carohs

That's funny I got a "hot!" It's just been me posting but I wrote this all out before starting to post so I've been able to update quickly. Separating it out, because let's face it, who wants to read a whole term paper in one post?

Dessert was extra tasty. The German Choco was pre-cut but the Caramel Cheesecake was sliced to order. I didn't see fun-fetti but that was ok because I only really enjoy the cheesecake part anyway.

The sky was clear, and although it was slightly chilly and windy, we had our jackets and had an easy going start to our vacation. We did get cold though, so after lunch, we walked our suitcases through the dessert line and went off in search of a place to enjoy it indoors. The lobby patronage was already going strong and loud so that wasn’t gonna do it. Headed to Liquid Lounge where we had done muster but after a short stay we decided to look again elsewhere. We had passed Limelight Lounge earlier, so we did a little zigzagging and were able to find it again. We sat there until we were kicked out (ok, ok, nicely asked) due to a crew training of some sort that was about to start. At that point we started making our way toward our cabin which worked out perfectly, since we heard the announcement that cabins were ready just as we reached the elevator banks. This was shortly before the anticipated time of 1:30. It was nice that cabins were ready a little early. Speaking of elevators. I’ve so far been on ships with 3 sets of elevator banks: Forward, Mid, and Aft. The Radiance has three sets of banks too, but I’m used the elevators by the lobby/atrium to be the Midship elevators. Not so here. These are considered the Forward elevators, and it caused my brain all kinds of directionally challenged orientation confusion.

First order of business was muster and then lunch while escaping the mad house that tends to be embarkation day on Lido. I lead us straight to Pig and Anchor, and luckily there was zero line and a few open tables nearby with a great view.

Inside the terminal

Never having cruised out of LB I wasn’t sure what to expect. Turns out, Carnival having their own dedicated hub made things quite organized and flowed really well. Our arrival time was set for 10:30 am but we arrived just shy of two hours after hitting the road at about 11:15 am. One thing I did not do was print out our documents. I guessed correctly that since I would be carrying-on due to the bottles of wine, Lynn would not opt to use the porters. I guessed incorrectly that a digital version of the documents would suffice to get through check-in and security. They have a guy at the entrance to specifically deal with us uninformed, unprepared millennials. It was quite annoying that he didn’t simply scan the barcode and print the paper, but also ask for our passports. Nobody that had a paper doc got asked for so much as ID. It looked like he was finding our reservation from our names, but that’s just inefficient if you ask me. I was more annoyed that the family who immediately preceded us had some sort of issue and we saw waves of people going in while we were stuck waiting…. Ugh. Well now I know. Barring that unforeseen delay, due to our later arrival time, our port arrival was as quick as you can hope for. From parking the car to sitting down with lunch in front of us took less than 30 minutes.

It wasn't long before we caught our first look at the Radiance and the Queen Mary.

Can you see it?

The weather forecast going into the weekend was 100% chance of rain Thursday with declining probabilities through Sunday, and a close certainty of rain again on Monday. You may have caught my frantic, tail-spinning thread asking about rain in long beach. But I know SoCal and we’re more prone to draught than rain, and even when a hurricane is coming (remember that?) we don’t really get all that much water. Except for that record-breaking rain fall the week prior. What the heck was that? But I went to bed Thursday after it rained all day with hope and optimism. Driving to Long Beach. I’m going to skip the part where we talk about prep work and packing. Needless to say, I’m a procrastinator. Friday morning after dropping off the kids at school I ran to Target for last minute cruise items, mainly a bathroom freshener, drove South and picked up my cruising buddy. She suggested a new coffee shop whose drive-thru line made In-n-Out seem abandoned. Well actually it was probably about the same number of cars, but it took almost an hour to get through. If it hadn’t been for my good mood, I may have suggested somewhere else. Coffee in hand, we were on our way by 9:20 a.m. Along the route we saw mostly clear blue skies, a rainbow, and intermittent bouts of rain. The rainbow did reinforce my optimism though.

