A Grand Adventure! Grand Princess California Coastal Complete Photo Review 9/18-9/25

Hello Princess message board community! It is the one and only Flying Cruiser of NJ, and I am here to share my cruise vacation adventure from the recent September 18 sailing of the Grand Princess, a 7-day California coastal cruise.

Little about me first - although I have gone on about 20 cruises overall in my lifetime, this was only my second time on Princess, first time in 8 years. My only other Princess experience was a cruise to Alaska, from Seattle on the Golden Princess back in 2007, which was a very good one. I am from the Philadelphia suburbs in New Jersey, in my mid 30s, single, no kids, and am very flexible in my ability to make my own schedule and travel whenever I want to, so I do like to cruise quite a bit. It is my preferred method of vacation (my cruising history with CC reviews is in my signature if anyone wants to check out some of my other cruise vacation reviews), and I have sailed at various times, to various places on Princess, Carnival, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian. I often travel with my mom, who is retired and also likes to cruise (she cruises more than I do, lol and gave me the cruising bug about 10 years ago), and she accompanied me on this voyage. With that out of the way, little bit of background on this cruise and how I settled on choosing it.

Yes, I have cruised from pretty much every corner of the country and even a US territory so I have had quite a few different experiences so when my mom and I sat down to figure out where we would go on our fall vacation this year, we considered a common Caribbean cruise out of Florida (hurricane season), New Orleans (same) and a unique 7-day California coastal voyage on a ship we had never sailed before, out of a city I had never been to before. The price was right for an outside cabin (I often use a third party travel agent who can really hook me up with good deals on cruises and land resorts if I want to go for that), and the date worked, so we went for it. We wanted to go for a balcony originally but right before we booked, the price went way up, so we just settled for an outside cabin for nearly half the price.

I will note that we pre-paid EVERYTHING on this cruise, including excursions and gratiuities, soda package, EVERYTHING. If you can, I suggest you do that as I did upfront and you won't have a huge bill at the end of the cruise. It sure was nice to not look at a huge charge when I went to get off the ship the last day. Anyway, I will talk more about the numerous excursions we took during this cruise as the review goes on and they were all good and worth the money.

I have to mention a few things before I get started on this review also. First, they take a long time to do and I usually only do one day at a time, when I get time to sit down and write, so it will likely take quite a while to finish. So if I go a few days or even a week without adding on, I didn't abandon the review and I will be back when I get the time. I really am thorough with these things and I will include over 300 pictures that I took along with commentary of how each day went, so I do take my time. Also, I will cover this entire vacation, from the day we flew out to California and our pre-cruise tourist day in San Francisco, the cruise itself, and travel home, so it will be long and adventurous and will in some ways, be a cruise review plus a vacation review, so expect that. There was a lot to see and do in San Francisco and I wanted to be sure to include that for those who may be interested in seeing the place before or after their cruise.

So, let's get going with the review. I will break it down into segments, each covering a day or part of a day, and with the 6-photo limit for each post, I will be breaking each day into a number of posts so I can include all the photos I want to include. I also have an interesting sense of humor and will work that in, and I like to put the story that I am telling together using both written words and pictures. I will actually start with Day 1, which was a travel day in my next post.

I do hope you thoroughly enjoy this upcoming review, and glad to have you along for the journey. Questions/comments, etc are welcome and I will make my best effort to get back to everyone who wants to join in and make this review a bit of a lively cruise discussion.

OK, I'm game. Waiting for more. BTW, thanks in advance for doing the review. :)

DAY 1: TRAVEL DAY

Well, a few months of planning and planning and more planning had finally passed and it was time for the cruise. Well, seeing that we live on the east coast and that is thousands of miles away from the west coast, we still had to fly to get out to the west coast. Duh. My mom is quite a planner, and although I like to sort of just go with the flow sometimes, I do like to have an idea of what is going to happen once the vacation begins. I have noticed that the more I preplan and anticipate what I am going to do, I am sometimes disappointed in the experience moreso than if I just go ahead and do whatever grabs my attention so there does have to be that happy medium somewhere. I will talk more about that as we go in, but we really did plan out much of what we ended up doing ahead of time.

So, cruise plans done. Checkin done, travel documents in hand. Flight plans made. Hotel plans made. Pre-cruise day in San Francisco pretty much planned out. Travel to the port planned out. Everything taken care of at home, so it was time to begin the vacation on this Friday morning. It was a nice September day that we would be traveling out on, so that is always a good thing. Means on-time flights and all that. September is my favorite month of the year, starts summer-ish and ends up fall-ish weatherwise. Anyway....

