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Broadcasting from the Tripinsurance.com studios in Jacksonville, Florida.

This is Cruise Radio.

Hey, what's up?

My name is Doug Parker.

Thank you so much for checking out this week's episode of Cruise Radio.

Very happy to have you here.

A special broadcast because we, I say we, Jason Leppard from popularcruising.com,

also Mike from cruis currents.com and myself are aboard Royal Caribbean's Anthem of the Seas,

a quantum class ship that is now home ported year round here in Bayonne, New Jersey, Cape Liberty,

Bayonne, New York City area, whatever you want to call it. The ship is fairly new. It started service in the spring over in Southampton and Europe.

It made a journey over to the U.S. where it is right now. Some quick facts about Anthem of the

seas. It's 168,000 tons, over 1,100 feet long. It goes 22 knots, so that's pretty

fast for a ship this size, holds 4,180 guests, four bow thrusters, goes down 28 feet below

the water, so the draft is 28 feet, and 1600 crew, state rooms, a lot of state rooms, over 2,000 state rooms. So before we go any further, Jason, welcome to the show, man. Hey, glad I be here. Mike. Thanks for having me again. Yeah, absolutely. Last year, we were actually taping the show down in a, we call it a pod down on deck four or five, but it's kind of a little loud down there, so he came to

my stateroom to do it, this go around. But guys, let's talk about embarkation, because I have to say,

I thought Terminal 18 was really fast in Fort Lauderdale, where curb to the ship in less than 15 minutes,

but they seem to have this a little more streamlined. Yeah, definitely. The fact that you have everything done basically online ahead of time, even your security photo, just streamlines everything. You go to the port. There's people there, like, just standing around. You just have your paperwork in hand, they scan it, and then they stamp it and make sure everything's good to go. You're through security, and on board. I was on board in like five minutes. Yeah, same here, which is really weird because I got off the bus coming from, I flew in from Jacksonville to Newark and I give the guy my set sail pass that I printed out at the house, which also I uploaded my own photo. So that's pretty cool too. So there's no photo taking here once you get to the pier. He scanned the set sail pass. He scanned my passport. He did a stamp and said,

go on the ship. I was like, wow, we go through security and we were on the ship. What did you think, Mike? Because you're down in Fort Lauderdale and you've used Terminal 18 quite a few times. What did you think about the speed? Here's my embarkation story. For people like me who forget to print off or set sail paths.

Yeah.

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