parts, but this was apparently our guy. A young man with gold chains around his neck and gold caps on his front teeth came out to greet us and introduced himself as Safraaz. Janet asked if that was a Carib name, but it was Arab. He had come to St. Maarten from South Africa. He got on his cell phone and after a brief conversation with whomever was on the other end, he concluded that we were the only two customers for his tour today. This was actually the first time they have had customers for ATV tours since Hurricane Irma devastated the island. The Island Princess was only the second Princess cruise ship to call on St. Maarten since Hurricane Irma.

Safraaz then walked into the lot and miraculously started up and backed out two ATV’s. Looking around, it looked like there were only 3 out of the more than 20 ATV’s in the lot that were in drivable condition, so I guess it’s a good thing we were the only customers today.

After the briefest of safety and instructional briefings, he mounted a small scooter- not an ATV, and lead us off. While we were on an ATV tour, we might all just have well been on scooters or motorcycles because the entire tour stayed on St. Maarten’s paved roads. However, the ATV’s are easy to use and feel a bit more substantial than his tiny scooter for getting around in the island’s traffic.

Shortly after we headed off, it began to rain on us, but the rain was fairly light and the 80+ degree weather made it not at all uncomfortable to get a bit wet. That lasted less than 5 minutes. We were probably doing 40+mph on the roads in places, but got to see most of the island. The island is very hilly, and there is quite a bit of traffic, so this would not be a place to do a bicycle tour.

What was quite striking was the extensive damage everywhere. Trees and cacti were in twisted heaps along the roads, and most homes did not appear to have roofs on them at this point. We did spot some huge bright orange and yellow iguana’s sunning themselves on some of the downed twisted up trees. Along the water, there were boats of all sizes and shapes strewn about or capsized in the water, or on the shore. There were hundreds if not thousands of wrecked ships in the waters and harbors around the island. Many cars were driving with smashed windshields and plastic duct taped over other windows that had been smashed. We also saw a few upside down airplanes and crushed cars in a few places. Virtually every standing building has some damage to the siding and roof, and there are lots of lots that are just piles of debris.

Our first stop was at the famous (infamous) Orient Beach on the French side of the island, or St. Martin. There were French flags marking the border crossing, and not much else. Orient Beach is touted as one of the most beautiful beaches in the world, and features a nude portion as well. The hurricane ended up pulling a lot of sand off the beach, and utterly destroyed the Orient Beach Resort that backed onto the beach itself. The locals have erected a bar and cantina at the near end of the beach, and have set out beach chairs and umbrellas. When we were there, there must have been a 40mph wind blowing onto the beach, so getting in the water would have not been so much fun. We walked along the beach, and encountered a few nude sunbathers, but with bodies that you really did not want to see in the nude. It was funny to see some of them with the Princess Cruises blue tote on the sand next to their beach chairs. I’m not sure we’ll want to be dining with any of them. At the end of the beach is the remains of a once famous bar and restaurant. It as totally destroyed. The front of the building looked like a giant had decided to sit on the building, and it slipped out from behind him as it collapsed.

We walked back to the ATV’s through what had once been the resort. The bungalows were made of steel reinforced concrete, but they looked like a giant had crushed them like saltine crackers, and knocked them down. We found some conch shells amongst the debris that will make their way home as souvenirs.

Our next stop was Marigot, the French capital on the island, which had a shopping district that we passed on. We also drove by Grand Case, an area famous for its cuisine. There were some delicious smells wafting out of the restaurants as we rode by. We also saw some seafood vendors cleaning fish along a seawall as we rode past.

