boojimom

My DH and I were on the Westerdam for The Jazz Cruise (check my previous posts to confirm) and the passenger who was tossed was in the cabin next to ours. During the muster drill (which took place BEFORE the ship even budged from the dock) the crew called us out by cabin number at our lifeboat station and asked for all in the party to respond with "present". The cabin 7005 was called several times, and then paged shipwide several times with a warning that they would not be allowed to sail if they didn't respond. When my DH and I returned to our cabin (7009) to get ready for the Sail-Away Party thrown by the charter company, we saw several ship's pursers standing around and going into the next cabin. Later we were told that the guy was removed from the ship and was one of the sound technicians hired by the charter company to set up the system for the Vista Lounge. He had been on the ship for the previous 2 weeks (when the ship is fully chartered by the same company for back-to-back "Smooth Jazz" sailings) and thought that exempted him from the drill this time around, especially since he was busy setting up the sound system for the opening performances. Obviously, he was very wrong. The whole incident was the talk of the cruise.

BTW: On our previous Jazz Cruise on the Westerdam, the crew also did a "crew only" muster drill the second day of sailing. This time around they also did a couple of crew drills involving actually lowering and raising a few lifeboats and one afternoon they asked the passengers to stop using the elevators for 5 minutes while they tested the emergency backup generators.

We will be arriving early evening the day before our cruise and have booked the Fairfield Inn in Dania Beach. After we check in, we want to have a nice dinner but none of the nearby restaurants seem exciting to us. We are looking for locally owned (no chains please), fresh seafood and cocktails. There seem to be some fun places on 17th St but what is the best way to get there? Cab? What kind of price should we expect to pay for transportation? Can we trust the hotel to arraign this for us or should we do it on our own?