deladane

OMG! That story about losing your GoPro had me on the edge of my seat! I'm so glad your instructor was able to find it and return it to you safely!! It reminds me of when I went stand up paddle boarding in St. Kitts on my 2012 Carnival Victory cruise, and the instructor offered to take my camera to take photos of us SUPing. Towards the end of the tour, he put it in the cargo pocket of his swim trunks and when I asked for it back at the end of the tour, I saw a look of horror on his face as he realized he no longer had the camera in his pocket. One of his friends took him on a jet ski to backtrack along the route we had taken and an hour later, he returned with my camera! I had a floating wristband attached to it and he saw it bobbing along the shore near where we had stopped to take a rest break. That was over a decade ago and I still remember it like it was yesterday because nearly losing my camera with all of my vacation photos was so traumatic! So I definitely feel your pain and know exactly how you felt on that boat waiting for your guide to return!! Whew!! I am making a mental note about this scuba tour... it will be a few years before we can take Ian on a DSD tour, but I am sure we will take many more Mexican Riviera cruises in the years to come with living in Arizona, so I definitely want to visit that site one day!

Yea, that is pretty much my rationale as well. Plus, Ian will still qualify as an infant on this trip so we may as well go while he is still free!

I'm so glad you guys went to the aquarium! We will be back in Mazatlan in January as we are sailing on the Discovery Princess for New Years (switching it up instead of doing the same Panorama cruise 2 years in a row!). We will be in Mazatlan on New Years Eve day and wanted a half-day activity to make sure to be back on the ship around lunch time so Ian can take his nap and hopefully not have a meltdown again like he did last year! I had looked into going to the aquarium last year in case our day pass to Hotel Playa fell through, so now we are planning to finally get to the aquarium next year. There really wasn't much info about it when I was doing my research last fall, so I am bookmarking this page of your review. Did you think it was worth the $30 per person for admission? That seems a little steep for an aquarium in Mexico (especially considering we only paid $12 per person to go to the zoo in Puerto Vallarta). Did you think it was a good value?

Kim, JerseyGirl and I were on the same New Years Eve cruise. She posted in my review about her insane day in La Paz when she went out on the boat to see whale sharks and it was horrible seas and very dangerous and they were so late coming back that they nearly missed the ship. You definitely read about it when she posted in my review in January! Just thinking about her day raises my heartbeat!

🤣🤣🤣 IYKYK

I just got caught up. I’m so sorry your La Paz tour was cancelled. I was looking forward to living vicariously through you swimming with sea lions and whale sharks! It’s weird that it was so chilly for you in early April. I think we had warmer weather in early January!

Looking forward to reading your review! I loved my ABC cruise on Celebrity back in 2018!

Great start to your review! I look forward to following along as I just did this itinerary for the New Years Eve cruise!

Yay!! I have been waiting for you to post your review! I can’t wait to see how you liked the Mexican Riviera!

I cruised out of Long Beach on the Panorama for the New Years Eve cruise, so the ship was filled to capacity with nearly 5000 passengers. We took my toddler on his first cruise and opted not to get him a passport, so we traveled with his birth certificate and my husband and I both took our passports. At debarkation, the line for passports was crazy long, wrapping all the way up to the top of the ramp when exiting the ship. We flew passed them all the way to the front and had no line at all for the birth certificate line (they were able to look at our passports there too since obviously we couldn't send our toddler on his own to the BC line). I assume that not every port operates the same way, but we were happy with our decision to use his BC as it saved us a lot of time in the long and slow-moving passport line in Long Beach.

I don't know the exact daily pricing to park in the garage because we used Uber. Maybe someone else can chime in about that? I don't think it will be possible for you to retrieve your car by 8:30am. Unlike most other cruises from other ports who arrive back to their homeports at like 5 or 6am, the Panorama doesn't arrive back in Long Beach until 7am. According to our paperwork, the earliest time to debark was 9:15am, and then you still need to get off the ship, through the terminal, through passport control, over to the garage, and up to your car.

Thanks for following along! I hope you have a great cruise!

Thanks! Yes, we lived in San Jose for about 8 years and Strike was one of our favorite breweries. I told Jason you liked his shirt, and he was excited someone recognized it!

Ugh, yea it's so hard to fly cross country with the big time zone changes. When we visited my parents in New York in August, the only direct fight back to Phoenix left around 6pm, and we landed at 9:30pm local time, which felt like 12:30am NY time, and by the time we got home, it was close to 2am NY time. That was brutal! Even still, I think you are making the right call with keeping the later flight. It's not worth the risk of missing the flight since based on peoples' replies, that traffic nightmare leaving the port of Long Beach is very common.

Thanks for following along! Now that I'm done with this review, I kind of want to book another cruise too, but it will have to wait for now (I think Ian would get back on a ship tomorrow if I let him, but Jason is still in recovery mode 🤣)