Heading to Port Canaveral

It was about ten when we left. We stopped at CVS along the way to get some drinks. On the ship, soda costs extra. Or you can buy a soda card. Well, for a 4 day cruise a 30 dollar soda card for each of us seemed excessive. You can bring up to 12 nonalcoholic beverages on board. You can also bring a bottle of wine or champagne each. I grabbed a selection of drinks for the two of us and hopped back into the car.

I’ll say that Florida’s roads are well marked. However, I would expect there to be more signs that say CRUISE SHIPS THIS WAY then there were. We did not see any signage until we were three miles away on the road that leads to the ports. A bit after the signs we start to see the ships sitting at port. They loom up over the trees and they are enormous.

From

The Disney Dream has the red stacks and the Royal Caribbean Freedom of the Seas is the other. My ship, the Carnival Sensation, is smaller and tucked behind them.
The Hertz place was right past the ships. We had barely stopped weaving all over the road as we ogled the cruise ships and then Hertz place appeared. It was not even a mile past the ships. We parked and started walking towards the building. Two employees approached us and asked if we had our mileage. We gave it, they grabbed the keys and told us to hop on the shuttle and enjoy our trip. We blinked and bam, we are on the shuttle and on our way.

That is what we had been looking for. Organization and coordination.
The driver for Hertz was fantastic. He gave some facts about each ship docked. The Disney Dream was at dock with the Royal Caribbean Freedom of the Seas and the Carnival Sensation. The Sensation is the smallest of the ships by far.

We got dropped off. I did not have to pay the porter for my bag. He did not ask and I did not give. We will see if our bags make it. We printed our luggage tags out in color. I then folded them as instructed and taped them up with clear packaging tape. Then, we stapled them all around the edges and in the center. It will take some effort to remove them. We also have luggage straps around the bags and nothing valuable inside of them.

At the terminal, we have VIP boarding. It means a super short line and a direct walk to the ship. I kept managing to get into the wrong lines. There are signs and the signs have arrows. There is normally a path by the sign. Yet, it is the next path over that I am supposed to take. How, I am supposed to know this I am not sure. Don’t walked by the sign, pick the unlabeled lane one line over instead.
I then got yelled at for taking a photo graph as we walked up the steps to get to the gang way.

The first glimpse of the ship was neon.

From Bahamas - 2011

It was hard not to stop and stare around us. While boarding a ship is not an accomplishment, it felt like it at that moment.