We then rode around the St. Maarten airport, which has it’s only runway backing on a small but beautiful beach. You’ve probably seen YouTube videos of tourists standing under enormous jets flying just over their heads making their final approaches to the runway, or tourists getting tossed about like rag dolls in the jetwash from jets taking off from the runway. We got there about 11:45, and a Jet Blue airliner was scheduled to land at 12:05, so we took a quick but refreshing swim in the beautiful blue water and waited on the beautiful white sand beach for the Jet Blue to arrive. It never showed, but two turboprop commuter planes did land over our heads, so it wasn’t a complete loss. A 737 did take off, and we saw a bunch of Japanese tourists, scrambling down the beach towards the water, blasted by sand and jet wash, along with their hats and bags. That was worth the trip seeing that little comedy.

Our last stop was a huge flag erected on a hilltop to inspire the islanders after Irma. It was erected 3 months after the storm. We wondered if it had the desired effect, but Safraaz said many islanders would have rather seen the effort and concrete put into putting roofs on houses.

We got showered and changed back on the boat, and had a little bit of free time before the ship was scheduled to depart. Ben decided to try to walk into town to see if he could get some pictures of the devastation since we didn’t stop while we were driving the ATV’s to take pictures. He got halfway into town when the sky let loose with a huge downpour. Ben turned around, and by the time he got back to the ship, it was like he had stepped into the shower with his clothes on.

We had afternoon tea with a couple who had taken the ship’s bus tour around the island and compared notes. We certainly got a much closer look at the destruction at Orient Beach. They never say any nude people or any of the resort.

We had dinner and then saw the late showing of Lovena Fox doing some Broadway show tune. It was a terrific show, and she got a well deserved standing ovation.

We dropped in late on a music trivia game featuring power ballads, and confirmed what we already know- we suck at music trivia, although none of the teams competing did very well. The winning team got 17-1/2 points out of 40. We arrived halfway through the game, and scored 8.

Today was international chocolate cake day, so there was a wide assortment of chocolate cakes of many different styles featured in the buffet. We picked up samples of several, but aren’t really sure when we’ll get around to eating them.

Tomorrow we arrive at Martinique, a bit of France in the Caribbean. We have a tour booked with a local provider outside the Princess shore excursion offerings. We’ll see how that goes.

Friday, January 26, 2018

Friday, January 26, 2018- At Sea

We were able to get up before 7am with some effort and had breakfast in the Horizon Court buffet. We attended the am Trivia, teaming up with John and Wyn from Chicago, and Roger (Santa Claus) from Arizona. Roger is a professional Santa, and recently came from a convention of the International Brotherhood of Naturally Bearded Santas. Yes, that is a real thing. Can you imagine the Las Vegas strip over-run by drunk Santas? We fared no better than yesterday, but made a decent showing, scoring 15/20. The winners got 17, and won the wine bottle stoppers. Ben hit the fitness center before lunch. We had a short morning as the ship jumped its clocks forward an hour from 11:59am to 1:00pm as we crossed into the Atlantic time zone. We did the hamburger and brat stand along with the pizza bar for a quick lunch and then attended the afternoon trivia. We teamed up new people, Fred and Jannine and Ken and Tam. Fred and Ken both were a bit aggressive with answers they knew, but didn’t really, reversing our correct answers on 3 questions. We bombed that trivia pretty bad, scoring 11/20. Guess we really miss Judy, Rick and Joanne. We’ve got to get us some wine bottle stoppers before this cruise is over.

This was the first formal evening. We got dressed up and headed for the dining room right as it opened, and avoided the long lines. Service was pretty slow, but the food was good. Ben had leg of lamb and Janet had prawns. The best part was a new raspberry Chocolate Journey dessert.

The evening show featured Princess singers and dancers doing songs by Billy Joel, Barry Manilow and Elton John called “The Piano Man”. It was a good show. We had seen it on an earlier cruise. The stage decor was slightly simplified as the last time we saw the show, there were a few digital screens suspended above the stage with stylized portraits of Billy Joel, Barry Manilow and Elton John. These screens were omitted. The dancing and singing were good. It was notable that the dancers and singers were all racially diversified- not all tall blond Ukranian imports. There were two black, two asian, and two caucasian female dancers. The male dancers also looked quite diverse, although it was hard to exactly pinpoint their racial make-up because most appeared to have some mixed racial features. The lead singers were two tall blond caucasians (male and female) and a pair of asian singers (tall male, very petite female- Princess must have had to invest in an entirely custom wardrobe for her because she was tiny).