The closest airport to me is Philadelphia International (KPHL), and with the most flight options to the west coast of airports nearby me. I also have to note that I am a huge aviation geek along with a cruise geek, so I will be talking a bit about that in this day's review and again later when we got to visit San Diego. Our flight routing took us to Phoenix Sky Harbor International, then to San Diego Lindbergh Field (KSAN) and then finally, to San Francisco International (KSFO) late in the afternoon. Our day started out roughly 0900, and we finally ended up at the hotel in San Francisco by around 1800 local time (with the 3 hour time change), so quite a long day flying. Always fun though. Oh, I do all my reviews in 24-hour military time format because it is easier to follow along and not confuse AM with PM.

Nice September day to fly. Looking down at center city Philadelphia after a quick departure from PHL Runway 9L, a view you don't normally get, lol.

Close to 10,000 feet, nice bird's eye view of PHL as we climb out to the west. Crystal clear day.

Out over the mountains of southern New Mexico, I think. We were late getting to PHX because of a reroute around some pretty heavy thunderstorms over our planned route through the midwest and Rocky Mountains (looking at the tracking map on my phone that I was following using the plane's free wifi), but we made up some time in PHX and were soon on our way off I think Runway 25L, destination SAN.

Landing over downtown Phoenix, guessing Runway 7R. Nice views. Been here a couple times, nice this time of year, too hot in the summertime for me though.

Enroute PHX to SAN. Lot of nice scenery down below in this great land we call the USA. Who needs inflight entertainment when you have that kind of view out the window?

Landing over Balboa Park, downtown San Diego. Great approach with a huge hill before the displaced threshold runway 27, awesome view on the way in and great views of the airport from all around the city. More on that when I talk all about our port day in San Diego. Really thrilling experience flying into that airport and a preview of what we would see later that week.

More in a second, including an arrival in San Francisco, and our early evening once we got settled in. Hope you like the preview so far.....

DAY 1: TRAVEL DAY CONTINUED

Ah, I got some of the photos mixed up in that last post. I posted us landing in SAN twice, meant to include this one as the enroute over Socal here:

Good inflight entertainment for sure.

Anyway, the flight up the coast to SFO is really neat. Mountains, valleys, ocean all in the same view out the window. Got to fly over some of the stuff we would be seeing on our port excursions during the cruise. After about an hour or so, it was gear down, flaps down, speedbrakes, approach over San Francisco Bay. Scenic approach and I guess we landed on Runway 28L IIRC. Spotters heaven by the way, if you like seeing international widebodies, including 747s and A380s from all over the world. Saw some of that action on our way down to baggage claim.

We got our bags at the carousel, and I will say that although SFO is improved from the time I transited through the airport years ago, it is still really spread out, confusing layout, and if you are not a fast walker, it will take you forever to get from one end of the place to the other. I guess now the vacation was officially started, once we got outside the terminal doors, haha.

I forgot to note that I always like to fly into a cruise port a day ahead of time, even if I am not planning on doing any sightseeing in the departure city. I have had some close calls due to delays when trying to fly in day-of the cruise and have seen people miss their cruises due to cutting their travel in too close, so keep that in mind. Yeah, a hotel might cost a little more but it is worth it for peace of mind and relaxation. We planned our trip out to San Francisco two days in advance because we wanted to see the city before the cruise so it worked out fine.

After an exhaustive search, we booked the Crowne Plaza SFO airport, got a good 2-night rate there and the hotel had a shuttle to the airport with good BART and cruise port shuttle access so we were happy. We got the shuttle across the street from the baggage claim office and were at the hotel shortly after. Just a quick ride down US 101, there is actually a good view of planes landing over the bay from the hotel parking lot if you are bored and interested in that kind of stuff. It is in Burlingame I think, and although there is a lot of construction in the area, there are a few restaurants within walking distance, on both sides of 101, and there was a restaurant at the hotel as well.

Sadly, once we checked in and got details on how to ride BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) from the friendly and helpful front desk folks for our trip into downtown for sightseeing the next day, we both had headaches from a long day of travel and did not do much more the rest of the night. We had planned to go somewhere for dinner that night but it just did not work out. The room was plenty comfortable though, thankfully and we got plenty of rest ahead of our very eventful next day, which would be spent seeing as much of San Francisco as we could in a day. So, around 2000, it was lights out and we would be recharged for the next day's activities.

