harryfat1

I have always wanted to check out Hollywood Beach as I have seen pictures/videos of the place from a while back to see how different it is compared to the CA beach vibe. In my research, someone said this about the Hollywood Beach area: Miami is for the party-going folks. Fort Lauderdale is for the foodies. Hollywood Beach is for families. I tend to agree with that broad analysis as there are always exceptions to any general statement. Yeah, I believe RCI mentioned on their earning call a while back urging people to sail on the older vessels as they represent a better value. Since the menu is the same fleet-wide, what you will be giving up is just the entertainment like water shows/high-tech wizardry shows at 270 but for people that don’t care for that kind of stuff or have already seen it, the older ships are better value.

Yeah, sometimes we can’t blindly follow the GPS instructions as the software isn’t perfect. One time we were trying to visit a beach in Oregon and Google Maps told us to go through someone’s backyard to the beach. Ehhh, maybe not… I can imagine how congested the beach area could be in the summer like on July 4. People and bikes will all be fighting for the narrow road. Oh, yeah, QR code. Sorry. I forgot to upload the picture. I got the card from the podium earlier in the trip and took the card to the room but didn’t take a picture of it until later the next day so when I uploaded my picture of the podium, I remembered the event but forgot to upload the picture itself. So here it is. Not sure if the QR code works via picture upload here on CC. But the card has the business name and phone number so whoever needs a ride can call the place and say the QR code is not working and request a discount over the phone instead. I think it was $3 cheaper per person as they essentially give you the “group rate” with the discount.

Lots of good photo opts with the bike: Here are couple of short video clips: 20231222_121913.mp4 20231222_123026.mp4

After walking around for a bit, we decided to do the highlight of the day – renting a 2-row surrey bike to ride around the Broadwalk. Yes, it’s touristy as heck but there were a lot of groups doing it as well and I have always wanted to do one from all the tourist spots I have seen in the past. I did my research online and these guys got good Google ratings so I went with them as there were 3 bike rental places in the area and they all charged the same price so there’s no savings with anyone over another You have to leave your ID with them as collateral in case you don’t come back with the bike. The dude looked at my ID and said, “Oh, CALI”. Yeah, he’s not from the West Coast… So we put the boys in front to make them work and steer while the wife and I took pictures/videos in the back row. These bikes are heavy so it was a fair amount of effort to pedal. Especially against the wind.

Fairly overcast day. When you are at home pre-planning your vacation and watching the endless number of YouTube videos on the area, they always show the hot sunny skies and when you get there, it’s not exactly as sunny as you had hoped. Oh, well, you can’t plan for the weather. Good thing we had warmer clothes with us. So the Hollywood Beach area is south of Fort Lauderdale/Port Everglades. The beachfront area is called Broadwalk. Not Boardwalk. But Broadwalk. People will correct you if you say it wrong. In the warmer days, I would imagine there would be tons of people at the beach and the area would be hopping. During our visit, there were enough people (mainly tourists renting bikes or walking around) that came out later in the afternoon to keep it from being dead but not super crowded on a mostly overcast December weekday morning.

CFKACD not willing to pay for coffee in a hotel. I’ll stick with the complimentary coffee from our hotel. After the lobby area, the pool and the beach access are in the back Yeah, there's a very WIDE bike path that many people were walking on when they shouldn't be as they would be run over. I overheard a couple of elderly ladies on their bikes (I assume they were locals) scolding the tourists who were clueless and were blocking the bike path...

So we made it to Margaritaville. Nice lobby area.

My fuzzy old-man memory of Fort Lauderdale was it was a pretty warm place during previous visits, even in December. But in 2023, it wasn’t the case. As a matter of fact, the weekend before our sailing – the one that Mark @h20skibum was on, it was downright UGLY weather. This was Fort Lauderdale less than a week before our visit We didn’t get any big rain during our visit, but it certainly wasn’t hot by any means. Anyway, after breakfast and just relaxing in the hotel waiting for the sun to come out a little bit so it won’t be so cold at the beach area, we then headed out. Hotel breakfast area with no crowd.at 11 AM It was a short Lyft ride to Hollywood Beach from the hotel. Less than $20. Margaritaville is the biggest hotel in the area so I mapped it there as an easy landmark place to be dropped off.

Day 0: So this is the “extra” vacation day we got for coming out to Florida one day earlier. Since we had already visited Fort Lauderdale’s downtown area via the water taxi years ago, we wanted to explore the southern part of the region and visit Hollywood Beach for the day. Hotel breakfast area. Lots of families/cruisers eating at 8:40. As we were eating, we saw more families getting off early flights and trying to check in similar to us yesterday as the cruise crowd started to gather for the big Holiday weekend sailing. Another picture of the display for the cruise shuttle info. Money-saving tip: If you want to utilize their services, DO NOT go sign up as instructed by the display sign as that would cost you $15/pp. Instead, go to the black podium, grab their business card, scan the QR code, and from that link, you will pay less with the promo code than the list price at the display. You are welcome… Yeah, helps to be CFKACD to always look for discounts even though I won’t need it…

