March 28, 2025 - Embarkation

Today we started our 10-day Southern Caribbean cruise. The cruise boat terminal in Fort Lauderdale is called Port Everglades. It has eight cruise terminals, which serve as docking points for various cruise ships. These terminals are equipped to ensure a quick and secure embarkation/debarkation process. Assorted other piers are used to provide docking facilities for cargo ships or cruise liners that are waiting for their turn at the cruise terminals.

What we noticed immediately was the size of these ships. To call them massive would be an understatement, similar to calling an Ottawa winter moderate. Our boat, the Celebrity Beyond, can easily accommodate everyone in Port Stanley, the village in Ontario that we live in. Close to our pier was a Royal Caribbean ship that was even larger than our ship.

Embarkation was super easy.  When we first started cruising the embarkation process was so slow that it could be considered painful. Now when you go on a cruise, you fill in the necessary information on-line, then print out your boarding pass. When you enter the terminal, you are met by an army of helpful customer service agents, who check your boarding pass, take your picture and send you on your way to your cabin. When you get to your cabin your key card, which you need to do just about everything on board, is ready for your use. Eventually your luggage will arrive, but until then you can explore the ship.

Celebrity is our favourite cruise line. Celebrity Beyond is a newer class of ship. It is known as an Edge class ship. Other older boats that we’ve travelled on, with Celebrity, were Solstice class ships. The Beyond is spacious and bright, but it seems strange because many of the facilities are similar to the Solstice class ships, just in different locations and with different setups. 

We went on a long walkabout and I’m thinking that it may take the entire cruise before I can comfortably know where to find what I’m looking for. What I did notice was that like all cruise liners the common areas are filled with modern art. Beyond takes this approach to an entirely different level. It has some of the most bizarre pieces of “art” that you could imagine. There is a hallway that is a replica of the “house of mirrors” that you would see at your local carnival. It is a pitch black hallway, with mirrors on the walls and orbs hanging from the ceiling or protruding from the floor. Very weird indeed.

Our exit out of the harbour into the Gulf of Mexico was interesting as we passed a series of mansions along the shoreline. With the number of ships that use this channel each day, I can’t imagine that it would be considered peaceful.

Steve Caoette was the evening’s entertainer. He is a comedian, who had us in stitches for the entire show. No swearing, no ranting, just hilarious dialogue.

My favourite grippe in life has jumped up and bit me on my ass. Why do IT companies change things when they are working fine already. To use Celebrity’s Internet plan, you can only have one device logged in at a time. If you want more than one, you either have to mortgage your house or indenture one of your grandchildren to Elon Musk and Starlink, who run the ships internet connectivity. So, this meant that every time you switched devices from your phone to your computer as an example, you needed to open your browser and log in. The login page was “login.com.” Simple right? It must have been too simple, because they now require you to go to a page called “onboardicafe”, and nowhere is this documented as far as I can see. Thankfully there was someone at the customer service desk who told me what do. Could it have something to do with the fact that Celebrity has an exclusive arrangement with Apple to promote their products in their “ICAFE”?