The Panama Canal Cruise - Part - 1 - The Love Boat

 

Our return to cruising back in December of 2021 was a marvelous experience, not just because of the ship, the Celebrity Millennium, or our itinerary in the eastern Leeward Islands of the Caribbean, but also because we had the classic, spotless ship practically to ourselves. COVID restrictions were being slowly lifted and cruising had just resumed following the industry-wide shutdown caused by the COVID-19 epidemic. We happened to pick the second cruise of the Millennium’s return to full service. There were only several hundred passengers on a fully staffed ship designed to carry over two thousand. There were as many crew as there were passengers, and needless to say, the service was outstanding.

We concluded the ten day cruise following the mask and cleanliness requirements, especially when in the many ports of call and did not suffer any illness of any kind. There were several passengers confined to their staterooms who apparently had tested positive for the infection and we found later one deck had been assigned as a restricted area for those who fell ill to COVID, but the affect of the precautions on the cruise was unnoticed by most of us. 

The cruise was so enjoyable we visited the future cruise office on board the Millennium after the mid-point of the sailing and booked our dream cruise, a full transit of the Panama Canal. The Millennium was being repositioned from Ft. Lauderdale to Los Angeles early next year and the timing was perfect for us. We excitedly made our cruise deposit and began planning even before our cruise was over. We disembarked in Ft Lauderdale full of enthusiasm, thrilled that our return to cruising had reaffirmed our memories of our past cruises. We began planning about visiting friends in California as we incorporated the upcoming Panama Canal cruise into an extended adventure. We were back! Cruising was great again.

Unfortunately, after months of planning and anticipation of our “bucket-list” cruise, Celebrity Cruise line abruptly informed us of a major change in plans and within days, the highly anticipated cruise faded into the mist of disillusionment. We were offered a similar cruise on a different ship, and at a different time, but no option for a refund. The new schedule was impossible for us to accommodate, so we had to settle for “ship’s credit” for some future cruise. Ship’s credit has become the new refund in the industry, and we grudgingly accepted that resolution, feeling as if we would really be surprised to ever recover our down payment. And then life got in the way, or more specifically, Hurricane Ian, and we began to wonder if we would ever get back to sea.

We did. After a two year hiatus – mainly spent spending three months cleaning up after Hurricane Ian and then pulling up our Florida roots and moving to Athens, Georgia – we decided to try again, and this time we pulled yet another rabbit out of the hat – the Love Boat.

After settling in our new home in Athens, Georgia, and facing the prospect of our first “cold” winter, we decided to find a cruise that included a full transit of the iconic Panama Canal. We needed a respite from our moving and resettling chores and the foreboding winter weather as well. Princess Cruises, which we have sailed with twice before, offered the Island Princess with 2200 passengers and a crew of 900, a perfect size cruise ship for us. It was scheduled to depart from Ft. Lauderdale just after New Years and arrive in Los Angeles fifteen days later. We booked the cruise and started packing. We resumed our plans for an extended vacation in California as well.

We were thrilled to book a cruise on the ship, which we were told, is the namesake of one of the two ships used in the television series of long ago. Technically, it is the “other” Love Boat, the Island Princess, not the Pacific Princess, and it’s not the original ship used in the series either, but rather it’s namesake, a specifically designed Panamax for Panama Canal passage, launched in 2003. The original Love Boat has already met its ignominious end on the beaches at Alang, India, as did the marvelous SS Norway, both cut up for scrap after setting the standards for cruising that evolved past them. We were fortunate to sail on the SS Norway years ago, and this was a unique opportunity to sail yet on another iconic ship. We would soon find out the Island Princess, as pristine as it is, like the Millennium of our last cruise, is also approaching the end of its service life in mainstream cruising.

Step 1 - Get to the port! 

