Day 114 – Fort Lauderdale

Day 114 – April 28 – Fort Lauderdale

Today is the final day of our cruise, and it’s only a half day as the ship starts disembarking passengers early in the morning and we expect to all be off by 10 o’clock. We chose the latest disembarkation time since we were in no hurry to get off. We are staying in Fort Lauderdale for a few days until we board the Crystal Symphony on our Panama Canal Cruise back to San Diego.

One benefit of Holland America is that we can stay in our cabin until we were ready to leave the ship and full room service is available on this last day. Most cruise lines want you to be out of your room by 8 AM and wander the ship until you disembark, and room service is either not offered at all or limited to a small selection.

Our room service breakfast arrived at 8 AM and by this time many people were already leaving the ship. This disembarkation was a little different since it this is not a turnaround port. The Amsterdam will be going to drydock and not taking on any passengers. There will be about 1,000 contractors ready to board to start work during the transit to the drydock.

We had two wonderful stateroom stewards – Darma and Andri and they made our trip a joy.

The disembarkation was going slower than expected due to fewer than required Customs agents in the terminal. The ship is at the mercy of the Customs force as to how many agents they allocate to each ship. Additionally, since this is the end of the World Cruise there are a lot of bags, which I suspect, is another reason that everything slows down in the terminal.

Since disembarkation was running about 45 minutes behind, I took the time to wander around the ship while waiting for our color to be called. Wooden protective strips have been installed on the corners of the elevator doors to protect them from the heavy equipment that will be moved around the ship.

The main dining room was being converted into a large cafeteria style eating area. Serving trays were set up near the entrance so the construction workers could eat here in addition to the Lido Market.

Our cabin steward said that they had a little less to do on the turnaround since there are no passengers coming on board. The rooms are cleaned and made up as always, but they didn’t have to go around and deliver all the bottles of champagne, gifts cards and other things that go along with a ship full of new passengers.

Leaving the ship for the final time

Our color was finally called at 10:52 AM and we headed down to the pier for our one final trip across the gangway. Henk, Christel and about a dozen other crewmembers lined the exit bidding us farewell as we scanned our cruise cards one final time.

Since we were in the last group to come off the ship, the bags were scattered across the area in the terminal. We wandered around to find our bags and move them to a central spot to wait for a porter. There was sort of a line for passengers to wait for the next porter, but it was hard to figure out and by time we gathered all our bags the line was gone, and porters were readily available.

Typically, as you search for your bags one person in your group will stand with the bags you’ve already retrieved as you go look for the rest of them. Inevitably you spot a bag that appears to be already selected by someone else and you go over look at make sure that is not your bag. This is understandable as everyone is searching for bags and many bags tend look-alike — it wouldn’t be the first time that someone grabbed the wrong bag. As I was looking for the last of our bags I saw some that were near an older gentleman. I walked by and glanced at the luggage tags. As I looked at the tags he roared a loud “NO” for at least five seconds. I wasn’t sure what the problem was and then I realize that he was taking offense that I even looked at his bags thinking they might be mine. I smiled and kept moving and found my bags a few minutes later.

Fort Lauderdale has Global Entry, and this is one of the few places where you need your Global Entry Card to access the Global Entry Line. I had filled out my customs declaration form earlier and handed that to the person guarding the Global Entry line along with my Global Entry card. The person took my customs form and tore it in half saying that I didn’t need a form since I was in the Global Entry line.

We cleared Customs in a few minutes with only cursory questions asked by the agent and we were soon on the curb outside the terminal. There was a large FedEx truck around the corner from the terminal’s exit where we dropped off our FedEx luggage and then we crossed the drive to the taxi stand and found a large cab in about 15 minutes.

Twenty minutes later we arrived at the Hilton Fort Lauderdale Beach Resort where we will be staying for a few days until we board the Crystal Symphony. Our room was not available until 3 PM so we left our bags with the bell hop and ordered an Uber to take us to the Microsoft store in a Mall about 50 miles away. I needed to buy a new laptop computer since my other one went on the fritz a few days before the cruise ended. Fortunately, it worked enough where I could get the data off and just move it over to the new laptop but it occupied most of our time for the next several days.

That concludes our World Cruise. I will post a final summary soon and then start blogging on our first Crystal cruise.