Day by Day Review of Island Princess 12/29/2011

I know this is a little late. :o We got home, work took over and I'm finally ready to do a review from our perspective. This was a 10-night partial transit cruise round-trip out of Ft. Lauderdale. For those of you that were on this cruise, I encourage you to add your comments as I do a day by day recall of this cruise.

This is the first time I do a review this extensive, but I'm going to give it a shot and see how it goes. I expect this to take me several days to do the day by day account of our cruise.

For a little background... my DH and I have sailed on Princess, Carnival, Celebrity, RCCL, and Regent.

More to come over the weekend! :)

Dec. 23, 2011 T-6 Days and Counting Until 10 Night Panama Canal Cruise Aboard Island Princess - Traveling to Miami and onward to Marathon, FL (middle of the keys)

This is the start of our journey. The day has finally arrived! The alarm went off at 3:30am and it was time to pack the last bit of toiletries, take our cab to the airport and jump on a flight to Miami. So we squeezed into an American Eagle flight and took off.

Touch down was smooth and off to the rental car! I’m a National Club Emerald Member (based on traveling for work) and we proceeded to the Emerald Aisle. My DH’s eyes lit up when he sees a convertible. But someone else has appeared to have taken it... but they are waiting for their other half to walk down the aisle to see if they find something better (no pun intended). Then someone from National comes up to my DH and I and asks we are Executive Members. I said, “No, just Emerald.” She points to the sign and says this is for Executive Members only. Woops! The other part of this exact aisle was Emerald and I didn’t see it. I apologize to my DH and we move along and get a Nissan Altima.

Now we are settled into the car and this is how our conversation goes. Mind you, I was my father’s “navigator” for many weekend trips and drives across the country as a child, so I “think” I’m good at being a navigator.

Me: “Make sure to adjust all your mirrors.”

DH: “Check”

Then I watch him start this keyless car. He hits the start button and nothing happens except for the light turning on in the dash and on the button. He hits it again and the light turns off. He hits the start again and same thing.... So this happens several times. I think someone once told the me the definition of insanity is repeating the same thing over and over expecting a different result. Our conversation proceeds...

Me: “Look at the dash; it says to put your foot on the brake.”

My DH puts his foot on the brake hits the button and voila, the car starts! And off we go. Except immediately out the exit our conversation continues...

Me: “Why is the car making that noise?”

DH: “I don’t know.”

We drive through the parking garage and out towards the road.

Me: “I think there is something wrong with the car. It’s really noisy.”

DH: “I think it’s one of those wanna be hot rod cars.”

Me: “Sounds like they failed.”

DH: “Sounds like the muffler they put on it.”

We are trying to get to the Florida Turnpike, but need to get onto 836 West to cut over to it. We miss the exit due to a combination of me studying the car and my husband waiting for me to say take the exit for 836 West when it came up. He passed it and we make our first U-Turn. The noise is getting worse at higher speeds, my feet are vibrating and I can’t find the manual for the car (it’s not in the glovebox). All the while I’m wondering if we need to bring their new car back (it only had 8 miles on it). We miss 836 again. Woops - I’m not navigating to well, but who can with this noise? This is our second U-Turn. Problem now is that immediately after the U-Turn is the ramp all the way to the right for 836. By the time I saw it, it was to late to make the ramp. And here we go again... 3rd U-Turn. Oh boy.

Finally we are on 836 and I’m thinking the engine is going to blow up. At a higher speed, it is very noisy now! I’m wondering if my feet will fall asleep with the vibration! How can anyone think that doing this to their car to make it a hot rod would think this is cool? Back to studying the car.

Me: “What’s the plus and minus sign for above and below the Drive area by the gear shifter?”

DH: “I was wondering that earlier.”

Me: “Look at the RPM, it’s a little over 5000! It’s too high. Why is it so high?”

DH: “That’s a good question.”

My DH finally plays with pushing up and down into the plus and minus areas of the gear shifter and voila, gear changes and we are now in a lower gear. Our conversation continues on about how we believe they should warn people if they give them a semi-manual car (or whatever this is). After some playing around my DH finds there are 6 gears. And eventually slides the gear shift to the right and is now in automatic. No more gear shifting, vibrations, or loud noise. Although, we may have done some slight damage to the engine - whoops. I think it is easy to say we are not accustomed to new cars.

Here is a picture of the gear shift...

I won't delay you to much longer and will get the to cruise portion soon, but had to share this rental car experience.

Hahaha--that could have been the exact conversation my dh and I would have had in that situation.:D

Sounds like us too! Looking forward to the rest of your review. :)

Okay, so I do not want anyone to think this in not a genuine review. I messed up the title. It was supposed to be for the cruise dated 12/29/2011, NOT 11/29/2011 (I don't even know if there was a cruise starting on this date). I asked the mods to fix it and I'm not sure they will. So what I'll do is start a new thread that links to this, but will encourage people to post on the new thread. So sorry for the confusion. I'm sure I'm not the first to mess up the title.

Continuation of this thread with correct title (date) is now at

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1586027