For the first time in our cruising experience, we can not simply drive to the port of embarkation. Not trusting airline delays, we book a flight a day early so as to minimize the possibility of missing the boat. That’s not an idiom, we really didn’t want to miss the boat. We fly from busy Atlanta, the busiest in the world, to Ft Lauderdale – a modest, under two hour flight – and stay in one of the several well-known chain hotels not far from Port Everglades. The cruise port, less than three miles from the International airport, has become a thriving, modern passenger cruise terminal, complete with parking garage for those who drive to the port. It now rivals its nearby neighbor, Dodge Island, the Port of Miami less than thirty miles away. Arriving a day early also gave us the opportunity to have dinner that evening with great friends, Bob and Patricia, who drove up from Miami. We enjoyed a great Cuban dinner, something we dearly miss up in Georgia, and reminisced about old times. The dinner set the tone for the entire cruise.

Port Everglades

The hotel, while spotlessly clean, showed it’s primary business is the constant flow of one night guests departing the next day on cruise ships and appears to have no interest in investing in maintenance or upkeep as that would be apparently an unnecessary expense. They had shuttle bus service to the cruise port, for an additional fee of course, that ran multiple trips beginning fairly early the next morning and each was filled with excited, shuffling passengers, all with various carry-ons strapped over shoulders and every possible color and size of four wheeled luggage made on planet earth.

Step 2 - Boarding - A short wait

One feature of Princess cruising I really like is their medallion. It was mailed to us at home a week or so before the cruise and even though I now know how my dog feels when the vet scans him for an implanted chip, I really found it to be a time saver. The medallion is a small disc with an RF chip containing your pertinent information. Lost your wife? Just ask the closest staff member to locate her. Piece of cake. After presenting our passports and scanning our medallions, we were soon on board and since we didn’t have to wait on checked in luggage, dropped our backpacks and carry-ons in our stateroom and headed for the food on the upper deck. 

We made the mandatory stop by our assigned lifeboat station, scanned our medallions yet again, and reminisced about the pushing and shoving of the old days. It isn’t really nostalgia because I don’t miss the old Parade of New Shoes, also formerly known as the mandatory life boat drill. It now takes a few seconds to complete the safety requirements and you are free to do whatever you want.

The open buffet is extensive and well replenished, and while we were sitting, looking over the other ships and boats around the port, my wife got a cellphone call from our overnight hotel. The maid found a tablet under her pillow when she made the bed. Normally, my wife, who always reads at night, would have put it on the top shelf of the headboard as the sandman slipped in, but not having a headboard, she had simply slipped her Kindle electronic reader beneath her pillow. Out of sight, out of mind, and we simply forgot it was there.

The next four hours, right up to casting off, were intense, with phone calls to the hotel, the shuttle company staff, drivers, and of course, on board customer service. I used my phone to deactivate her Kindle in case it couldn’t be recovered, and when we finally got a photo from the driver who delivered the forgotten tablet to the port showing who he had handed it to - it was of the back of an unidentifiable woman, dressed in a blue suit, taken as she walked away.

We shoved off almost immediately after, and once again pleaded our case to the sympathetic staff at customer service, but alas, there was no word or information about the lost Kindle. They checked again with the boarding crew, to no avail, and said simply they would do their best to find it. While they were helping us, they copied my DD214 to prove my military service. Most cruise lines offer a small discount to veterans, but I hadn’t submitted the required form ahead of time so I brought a copy with me. A few keystrokes and the document was on its way to corporate headquarters. My approval was received early the next day.

Leaving Port Everglades

The first night dinner is always informal as many suitcases have yet to be delivered to the staterooms and cabins, but we passed on the dining room and ended up in the Horizon Court, a great open food service area forward on deck 14 offering something for everyone. 

It was a gray, overcast sky by the time Ft Lauderdale was but a bright spot on the distant evening horizon. When we finally retired to the cabin, tired but excited, Ilse began to realize how much she missed her Kindle.

An old fashioned Kindle. 