After the show we dropped in on a gameshow for just a little bit where the cruise staff put up a scenario, and then competing teams would write out answers and turn them in. The answers would be tallied and the most common answer would be deemed correct and a point would be awarded. The question we saw was “If your wife came home with a new hair style, what would be the worst thing you could say to her?” The answers varied from “Did you get the license plate?” to “Don’t worry, it’ll grow back”. The winning answer was along the lines of “what happened to your hair?”. We didn’t stick around, opting to go just a little further astern to the fitness center to ease some of our guilt.

Tomorrow we arrive in St. Maarten, our first port of call. We have an ATV tour booked through the Shipmate App. St. Maarten was 80% destroyed during the last hurricane season, and our ship is only the second to return to St. Maarten since then. It’ll be interesting to see how the islanders have managed to get the cruise port opened, and to see if they’ve cleaned up the tourist sites. One of the most popular destinations is a beach at the aproach of the international airport where jets swoop very low over the sandy beach to the delight of drunken tourists on the sand below. After the Hurricane, much of the sand was gone and replaced with wrecked boats. They say the islanders have worked tirelessly to get thing things back open for tourist business since that is the lifeblood of the local economy. We’re hoping the ATV’s will allow us to get a closer look at what’s been fixed, and what’s still destroyed.

Thursday, January 25, 2018

Thursday, January 25, 2018- At Sea

We must still be on west coast time because we had a hard time rolling out of bed even at 8:30. We had breakfast in the dining room by ourselves. It was hard to imagine trying to carry on a conversation before having coffee. We missed the destination expert lecture at 9am but that should end up rebroadcast on the TV. We did make it for the first trivia game of the cruise. We were joined by Bob from New Jersey, Carl from the San Francisco Bay area, and Jackie from St. Louis. Overall, it was a pretty easy game, but we scored 15/20. there were 5 teams that scored 16/20. The tie breaker was “How tall is the Eiffel Tower in meters? Two teams guessed 300m, and they were awarded prizes, which were Princess wine bottle stoppers. We would have guessed 318m, while the answer was 320m, so we could have won if we had gotten just one more answer.

We sat with a large group of Canadian’s at lunch. The majority of the passengers we have encountered have been either American or Canadian, with a lot of the Canadian’s coming from Vancouver.

Although we told ourselves we would not spend so much time on trivia this cruise, we ended up going to afternoon trivia to keep us busy. We joined a couple from Chicago, a gentleman from Vancouver BC, and Bob from New Jersey, whom we had teamed up with in the morning. We ended up with 14 points, two points off the top, although there was one winning team with 16 points, so no tie breakers. The winning team got aluminum water bottles.

We had afternoon tea, and have to mention dining room procedure changes made due to the recent Norovirus outbreak on this ship. There are no salt and pepper shakers, bread basket with rolls or butter on the tables at dinner. The waiters come around and serve the rolls individually, along with butter pats. If you want salt or pepper, they will bring the shakers out, but probably have to disinfect them between uses now. The buffet now has a line of sinks for hand washing and the line has been restructured so there is only one way into the buffet area. Once you exit the serving area, staff don’t let you re-enter the serving area unless you go back through the entrance. Hopefully, these changes will keep us all safe and healthy, but it takes longer for the dining room staff to serve meals.

We attended the early Showtime Princess Theatre show featuring vocalist and dancer Lovena Fox, who did a very entertaining and energy filled show.

