Three Day Serenade - Escape From The Deep Freeze

Who writes a review of a three day cruise? Well, it will actually be more than that. This will be a trip report, as we cover a road trip from Pennsylvania to our Home Away stay pre-cruise, the cruise, and the road trip home.

This all started about 8 months prior, when DW said, “Wouldn’t it be fun to get the kids and grandkids together for the Holidays and rent a house at the beach in Florida?” I made a note to myself to check the word “fun” in the dictionary, and in a moment of weakness said “Sure, that sounds like “fun”.” Almost as quickly, I said, “As long as we are down there, we should see if we can get a short cruise after our week of togetherness.”

So things were set in motion, the house was booked and the cruise was booked. We made the decision early to drive, so we would have a vehicle to shuttle everyone to and from the airport and around the area. We could actually drive and stay along the way for less than we would pay for airfare over the holidays. In the house we would have four 60-somethings, four 30-somethings, two 5 year olds, and a 2 year old. Six of us would travel from Pennsylvania, three from California, and two from China. Only DW and I would do the cruise.

Driving from Pennsylvania in the winter can be dicey, so we kept and eye on the weather to see when we would leave. A check of the weather had a lot of snow forecast for our Sunday departure date. Plus, an igloo appeared in the forecast, so we were glad we were getting away.

So off to an early start to stay ahead of the storm, (Hmm, isn’t that a line from Groundhog Day?) we are on the road and in the “Snowbird lane”. Into the left lane we go, ready to set the cruise control to 45, and the left blinker is on.

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We saw so many friendly people as we traveled the “Snowbird lane”. Almost everyone who passed us on the right waved the “We’re No. 1” sign and were shouting “Happy Holidays”, or something. So we returned the wave, and thought, How nice, they must support the Steelers or Pens too. But I always thought you were supposed to use the index finger!!

The weather gods were shining on us, and we didn’t see a drop of rain, or sleet, or snow the entire way. Some of the Pennsylvania cloud cover, that we see most of the year, managed to push into West Virginia.

There was very little traffic on the road for the day before Christmas, as we made our way to our first overnight in Charlotte, North Carolina. If anyone has to drive 77 through Charlotte, you have my sympathy. It is like the highway department had a contest to come up with the craziest construction layout. I was able to find their model layout online.

Onward to day two of the road trip - Christmas Day.

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Subscribing to your report. Great start so far. We're looking at a possible 4 day cruise so interested on how you felt a shorter cruise is.

Love your review so far, don't stop!

Subscribing to your report. Great start so far. We're looking at a possible 4 day cruise so interested on how you felt a shorter cruise is.

QUOTE=scopewest;54945683]Love your review so far, don't stop!

Thanks for following along.

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Travel on Christmas Day has advantages, and disadvantages. There is less traffic on the road, but finding a place to eat is tough. Fortunately, our hotel had breakfast included, so we could eat before we hit the road to Jacksonville. That would be our stop for the second day.

Along the way, we would stop at the exits to see what was open. Sorry, but I didn’t want a Golden Arches Christmas dinner, and it seemed like the only places open were Waffle Houses. I have never set foot in a Waffle House, and I didn’t want to start now. (Now, I will probably hear from the Waffle House lover crowd.)

Nothing but blue skies and sunshine when we crossed the Florida border.

How can all the restaurants be closed? Where is Ebenezer Scrooge when you need him? Finally, we find a restaurant with cars in the parking lot. Fujiyama’s is open on Christmas Day. This one is located in the River City Marketplace, at the airport exit.

This guy was great, and the food was fantastic.

Next - Final day on the road to Ft. Lauderdale.

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Your trip sounds like a blast!

Can't wait for more!

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Your trip sounds like a blast!

Thanks. The road trip portion was somewhat of a warmup for our planned cross country road trip this summer. We wanted to see if we could spend that much time in the close confines of a vehicle without killing one another. [emoji48]

I think the last time we did a Florida road trip, the kids were young, and we had a close encounter with a semi. We were in the left lane (naturally), when a large white truck started to pull into our lane. We went into the median with soft red dirt flying everywhere. When we hit the bottom, I kept it floored to try to make it back up to the road. In the meantime, everyone was screaming “We’re going to die”. Our experience back then reminded me of this.

We had red dirt every time we washed the car for the next few years. DW has had an aversion to semis ever since. She literally floors it to get past every one she passes.

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Jacksonville. This is where we encounter our first major crisis of the trip. The collapsible adult beverage cooler has a rip, and water leaks out as the ice melts. Off to Walmart to fight the return crowd after Christmas. They must have had a brutal crowd of last minute Christmas shoppers, because we found this in the parking lot on our way in.

After picking up the new cooler, we headed to Lauderdale by the Sea, where we rented a house for the week. This was our first experience doing this, and we used Home Away to find our rental that would accommodate 11 of us. I won’t spend much time on our week at the rental, because this should be more about the cruise, since this is cruise critic and not home critic. However, a nice, warm, heated pool awaited us.

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Cannot wait to read more!

Lauderdale-by-the-Sea is about 15 miles north of the port, so it is a little far for a typical short pre-cruise stay. However, it was a perfect place for our family stay. The area by Anglin’s fishing pier was still decorated for Christmas.