Next:  Cartagena - https://piddlepaddler.blogspot.com/2024/11/the-panama-canal-cruise-part-2-cartegena.html

Video:  A 26 minute video of this blog, including Cartagena, is at  https://youtu.be/MeKFr8bPaFs

The Cruise to Aruba - Home Again

Thursday is a great day at sea. The faint, white smoke from the funnels drifts slowly upward as it dissipates in the amazingly clear blue sky, staying almost directly over the ship. We are making 11 knots with a trailing wind and a following sea, the sun is shining and Mother Nature is at peace with the marketing arm of Princess Cruises. Everything is as advertised.

 A really nice way to wrap up a cruise. We do all the touristy things we think will interest us, from touring the galley (at least the tour is still free, but they are hawking a $29 Chef's cook book. Yes, I bought one) and attending free health maintenance seminars. We tour the ship to see if we've missed any decks or crannies that are unique, and we head back to the library to check out one last book. Or was that Friday? No, it had to be Thursday because we turned the books back in on Friday. That's what's great about cruising when all goes well: you lose track of time and that is the whole idea. 

Thursday is the Captain's Cocktail Party, followed by the last of the two formal dinners. Lobster tonight! Must be Thursday! We take in the show in the ship's theater, “What a Swell Party,” a tribute to Cole Porter, but the strain of constantly being on is showing on the the dancers and performers. The show is a canned, prerecorded production but it is still a pleasure to watch the entertainers do their best, even when the cruise is about to wrap up. They do two shows a night so it isn't a cakewalk by any means. 

Friday is another laid-back, enjoy-the-cruise day. Weather is perfect and we head for the theater at 10:30 am for a Chef's culinary demonstration, followed by the Galley tour. OK, so the galley tour was on Friday! Award winning Executive Chef Giuseppe de Gennaro and his comedic side kick, Maitre d' Nicola Furlan, put on a memorable demonstration of cooking pasta, including the over-the-shoulder pasta fling to see if it sticks on the wall. If it does, it is ready! It did, to the delight of the audience. 

Some last minute shopping from the ship's stores, and spending an hour or so standing on deck seven forward watching the flying fish as they skip away from the ships' bow wave and one last lunch in the buffet. Tonight the luggage is picked up from outside your stateroom for transfer to the dock as soon as we land. Everything you have left goes in your carry-one luggage or bags. The last call for placing your luggage in the hall way is 11:00 pm, so we have plenty of time to change after we eat and lay out the clothes for the trip home.

We eat dinner one last time, and once again we get to hear Buster Poindexter.

One of the few traditions that seems to be carried on every Caribbean cruise regardless of ship or cruise line is the dessert on the night of the final dinner, and how it is served. Our German friends were somewhat startled when the lights in the glamorous dining went down after dinner and “Hot, Hot, Hot” began to play on the dining room speakers. The conga line of servers and waiters still wind their way around the darkened dining room carrying Baked Alaska on their heads, singing and generally having a good time as they have done on every cruise we have sailed on. The lights finally came back up and everyone took photos of their by-now-famous desert. I have never seen so many different sizes and types of digital cameras! They came out of nowhere. I think were pulled out of thin air. Everybody seemed to have at least one!  

 As our waitress held out the Baked Alaska we were to be served so we could photograph it, I realized the rum flambe on top has been replaced with an LED candle. Ahh, progress! Actually, safety is the reason for the change and it doesn't affect most the people who could care less anyway. Just another point of nostalgia for us old cruisers who still remember the good old days.

As we finally say goodnight and turn in, we reflect on what has been a pretty good cruise, especially considering the rough weather of the second and third days. Tomorrow we will be back in Port Everglades to disembark.

Will we be back? Oh, I'm sure we will, we just don't know when or which cruise ports we want to visit. Only one thing is absolutely certain: It won't be on the Oasis of the Seas. Having two thousand passengers on a ship is more than enough for me.