There was a long line for the dining room after the early show, so we retired to our room for a half hour to freshen up, but when we returned, the dining room line was just as long. So we ended waiting another 10 minutes to be seated. We ended up on a 2 top next to a couple from Naples Florida, who had moved there from Baltimore. The husband is a fraud investigator, so it was interesting to learn about the scams that he has uncovered. This couple was the first we have encountered who are getting off the ship in Buenos Aires, rather than completing the 60 day round trip to Fort Lauderdale. Later in the evening, Ben met a woman from Vancouver who flew to Los Angeles to board the ship. It then sailed through the Panama Canal to Fort Lauderdale, where we boarded. Then she will do the 60 days with us, and then stay on the ship as it goes from Fort Lauderdale back through the Panama Canal to Los Angeles, so she will be on this ship for 90 days. She says she hates to fly.

After dinner we saw the Canadian comedian Scott Harris in the Explorer’s Lounge, where he put on another very funny show. The theme of this show was on getting older, and remember when…

Tomorrow, we cross a time zone, but rather than turn our clocks forward at bedtime, the whole ship will simply skip the 12noon hour, going from 11:59am to 1:00pm. That’s the first time we have encountered a mid-day time zone transition in our cruising history, so we’ll see how that goes.

Wednesday, January 24, 2018

Wednesday, January 24, 2018- Fort Lauderdale Embarkation

Princess Cruises certainly appears to want its customers to feel at home, even on the land extensions for their cruises. The atrium of the Embassy Suites has two banks of bubble elevators, not unlike the atrium of the cruise ships, and the breakfast buffet was a full American hot made to order breakfast. You could certainly see the majority of guests fit the “Cruiser” profile, including us. We could see the Island Princess docked at Port Everglades from the small balcony of our 4th story room. The bell staff came and picked up our suitcases right at 9am.

The transfer from the Embassy Suites to the ship took a while because of the number of passengers and bulk of their luggage. The bus ran out of storage space for bags, so they had to arrange an extra bus to carry all the bags and passengers.

This was our first cruise with Platinum status, which entitles us to priority boarding, but this particular cruise, with it’s 60 day itinerary, attracts seasoned cruisers, so probably 80% of the passengers were either platinum or elite status, so there were very few non-priority passengers. This lead to the odd situation where the non-priority lines would be empty, while the priority lines would be jammed. Therefore, they treated everyone the same. We did end up sitting in the cruise terminal for a couple of hours while the ship was prepared for boarding, but they did provide snacks, bottled water and free Port Everglades Wifi.

Once boarding started, things went pretty quick, and we were soon at our room, C301. This is a mid-forward balcony on the starboard side. This was a very familiar room for us, with plenty of storage for even a 60 day cruise. We only had one unused coat hanger in the closet, but we were able to hang everything that needed to be hung. It’s nice to have a real desk with drawers, and night stands with two drawers and a cubby each. The balcony is a decent size and we have a direct view down the side of the ship to the waterline. There was an odd smell in the bathroom, and the TV was missing the remote control There used to be a shelf in the corner where the TV resides, but this was removed (torn off the walls with some unfinished damaged drywall behind the TV) to make room for the much larger flat screen TV.

Ben found a case of bottled water and a bag of cleaning supplies stuffed under one of the beds. At first we thought this stuff was left by prior passengers, but after we met the room attendant Jojan (East Indian), he explained the water and cleaning supplies were his. He had hidden them in our room for some reason that didn’t make a lot of sense, but he did clean up after himself and got us a replacement TV remote control.

We toured the ship and found several unique features compared with most of the other Panamax sized Princess cruise ships we have cruised on in the past. The most notable changes are:

1. No Skywalker’s lounge at the aft of the ship. This looks like a aerodynamic spoiler at the rear of the ship. This has nice views because it wraps around the stern and has wings that allow looking forward along the sides of the ship.

2. The Promenade deck does not wrap around the stern of the ship. On most other Princess ships, you can look out over the wake, but on the Island Princess, you have to cross from one side of the ship to the other through the aft elevator/stair bank. The bow walk is an entirely enclosed hallway, so you can’t see the front of the ship. The Promenade deck is real teak, but is showing wear in areas.