The Aruba Beach Cafe would be a place we would go to eat several times. It was huge, and they had no problem seating our group of 11.

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Just some random photos from Lauderdale-by-the-Sea. I typically don’t post photos of the kids with their faces showing. They will probably be on social media enough as they get older.

One 5YO grandson meets the Ocean for the first time. ( Don’t ask how he managed to have his footprints going backwards)

2YO granddaughter surveys her big sandbox

Second 5YO grandson meets the Atlantic.

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Anxiously waiting for more. Great start...

We had some of these come to visit us at the pool.

This is the one the 2YO tried to catch. No fear.

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Love it! We stay in Charlotte on our annual road trip to Hilton Head.

As to open restaurants on Christmas day, always look for the Chinese restaurants. Just ask your Jewish friends as that is where you will find us!

Some days, we almost had the beach to ourselves

The Anglin fishing pier

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Missing the snow, we had to build a little sandman.

We actually had a lot of time to build sand sculptures during the week. Most of my photos have the kids posed around or in them. There were a couple race cars, alligators, sharks, transformers, and castles. Our week of togetherness worked out pretty well. It was good to get everyone together, and the kids really enjoyed their time together.

The weather was perfect the entire week. The only rain we had was during our departure from the house. That was a busy morning. I had to shuttle my son and his family and in-laws to a hotel by the airport, since their flight to California would not be until the next day. Then it was a drive back to the house to load all of our stuff and our daughter and her family and their stuff in our SUV and drop them at the airport. After dropping them for their flight, it was time to head to the port for the cruise. So enough of the pre-cruise stuff, and on with the cruise.

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This was the shortest cruise we have ever taken. Our little three day cruise on the Serenade was a free cruise. We have a bunch of points accumulated on one of the Royal Caribbean branded credit cards, and some of them were due to expire. We have been transitioning to a different travel card that offers better return and less restrictions. Plus, we were tired of waiting for Royal to offer a true sale where using the points would be a good choice. Back in the early days of the card, we did gets some truly good deals, but now with the restrictions, that is a thing of the past.

This cruise would work out perfectly, since we would board the day we had to depart from our house rental. In addition to using points for the cruise, we cashed in additional points to give us $350 in OBC for the cruise.

We have sailed on the Serenade a couple of times before, but both of those were southern caribbean itineraries from San Juan. The one thing we like about this ship is the outdoor seating area at Windjammers.

After dropping our daughter and her family at the airport, we drove to the port. Although there were only two ships in port, traffic was really backed up. I would hate to see what it was like if there were 7 or 8 ships in port. We had the Celebrity Reflection at terminal 18, and the Serenade was sailing from terminal 26.

We left the airport area at 11:30, went through port security, dropped our bag at the curb at terminal 26 and parked at the garage there. At 1:00, we were still waiting in this line to get to Royal’s check-in counter.

Out of all the cruises we have taken, this was the absolute longest to get through the check-in and security process. Maybe it was because of the time we arrived, or the number of workers they assigned, but the process took almost an hour and a half. We have been through security, check-in and on the ship on other ships in less than 20 minutes. Note to self - Never arrive this late to the port again.

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Yeah, I know, they usually frown on you taking pictures in the terminal as you wait for security. Maybe that was what the announcement was that they kept making. However, with the noise level, no PA system, and having a soft voice woman scream the announcements was not a good decision. (Now I will have the soft voice women’s coalition, of which DW is a founding member, up in arms)

But now, on to the cruise. After we finally got aboard, we went to the Windjammer for some food. Shepherd's Pie, a little beef, pasta and a salad would have to tide me over until supper.

Of course, we had to try out a couple deserts.

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One of the nice things, and I am not sure if it is new, is they gave us cards that listed how much OBC we had. In our case, it was $175 for me and $175 for DW. Maybe it was because it was a short cruise, and OBC doesn’t post to your account until the second day.

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Loved the photos of Lauderdale-by-the-Sea. We have stayed there several times, and enjoy a meal at Aruba every time. Also, we are scheduled to be on the Serenade next November, though for 10 nights rather than 3....can't wait for more of your fine review. Thanks.

Loved the photos of Lauderdale-by-the-Sea. We have stayed there several times, and enjoy a meal at Aruba every time. Also, we are scheduled to be on the Serenade next November, though for 10 nights rather than 3....can't wait for more of your fine review. Thanks.

We also enjoyed the Basilic Vietnamese Grill in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea. It is a small restaurant, but the food was good.

We had hoped to extend our cruise and do the one after it, and we looked at doing the Harmony or driving to Miami and doing the Star Trek theme cruise, but they would not work since we had to be back home by the 12th. The last two had some fantastic last minute rates. Harmony was $585 each, and the 6 day theme cruise was $300 each.

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We expected them to hand us our disembarkation information at check-in since this was such a short cruise.[emoji849]

They did have a boarding day edition of the cruise compass, along with a map of the ship.

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One of the first things we did after visiting Windjammers was to sign up for the surf and stream internet package. We just got a one device plan, since you could log off one device and log on with another. With two iPhones and an iPad, this worked well.

This is the speed we were getting.

One thing we did discover was that you could airdrop your photos to your devices without being logged in to your account. I like to drop photos to my iPad to view on the larger screen. Plus, I have more editing apps on the iPad.

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