From ChatGPT:

Fort Lauderdale, located on Florida's southeastern coast, is renowned for its stunning beaches and vibrant nightlife. Founded in 1911, it played a significant role in World War II as a naval base. Today, it has a population of around 190,000 residents. A fun fact: the city’s canal system, which earned it the nickname “Venice of America,” is one of its most distinctive features, with more than 300 miles of waterways. The community is diverse and lively, attracting both tourists and retirees with its warm climate and cultural events. Fort Lauderdale remains a popular destination for sunseekers and boating enthusiasts alike. 

Day 1 – Fort Lauderdale

Mary was up at 7 o’clock. She got me up by about 830. I did a hard reset on my  watch and it came to life, thankfully. We packed up what we had in the room and headed downstairs by about 915. Everybody was to meet down there to claim their luggage. There was supposed to be one pause that bus to take everyone to the cruise port. As it turns out, the bus had a broken lift. The Cruise Specialist ladies called the day before and verified that the when was working. When I pulled up outside the hotel the driver said the lift was broken. I have to give them credit period they quickly came up with alternatives. It was about 30 minutes later when a smaller bus pulled up. It had enough space for my chair and Mary. Thankfully, we put all of our other stuff on the first bus. We loaded up on this new second bus and we were to the cruise port in about 20 minutes. We quickly found our pile of other luggage and work with a Porter to get it inside the terminal.

We then worked our way through a couple of check-in points to get on the ship. We picked up our medallion which is the key to everything. Because we had drilled out much of the work on the Princess app, entry was very easy. Because I did not wanna push however far it would be, we picked up a transport guy. He was one of the ship's people who would push me through to get to our room. The whole process took about 20 minutes period from getting on the ship to sitting in our room was about 20 minutes.

Our room is huge. My guess is that it's about 600 square feet. We have two entries out onto the balcony. We have a little seating area. I'm not sure we'll ever use, but it'll be a good place to store stuff. The bed is the right height. I can get under one of the desks. I can get under the sink in the bathroom. The only downside is the carpet is very plush which makes pushing very difficult. I'm going to have to look at it as an exercise plan. It was a little after 1:00 and our wait for our luggage began. That was the last hurdle we needed to clear. This was the one hurdle that I was most worried about. Between bags and boxes we had about 12 things that had to come from the border room all the way up to our cabin. Mary and I sat on the balcony for a couple of hours. We read through several documents that were provided. We napped a little. I had my first beer. We overlooked the parking lot so I could watch the traffic which was next to nothing. We walked down to our fire station on 6. We checked in to meet the requirement. From there we walked around a little bit Before heading back to the room. We were supposed to leave at 3:00 but we actually didn't leave for almost 430. When the ship did finally leave we videotaped it. There was still no luggage. We had made reservations for the Italian place called Sabatinis for 6:00. It was about 5:15 when our first luggage showed up. Over the next 20 minutes or so everything showed up. My anxiety level dropped to near 0 again. Everything that could go wrong did not go wrong. Now my anxiety level will drop to its normal two or three. Mary immediately began to unpack until we had to leave for dinner.

I'm not exactly sure how, but we are premier members. As Premier members we got free specialty dining at Sabatini’s on the first night. We read this in one of the documents. So we took advantage of it. We headed down to the 7th floor. We were seated at a table that I could fit under. Over the next three hours we ate and drank for you we forgot that dinners on the ship could take three or more hours. Not a complaint, Just an observation. I had three different glasses of wine. They were all Italian reds. They were all good. I took a picture of the wine menu because I cannot pronounce the names of these wines.

All the menu options were in Italians so you didn't really know what you were eating, thankfully they had explanations below. To start off we had what looked like fried cheese. It was actually pretty good. For my appetizer I had vitellio tonnato, Which was sliced veal with a tuna sauce and capers. It was pretty good. Mary had her Caprese salad. I have a vegetable soup. Mary had some type of salad. For our pasta dish I had shrimp linguine. Mary had spaghetti with a meatball. For our main courses I had shrimp. News about 10 shrimp in a red sauce on top of linguine. It was pretty good. Mary had a chicken breast dish. It was a ton of food. We still have dessert to go. Mary had berries for dessert. I had something called Racher which was chocolate and hazelnut ice cream. It was very good. It was a very good dinner. It was way too much food. Nonetheless, we did it. We both said we need to stop this overeating thing soon. I'm not sure how we're going to do this just yet, but it's a challenge you will have to conquer.

By time we were done with dinner it was almost 9:00. We came back upstairs to the room. The lions were playing the Vikings. We watched about an hour of it before going to bed. Our very first day on the ship was beyond successful. As mentioned above, anything that could go wrong did not go wrong. My weeks of worrying were for nothing. We are in an incredible room with incredible amenities on a very nice ship with the unbelievable itinerary. Hopefully, the next 115 days will go as well as this one.

Time lapse of leaving Fort Lauderdale