There’s a TGI Fridays down the street from the theater so we just walked over there and after we ordered a takeout from the phone app and brought it back to the hotel to eat as you saw in the room picture previously they had a small kitchenette area that had plates/forks/teapot for people to eat in the room. I do appreciate the clean streets of Dania Beach. If this was back home, the area underneath these overpasses would be filled with homeless encampments. Not in Dania Beach. Last picture of the night as we made it back to the hotel with the take-out. This concludes day minus 1 of the trip report. I know it hasn’t been terribly exciting so far as we try to get our bearing straight after landing in Florida but it will get more interesting the rest of the trip report

Onward with the trip report for the rest of the day minus 1 +++++++++ After lunch, we meandered to the other mall walked around a few stores, and went to the theater at later in the afternoon to check out the new movie, Aquaman. Typically I’m not the type to watch movies during vacation (not watching any movies on the pool deck) but since we are coming off a red eye, I didn’t want to schedule anything aggressive as I know we would be tired. The worst case scenario was that if we couldn’t check in until the official 3 PM time, then we would take a nap inside an air-conditioned theater with a very comfy chair lounger… Being cheap, I bought the tickets online during the Black Friday sale at less than $10/pp for the tickets. I could do my old man speech of "when I was younger, the cost of a movie was..." This is just odd to me – the Florida Mall area would have these sidewalks that just end with a grass area after that. Do they expect people to be picked up/dropped off by a car in the middle of the sidewalk and thus not needing the sidewalk anymore to reach the crosswalk? Anyway, very quiet theater on a Thursday afternoon. Less than 15 people for the movie. I wasn’t sure I could stay awake the entire movie and at the beginning, I almost did fall asleep but there’s enough action and explosions in these movies to keep most of the people awake.

Yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if the land-based all-inclusive vacation costs are higher than cruise prices as cruise lines have lower labor and tax advantages not available to land-based operations. Cruise lines have the tax advantage of registering their ships overseas and hiring International workers to work on the ships. Here’s a screenshot of the RCCL’s Form 10K from 2022 describing their employees. Comes as no surprise for anyone who has cruised before that the majority of the cruiser workers are non-US based. If the cost is similar/close between cruises or land-based vacations, my personal bias would still be a cruise as I would be able to see 3+ ports on a typical 7-night cruise and higher entertainment value on many of the sailings than an average land-based vacation.

Thanks. As I said previously, the beginning is a bit “blah” as we arrived in Florida. Day minus 1 coming up hopefully will be more exciting as we visit Hollywood Beach with more scenic pictures. The first travel day is never exciting as we all have to spend time and effort to get to the town on top of time zone differences.

Hi Pat, Thank you for the compliment and continued support in reading these trip reports. The boys have grown a lot since I started writing these reports back in 2014. As my wife tells me regularly, I now have less hair compared to the old days. Somewhere down the road, I’ll be upgraded to Cheapo Grandpa and be even more grumpy in complaining how cruising “used to be so great when we had our cabins cleaned twice a day…”

Yeah, Google Maps in Dania Beach is a little out of whack. I wonder if it has to do with the area built up by the cruise industry over the past 10-plus years that they built roads/walkways that Google Maps didn’t know about. Case in point. If I had listened to Google Maps to go to the Cuban restaurant for lunch, it’d be a 1-hour walk to go ALL THE WAY AROUND. The short (logical) way is as I highlighted in red and it was a 10-minute walk, even accounting for extra wait due to very aggressive Florida drivers that do not yield to pedestrians.

Hi Jim, Good to hear from you again. I see you are still keeping these late East Coast hours. Thanks again for reading another segment. Yeah, these cruise prices are crazy high, and yet, the ships are still sailing at a very high capacity. For our sailing, it was 125% of double occupancy with many families squeezing their kids in the trip and quad cabins. On the Odyssey, the “Next Cruise” area is near 270 Café where I walk by daily and I always see the desks full of people booking future cruises while on board so I can tell the demand is still very strong – even at these inflated prices. As we are both finance people, I pulled up the RCCL’s latest 10Q info, and under footnote 6, I see in the first 9 months of 2023, they paid down $3B of debt. So they are trying to deleverage their balance sheet from the recent profits they made. This is a prudent financial decision for them but not as well for us customers as they are not increasing their cost (our benefit) in light of the higher revenue.

