Day 16 - Sunday - 3/30/25 - Ft. Lauderdale Turnaround Day
Today was turnaround day and it actually turned out to be a fairly busy day. We had to be out of our room by 8:15 AM and so our alarms went off at 7 AM and we finished the last-minute packing and went up to the Lido for one final breakfast on this leg. The Lido Marketplace was extremely busy and we finally found a seat and enjoyed a nice breakfast. We didn't need to be in the Pinnacle bar until 9 AM to do the immigration inspection.
This week's cruise is a full charter cruise meaning that the sponsor of this cruise chartered the entire ship and they control the programming. The casino is closed, alcohol promotion is eliminated, there are very few public announcements by Stephanie, our Cruise & Travel Director, there are no events scheduled by HAL except shore excursions, the casino is closed, and the charter group provides all the Main Stage and Rolling Stone lounge programming. All of the restaurants are open as well as the shops and photo studio.
We were waiting in the Pinnacle bar lounge and we met the other three passengers who had been on this week's cruise and were going to stay on for the next segment. One couple was from Everett. Also, the son of the front desk manager was on board the ship staying with his mother until the end of April. Besides us five passengers, there were a number of crew who had to also go through the immigration inspection. This whole process is called 'going to a zero count'. The ship has to demonstrate that all the passengers have been taken off the ship and sent through the immigration by US customs and border patrol. Angela was the next to the last person in the zero count process and I was third from the last. That's the lowest we have ever been. As we were standing there, I saw the security lady running down with the necessary paperwork to demonstrate that they had reached a zero count on the ship. Within minutes we were then escorted back onto the ship, where we signed on with our familiar facial recognition. I should add that the immigration inspection consisted of facial recognition as well, there was no inspection of passports or anything like that.
Just after we finished the boarding of the ship, we were standing by the elevator bank and Bill and Gloria Gaither, who are the sponsors and namesake for the cruise, cleared security and were ushered into elevators. I was a little taken aback by how elderly both of them looked with Gloria using a walker and Bill kind of shuffling along. He did give us a wave when he saw Angela taking a picture.
We then headed on up to the Crows Nest to wait for other passengers to join the ship. We were parked at Terminal 26 behind the Celebrity Ascent and the Enchanted Princess was on a nearby berth. That we left from a week ago. There were only five ships in port today. Slowly people began to trickle in to the Crows Nest. Sometime after 12 we ventured back down to our state room to see if our luggage had been transferred from the previous stateroom and found that my distilled water jug had not been transferred. We were having problems with the TV controls and I found the stateroom attendant and he addressed those issues. My gallon of distilled water was replaced at no charge, and the TV remote was also replaced. We watched the safety video while unpacking. We then headed our muster station to check in. Our pictures were not linked to our new key cards so we had new photos taken later at the Front Desk. Then we went up to the Lido and it was extremely crowded, but I found a seat for us.
After lunch, we went back up to the Crow's Nest to watch the sail away, which was scheduled for 3 PM. Captain Baijen came on the PA system to give his departure announcement and noted that we needed to wait for the Celebrity Ascent to depart and that would be a priority to each ships departure. It really began to rain heavily with a very low ceiling. The ceiling was so low that we couldn't even see the condominiums or the 17th St. bridge which are normally in full view. There were also a number of lightning strikes nearby. Finally, the Celebrity Ascent backed out of its berth into the turning area, rotated 90° counterclockwise and then headed forward out the channel into the open sea. Shortly after that the Enchanted Princess left its berth and headed out to sea. During that process, the departure horn sounded, and we left the berth and sailed towards the departure channel and made a 90° turn to starboard and headed out to sea ourselves. It was very low ceiling and not much visibility with the rain so we came down to our stateroom and unpacked. This interior room is much smaller than last week's room.
For this cruise we were assigned a dining time in the main dining room. The entire passenger population is divided into two groups, blue and red and we are in the red group. That group has the 5:15 dinner hour and then we attend an evening concert every night starting at 7:15. We have an assigned table number 155 which is a table for four and we were joined by two women. One is a widow lady and the other is a lady whose husband doesn't like to cruise. We enjoyed great conversation with them and enjoyed their company. The menu theme tonight was a Caribbean theme and I had cracked pork proceeded by a shrimp cocktail and a Caesar salad. Dessert for me was a mixed cheese plate.
One of the ladies explained how the process works for the concerts. As I said earlier, there are two groups designated as blue and red, and concerts and events are divided among those two groups and the major events always occur on the World Stage which seats about 1200 people. Then within each of the groups there is a green, purple, and yellow sub group and each sub sub group gets priority for shows. All of these color codes are on each person's event name badge. And in that way they rotate priority among the colors so everyone has a chance at some point to sit close to the stage if they desire. Our purple color did not have priority tonight so we ended up sitting facing the stage in the riser section, which actually had pretty good sight lines. I'd also note that they were disorganized at the entry area and not identifying that the priority people were to be on one side of a tape marking on the floor and so it was sort of a jumbled up mess with people. There was much jockeying for a position to get in to the Theater. In the end, it worked out, and the theater was entirely full.
For those not familiar with who Bill and Gloria Gaither are, they are one of the preeminent Christian songwriters over the last 60 years. I believe they have around 700 songs to their credit and have performed numerous concerts and have done these cruise events for many years. This current Caribbean cruise is billed as a farewell cruise as Bill turned 89 a couple days ago. I had heard a couple days earlier that he may not be on this cruise because of health concerns, but he was certainly here and he led the concert that we participated in this evening. Gloria, however, not there. There are about 20 primarily southern gospel type singers or groups that are all seated on stage and they perform individual songs that are central to their repertoire. There's lots of audience participation, and for many of the songs, the words are displayed on the screen behind the performers. If you're interested in this type of music or what it is all about, I would suggest doing a YouTube search and there are plenty of examples of the Gaither music. He also has a Gaither TV channel and programs from that series are playing on our stateroom TV so we can watch Gaither 24/7 if we'd like.
They nearly 2 hour concert was wonderful, very uplifting and encouraging and an introduction to what will happen over the next seven days. After the concert, we went to the billboard onboard dueling pianos, and listened to the British invasion set list. One of the pianists recognized me as being on the cruise the previous week and we exchanged pleasantries. We rather enjoy listening to the billboard onboard singers and pianists. However, It was so crowded it was very difficult to get a seat. This week there are lots of seats available because this crowd tends to be a little on the older side and 9 o'clock is pretty late for them.
I consulted in my fitness tracker and saw that I was within a few hundred steps of reaching my daily goal so we proceeded to walk inside down level two and then up to level three and back forward to the forward elevator bank and then to our room. By the time I reached the room, I had reached my goal so I was pleased with myself for the day in that regard.
Tomorrow is a sea day on our way to Amber Cove in the Dominican Republic and we have three concerts spread out today. And our purple code gives us priority at one of those three concerts.
What are the unfortunate side effects of being on this charter cruise? One is that most of our Mariner benefits for being loyal to Holland America DO NOT qualify us for any special arrangements or discounts and so everything we purchase is at full price. However, they still count our cruise days towards anything that that helps in the status program within Holland America. What this meant for us is that we had to purchase Internet at the full price and we elected to buy a four device plan at the surf level which cost $200 for the week. Fortunately, we had a $100 credit available and so our net cost of that was only $100. We also decided to purchase the soft drink package for $8 a day each which gives us a souvenir mug and then unlimited sodas. It only takes about three to make this package pay for itself and generally, I can easily drink three sodas a day.
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