My wife and I chose this cruise to surprise my folks and relatives, and it was an amazing success!!!
My wife and I flew into Fort Lauderdale from Chicago the day of the cruise. This makes my wife a nervous wreck, but seeing as how we booked last minute it saved us almost $1000 dollars on airfare, hotel, and food. Amazingly, from the time we landed to embarkation was less than an hour. We were shocked how smooth the transfer went.
Having traveled with my folks before we knew they were creatures of habit, and we knew exactly where they would be first - The Cafe' Promenade. My ma was shocked and started crying.
If you call getting off the ship and going to Walgreens an excursion then yes we went on an excursion.