Day 1 Fort Lauderdale

So today marks the start of our cruise and Kens 80th Birthday, so first things first we all met for breakfast and wished Ken a happy birthday and gave him his presents, we also had a badge for him to wear all day with 80 on it. We had until 11:45am to wait for the shuttle to the cruise port so we were in no hurry, we eventually all met again in the lobby and got onboard our shuttle, it was full but it was only going to be a short trip or so we thought, in no time the traffic was at a standstill as all 3 entrances are patrolled by security they caused a bottleneck, it took us nearly a hour to travel about 5 miles but eventually we got through and was parked at the dedicated terminal for our ship Celebrity Edge. The check in process was fantastic and took all 6 of us about 10 minutes to get through and onto the ship, our rooms were ready so we all went down to to store our hand luggage. Everyone was impressed with the rooms. We now headed up to the restaurant for some lunch. It was busy but we got seated and had a great meal and our first drink after we upgraded our drinks package to the top tier.

After lunch we convinced Ken and Sandy to stay behind while the rest of us went down to there room to decorate it and front door but we never made it because the muster station briefing was about to start so we ended up in our muster station wondering if Ken and Sandy would know to come down, eventually they arrived just in time.
After the cheesy briefing we asked Ken and Sandy to bugger off for a bit so we could decorate the room, we gave them a walkie talky so we could ask them to come down afterwards. So we set to work on the room, we had got some bunting and magnetic signs to go on the door. After about 15 minutes we had filled the room with decoration and called them to come back down. Ken was pleasantly surprised and was really feeling the love.
We then headed up to the top deck and the Rooftop Garden and got ourselves in place for the sail away, our Friends JJ and Brandon had arranged for a webcam to seek us down and video the ship leaving, we brought along a red scarf to help located us and although a bit late the ship started to head off out to sea with the 6 of us frantically waving into oblivion hoping that they could see us. We got a text from Brandon showing us pictures of us all waving, it was very cool.
So after this we headed back to the rooms to unpack our cases which were now there, this took us a while and after this we showered to get ready for tonight. We all met in the Martini bar for cocktails and tonight we were eating in the fine dining restaurant “Fine Cut” for Kens birthday, Lorna and myself went down to the restaurant earlier to make sure they had a cake we order and also to hand them some table decorations and candles for the cake. We turned up at 8:45pm and we were seated at a large table with great high back chairs and the table looked great, we all had a fantastic meal and drinks were flowing all night. When we finished we headed up to the nightclub for the silent disco which was a great laugh. If you don’t know about this you put on a set of headphones with a choice of 3 channels and listen to music, the room is silent apart from the occasional reveller singing along badly. Needless to say we were all a bit drunk and singing along and making right prats of ourselves. The night finished when the disco stopped and we were all kicked out. So the 1st day at sea was a great success and Ken thoroughly enjoyed his 80th birthday.