3. The Fitness Center is buried at the aft of the ship at deck 6 aft of the aft elevators/stairs. There are no windows, but it is well air conditioned and equipped.

4. The main buffet is situated at the front of the ship on the Lido deck. It seems like every other cruise ship we have been on to date has this situated at the aft end of the ship. We had lunch in the Horizon Court buffet, but it seemed smaller and had fewer selections than on other Princess ships. However, it never seemed crowded and there were plenty of places to sit, and excellent table service.

5. There is no Club Fusion at the aft of the ship either.

The ship was quite late in pulling away from the dock. We were scheduled to depart at 5pm, but it was nearly 7pm before the ship left Port Everglades. We had dinner in the main dining room (Bordeaux) for anytime dining and shared a table with a group of 4 from Carnation, and a pair of women from Canada who didn’t know each other before boarding the ship, but were matched by a travel agent so they wouldn’t have to pay the single supplement, which essentially doubles the cost of the cruise. One woman was from Vancouver, while the other was from New Brunswick.

The Princess Theatre had a single showing, featuring a Canadian comedian, Scott Harris, who was pretty funny. He was actually a last minute fill in because the originally scheduled comic had the flu. He said he was from Toronto and had a Chinese wife and two dogs. Every evening at dinner, he would count the dogs (insert laughter). He also joked about how in Japan they have these fancy toilets. If you push on button the seat warms up. If you push another button, a convenient water fountain squirts up so you can get a drink. He also found the back scratcher kept by the toilet very handy when he had a peeling, itching sunburn on his back.

The ship was surprisingly dead by 10pm. There was not a soul in the Explorer’s lounge, or any of the bars. There were 3 or 4 people still in the Wheelhouse lounge, but there was no live entertainment or music going on. I guess it’s going to be a quiet and thoughtful kind of cruise.

Wednesday, January 24, 2018- Embassy Suites pictures

Wednesday, January 24, 2018- Fort Lauderdale Pre-Embarkation

Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Tuesday, January 23, 2018- pictures of Princess Greeter and Embassy Suites

Princess Greeter at Fort Lauderdale Airport and Embassy Suites room.

Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - Pre-cruise Flight and Overnight Hotel Transfers

We're off on another adventure. This time, it is a 60 day cruise around South America starting and ending in Fort Lauderdale on the Island Princess.

We had to wake Price up in the middle of the night to drop us off at the 7-Eleven store in Oak Harbor at 4am to catch our airport shuttle. We would not have been allowed to park our car for 60+ days.

We were able to check in online the day before, and were offered the ability to check in our carry on bags for free, so we took advantage of that to overstuff our carry on bags. For a 60 day cruise that will take us from the Caribbean to Antarctica, we have to be prepared for all sorts of weather conditions, from 90 degrees and sunny to 25 degrees with driving snow. That meant packing not only our usual carry on roller bags, but both the 21" and 26" roller bags to capacity. It was very tricky to keep the bigger bags under 50#, but we managed it. We'll see if we end up wearing everything we packed.

We pretty much sailed through the TSA Pre-Check line and had a bit over an hour before boarding, so we had breakfast in the food court.

Our flight was a 737-900 on Alaska Airlines. This plane has huge overhead bins that can hold six or eight roller bags each. Quite a contrast to the Delta Airlines 777's tiny overhead bins that won't hold more than 2 roller bags.