George

Reflections: The S/S Norway, our favorite ship

Cruise to Aruba - Boarding

From part one : http://piddlepaddler.blogspot.com/2012/03/crown-princess-to-aruba.html

Boarding the huge ship was smoothly done, but I can't say the same for just getting to the ship to start with. With the convoluted routing and redirects through the construction that dominated the port and the various security control points as we entered Port Everglades, I was really glad I left the driving to someone else. We used a charter-bus to make the 180 mile trip from Port Charlotte to Ft. Lauderdale so I wouldn't have to figure out the parking nonsense in the congested port area. We had friends of ours with us from Germany who speak very little English, and I simply didn't need the added confusion factor or a failure to communicate.

Bernd and Agnes, our friends from Germany

There were seven, huge, state-of-the-art cruise ships being boarded simultaneously in one of the busiest cruise ports in the United States. To say the port was jammed with traffic would be an understatement. The bus trip was easy enough for us, but our driver had my heartfelt sympathy as guard after guard made him move the huge bus after we finally got next to the correct ship in the terminal area. Two guards actually stood in front of the bus at one time, each pointing for him to go in a different direction. Whoever outranked whom finally won, and we again did another five point turn in the confines of a parking garage! Our driver finally got fed up once he was satisfied he was close enough to the entrance and just turned off the ignition. Hordes of porters pushing empty luggage carts descended on the undersides of the bus, and once they started unloading, it was obvious no one was going to move the bus. This driver earned his tip, even with his momentary lapse on the highway. This was his third shift in two days. Welcome to the new America.

Princess had us print everything from the Internet beforehand, so all we had to do was follow our yellow color through the terminal to our designated seating area. We never saw our luggage again, but it was also pre-tagged and color coded just like we were, so I wasn't worried. It had always shown up in front of our stateroom late in the evening on previous cruises, so I expected the same service here. 

After an hour and a half wait, we signed in with the efficient, courteous staff, they were actually quite funny, and after getting our plastic, embossed gold room keys, which are also your boarding cards, we were on our way up the forward gangplank. Ten minutes later we were checking out our stateroom, ready for a tour of the ship. I react badly when being herded and avoid places like Disney World like the plague, but Princess has this down to an art form and the whole procedure was quite painless.

Much of the chatter on deck was French, German, even Russian, with only a few passengers speaking English. The English speaking passengers were the only ones to benefit from the new, expanded safety briefing, however, which had formerly been known as the Parade of New Shoes, or technically, the Life Boat Drill. Over 800 of us listened intently to the Captain's 22 minute safety address over the Public Address speakers in the ship's theater, the “A” muster station, I couldn't help but wonder if we could all get out of the theater in time in case of a real emergency.

The first real shock of new-age cruising came shortly after the lifeboat drill. We went up to the forward pool deck bar and ordered drinks. I simply ordered a Budweiser. Apparently a brand hard to find among the many better known foreign labels. The smiling young woman presented me with the charge slip, they only accept your pre-approved credit card, and watched blandly as I read it several times. No matter how I turned it around, it still came out to six dollars and four cents, gratuity included. Wow, my first and only beer! The grand old days of cruising are over! My wife pointed out it was a sixteen ounce can, rather than the standard twelve ounce size. Doesn't matter, it was a six dollar can of Budweiser! This would be a cruise of abstinence. Well, within reason, of course. Remind me to check the futures market on beer. It may be a better investment than oil.

With heavy, overcast skies and winds steady at over thirty knots out of the northeast, most of the passengers standing outside on the railing had their arms folded tightly in front of them with their shoulders scrunched up to their ears as we crossed out of the protected anchorage and into the open ocean. Most looked like they wished they still had on their northern, cold weather jackets. 

As we watched the pilot disembark well outside the protection of the channel and head back toward Ft. Lauderdale, we wondered just how rough it has to be to get these people worried.  

The Crown Princess weighs over 112,000 tons, and that was probably before they loaded us, the fuel, the food, and who knows how many cases of Budweiser.  Actually, the net registered tonnage is only 83, 977 tons, so the gross tonnage of 113, 561 tons is when we cast off from Port Everglades loaded to the gills.  In that bloated condition she draws 28 feet of water.  In other words, you couldn't put her in your swimming pool unless your pool was 29 feet deep.  At 950 feet long, (that's over three football fields, I think, or over three soccer fields, or something else that makes you say, “Wow, that's long!”) she still shuddered and shook in the 30 knot crosswinds like my Golden Retriever when I give him a bath. 

