It’s 5AM and my phone goes off, who’s texting me this early?
I better get up and check, it might be important. Oh it’s only Ly. Turns out he
left his cruise information package on his table, which contained his cruise
boarding pass. Seems like every trip he likes to start it off with an exciting
situation, “lost” wallet, rubber gloved @ security, laundry washed passport,
and now forgetting his boarding pass.
But don’t worry, we managed to get a hold of his cruise
package and reunite him with it in Florida, talk about exceptional customer
service!
So we arrive in Florida, reunite with Ly and Derrek because
they had different flights, and all 16 of us are going to take cabs over to
Port Everglades. I ask and find out that they are willing to take 4 people per
cab, and it’ll cost $15 each ride, to wait for mini-vans would have been much
longer and we didn’t have that much time to wait, since we needed to board the
cruise ship before they closed their gates. So along with the Taxi Cab
Authority person there, we assemble people into groups of four and pile them
into cabs and instruct the drivers to take them to Port Everglades to board the
Allure of the Seas cruise ship.
I ensure that everyone else has made their way into a taxi
and headed to the port before, Ly, Derrek and Myself board the last taxi and
head there ourselves, 7 minutes into the ride, the driver tells us to take out
our ID, as they are going to check it. Oh shit! I have Karen, Eric and my
Grandma’s passports. Oops! I wonder how they’re going to make it through the gate.
Luckily when I reunite with them later on, they told me that they still had
their driver’s licenses or ID’s with them. Phew!
Our cab ride cost $12.90 and I gave the driver $15 and
thanked him for his time. I get out of the cab and talked to DuBai. He was
asking me how much my cab ride was, I said $15 like they told us at the
airport, he said his cost him $30. WTF? Turns out, when the Taxi Authority
person at the airport told him it was $15, he gave him $15, thinking that he
was suppose to pay him for the ride. Uh, no sir. You just tipped him $15, for
all of us! You still have to pay your driver. Faceplam!
So that’s over and done with, let’s make our way over to
security and into the long line ups to register our payment methods and
check-in. Hey, wait a minute, for a 6,300 passenger cruise ship sailing at
capacity, where are all the long lineups? Oh that’s right! We’re so late that
everyone else must have already boarded. Well we weren’t that late, but we were
pretty late, it seemed like we were the last ones boarding, ‘cause while we
stood there to wait for everyone to finish registration, there really wasn’t
anyone else who passed us. Oh well, we still made it!
We board the ship, stand around the middle of the ship for
about ten minutes, absorbing it all in, then agree on plan that we’re all going
to go to our rooms to drop our carryon’s off, head over to the Windjammer
Marketplace for their buffet before meeting back up at 5:30 and then heading
off to dinner at 6.
By the time we managed to find our rooms, take a quick
glance at everyone else’s room, and find the buffet, we realize that it’s
closed down, due to a mandatory Guest Assembly Drill. So we all march hungry,
over to the Amber Theatre, which is where the drill was being held, and find
seats. Little did we know that you have assigned stations that you’re supposed
to report to, so we just sat down at the first available section, and waited,
only later did we realize that we were in the wrong section, so we all got up
and moved, when you enter a section, they scan your card, however it didn’t
register that we weren’t in the wrong section, or maybe the attendant didn’t
care. So later when we were in the correct section, our cards were scanned,
however, a couple days later, I checked my in room messages and it said that my
roommate, Eric and I never showed up to the mandatory drill and asked us to
watch the safety video.
Once the drill was done we still had about an hour and
fifteen minutes before dinner, so we were free to roam around the ship. I
wandered all the way up to the fifteenth floor to where the pools were and
found the flow rider machines, which I was most excited about trying. I even
packed my swimwear in my carry on, so that I could ride it the first day!
However, with the limited time remaining and lack of energy, I just stood there
and watched for a bit.
Finally, it’s time to get ready for dinner! We were all
famished, since most of us didn’t eat anything except for the bakery buns and
sandwiches we brought, which were consumed in the morning. Each night our
dinner was at 6PM and we were to eat in the Main Dining Room, and we had
assigned tables and waiters. Of course we were free to forgo the nightly dinner
reservations and eat elsewhere, but why would we do that, since the food was
exceptional!
Each night, dinner was insane! We would each order several
different appetizers, several different main courses and several different
deserts, for ourselves! Of course, sometimes those dishes would be shared. And
each night, we would utilize the full two hours of our dining time, even going
over by several minutes, sometimes we even left some of the deserts behind or
took it with us, ‘cause we were over our allotted time and didn’t want to make
it difficult for our wonderful servers.
After dinner, we continued our exploration until it was time
for our 9PM of Chicago, The Broadway musical comedy, rated R. It was a pretty
good show, although the theatre got kind of chilly after awhile, they managed
to keep me entertained, I never did watch the Chicago movie, so it was a bit
hard to follow along, I suspect that I would have enjoyed the musical much more
had I seen the movie first.
After the show, I walked around, and I think this is where I
bumped into the Thai’s and they were hanging around some new people and I got
introduced to them as well. I believe this is where I first used my cruise name
of JoJo. Oh no wait. During dinner our waiter asked us for our names, to become
more personal and to help him mark down what we ordered and that was the first
time that I used my name of JoJo on this cruise ship.
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