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.

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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.

Residence Inn Marriott Melbourne

From Bahamas - 2011

I slept poorly on that rock hard bed. It was awful. I woke up about every thirty minutes. I’d love to say that it was excitement, but it was misery.
We woke up sore and grumpy. I called the airport shuttle to inquire about the shuttle schedule to the port. I was told that they had one shuttle scheduled to go to the port and that it left around noon. We are supposed to be boarded by 1430hrs. That is not much time considering the distance from the airport to the cruise lines was about an hour.

We went and got breakfast. Coffee was needed by the husband. We where both a bit hungry and tired. It worked out for us. They had a real breakfast, much to my surprise. Often times, the breakfast offered by a hotel is some old bagels and dry pastries. They had eggs, sausage, potatoes, waffles, cereal, oatmeal, and juices. They also had coffee. At one point, I looked around and realized that I was the only adult not drinking coffee. I felt strange. It did not help that someone had switched the television to an evangelist Sunday morning service. I learned that God can read text messages and knows when you use his name in vain. I guess all of those comic strips of them using computers in heaven are true.

We started making a plan B. Plan B evolved as I did some reading and discovered that there was a car rental right by the pier. I asked my husband to see if we could move the drop off. He was tired and grumpy about our sudden lack of premade plans. When he called Hertz they said “Sure, and your rate is the same.” That means the 63 dollars we were paying to rent the car from the previous day covered us dropping off at the pier. They also had a shuttle to the cruise terminal.

This was becoming a better situation. Finding the actual addresses to GPS coordinate ourselves was a little bit harder. People have been cruising for longer then there has been an internet. Some of these established agencies are not online yet. This makes finding simple bits of information hard. Everyone wants to route us to the airport as their home base.

Yet, we found the address, packed up, and headed out.

At checkout the receptionist asks, “How was your stay?”

Tim looked at her and said, “It sucked. The bed was horrible. It was incredibly hard.”

“We hear that a lot,” she chirped. “People either love them or hate them.”

“I hated it,” he snarled. “It was awful.”

“Sorry about that! So, here is your bill,” she checked us out. “Oh yes! The night clerk said that you all were taking a limo from Black Diamond?”

“No. We thought the hotel had a shuttle. We rented a car.“ Tim glared and we left.

We will write a poor review for that hotel. TripAdvisor.Com and I will have a talk.

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Residence Inn Marriott in Melbourne, Florida: Do not stay here unless you like hard beds and shady dealings

Flight to Flordia

Fly early if you can.
We arrived at the airport about two and a half hours before our flight. We normally try for three, but I had gotten off of work at 0700hrs and I was not moving as fast as I might have. We had packed well in advance so we where fine there.

We fly United. Tim flies with them all of the time for work. He travels a lot for his job so he is a premier member and gets perks and miles to fly with them. We went to their self check in section and attempted to check ourselves in. The first terminal did not work. We slid over to another terminal but then we wound up stuck between two high maintainance groups.

The people to our left wanted to change everything about their flight. Instead of going to the check in line for buying and changing flight details, they stood in the self check in line and occupied one of the people. Each of the airline people are assigned to two terminals. They are there to check your ID, put on your baggage tags, and load your baggage. They did not have the time to do any of this thanks to this group.

To our right, was a British couple and three teen age girls. They where upset becuase however they had booked their tickets, it caused the girls not to sit together. One of the three is sobbing becuase she will have to sit by herself. The father is snarling at the guy about how they keep getting the run around. The girls are now all crying. Their luggage is pink but I don’t think that had anything to do with the entire situation.

All told, it took us forty five minutes to get our bags checked in.

Then we had to wade through security. The high maintenance couple to our left appeared near us in the security line. We got out of that line and moved to another. I’m glad we did because they caused another incident over at the security point.

By the time we made it to our flight we had fifteen minutes until boarding. We had not eaten all day, our plan being to eat in the terminal. Instead, we ran through the airport and passed a sign that said ‘Last place to stop for food here’ and reached our terminal. Wheezing and out of breath I ran back to the last stop for food and bagged chips and some apples. As I headed back Tim called and told me that our flight was delayed for an hour due to technical problems with the plane.
So much for running around. We went and got dinner. It was a nice meal that reminded me that you only get plastic utensals inside of hte airport. Unless you are in one of the airline clubs. There, you can get real utensals.

Another flight came in. It was a bigger plane and I assume it was either scheduled to sit for a while or head to Florida. It was our plane now. and we where on our way with an hour and a half delay. This is the type of reason why we had decided to fly the day before. I would not want to live with the stress of trying to fly in the same day as the cruise and having the flight delayed.

When we selected our hotel, we selected one that was close to an airport. We looked into it and they said that they had a shuttle to the cruise line. This seemed to be the easiest option. We flew into Orlando and rented a car from Hertz. We would then drop the car off at the airport by the hotel and take the shuttle provided by the airport to the dock.

The Hertz rental itself was a bit of a mess. My husband has been a Gold Member of Hertz in the past. He signed up for it. However, he has said that it often does not work. Therefore, he went to the desk to pick up the rental car. There he was told he was a gold member and he could just go and pick out a car. So, when we went to the pickup there was a sign board and his name was not on it. We went into the next office where we were told we were not gold members and given our rental car. Our rental, of course, was located all the way to the back of the lot. It was a little Toyota Corolla. I was hoping for the Nissan Versa we had originally asked for.

The Toyota Corolla has no trunk space. We fit our two large cases in the trunk and it was done. There was not enough room for anything else. Not even a backpack. The third case and the backpacks went onto the back seat.

It was about an hour’s drive from Orlando to Melborne airport. It was a smooth ride with little traffic. We went to the hotel. We dropped off our stuff and went back out, our goal to get something for dinner. The highway sign said that there was an IHOP nearby. However, it seems that the sign lied to us. There was no IHOP.
We wound up at Steak a Shake. This was a very nice experience. Nice enough that we wrote a review. There was also a massive fraternity meeting going on and everyone was dressed in purple. They took up about a quarter of the restaurant. The staff managed to keep them corralled. ‘Thank you.

Back at the Hotel we decide to ask the front desk about the shuttle. She says, “We can help you arrange transportation.” This is where things start to go downhill. “We don’t have a shuttle ourselves” she said. “I can help arrange transportation to the cruise line but it will probably cost a lot. Can’t you just drive? They have parking at the pier.”

“We have a rental car,” we remind her.

“Oh. You sure wanted to the last minute to plan this.” I can’t say what comes after that becuase my head exploded for a moment. We accepted contact information for the airport shuttle and for a private company called Black Ice or something else shady and went to our room.

There we said “WTF” to each other and pulled out our laptops to look up transportation. This is when we learned that the free WiFi that the hotel had bragged about was slow. If you wanted their fast internet you had to pay to play. Also, the bed was rock hard. I flopped down on it, stomach first and almost vomited because it felt like someone punched me in the gut. I was not expecting that and I apologize to my stomach. It didn’t deserve that.

We made some phone calls but no one was open. Frustrated, we decided that we would call in the morning. Worst case scenario, we’d get a cab.