This morning, somewhat caught up on sleep, we took advantage of the hotel’s included continental breakfast (supplemented by the last of Toojay’s rugelach) and then it was time to grab an Uber for the 10 minute drive to Port Everglades Cruise Port, where a luggage porter met us at the car. We simply handed over our tagged luggage (except Ted’s tech bag), and then walked through security and straight to the “blue line” desk to get our medallions and board the Regal Princess.

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Princess has a feature we’ve never experienced before: a wearable medallion that serves as identification, room key, payment for incidentals, and boarding pass. Medallions get mailed to passengers living in the continental United States, but by the time Princess announced shipping to Canada we felt the timeline was too tight. Passengers who already have their medallions board the ship through the “green line”; the rest of us through blue, but we noticed no appreciable delay caused by picking up our medallions at the port. In fact, the entire embarkation process was a breeze.

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The very first crew member we met after boarding was the Assistant Cruise Director, Matt, from South Africa. His warm greeting and the extra time he spent welcoming us to the ship made a great first impression.

To our delight, even though it was only 11 a.m., our stateroom was ready, although we’d need to wait a few hours for our luggage.

Because I suffer from motion sickness, we always try to book a cabin low and midship. Our cabin this time is a balcony stateroom midship on Deck 9, the Dolphin Deck. On a ship this big – 19 decks!! – deck 9 isn’t considered high (in fact, deck 8 is the lowest deck with staterooms) although on one of our beloved Viking ships (where we prefer to be on deck 3) 9 would be almost at the top of the ship.

My first impressions of our Princess stateroom was that it was clean, bright, and SMALL – and yet as far as room size goes, it is actually comparable in square footage to both the Viking Ocean ship balcony (V & DV categories) and the Holland America Line veranda (codes beginning with V) on the Koningsdam, both of which we’ve enjoyed.

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The biggest difference seems to be that because of the “walk-through” closet configuration, Princess has sacrificed the space needed to have a seating area; there’s just a single chair, at the desk, opposite the cabinet that holds the mini-fridge.

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All three cruise lines’ ships have decent-sized bathrooms with showers. What is slightly odd about our Princess shower is that it has a fabric shower curtain as opposed to glass doors, which we prefer because they keep the bathroom floor dryer. I’d prefer brighter lighting as well, since there’s no makeup mirror like on Viking and HAL.

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All three ships have good-sized balconies, with Viking’s having nicer (perhaps just better maintained) outdoor furniture. Our specific Princess room in category BA has a slightly larger than average irregular-shaped balcony, visible in the deck plan picture.

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I’d read a hint on one of the cruise forums that suggested heading straight to Alfredo’s Pizzeria on Deck 6 on embarkation day, when almost everyone heads to the main buffet to check it out, but Alfredo’s is a sit-down up-charge casual (i.e. no reservations) restaurant. We have 2 of those included in our fare, but using one for lunch on the run on Day 1 seemed silly. Besides, we really weren’t starving, so it made more sense to reconnoiter around the ship a bit.

It’s likely the only time we’ll ever get photos of the beautiful 3-story central Piazza without hundreds of people in it, or of the theatre completely empty!

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Cruise hint: if you go to the theatre 8 hours before the show, you get the best seat in the house!

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The pool and hot tubs will never be this empty again either!

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When our wandering got us to the buffet on Deck 16, it wasn’t crowded at all, so we grabbed a quick lunch. The buffet stations are all curved, and create a winding route that seems at first glance to be a recipe for confusion, but we’ll be able to judge better as the cruise progresses.

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While Ted waited in our room for our luggage to appear, I did a bit more wandering, and ended up listening to Jan Jan, the resident guitarist/vocalist, and talking (no surprise to anyone who knows me) to a few fellow passengers in the Piazza while drinking my first of what will undoubtedly be many Proseccos of the cruise.

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After unpacking, we spent some time pre-dinner listening to the Viennese String Duo, violin and cello, who surprised us by not being acoustic classical music (as we’d secretly hoped), but rather electric violin accompanied by cello and soundtrack, performing modern pop sounds.

For our first dinner, in the Symphony dining room, we chose to share a table with 5 other people, allowing for some fun conversation to go,with an excellent meal.

We got our first taste of Princess’ main-stage entertainment tonight: Showtime, with Sir Elton John tribute artist Jeffrey Allen. For me, his best song of the night was Candle In The Wind video below) although all the songs he covered were very well done.

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Before and after the show was our first chance to see our Cruise Director, Alexandra, whose voice we’d been hearing on the PA system throughout the day. She told us she’s a proud Italian-American from New Jersey, and described her Dad as “Tony Soprano with less hair”. I think she’s going to be fun!

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And that was it for embarkation day! Tomorrow is the first of 6 full sea days before we reach land in the Azores. Time to relax.

FOREWARNING: the wifi strength on board isn’t always great for uploading photos, so even though I’m creating a daily diary, blogs may or may not actually publish each day.