In late September, Steve (DOS) and I took a cruise on Royal Caribbean Cruise Line’s (RCCL) brand new Star of the Seas. Prior to the cruise we stayed at the Hyatt Place Port Canaveral for two nights. I had recently stayed at the Residence Inn Port Canaveral (right next door to the Hyatt) for one night last month when my sister Jenni was down for a pre-inaugural sailing on the Star as part of an employee shake-down cruise. We had a nice time together and went to a couple of the restaurants by the port, and I saw her off on her cruise in the morning. DOS had a cold then, so he didn’t join us, and I thought he would like staying down there, so we repeated the process, but this time in the Hyatt Place next door, as I’m Globalist with Hyatt and it wasn’t available last time.
One of our friends, Joanna, was also taking a cruise out of Port Canaveral, but on a different line leaving on Saturday, while our’s leaves today on Sunday. We first met Joanna on a Mediterranean cruise about 10 years ago, and have stayed in touch since. We picked up Joanna at the airport, as she was flying in from Tennessee, and took her to her port hotel, The Country Inn and Suites, which was conveniently located right behind our hotel, the Hyatt Place. Joanna stayed one night only (Friday night), while DOS and I stayed 2 nights at the Hyatt. The Port Canaveral area now has quite a few hotels near each other (also the Hilton chains Garden Inn, Homewood Suites, and Home2Suites) all with in a block of our hotel, plus others just down the road which then becomes part of Cocoa Beach and its hotels and condos.
We got to the hotel around 3pm, just in time to check-in, get settled, and then hurry over to the port to watch the other ships departing on today’s (Friday) sail-away. You can literally see the tops of some of the ships from the hotel (especially from the Hyatt Place’s roof top bar), as it’s only a mile or so drive to the port, but we wanted to see the ships up close. Our room was a typical Hyatt Place room, but as this is a new hotel, everything was new and fresh. It was also very quiet; I figured there would be loads of kids running up and down the halls, but actually we saw very few kids at all. It’s late September and “they should be back in school”, according to Rod Stewarts Maggie May song! LOL!🤣
We did make a quick stop at the roof top bar to see it, but as it didn’t open until 4pm, it was empty when we went there. I would go back there later at night, however as it was open until 11pm, and even though the ships were gone by then, it still offered nice views and a pleasant breeze from the ocean.
We then drove over to Fishlips Restaurant and Bar by the port (only a mile away) for a beverage and appetizer, and unlike when I was here with my sister a month ago, it was not as crowded as the peak time then in summer, so we got a front-row seat by the window.
There were five ships in port on Friday, and we saw four of them leave: The Utopia of the Seas (RCCL), the Adventure of the Seas (RCCL), and two Disney ships, the Wonder, and the Wish (one of the Carnival ships left earlier at 3:15pm). We got some good photos while having our light meal, and had a good time catching up with Joanna.
As Joanna was meeting her sisters arriving later that evening and having an early dinner with them, DOS and I later had dinner on our own. We went to Zarrela’s Italian Restaurant near the hotel, which was a family-type restaurant with fresh ingredients, friendly staff. It was a festive atmosphere with most of the diners going on a cruise in a day or two, or visiting nearby Cocoa Beach.
The next day, Saturday, we had planned on going to Cocoa Beach, just up the road a couple miles, but instead we spent most of the day replacing our existing iPhone’s 15 with the new iPhone Pro Max 17. (DOS actually had to drive home Saturday morning, an hour each way and back, to pick up the phones, which were delivered late Friday after we had already left for Port Canaveral .) We followed Apple’s instructions, and while not terrible, using the hotel’s wifi did slow the process down a fair bit, with not only the slower internet connection, but initially getting the network to connect, accept the terms and conditions etc. Once we were transferring the data, it took almost 5 hours to do so, but I have over 100K photos and lots of videos from trips, so I’m sure that’s what slowed it down. Anyway, we have our new iPhones and cases, and DOS returned our old iPhone 15 for trade in at the Walgreens drop off point down the street.
In the evening, we went to Grill’s Restaurant and Tiki Bar for dinner, (which leaves just down the port from Fishlips), and is directly next to port 1, which is where our ship will leave from tomorrow (Sunday). At 8pm there were obviously no ships in port, but like last night, it was a festive atmosphere with many people going on cruises, and also entertainment at the outdoor Tiki Bar, which we could hear inside the restaurant where we ate.
After dinner, I went up to the Hyatt Rooftop Bar and had a nightcap while I caught up on a couple of the previous blog posts. It’s really a cool bar, and wasn’t busy, so I could enjoy some relaxation solo, while DOS stayed in the room watching Youtube videos.
Cruise Day! Now it’s 11:03am on Sunday , and I’m getting “looks” from DOS, as in we need to checkout of the hotel now, and head to the port! I’ll add a couple photos when we get to the ship! He’s in a hurry to get there as we need to confirm our dinner reservations for the cruise, and we can’t until we get on the ship. We drove the short mile away to the port, dropped off our luggage, and parked in the adjacent garage.
to your car a week later!
Wow – it’s now 11:58am am we’re already on the ship! As I told DOS as we boarded “Royal Caribbean is a well-oiled machine”, meaning they are so very efficient at handling large crowds of people, car traffic, luggage, etc. We’re now sitting in the 1400 Lounge, which is right by the entrance gateway on deck 5 as our rooms aren’t available until 1pm. Meanwhile I’m having a Coke Zero while Steve DOS is off trying to secure all of our specialty dining reservations for the week, carefully working around the 3 shows we’ve already booked. Unfortunately the dining reservations were not available on the RCCL App, so he has to do it first thing since we boarded. Meanwhile I can retroactively add pics to this post!
The next post will have lots of photos of the ship, but here’s one of the iconic “Pearl” which is the focal point of the lobby and boarding area.
Next, is a quick stop to our Muster Drill location, where they marked our name off as attending, and confirmed we watched the muster drill video, which we did just after boarding.
So it’s Bon Voyage for now! Welcome to the brand new and world’s largest ship, RCCL’s Star of the Seas!