Finally!
We are in the air and on our way to Tampa. According to the pilot, we are scheduled to arrive on time and the weather in Tampa is gorgeous!
Jeff and I spend the flight playing games on our iPods or listening to music and, just as promised, we land in Tampa right on time at 10:40! As we get off the plane, we are watching for our new friends. Jeff heads to the bathroom, while I wait at the gate for Joyce and her granddaughters to exit the plane. The one girl recognizes me right away and is quickly joined by her sister and grandma. Jeff rejoins our little group and we head off to find baggage claim and ground transportation. Joyce and her granddaughters have not checked any luggage (wow!
) but Jeff and I need to fetch our bags before heading to the rental car counters. We all know that we are under a bit of a time crunch at this point so we're keeping our fingers crossed that we can get our bags quickly. As luck would have it, our bags are
FIRST off the plane! Moving them at the last minute paid off for us! We grab them and head to the Thrifty car counter. So far so good.....
And our good fortune continues! The man at the rental car counter is quick and efficient and within no time we are all piling into our mini van to head to Port Canaveral. Joyce and her granddaughters settle into the back, Jeff loads all the bags, I jump into the passenger seat and off we go!! We made it through the Tampa airport in record time!
As luck would have it, Jeff packed our GPS in his carry-on so we grabbed it and I programmed the address for the port in as our destination. The very best thing about a GPS, in my opinion, is that it gives you an estimated arrival time. In this case, that was a big plus! The GPS, who we affectionately call Denise, predicts that we will be arriving in Port Canaveral at 1:39 pm. Although we still had a drive and anything could happen, we all were able to breathe a collective sigh of relief. It looked like the Monarch of the Seas would not sail without us!
Green Cat in our minivan console headed to Port Canaveral!
We never expected to be HERE!
Now you might think that riding in the enclosed space of a mini-van for two hours with complete strangers would be awkward and filled with uncomfortable silences.
WRONG! We ended up finding a lot to talk about. The girls talked about what they were looking forward to on their first cruise...they were so cute! They were 12 and 9 and reminded me a lot of my own boys. Joyce was taking the girls on the cruise and then staying in Orlando and meeting her other daughter and her kids afterward. They were going to be staying at POR and going to WDW....so of course we had a ton to talk about on that topic! Jeff and Joyce talked about their jobs, we talked about where we would like to travel, the girls talked about school and how excited they were to be on a special vacation with Grandma. It was a very nice trip. When we did encounter silences, Jeff and I would have a conversation or Joyce and the girls would talk to each other. All the while, we continued to check Denise for our arrival time which was hovering around 1:30. At one point on the drive we saw this.....
YIKES!
The entire car was engulfed in flames. That is
NEVER good.
As we got closer to Orlando I spotted this!
My first hidden Mickey sighting! We are so close to the Magic! I can almost feel it! For the first time all day, I am relaxed and SO excited to be on vacation!
As we made our way through Orlando, we passed Downtown Disney and lots of signs for my Happy Place. We also noticed that we were going to pass right by MCO.
Since we had made good time and had a little breathing room, we talked to Joyce about picking up her rental car at the airport. Between Rochester and Tampa, we realized that she had rented the car in MCO and was going to keep it parked at Port Canaveral for the week before using it again to get the girls back to the airport after the cruise. Jeff and I agreed to take her back to MCO on our way to Orlando since now she had no transportation to do so. We were planning to head that way after the ship docked anyway, so no big deal. BUT....since we had some time, we decided that we would drop her and the girls at MCO and they could get the car. She had already pre-paid so was out the money anyway, so this way she and the girls could have their own transportation to the airport and be able to do some sightseeing in Orlando before catching flights out later in the day.
MCO was fairly easy to navigate, so we found the arrival area quickly and said good-bye to Joyce and the girls. She insisted on paying us for the upgrade since we would have rented a smaller car had it not been for them. We said good-bye and planned to meet up once we got on the ship to be sure everyone arrived safely. I was a little nervous, only because they still needed to get their car and it was still about 45 minutes to the Port. I knew I would feel guilty if, for some reason, they did not make the ship and we did. But after good-byes and exchanging cell numbers, Jeff and I were back on the road.
A few of our unexpected road trip pictures...
Jeff in the minivan
We passed over this very cool waterway. So pretty!
Headed into Cape Canaveral we saw this ahead of us. Doesn't it look like the road just drops you off to nowhere?!
This is our first glimpse of the Port and the ships. If you've never seen one, the sheer size of these ships is AMAZING!
Woo-Hoo!
What a relief to see this sign!
Like a good DISer, I pulled out my trip binder at this point to be sure we were headed to the right cruise terminal. Once we had our bearings we followed the signs to the terminal where our Royal Caribbean ship would depart. OH LOOK! There she is! The Monarch of the Seas...our floating home for the next 5 days!
That last picture was taken at 1:26pm. We entered the parking area and found a parking attendant to ask about where to return our rental car. We knew that the rental car offices were not AT the port, but a few miles away in Cape Canaveral. The nice man gave us directions and told us he'd see us in a few! We headed back to the road and took the short 2 mile drive into the little city. We also had to stop and get gas so we wouldn't be charged an arm and a leg by the rental company and I desperately needed to find a little girl's room.
With all that business taken care of, we found the Thrifty office and made short work of returning our minivan. Unfortunately we had just missed the shuttle to the Port. UGH!! It would be about 20 minutes before it returned. Now I'm stressing a little again! We
NEED to be on the ship by 3 and it's 1:55....20 minutes puts us at 2:15. We are truly cutting it close!
Green Cat needed a little liquid refreshment while we waited!
At long last, the shuttle returned, we loaded up our bags and made the LAST leg of our journey to get on the ship. YAY....she hasn't left without us!
We tipped the driver, grabbed our bags and headed into the terminal to check in and board. The advantage to arriving so close to the wire is that there is NO LINE! I had heard reports of long lines to check in and board, but not at 2:20! LOL!
The nice Royal Caribbean representative quickly checked our travel documents, issued us our SeaPasses (essentially the only thing we would need for the next 5 days!), and gave us a map directing us to our stateroom and the open buffet.
Security is pretty tight on a cruise ship. As we crossed from land onto the ship, we handed over our SeaPasses and our photos were taken. The pic never appeared on the card itself, but every time we got on or off the ship from here on out, they checked the machine to be sure the pass and the photos matched. We weren't allowed to take pics, so I don't have any pictures of us boarding the ship, but believe me....we were so happy to be there!
As we headed in, on of the first of MANY pictures of us were taken by the ship's photographers. The first order of business for us was to EAT! Our plan had been to eat breakfast in Atlanta...and you all know how that worked out for us.
So.....we had been up since 4:00 am and had nothing in our bellies but the little graham cracker-type cookie we got on the plane. The buffet was only open until 3:15 and we did not want to miss out on lunch so we made our way straight to the elevator to take us to Deck 11 and the waiting Windjammer Cafe. Needless to say we got lost once or twice....this ship is the smallest in the Royal Caribbean fleet, but it is still enormous! It would take us the better part of our cruise to find our way around confidently!
The buffet area was PACKED! Everyone was milling around in the common areas trying to get lunch, etc and there were no seats to be had. Jeff was beginning to get stressed at this point...we had our carryon bags so we were trying to make our way through the crowded buffet area with those and we were hungry, tired, and a little cranky! Finally, we found two seats and began to fill our empty tummies. The buffet had a TON of choices from burgers to fish to salad and fruit. There were lots of different pastries, sandwich meats, soups, etc. If we hadn't been so stressed, we probably would have enjoyed the lunch, but as it was we just wanted to eat and then go find our room.
With our hunger finally satisfied we set off to find stateroom number 3106. We had chosen our room carefully to be in the best place for me not to get seasick. Speaking of that...I had begun taking my Bonine the night before and was also wearing my handy-dandy SeaBands. I was taking NO chances!
We finally found our room and here's how Jeff celebrated.
Up next.....BON VOYAGE!!
How did I miss this TR??!! What a wonderful get away for you and your hubby. Looking forward to reading all about your trip..even though it looks like a rough start
for the vehicle engulfed in flames! Scary!
I hate to fly, so anything that happens to make my flight change, delay, cancel, etc...totally makes my nerves go haywire! Shawn is not much about relaxing during the "travel" portion of any trip - only once we get to where we are going, so the airport situation would have just been awful for us! You two, on the other hand, sound like you balanced eachother out fairly well! Jeff was calm while you were worried, and vice-versa! 
Thankfully it all worked out! 
