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Published: April 23rd 2016
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Fairfield Inn
Where we stayed last night Hello everyone. We got up this morning and had a nice but simple breakfast at the hotel. We purchased tickets for the shuttle service to get us to the cruise port but had a couple of hours to rest at the hotel before leaving at 11:45. The shuttle took us to the only ship in port today – the Royal Princess. The shore-side personnel took charge of our luggage and promised to deliver everything directly to our cabin. There was a large throng of people at our cruise terminal, all having arrived about the same time and all trying to get through the registration process. Since we have cruised with Princess quite a bit, we have a status called Preferred Boarding which basically means “go to the front of the line”. Anyway, we hustled through the boarding process very quickly and were on board the ship by 12:30 – that was great! Our first order of business was to find our cabin and then head up to the buffet lunch. There seems to be something about being on a cruise ship which just stimulates an appetite. We ate a sensible lunch in the Horizon Bistro and then explored a little bit. The larger Horizon Court is a little further down the deck, but we didn’t really need a full-sized meal anyway (salad, sandwiches, and chili were plenty, along with some “sweets” afterwards).
Some interesting information about the Royal Princess:
Guest Capacity: 3,560
Ship’s Length: 1,083 feet
Ship’s Height: 217 feet
Number of Decks: 19
Service Speed: 22 knots
Inaugural Cruise: June 16, 2013
You can monitor the Ship’s Location & see the Bridge Cam View at this website:
http://www.sea-scanner.com/schiffsposition.php?schiff=royal+princess Back to our cabin after lunch, we met our Cabin Attendant (Manuel) who volunteered to bring us anything we wanted. We also found that our luggage had been delivered as promised. We were able to get everything unpacked and we started getting settled in our cabin. David went out to get a couple of bottles of water at one of the bars and to take a few scenery pictures of Ft Lauderdale harbor. Then we gathered up our Life Preservers and went to our assigned “muster station” in the ship’s. Now we have had our memory refreshed about the emergency Channel to Atlantic
Leaving Ft Lauderdale procedures and how to wear our vests if necessary, so we are as safe as possible.
After the Lift Boat Drill, Janet went down to the International Café got a Café Mocha and David found the Internet Café to learn how to get connected to the internet for the remainder of our cruise. Because of our previous cruises, we each get 250 free internet minutes for this leg of our trip. We then went back to our cabin and rested before it was time for dinner. The ship actually left the port and headed off on our cruise about 5:00. Sailing out of port the ship was able to play a series of musical notes from the ship’s horn, playing the first few bars of the theme from Love Boat – that was cute. When we made the reservation for this trip, Princess Cruises was offering a complimentary incentive for booking at that early date. The “gift” happened to be a full beverage package for each of us (whatever drinks we want from the bar, sodas, bottled water, fancy coffees, whatever). If we had decided to purchase this package, they sell it at $49 Looking back
along the coast from Atlantic per day per person for the full 29-day duration of our trip. Even at their inflated shipboard prices we would never have purchased more than $2800 in drinks, but now that we can have whatever we want, it won’t cost us anything.
We have been assigned to the Allegro Dining Room, which is on Deck-6 at the opposite end of the ship. If nothing else, we will get plenty of exercise walking back and forth to our meals. We had requested a 6:00 seating, but got assigned to the 5:15 dinner seating instead. That may rush us a few times when we return from a late shore excursion, but it was no problem this evening. And it allows a little more time after dinner before the evening entertainment begins, so we won’t be rushing as much to get seated at any of the popular shows. Tonight Janet had the Melon Balls and David had Smoked Haddock and Potato Soup for our first course. For our second course we each had a small version of Fettuccine Alfredo. We each had the “sail away Prime Rib Dinner” entree which is kind of a tradition of the Princess cruises. For dessert Janet had chocolate chip ice cream with chocolate syrup and David had cheesecake with strawberries. Since we have free drinks, we each got a glass of wine with our dinner. After dessert Janet had an Irish Coffee and David had a snifter of Grand Marnier liquor.
Before we forget to mention it, we had a table for four, but nobody else came to dinner with us. If you remember our Australian cruises, this had been a regular experience for us, so we really hope that tomorrow our tablemates will show up. The Head Waiter (Benito) talked to us and he was very hopeful that tomorrow someone would be dinning with us. By the way, our waiter is named Jesus (from the Philippines) and his assistant is Hernando (from Peru). After dinner we went to the Princess Theater for the kickoff session with the ship’s singers and dancers, and a Canadian humorist. This is also when the Cruise Director (Ron Goodman) told us about some of the things ahead for us as well as introducing his staff. It was an entertaining hour. FYI, the ship is so large that the Princess Theater (their largest stage showroom) is on both decks 6 & 7. It certainly will seat more people than any of the ship theaters we’ve been on before, but there are more passengers here than we’ve had ever before too. Even at that the show was still Standing Room Only. Now that we have sailed, our trip REALLY has begun. We will be sailing from West to East so there will be a series of 23-hour days ahead before we get to Europe (but no lost sleep tonight). You’re probably not going to be too sympathetic for us losing a little sleep every so often as we can always make up for it with some afternoon naps. We had thought about delaying our vacation until this Fall so the energetic European adventures would occur first followed by a leisurely cruise coming back to the US (many 25-hour days), but this eastbound trip fits our overall schedule better. The first part of our trip is actually a “repositioning cruise”, where the primary purpose is to move the ship from the Caribbean to the Mediterranean for the coming cruising season. We have a lot of “sea days” crossing the Atlantic and some people may think this will be boring for us – not true! There will be lots of activities available for us on the ship if we are interested, or we can simply rest and enjoy being pampered (personal service with abundant food and entertainment). Anyway, we are all set for a lot of fun ahead during the coming weeks – we hope you will enjoy reading about our trip! After an active day and a variety of evening drinks, we will say good night from cabin 206 on Dolphin Deck aboard the Royal Princess.
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Janel
non-member comment
Bon Voyage!
So glad you share these trips with us. Can't wait to hear all about it!