Dan

Been high, been low, been in bewteen, been front and been back. Felt a tad more motion at the front and back, one being due to storm remnants, the other from the max speed dash back to LA from Cabo. There is no engine noise to be bothered with anywhere on any modern or even semi modern cruise ship. It's not like there's a couple Evinrude's hanging out the back LOL. Those things are so far down from anywhere that a passenger would be. When arriving or departing a port, you may feel the cavitation as the ship manoevers, and this could be at the front near the thrusters as well as aft under the propellers. What you really want to avoid, and unfortunately they aren't labelled on the deck plans, are the steward stations and the freight handling areas. In many cases, the freight elevators are in a back area near the passenger elevators, and you'll probably only notice them if you are paying attention on boarding day when they are delivering luggage. Self serve laundries are another good thing to avoid, if they are marked. You never know when some idiot decides they need to wash some clothes at 2am between trips to the casino and buffet, and has no concern about slamming the lids.

I wonder how aghast the BC environmentalists will be when they discover where the BC toilets empty? LOL

Pretty funny how discussion goes now with 2000-2500 pax ships being called "mid-sized" LOL

Like jacketwatch above, the Sapphire is our largest to date (it had just over 2900 on it in January, according to the sign on the wall in the galley tour, but carries just over 2600 double occupancy). I didn't feel crowded at all except at disembarkation. I think it's all proportional anyway. Smaller ships have fewer people, but fewer places for them to go as well. The Carnival Tropicale with 1022 pax still had line-ups and you had to go to the show early to get seats. As I've said many times before about the Carnival Victory (somewhere just shy of 3000 capacity), when we sailed it right after 9-11, there were 756 passengers on the ship, and we still lined up at the buffet and disembarkation was an unorganized disaster.

No, Costco and Sam's aren't the same company. I checked with Cruise Compete for our cruise last January, and didn't get anything lower than what our TA got. Plus my TA threw in some perks for us as well.

Usually it's up to the cruise gods. In gogetter's case, he booked a guarantee (GTY) cabin, which means you book a category, and they give you whatever cabin in that category or higher, but not lower. If you book a "GTY", you should do so expecting to get the category booked, and treat an upgrade as a surprise. Many times people will book a GTY and feel let down that they ended up in that category. When you book, your TA should also ask if you want an upgrade. This is recorded in the booking. In our case this last time, we wanted the cabin we booked so we told the TA no upgrades. This isn't to say we would have gotten one, but if the cruise line wants to move people around, it helps them to know which people want to be moved up. They do this so they have lower priced inventory to advertise and sell as the cruise date gets closer. If they sold out all the cheap cabins, and still had plenty of mini-suites, their newspaper ads saying "Depart in 4 weeks, from $1999" wouldn't be very effective. But if they can open up some inside and window cabins by moving those people to the higher grade cabins then they can advertise "from $599". Ideally they would like to sell the higher priced cabins for the higher price, but they really make their money by having people on board, so they move people up and re-sell the cheaper cabins.

How obstructed probably depends on where the lifeboat is in relation to your particular cabin, and whether you have a lifeboat or a tender there. I'd take an obstruced balcony anyday over a window, since at least you can get out and get some air in your cabin. Even with a boat sitting there, it's still your private outdoor oasis. With my balcony, I still went out on deck to see us pulling into or out of port (ok, who am I kidding, I was never up early enough to see us pulling into port LOL).

I'm not sold on the idea that a smaller ship gets tossed around a lot more than a larger ship. Based solely on my experience with 3 larger than 100k ton ships getting tossed around pretty good anyway. No real difference to the 30k and 50k ton ships I've also been on. I wouldn't let that be my deciding factor anyway. My concern with a smaller ship would be the fewer amenities. But that depends on what you are looking to do. I don't need 116,000 tons of ship around me if I want to sit back, read a book and get a tan LOL. Even though I really like Princess and am not very impressed with NCL's reputation (I haven't sailed them so no first hand account), I would likely take the NCL just because you mention the cruise goes to more islands. If I was going all that way, I would want to see more while there, because who knows if/when I would be back.