I will give you a hint and say they included an adventure on BART, MUNI, a tour of the Embarcadero, a trip to Alcatraz, Fisherman's Wharf, and a San Francisco Giants game, wrapped up by a trip back on Caltrain, LOL. Yeah, you won't want to miss my review of all of that. Lots and lots of pictures from that day upcoming as well. I am just too tired and it is too late tonight to get into all that, but I will get to it as soon as I have the chance in hopefully the next few days.

Also, I forgot to include the cruise itinerary in my opening post. It went as such:

DAY 1: SAN FRANCISCO

DAY 2: SEA DAY

DAY 3: SANTA BARBARA

DAY 4: LONG BEACH

DAY 5: SAN DIEGO

DAY 6: ENSENADA, MEXICO

DAY 7: SEA DAY

DAY 8: RETURN TO SAN FRANCISCO

Great itinerary. Hopefully you have enjoyed my little cruise vacation preview up to this point, I will update this as often as I can depending on how busy I am in the upcoming days. Thanks for reading along so far, glad you are along for the ride, and happy cruising!

OK, I'm game. Waiting for more. BTW, thanks in advance for doing the review. :)

Glad you are here for the ride. I got through DAY 1 tonight, but it is late and I did so much on the second day that I don't want to hurry through it and want to include the whole day's experience. I will hopefully get to it later this weekend or this upcoming week. I am really excited to get going with this review. Hope you enjoy and it is my pleasure to do these. I have gained a great deal of knowledge of cruising, ports, and ships from reading other reviews on this site and I know they can be really helpful for others who are planning cruises in the future or for those who just want to read about cruise adventures.

You took Mom! What a great son you are. :)

Following

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

Looking forward to your review. Thank you!

Marie

Looking forward to reading more of your review.....:):):)

Bob

Great review and photos! Looking forward to the rest!!!

I enjoy reading reviews and yours is sounding very interesting and the pictures are an added bonus. I am looking forward to the next installment

Great start to your review. Love the pics. I love flying and enjoyed your landing pics

Great pictures and review so far. Looking forward to the rest.

Hubby and I always wanted to see SF. Perhaps in 2018. We are thinking of doing a Panama Canal cruise out of SF. Did it in 2011 out of LA, and want to go again.

I too will be traveling with my Mom for her Birthday on the Grand in a few weeks. Do you remember any photo packages ???? Thanks BLJBLJ:)

I also have to note that I am a huge aviation geek along with a cruise geek,

Glad to see another aviation and cruise geek here.

I've always found it interesting that the flights between northern and southern California are just take off using a SID (Standard Instrument Departure) and a STAR (Standard Terminal Arrival Route). No real en-route segment!

My wife and I took this same cruise in March 2016. We had some friends on this (September 18) cruise who were part of a Shriner group.

I found the cruise to be a great cruise, although the seas were a little rough for most of the cruise.

I'm looking forward to seeing how you felt about the cruise.

FlyingNJ, will be following along as nothing better than a preview for our cruise 10.22.

Thanks so much for taking the time and effort to do this. I'm enjoying all the details and pictures - especially since I have my eye on this itinerary for next year.

Looking forward to more of your review and pictures.

Looking forward to the rest of your review as we're doing this in the spring :)

This is one of the short "getaway" cruises we have talked about doing. I'm actually hoping for a last minute deal on this cruise early next year. Now that I'm (finally!) retired we could pick up something at the last minute. SF is about a 3 hour drive for us so it's our preferred point of embarkation. Looking forward to your review of the ports.

I too will be traveling with my Mom for her Birthday on the Grand in a few weeks. Do you remember any photo packages ???? Thanks BLJBLJ:)

On the Grand a few weeks ago they had a $199 package for all the photos they took, gangway, formal, dinner, all of them. A person booked in the cabin had to appear in the picture.

Looking forward to reading and seeing more of your cruise. I'll be on that itinerary in three weeks and am still trying to decide what to do in the ports. Thanks for taking the time to post your experiences and pictures.

Jackie

Waiting for next segment!

Sent from my GT-N8013 using Forums mobile app

We are headed out on this cruise in three weeks so I'm really interested in reading your take on things. We were on the Grand two years ago Seattle to Alaska and really enjoyed her. Did you have good enough weather to sit outside for MUTS? Do you remember what movies were playing?

Thanks for the review. I'll be following. I love the pictures and the detail. DW and I are going on a California Coastal in April, but it's round trip from Vancouver. It's on a Grand Class ship, the Star.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk