The Royal Princess is here!

  

The Royal Princess docked at Pier 2 in Port Everglades

We spent two hours overnight glued to the computer watching as the Royal Princess arrived in the US for the very first time, at Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, and it was well worth the inevitable weariness we're going to feel later today as we wrap things up at home. 

I set the alarm for 45 minutes before the Royal Princess's scheduled arrival time of 3:30am EDT (ouch!) and started watching the marine traffic map on my phone while in bed.  I had hoped to be able to stay there, but quickly grew frustrated at trying to zoom in and out on the small screen, and finally got up to watch it on my laptop and 32" monitor. Before I knew it, G was at my side. What a soul mate!

It was interesting to watch, on the marine traffic map, the pilot boat leave Port Everglades to meet up with the Royal Princess to transfer the pilot on board. We've come into Port Everglades by cruise ship probably 40 times, and this happens every time, but seeing it from this perspective was new to us, and we were fascinated.



The pilot boat (white) leaves the Port Everglades entrance channel to
 meet up with the Royal Princess (blue).... 

...and transfer the pilot to the cruise ship

At about that time, the Royal Princess could start to be seen in the distance on the Port Everglades webcam and the Fort Lauderdale Beach webcam.



The Royal Princess is that white dot in the distant left.

We eventually had seven screens open- each of the three Port Everglades webcams, the beach webcam, the marine traffic site, the ship's own webcam (which they kept aimed in its usual nighttime way, backwards to the pool areas instead of to the front of the ship- darn) and finally Cruise Critic, where a few of us real addicts "conversed" while the Royal entered the Port Everglades inlet, made a turn, and slowly, slowly (and seemingly forever) backed into its home berth at Pier 2. What a beautiful sight it was!



As seen from the Fort Lauderdale Beach Cam



Here is the first view of the Royal Princess as she enters the Port Everglades entrance channel.
This webcam is in one of the condos on the inlet (the one that occasionally catches us
waving as we sail away), and the view is blocked in part by a palm tree. ;-)

Our first close-up view!

A wider view of the Royal Princess entering Port Everglades.

Swinging the aft around to dock at Pier 2.



A beautiful sight!



While we didn't see the Royal Princess arrive in the US in person, we were able to watch it from the comfort of home (me wearing my bunny slippers!), and return to our own bed afterwards.

Not that we slept, mind you. Excitement will do that to a person!

Life is fun!