Diver-Don's blog: Caribbean Cruise

Flight to Florida

The start of our 2016 Eastern Caribbean Cruise

Friday - January 8, 2016

Today we were up at 0630, ready for our big adventure, which, this time, was a flight to Florida followed by a Caribbean Cruise. We were booked on Royal Caribbean's "Navigator of the Seas" for a 9 day Eastern Caribbean Cruise.

We had a few last minute items to pack, the septic to dump, and TJ took the dogs for a walk while we got the final packing done. To be honest, it was Darlene who did all the packing as usual, lol.

The drive to Las Vegas usually takes 2 1/2 hours and today was not exception, with the cloudy skies finally giving way to some sunshine shortly before we reached Vegas.

We pulled up in front of United where Carrie got out to step into the driver seat, Darlene gave hugs to her and TJ, and I got our bags out and onto the curb. We were able to get our boarding passes right there at the curb and also get our bags checked in all the way to Ft. Lauderdale, as we had a 3 hr. Layover in Denver, Colorado.

In our rush, Darlene forgot her phone in the car, which we discovered almost as soon as Carrie and TJ had pulled away from the curb. Try as we might, we were unable to contact them until we were almost through the security screening, which was when they had stopped in Bullhead for breakfast at McDonald's, which has free wifi.

Seats 30D and 30F were our assigned seats and although the plane was almost full, we were lucky to have no one between us, which gave us a lot more room for the 2 hour flight into Denver, Colorado.

Click on 1st photo to see a short video as we left Las Vegas.

We were supposed to have about a 30 or 40 minute layover and then board again to our same seats but the wait was more like an hour and it started to snow which meant the plane had to wait in a line to be de-iced before we could take off. As well, we were not so lucky with our seats this time as a young girl was in between us, but she readily changed with Darlene so she could have the aisle seat.

Click on second photo to see a video as the plane was being de-iced prior to leaving Denver.

With United, you have to download their app and then pay to be able to watch movies or TV on Wifi while on the plane. They also have movies and TV on the small screens on the back of the seats on this 737, but you had to pay money for the movies.... "The Last Martian", starring Matt Damon was playing, it was new, so we purchased it and shared my earphones, which worked pretty good.

The icing in Denver caused us to be about an hour late which meant that Mitchell and Melodie were waiting for us at our baggage claim in Ft. Lauderdale.

We grabbed a Taxi to take us to the Motel 6 that Melodie had booked for us. I picked up the tab for the Taxi (13.00) and Melodie covered the room (85.00).

The next morning (9th Jan) we grabbed some coffee and then took a Taxi down the road to pick up some booze at a local Walgreens, which was very reasonable. This was so we could smuggle it aboard the Ship as they only allow 1 bottle of wine per person to be brought on board. My bottle of Crown Royal was only 22.00 which was very reasonable. (The fare for this taxi was 10.00 which Mitchell covered).

We checked out and got a taxi to the dock, which I covered (20.00).

Getting on to the ship (around 1200) was pretty fast and painless. It was kinda neat to see all those people, hardly any of whom were using their cell phones as they waited patiently in line to get on board.

After getting on board, we went to our rooms to get rid of our carry-ons and then went topside for a quick bite in the Windjammer before going topside to take in our departure. We also made reservations for 5:30 pm in the Sapphire Dining room and requested a window seat.

Topside we ended up catching some of the action on the flow rider and then ended up in the dining room as the ship left port and the sun set for the night.

Darlene in Windjammer