You might get off the ship in the canal for tours. They had shore-based tenders in Gatun Lake that came to our ship and took the people off for their tours before the ship went back through the locks. Maybe that happens on yours as well.

If this is an evening stop, is it mainly for the purpose of collecting the passengers that got off somewhere else for tours of the canal, etc? That's what our stop in Colon was for. We docked there at around 430pm, and left shortly after 6, and the main purpose was for the passengers who tendered off in Gatun Lake earlier in the afternoon to get back on the ship. (One of their tours was to go back over to the locks and watch the ship as it went back down). If this is truly a "nothing" port, then I'm sure this has been reported on comment cards, and one would wonder why they stop there unless there is an operational reason, such as above.

If it's anything like Colon was, then I would say that is true. We got off the ship, walked around the shopping centre at the cruise terminal, went to cross the street, and a guard armed with a rifle said it was not in our interests to venture away from the terminal. This other port of which you speak, I haven't heard of, so I don't know if it is in a built-up area like Colon or Christobal, or how safe the area is.

At least your pilot managed to stop on the runway. See pic below from Toronto. Aug 2005. Now that's an Air France drama LOL. No one died btw.

Oops, I guess with Thanksgiving coming up, I was going to refer you to the Butterball hotline LOL. Wrong Turkey LOL.

One of us is confused, and it's probably me. Are you talking about taking a bus tour to the Panama Canal from Costa Rica? Or bus tours in Costa Rica on the Panama Canal itineraries? They do use motorcoaches with bathrooms on the tours they do in Costa Rica, but I'm pretty sure CR is a little far to take a bus to the canal in the time alotted for a port stop.

I'd also like to add that, as in any election, if you have no idea what you are voting on, and are just voting for the sake of voting, don't bother.

Well, I was on a board that you couldn't say Christmas, hello, or grass. But it turned out they just hadn't re-set the default parental control on the new software LOL.

This board does the x-ing out thing too. I wasn't able to put a countdown clock on here that I had on other boards because it wouldn't allow a link to that site.

OK, lets try this..

Hopefully this image shows up. I was taking the kids for a drive and went by this place in the town where my mom lives. They build luxury yachts. I saw this thing sitting outside, and had to take a picture. I'm thinking I'm going to phone them up and ask how they plan to get the thing into water, as Lake Erie is about 12 miles away. Unless they are waiting for the next big flood to hit. Or maybe I have discovered Noah's Ark LOL.

Princess sent us plenty of extra tags. So we put them on before the flight and kept the extras in our carryon bag in case any got ripped off. None did. I agree that it helps in the recovery process if the bags get lost. It does help though, if your suitcases have 2 handles, to put the cruise tag on one handle, and the airline tag on the other. If you also have your own business card type luggage tags, you can make up a card to put in that with your ship and/or pre-cruise hotel info in case the bags get misplaced. Then when you get to the ship, or anytime before you leave the ship, you can replace that card with your home info.

They have 7 days on the Caribbean Princess starting at $499 in late November, early December posted on their website, so $399 on sale might be found.

Click on the banner in my posts to try the easycruise online simulator.

I would fly there and sail back, if only to get that miserable day of travel out of the way. Plus westbound flights are slightly shorter due to prevailing winds. But either way, it would be a great trip, I'm sure. I've wanted to sail that ship since I first heard about it.

You can check the map here http://www.porteverglades.org/directions.php for terminal numbers. We've boarded HAL and Carnival in the 25 and 26 area off SE 10th Ave, which is in the midport area, but that was several years ago now. Princess is up at 2 and I've seen Costa and Celebrity in the 16-19 area. Part of it will depend on the day and how many other ships are in port. The one Carnival cruise we took out of FLL, we boarded at 27, which was a warehouse, not a terminal, and disembarked at 21, which is where the Queen Mary 2 seems to be anytime I notice it on the webcam there.

A lot of today's cruise ships are diesel-electric, which means the diesel engine generates electricity which is used to propel the ship. This is why you don't generally see a big cloud of black smoke billowing out of the stack as they accelerate out of a port.