This was taken 2 weeks prior to our cruise … free luggage pickup and delivery directly to the ship and on our return home too!
Here are our pictures from our 2 days in Ft. Lauderdale
We had received notification from Holland that our boarding time had been pushed back a half hour due to safety inspections. I asked the motel manager if we could have a later check out and he graciously gave us another hour. When I booked an Uber he was 2 miles away. We left about noon, got to the ship in about 15 minutes (Uber cost $12). I was concerned that we were still early but they were processing people and some in the FB group were posting that they were already on board.
This was our first sailing as 4 star Mariner’s which gets us to the front of the line, an expedited check-in, and besides the fact that I keyed in Jeff’s birth year wrong on the boarding documents which needed to be corrected, we were on the ship within 15 minutes of entering the terminal. AND our rooms were ready!
And then the bottom started falling out. We went to our room, dumped our backpacks and put our passports and money in the safe. The room seemed warm and the air wasn’t moving from the AC with much umph. I checked to make sure that the thermostat was on the lowest setting and we went to lunch (which was hot dogs for both of us). We blissfully headed back to the room looking forward to a much cooler room in which we could unpack way too many suitcases. I’m embarrassed to say how many, just know that we shipped 4 suitcases ahead and we weren’t able to ship any electronics, food or medicine. Those 4 suitcases were shipped 2 weeks before we left for Florida and you kind of forget what you packed, so just to be safe you toss something in the suitcase and before you know you’ve filled up another one! I seriously admire the people that got on board with one big suitcase and a backpack … but I guarantee you that they are not prepared for ANY minor medical emergency, or electronic catastrophe, and they don’t take any medicine! (Work with me …. I’m trying to justify myself here!)
Okay, where was I? Oh yes, the air conditioning. When we headed back to the room after our hot dogs, the room was even hotter than before. We met our room steward and told him the room was hot and he brought us a fan. We asked him if this room had any issues with the air conditioning and he admitted that on the previous cruise the people had complained about the room temperature and he had provided a fan. Well, the previous cruise originated in Quebec and went down the east coast to Ft. Lauderdale. They had decent temps until they got further south. Armed with that information we headed to guest services. This was our first visit and it was about one pm. I told them the room was hot, the AC wasn’t working and the room steward identified an issue on the previous cruise. They said they would have someone go by the room and check the AC. I asked if there was a vacant room or a possible upgraded room that we could just go ahead and move to and was told that Corporate wouldn’t have that information available to them until the following day. We returned to the room and did NOT unpack while we waited for the AC person to show. Our dinner time was scheduled for 5 pm and no one had shown up before we went to dinner. We had no table mates show up at our table of 6. Our waiters are Agus (Gus) and Toni (from Brooklyn … said in a heavy Italian accent … haha … not!).
After dinner we returned to our room … no change in temp, maybe warmer. We returned to guest services and stood in line for an hour. They told us that it was reported that someone had been in our room 2 minutes ago and fixed something. We went to a mainstage presentation that lasted an hour and when we got back to our room it was even hotter and that was with a fan blowing.
Now, it is 8pm and we’ve been to guest relations twice, this is our 3rd trip. We waited in line another hour. While we were waiting, I watched as they got deck plans out and it appeared they gave room keys to 2 different couples. When we finally got to speak to a young lady, she looked our case up and said she would call and have someone return to look at the air conditioning. Now, I don’t normally do this because I absolutely hate when people give ultimatums, but they had had 9 hours to fix it and it hasn’t been fixed. I told her that we were not leaving the desk until we had a solution to the problem and that solution did NOT involve us sleeping in that room. At that point, a supervisor that had earlier told us that that room situation would not be known until the next day stepped in and told the other women that she would assist us. She punched in some keys on the computer and told us that a room had just become available (insert eye roll here). She gave us an access key so we could check out the room (fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me). We hightailed it to the room which was one floor down from our current floor but closer to the front of the ship. It was an identical room and the AC was working marginally better than our room. We returned to guest relations and said we would take it. She said she would call someone from housekeeping to help us move our 4+ (haha, not telling how many) suitcases to the new room and gave us new room key cards. We went to our original room, and although we hadn’t unpacked any suitcases, it was amazing how much we had accumulated in the 9 hours we’ve been on ship. We loaded up the dolly, grabbed the backpacks and other items that we’d acquired, cleaned out the safe and headed down one floor. When we got to the room … the keys wouldn’t open the door. The housekeeping guy showed up shortly with our suitcases and said he could call someone. I asked if it would be faster for me to go back to guest services, or wait for whoever he was calling. He said guest services would be faster.
Now I’m back at guest services, and yes, I was one of THOSE people that ignored the queue as I stood in the line of sight with the person that had helped me earlier. When we made eye contact, I held up the key cards and mouthed “they don’t work”. She was working with a couple of women that were requesting a change of rooms for safety reasons. She excused herself from them and took my keys to reprogram them. I apologized for interrupting and said that we had to change rooms because our AC wasn’t working. From the knowing glance that passed between them I knew that they had also been given the line that there weren’t any rooms available. As a result, I found out later that they received a different room.
Now I’ve been given another set of keys and I return to the room. Would it surprise you if I told you that those keys didn’t work? I would have been surprised if they DID work. I returned to guest relations yet again and just placed the card keys on the counter by the woman that had been helping us and stepped back. She reprogrammed the keys again and we returned to the new room together. This set didn’t work either, but she let us in with a master key and told us a locksmith would have new keys in our mailbox in the morning. I told her that we now couldn’t leave the room because we wouldn’t be able to get back in. She said we could go out and when we were ready to return to our room, to go back to guest relations (for the 5th time this day) and someone would let us in. We made it to the club as they were finishing their 3rd and final set of the night, had a drink and then waited in line at guest relations for 20 another minutes before we could be helped.
Are you exhausted reading this? I’m exhausted reliving it! What a day! I’m glad it’s over!
Now we have to deal with our app not working and not having WIFI. But that’s for tomorrow.
For tonight’s dinner I had the pot roast which was delicious and Jeff had the Jerk Pulled Pork which was neither jerked or pulled ….