The in-room television said we had “moderate seas” at four to seven feet, with an across-the-deck wind of 30 knots. We were constantly shaking. Of the five cruises we've done, this one was unique. We had lulled and waited all night in 20 foot seas not far off Palm Beach on our very first cruise many years ago and thought the slow, rolling wind blown waves were as bad as it got, but that ship, the old Sunward II hadn't protested like this one. The constant, quick jerks back and forth that occasionally caused quick side-steps and spilled drinks were new to us.But then we went to dinner and all was well with the world! Our decision to cruise once again was affirmed. Excellent food and outstanding service! I'll even wear a tie if I have to. Personally, the casual dining at one of the three buffets is great for a quick lunch, especially when everyone in your party is off doing their own thing, but the dining room is one reason we cruise.  The food is really good at the buffets, and table service is excellent there as well, but it is not personal.  When you eat in the dining room, you get to meet people like Antonio, our waiter and Alphonse, an assistant Maitre D' who cater to your every whim.  We only wore jackets twice, which to us was a nice change from the Mickey D atmosphere that surrounds the deck area that many of the passengers seem to enjoy.  Love great food!  Love great service!

But, times they are a'changing.  A guided tour of the ship from the bridge to the engine room is still available, but now instead of gratis or free of charge, it costs a staggering $150.00!  Even airline executives must look with envy at the cruise ship industry's ability to gouge their customers. 

Five of the seven cruise ships boarding passengers at Port Everglades, Florida.
The Oasis of the Seas is on the far right

Next: Day One to Aruba

M/S Crown Princess to Aruba

The old lady is still fun to sail. Showing her age with an occasional loose carpet strip, a few unobtrusive paint blisters, and generally in need of a carpet deep cleaning, the M/S Crown Princess still showed her stuff as she shuddered and twitched her way out of the Bar Cut Channel in Ft. Lauderdale into heavy seas and near gale-force winds. She's a seasoned veteran at six years old, and not to destined to be at the top of the Princess list much longer.

She will be surpassed by the new M/S Royal Princess in June, 2013, which will carry 3,600 passengers, 500 more than were on-board as we cast off from Pier Two at 4:00pm on a recent Saturday afternoon. If you think 3,600 passengers is impressive, remember Royal Caribbean's Oasis of the Seas already carries 5000 passengers spread between 18 decks. That behemoth was berthed near us at Ft Lauderdale, also prepping for a seven day excursion into the Caribbean. “Massive” was the only word I could think of as I looked at the Oasis from the fantail pool deck of the M/S Crown Princess. 

Astonishing to think they unload 5000 people, beginning at 7:00 am, clean the ship, load a new group of 5000 glassy-eyed vacationers, refuel, restock and stand ready to cast off by 4:30 pm. All in a day's work! I was already impressed with Princess's streamlined boarding processes which got 3224 of us on-board with as little stress and trepidation I have ever encountered boarding a cruise ship. This was our fifth cruise, and by far the one of the easiest to board. I found out later the Crown Princess also takes on over two hundred tons of food and supplies every Saturday during that same, short window of time. Amazing, simply amazing. 

But, I'm getting ahead of myself. The trip to Ft. Lauderdale from Port Charlotte on Florida's west coast had it's own moments, including when the bus driver's head slowly slumped to his right shoulder while we were doing 65 miles an hour on a long, straight, boring section of I-75 in the middle of the Everglades known as Alligator Alley. My wife and I were luckily sitting in the seats directly behind him, and I leaned over and gently tapped his shoulder until his head snapped up in surprise. He gave me a glance that showed more fear than gratefulness, but I wasn't about to condemn him. I simply smiled and pretended to be looking for alligators along side the adjacent canal and the event was never mentioned. He made a point to shake my hand when we got off the bus.

Next: Cast off - Underway on the Princess