This is the first time we tried Cuban food. Don't know how authentic it might be but it was tasty and the place had good reviews:

After waking up at 1:45 PM, we felt more human again. Amazing how the brain doesn’t function properly without much sleep. Here’s the view of Fort Lauderdale looking north. That’s the Hard Rock casino hotel in the distance. The hotel tower is in the shape of a guitar. More pictures later. So, for lunch today, we wanted to try some Cuban food as that’s the more local cuisine and we certainly don’t get much of that in the Bay Area, There’s one place within walking distance from the hotel so we went there to try it out: And y’all get to meet the fam for the first time on this trip. Others that have read my trip reports in the past know who we are

I know the official check-in time for most hotels is either 3 or 4 PM. But this being an airport hotel, they should be used to people arriving early especially with all the West Coast people coming in on the dreaded red-eye flights early to Florida. The best hope I had was that they would have an unused bedroom from the previous night so we could just check in early and crash as we didn’t sleep well on the plane. Of course, they didn’t have that when we got there so the best they could do was store our luggage and invite us to eat at the breakfast area and wait for the next available room after the house cleaning person finished cleaning a room. As we were eating breakfast, I debated whether to drink coffee or not. Do I want to try to stimulate my already frazzled brain in trying to be more awake or try something more relaxing like tea with the hope I can take a nap after we get a room? After breakfast, we just sat in the lobby area and waited for the room to be available. As we waited, a few more families also came in as their flights landed and they also sat in the lobby waiting for their rooms to be available. At least we were first on the list as I saw her write down our number on a new page. 10 AM and still waiting. The breakfast area (to the left) is all empty. The only people in the lobby were the few other families like us waiting for a room. The rest of my family fell asleep on the sofa in the lobby. I took a picture of them but don’t think they want that to be posted… At this point, you wonder to yourself on why you are doing this. Kinda like the "meaning of life" question. You spent thousands of hard-earned dollars to be stuck in an uncomfortable airplane seat and can't go to sleep for the entire night. Arrive at a hotel where you are like a refugee and sleeping on the sofa with nowhere to go. This is the "fun" and glamorous part of vacation nobody ever talks about... Yeah, vacations are overrated but yet we all still go on them... After waiting for about 2.5 hours, at 11:30, the hotel finally called my cell phone to say the room was ready. So after getting the key, we staggered up to the room used the restroom, and then closed the curtain. Then set a timer for a 90-minute nap so we could go to lunch later on and then we were all out like the light... The room comes with a mini kitchen set up with plates/cups/utensils/a sink/a refrigerator and a coffee maker

This being the “high season” of Christmas week, the hotel was packed with cruisers/families. Just par for the course as these hotels represent good value for families in having free shuttles and free breakfast to feed the clan. Here is a picture of the front of the hotel: Anyway, we arrived at the hotel around 8:45 and stood in line waiting to be checked in. You know the hotel caters to cruisers when you see a big old display at the front lobby advertising for cruise port shuttle service: If we were cruising with the inlaws and at 6 people, I would opt for shuttle service so we could all be together as a family as no Uber/Lyft can fit 6 people with all the luggage we had. But with 4 people, I opted to try the rideshare service to Port Everglades for the first time instead of using a professional shuttle service

(Continuing with the trip report. However, keep in mind that the first day of the trip report is pretty blah after we landed as we were dead tired. Things will pick up after the first day) ++++++++++ Day Minus 1: Welcome to the East Coast/Florida at 4 AM PST/7 AM EST as the plane has started the landing approach. FLL airport at 8 AM. Got our luggage from the carousel. My brain not exactly functioning after not having slept on the plane and our body clock says its 5 AM. I called the hotel to arrange for a free hotel shuttle to pick us up from the airport. We were instructed to go a station where all the hotel shuttles pick up their arriving guests: For this cruise, we stayed at the Home2 Suites in Dania Beach. The same hotel we stayed at back in 2017. We had stayed a couple of times in the past at Gallery One in Fort Lauderdale. While that hotel is nice, there’s not much “to do” in the area if you don’t do the water taxi as we did that back in 2016. Downtown Fort Lauderdale is nice but it’s a bit too hoity toity for my liking. We are more suburban folks and Dania Beach with the mall area is more our speed. Being CFKACD, I prefer hotels with two embedded perks: Free airport shuttle upon arrival and free breakfast to feed the family. Home2 Suites check both boxes. It’s located near a cluster of other hotels as you can see from Google Maps: As you can see, there are 6 hotels within walking distance as well as 2 neighborhood malls. That means you know there will be food places around the area to feed all the hungry tourists in town with most of them here for a night or two before their cruises.

Yeah, I looked into Global Entry as my credit card covers either one of them but Global Entry required me to drive to SFO on a weekday to complete the process. Not possible on a typical working day. Whereas TSA Pre-Check was done inside a Staples store in a mall so it was easier to do TSA Pre-Check instead. Not looking to travel overseas until at least 2025/2026 to go to Europe.

Yeah, especially if people can find credit cards that will reimburse you for the TSA pre-check fee as part of the perk, then it's a very easy decision to get the TSA pre-check. My credit card has the $100 allowance for TSA precheck or Global entry. Since TSA precheck was only $78 for the application, the remaining $22 credit was used to offset some of my son's $78 fee. Sometimes people report that the regular lines are shorter than the TSA precheck lines but the convenience of not having to take off shoes and sweatshirt and the hand-raising scanner for the next several years is worth it to me.

Yes, the word "Frisco" is deeply frowned upon in these parts of the world. I always tended to say "Pike's Place Market" in wanting to put an apostrophe there when it doesn't belong. Yikes on the upcoming flight on the Max 9. Hopefully, they will wrap up the investigation soon and come up with a fix to ensure the doors are securely in place.