Day 1 Fort Lauderdale (At Sea)

So after all the waiting we finally were up and ready to go to the cruise terminal for what has been a long awaited holiday. We were all very excited and after we checked out of the hotel we boarded our coach transfer to the terminal and 25 minutes later we were ship side and after we off loaded our cases we checked into the terminal. It was all very quick and despite a slight wait in a holding area we were finally onboard. The weather was great and we started to explore this new ship. Well that was after we all got a drink from the bar, mine was the traditional first drink of a mudslide, We had been able to got straight to out rooms which were really nice and spacious. Sail away was at 4pm so we had plenty of time to discover the ship and get installed in many of the onboard bars.
We think Rory as a first time cruiser was suitably impressed we had some lunch and went through the process of the safety drills. This was very different from other ships we had sailed on all we had to do was watch a video in our room and visit our Muster station, as this was a medallion class ship we all had a small medallion disk in place of a room key and this device was able to know where exactly we were at any time so when we walked to our Muster station it registered we had been and ticked it off on our App. The same applied to the safety video but men and Lorna watched it in Jacky and Pauls room so we assumed it knew this and 15mins before the deadline we had realised our app showed 2 red x’s nt green ticks so we had to rush back to our room before 3.30pm to watch the video.
When we got to our room the bags had arrived so we texted the gang and told them so we all unpacked in time for sail away.
We were all up on the top deck just in time as the ship started to manoeuvre our of the port and out to sea. Our friends from a previous cruise Brandon and JJ had texted us to stand in a certain spot so they could take some images from a wen cam that is located in one of the high rise apartment blocks, in no time Lorna was receiving texts from Brandon with images of us all waving it was a great way to start the cruise.
Once we were well underway we continued to discover the ships fast array of bars shops and restaurants.  We located our restaurant “Amalfi” and went inside to see if we could see where our table was, we were told that they had not been allocated yet so we put our request in for a nice round 6 seater next to the window, we didn’t think this would be a problem because the ships seemed to be around half full.
We found Bellinis bar and got installed there until it was time to head back to our room and get ready for tonights meal.
After a shower we all met up back in Bellinis and had a pre dinner cocktail. We got to the dining room and was pleased to know our table request had been granted and we had a great table, there were only a hand-full of people in there but we didn’t know if this was because we were dining at 8pm and a lot of the North Americans like to dine early but the meal was really nice and we were all very please with how our first day had turned out. As it had been a long day we all decided to call it a day after diner and went to be, well Rory and Amanda stayed for a last drink and we went back to our room and crashed into our sumptuous bed and drifted like the ship into the night. Tomorrow we are at Princesses own private Island in the Bahamas. Night night.

Photos to follow soon.