Friday, March 27th - Disembarkation, Fort Lauderdale, FL
I woke sometime around 5 am to the sound of the propellers going
into hard reverse, the usual indicator that the Maasdam was slowing
down for the approach into port. This morning was no exception, as
a quick look out the window showed the Fort Lauderdale coastline
just a few miles away. Having been in and out of this port a few
times now, I went back to sleep.
Mike and I woke again at 7 am and once again checked the view out the window. This time we found ourselves tied to the pier in Port Everglades and there was a hustle and bustle of activity taking place right outside our window. Our cruise was over after sailing a distance of 3,028 miles round trip.
We showered then headed up to the Lido for breakfast, just making it in time before they closed the hot food line at 8 am. The Lido was jam-packed with people eating breakfast and waiting for their disembarkation time.
Disembarkation was being done silently - meaning there were no calls over the public address system for groups or colors to come to the gangway. When we'd been issued our disembarkation luggage tags, the tags had our assigned disembarkation time on them. Because we were taking the Cruise Connection Bus back to Fort Myers we were among the very last of the people to leave the ship (we didn't have a flight we had to catch): our assigned time to disembark was 9:15 - 9:30 am.
After breakfast we just sat around the room waiting for 9:15 to roll around, which it did fairly quickly. As we and the Bairds walked down the hallway on Deck 4 for the final time it was clear we were the very last people on our deck to disembark. The room stewards were already hard at work in all the other rooms, turning them over for the folks that'd be arriving a few short hours later.
Once off the ship, we found our luggage with ease since there were literally only about 50 bags left in the warehouse area. We got a porter to help with our many (many!) bags, then breezed right through Customs - not that we had anything to declare besides our bottle of Bacardi Rum and a few small knick-knacks that we'd picked up along the way.
We were standing at the pick-up/drop-off area by 9:30 am, and there we stood for an hour and a half waiting for the Cruise Connection Bus to arrive. Apparently it was a busy day in port and the busses were running around dropping off a lot of people before they could come get us for the return trip to the west coast of Florida. Fortunately, it was overcast and not very hot - quite comfortable weather if one has to wait around outside.
Finally, after standing around for what seemed like a long time our bus made its appearance curb-side and we were able to load our luggage and sit down. We were off across Alligator Alley (I-75) by 11:15 am, and dropped off in Fort Myers by 1:45 pm. Our next door neighbor, Carol, arrived shortly thereafter to take us home.... and our trip was done!