We encountered an odd situation on boarding. We, like many other hopeful couples, had booked an aisle and window seat with an open seat between us, so that if the flight were not to capacity, we might end up with an empty seat between us. However this flight was booked to capacity. There was a couple in the row directly ahead of us that had also booked the aisle and window seats. There happened to be a couple (2 men) who really wanted to sit together, but were situated in the middle seats between our 2 rows. When we heard of their plight, a woman in the row across the aisle said she'd sit in our row so that the man in the aisle ahead of us would still have an aisle seat, and then the two men could sit together in the middle and aisle seat just ahead of us. The man, who happened to be married to the woman in the window seat refused to move. So the two men ended up being separated by the aisle and one row while the husband and wife ended up still separated by a stranger man, who really wanted to be near his traveling companion. The woman who had given up her aisle seat to sit in our row's window seat and we just exchanged unbelieving looks at each other and the man who wouldn't give up his aisle seat to either sit by his wife, or let the two men sit together. Some people.

The flight was only 5 hours, so it was tolerable. The entire coach cabin was restricted to using 3 lavatories at the back of the plane, and each of these was remarkably tiny- about the same size as the head on our 27' boat. Barely big enough to stand in, or sit on the seat with your head on the door. Strategy was required when the beverage service carts were rolled out since it meant that no-one ahead of the cart could use the bathrooms until the beverage services were complete for the entire plane and the cart was returned to the aft galley. There are no seat back screens on these planes, but they do stream video on wifi, and provide 120V and USB power on each seat back.

Our flights were booked through Princess EZ-Air, as was our overnight hotel stay, which includes transfers to the hotel, to the cruise ship, and back to the airport at the end of the cruise. The airfare we got through Princess EZ-Air was hard to beat- FREE! When we booked this cruise nearly a year ago, the offer included free airfare, free gratuities (worth $800 per person on a 60 day cruise) and $300 per person onboard spending money for excursions and what not.

I'd have to say, after nearly missing our ship for our British Isles cruise in 2016, we are total fans of using Princess EZ-Air to book all our cruise related flights. Even on flights that we have to pay for, the fares have been very competitive, and in some cases, a great deal. Princess apparently buys airline seats in bulk like Viking does, so they can offer competitive fares. Anyways, it is sure a reassuring feeling to exit the terminal and be greeted by a smiling person waving the Princess Cruises sign. While we did have to roll our suitcases down the sidewalk a ways to the waiting luxury tour bus, we didn't have to load or unload the suitcases, and had a very comfortable and quick trip to our hotel.

Fort Lauderdale obviously serves a lot of cruise ship passengers. Instead of a bell ringing to warn people that the baggage carousel was about to start up, they used the sound of a cruise ship's horn blasting it's 5 short departure tones. It was easy to spot other passengers who were going to board our ship by the sheer bulk of luggage required for a 60 day trip. There are a lot of veteran cruiser's on this trip, judging by the number and variety of cruise line luggage tags evident.

The Embassy Suites, where Princess put us up, is a vastly nicer hotel than the Quality Inn we stayed at before our previous Panama Canal cruise in 2015. As the name implies, our room was a suite, and it was a HUGE suite. There were two queen beds in the master bedroom, and a full sized sleeper sofa in the living room. We could have easily and comfortably put up our whole family in this room. The only thing missing was a safe in the room, which seemed like an odd omission, or perhaps we just never found the safe amongst all the cabinets and furniture. They also have a happy hour with free beer, margaritas and Bahama Mama's. There were also chips, veggies with humus, and popcorn.

There was a Five-Guys burger joint just around the corner from the hotel and it was surprising to walk in to find the place empty. Either they haven't been discovered by Floridians, or the novelty has worn out. Anyways, that was dinner.

As part of the cruise transfer/hotel package, they ask that we have our bags packed, tagged and just inside our hotel room doors by 9am for the bell men to collect. The Embassy Suites has a free made to order breakfast starting at 7am, and cruise ship passengers are to meet at 11:45am for the bus transfer to the cruise ship port. We had been earlier advised by Princess that the ship would be delayed because of a Norovirus outbreak on the current sailing. We hope they really give it a good scrubbing. That notification advised passengers not to arrive before 2:30pm, unless they were part of a Princess transfer, so we may get priority boarding.