deladane

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 🤣)

Isn't it so funny how two people can experience the same thing in totally different ways? Especially on a large ship with nearly 5000 passengers, and so many different things to do both on the ship and in port, everyone has a chance to enjoy what works best for them and their families. I love that about cruising! I hope you have a wonderful cruise next week!!

Thank you! It was great having you follow along!

Thank you!

Thank you!

Thank you! I'm so glad you enjoyed my review!!

Thank you!! So glad you enjoyed my review as much as I always enjoy yours! I made a mental note to check back in April to see how your cruise goes!

I'm all caught up, just in time for your arrival into San Juan! Wishing you a wonderful cruise and looking forward to following along. Just a pointer about the mud baths in St. Lucia... I did that same excursion a few years ago. It was great, but I would recommend wearing a bathing suit you don't care about in the mud baths. Or at the very least, only wear dark colors, and definitely no white! The minerals in the mud stained our bathing suits (both mine and my husband's) and it did not come out in the wash so those bathing suits are now tinted a rust/orange color. The black parts of the fabric were fine, but the white and yellow parts... not so much!

Thanks for following along! I hope you have a wonderful cruise, and please come back to tell me how it went!!

I’m not sure why I didn’t think to leave out jackets or extra layers of clothing, but OMG! It was freezing outside!! We all were just wearing a thin long sleeve t-shirt, and that was not nearly warm enough. I considered searching for our sweatshirts, but I knew they were packed somewhere in one of the big checked bags, and I wasn’t even sure which one. I wasn’t going to open up and dig around both bags and right here on the sidewalk, and I figured we’d be in the car soon enough, so we just made do. Jason opened the Uber app on his phone and requested an Uber XL to take us back to his brother’s house where our car was parked. It stayed on the screen where it said it was looking for an available driver for 10 minutes, then it bopped us out to the home screen again. What?! So Jason requested the ride again. And again, after 10 minutes, it kicked us out of the request and sent us back to the home screen. We have never had this happen before, especially not in a major city, but apparently there either weren’t any XL drivers available at 10am on a Sunday morning, or none of them were willing to pick us up at the Long Beach cruise terminal. That was frustrating, so he tried Lyft. Same thing! After half an hour of trying and not getting anyone to accept our ride request, I took out my phone and tried too. Jason used Uber and I used Lyft, hoping that one of us would get a driver and then the other could just cancel the request. Finally, after 40 minutes, an Uber XL driver accepted Jason’s request. The problem was, he was still 20 minutes away! We knew it would be hard to find a different driver who was closer to the port, so we just went with it. We kept watching the car move along the map and get closer to the terminal, and watching the arrival time count down. Then, when the clock said our driver was 5 minutes away, everything came to a halt. Uh oh! Remember all of that traffic we had trying to get to the port to be dropped off for our cruise last week? Well the same thing was happening this morning! It was all so chaotic, as more and more people got off the ship and were crowding onto the narrow sidewalk, with nowhere else to go as we all waited for our rides who were stuck outside the port gates in traffic. At one point, Jason called our driver to ask if he wanted us to walk out to him in the line of traffic (not that I have any idea how Jason thought that was possible with all our stuff and just the two of us to manage it). The driver said he was dropping off a family who were going on today’s cruise so he didn’t have space for us and our bags in the car quite yet. At least we knew he wouldn’t make a U-turn and abandon us here! Finally, at 11:10am, our driver called us to say he was here! We had been standing outside on the sidewalk waiting for a ride for exactly an hour and a half. No joke, my feet and fingers were completely numb from being so cold! The only person who was happy was Ian, who was nice and warm, sitting in his stroller, snacking on graham crackers the entire time. Lucky boy! Anyway, the Uber driver said he was on the far side of the pick up area because that’s where they directed him to go when he arrived. That must have been just as frustrating for the passengers he dropped off as it was for us! So now, we had to figure out how to get all of our stuff across to his car, including crossing two lanes of cars. Jason ended up going back and forth, taking as much as he could manage on his own, and I just stayed with the pile of stuff and with Ian until the last load when we all went to the Uber together. Oye, this was definitely the worst drop off and pick up experience I have ever had for a cruise! The good news was that our Uber XL was a nice big minivan with plenty of space for all our bags. The driver was very patient as Jason installed Ian’s car seat, and soon enough, we were on the road to Jason’s brother’s house. By the time we got there 30 minutes later, it was noon. Considering we started the process to exit the ship with the elevator fiasco starting at 8:40am, it had been a looooong time since we had bathroom access! Good thing we could fix that problem at the house prior to starting our long drive back to Phoenix. We loaded all the luggage into Jason’s car, re-installed Ian’s car seat, and finally hit the road at 12:30pm, way later than we ever expected to start the 6-hour drive home. Luckily, there was no traffic and we managed to conserve gas enough to wait until the Costco in Palm Springs to stop and fill the tank and get something to eat for a late lunch. After that, we drove straight through until we finally pulled into our garage at 8pm (thanks to the one hour time change). So that’s all, folks! This cruise certainly had its ups and its downs, but overall it was a great first family vacation and hopefully we’ll get to cruise again one day soon. We don’t currently have anything booked or planned, and I’m okay with that for the time being. I’m sure a few months will pass, and I’ll start to get that itch to want to travel again. And when we do, you know I’ll be right back here to write up another detailed review upon our return!