When Embarkation Day Goes Completely Wrong: A Celebrity Apex Disaster

I've been dreaming about this cruise for two years. Two years of saving, planning, and obsessively reading reviews about the Celebrity Apex. I'd heard it was the crown jewel of Celebrity Cruises' fleet—the ship with the fancy restaurants, the rooftop pool, the whole nine yards. My husband Mark and I had splurged on a veranda cabin (our first time ever), and I'd already mentally decorated it in my head about seventeen different ways. But here's the thing about dreams: sometimes they collide with reality in the most spectacularly ridiculous ways. It started at port in Fort Lauderdale. We arrived at 11:47 AM for a noon departure. Not cutting it close at all, right? Wrong. The parking situation alone nearly derailed us before we even stepped foot on the gangway. We circled the parking garage for what felt like forty minutes looking for a spot, with me frantically checking the time on my phone like it was somehow going to slow down if I stared at it hard enough. When we finally parked and made it to the terminal, we were already sweating through our nice clothes. Not the glamorous start I'd envisioned. The check-in line moved at a glacial pace. There were probably two hundred people ah…