h20skibum

I thought I mentioned that it was a deal with the grandkids. We would send them daily pictures of Daryl, and they would send us elf pictures. We had a great multi device FaceTime with everyone, to sing happy birthday to him.

You are right, the bow is to the left in the photo. The photo is from the entrance to the port from the sea. Symphony is at terminal 18, and Apex is across the channel.

Easy drive to the port. Twelve minutes from the hotel. Luggage dropped, thru security, and waiting in the terminal. Took a little longer, because Daryl got stuck in the scanner. He wanted to know why we didn’t have to ride on that belt. He is giving me death stares.

Thanks to both of you. It isn’t raining at the moment. Bags are packed and ready to go in the car. Leaving shortly to hopefully avoid some rain. Nope, tied up on the starboard side. Easy way to remember is Port and Left have the same number of letters. I even have a pair of socks that are labeled left and right, so if I forget, I just have to look down. 😂 I am ok, unless I put two lefts on, but I only do that when I go dancing, so I have an excuse.

I like the easy way to do your safety briefing on the app. It sure beats the old way of going to your cabin , grabbing the life vests, and dragging them to the muster station with thousands of other people, all while trying to not spill your drink. 😂 You can complete the app section at 8am on boarding day.

That will be nice. Although we don’t have that long of a drive from home to Cape Liberty, we still haven’t managed to sail from there. A few booked there, but all were cancelled for one reason or another. Our August cruise, we are flying the family to Florida for a cruise on Utopia.

Today is. With some luck, the rain will not be too heavy when we get to the port. It will be windy. I hope Daryl behaves and doesn’t get blown overboard. As Marvin Gaye would say …..Let’s get it on. I am not sure if that song is strictly appropriate, but it works for me. 😂

Well, look who showed up in port this morning. Looks like we will be boarding on the starboard side.

Since we were talking about booking shows, that is one thing I wish Royal was consistent with. For those who don’t know, you need to book the day and time for the shows you want to see on the Oasis Class ships. It can be a real juggling act, trying to get days and times to work with any specialty dining reservations you may want to make. Then to make things more interesting, some shows you want to see, that do not need to be prebooked, may conflict with one of the above. Then, to make things interesting, Royal will not show a realistic schedule of activities on the app, until boarding day. Now, when does booking shows open? Who knows how they arrive at that. For this cruise, we were able to book shows on October 25th, or about 53 days out. However, for our upcoming January 5th sailing on Allure, we could not book shows until December 1st, or about 36 days out. So I guess my advice is to check early and often.

You got me curious also, so I did a little researching. I think Odyssey may just be a sleeker, faster ship. How fast a ship is sailing depends on many factors, like wind speed, sea conditions, and if they have time to make up. It could also vary if they are trying to avoid a storm. Or, maybe the captain’s wife is yelling at him to slow down (which happens to me sometimes when out on our boat) So I looked at data on both ships on marine traffic dot com. This morning, Symphony was sailing at 14.9kn, but is almost back to port Odyssey, on the other hand, was sailing at 21.7kn down in the Caribbean Sea The maximum during the last voyage for Symphony was 18.2 knots with an average speed of 13.1 knots. While that hot rod Odyssey was maxing at 23 knots and averaging 20.3 knots. I may have a daily picture, but it would just b a snapshot in time.

That is some good news. I am ready to be onboard now, and it is only 4:30am.

Thank you. We are looking forward to all the shows. We booked them as soon as booking became available, and got all our preferred times.

It is walking distance from the hotel. It starts only a block away, to the north of Sterling Road.

We walked around Dania Pointe tonight, and they have really expanded since we stayed in this area. We will be here when we get off the ship, and there are some bars and restaurants that are calling me. The Tommy Bahama store with a bar and guitar music The pointe has some nice lighting and decorations

Just got my email from Royal, telling me I need to bid like a fool if I want one of those nice cabins.

Harry, enjoy your cruise on Odyssey. I think you will really like that ship.

He is insane. We leave him alone for a minute, and he looks so innocent. Then you turn your back, and oh the trouble he gets into. IMG_9624.mp4

@Sea Dog Greg, those lights look nice. Is that price an installed price? And for how many feet? I bought a strip of these heavy duty waterproof ones last year to line the perimeter of the roof of the gazebo we have over our hot tub. I have been pleased with the way these have held up, but they have only been up for 16 months. We have them on a couple hours every day. Easy to control from an app on my phone.

Thank you both.

We are at the Springhill Suites on Sterling Road. We have stayed here several times before. Getting laundry done from the last couple days, then heading out to the shopping areas near here.

For something else, cruise related, we did the health check on the app. For those who don’t know, these are done after noon on the day before you sail. They have really reduced the number of questions. after clicking the check in button, choose health status answer two questions, that I am sure does not apply to me. submit, and you are done.

I hope that I read correctly, that ezpass is accepted in the sun pass lanes down here now. We ended up in them to bypass about twelve miles of bumper to bumper traffic. I will have to log in to my account to check it, but it usually takes a while for things to show up.

Due to Daryl’s maniac driving, we arrived in Ft. Lauderdale ahead of schedule. Since it is Friday, we had to stop at our favorite place for their lunch special. I was surprised to see they are open Christmas Day, so we may be there again for dinner. We had the shrimp, shrimp, and more shrimp special. Forty two shrimp between the two of us, so we had some to take to the hotel for later. I found out that Daryl can’t pass up these things.

You know you have arrived in Florida when there are lizards all over the buildings

Thank you both. Just heard from him. They are enjoying seeing Daryl’s adventures. And, as part of our Daryl deal, we received an elf picture. It is evidently picture day.