Booked in early June, this cruise has been a long time coming. This time it's me and a good friend who's never cruised before. Hopefully the first of many, if I can infect her with the cruising bug. I've only ever sailed Carnival one other time, on the Spirit to Alaska. There were positives and negatives and not all were caused by Carnival. Overall we enjoyed the vacation but the negatives outweighed the positives, and DH and I decided CCL wasn't our cruise line of choice. As time goes on, as with other aspects of life, I start to reassess whether perceived frustrations were really as bad as I thought they were. Was the smoking that bad? Could another ship, layout, and/or passenger demographic make enough of a difference? Would the scheduled entertainment be more appealing if I hadn't been put off by the number of choices that we couldn't or wouldn't all enjoy doing as a family? If I didn't need to be considerate of the preferences of seniors and children, would I have had more fun on a "fun ship" ship? And then I was missing what did make it good. Breakfast burritos. Guys burgers. The Alchemy Bar. Maybe I should give Carnival another chance, I thought. My GF and I, we've been saying for ages we needed a girl's weekend. For any number of reasons, neither of us has had the time, nor the ability to leave free of mommy guilt. We've talked staycation, spa day, Palm Springs, local wineries but never actually booked anything. Finally, done procrastinating, done making excuses, I knew we could get most of what we wanted from a cruise. But it had to be within driving distance, with minimal time off of work, and minimal scheduling inconveniences and disruptions. Did I mention we each have 2 young kids? Carnival Radiance fit the bill. We also both have husbands whose responsibilities require them to be away several weekends a year. It's our turn now, long overdue, to leave the littles home with their dads. For her intro to cruising, I booked us a Spa Balcony. I've never gotten thermal suite passes, so that'll all be new to me too. I had envisioned sleeping in, coffee on the balcony in the mornings, a cup or two of wine at night. I imagined luxuriating in the thermal suite during the day, eating at leisure. Well the second part was still in the books but what about the rain? Will the balcony go completely unused? I wondered. Join me as I tell the tale of these two moms on the Radiance out of Long Beach and our getaway weekend.

Hey, I'm all caught up only took a day. Woulda been with ya sooner, but I had my own cruise. So far I'm seeing all the things I missed or the Radiance doesn't have and I'm like ooh need to look out for that and that. Thanks for sharing! And for mitigating the I'm not on a ship anymore blues.

We just debarked from the Radiance this morning! We had a fabulous time, hopefully the weather clears up for you too!

We saw the Caper thing on our second, maybe third, day aboard listed in the fun times. This was the Spirit to Alaska Aug 2022. We said hey that seems cool, and went to the library. There was absolutely no event happening or fun squad to be seen. I asked about it at guest services and they had absolutely no idea what I was talking about, even when I showed them the hub app. They actually sent me to the kids club! Later I discovered we had missed the debrief event the day before, and that what we saw in the fun times was just an opportunity to pick up the next clue. It was such a let down to have not been able to participate. So if it's something you are interested in doing, be sure to keep a lookout for it from the first day.

Oooh, curve ball! Okay np I'll bring a rain jacket. It's probably not a bad idea to have it anyway.

Feb 2, can't wait!

From SD. Google says 2 hrs right now, planning on leaving 8:30-9am to avoid most of morning traffic yet have more than enough time to get there. And it should be more than enough time, mostly wondering how much patience to pack.

You lose cell service fairly quickly once the ship sails away from land. And they do have to be far out enough to open the shops and casino. If you're far out enough for the casino to be open, you're too far for cell service.

Ya we found Mazatlan was def not on 5g. And my map/gps wasn't quite accurate. $8 seems very reasonable, was there a benefit to Uber and not going for the pulmonías in the first place?

Yikes!! Oh, phew.

We get so little rain in socal that I hadn't really worried that we'd end up with unfavorable weather. Yet it flooded last week, it's sunny and clear and 71° today, and projected to rain again next week. What's the long beach terminal like, and should we allow for extra time for traffic given the rain? It's covered, right? Anyone ever sail out of long beach when it was raining? I know the captain knows what they're doing, and on previous cruises we've been able to sail around the weather. Is that still a thing on a 3N cruise? The weather doesn't tend to be drastically different in Ensenada vs Long Beach. What are the chances of sailing far out enough to see some sun? So many questions! SoCal is usually like, oh look rain, I'll just stay indoors for a few hours and it'll clear up soon. Now I'm actually planning on leaving my house in it, and it's totally got me in a loop.

So far I haven't found the one cruise line I'm committed to. So far sailed on DCL, CCL and NCL. DCL I can get an inside room and fit four people comfortably with a split bathroom. There's a sofa that gets turned into a bed in the evening and back to a sofa during the day. The pullman bed isn't over my head in an inside room on DCL. Yes the price is higher on DCL, but to get a comparable layout and size stateroom on NCL I'm also paying more. The kids club is a mile above on DCL too. CCL the kids liked a lot too but weren't too happy with NCL programming in the kids clubs. I thought CCL lacked family friendly activities (all trivia, sales pitches, and comedy). I generally didn't like CCL because of the casino and smoking section locations, but I'm giving them another chance on a different ship in a few days. I did enjoy their quick eats options and since I don't drink much, I don't need to buy drink package. NCL doesn't offer 3 night sailings from the west coast so I need to find something else that works for us for a weekend getaway. We really enjoyed our cruises on NCL, so if something else pops up that works for us schedule wise we'd likely book again. There's been Pros and Cons on all three, but still looking for "the one"

I have to complete a challenge?? meh. Way to weed out bots I guess but too much effort.

Sorry for your loss. If you have insurance, go ahead and call if only for piece of mind. If you don't, re-fare the cruise online and consider if it's worth calling. Most likely you will get re-fared if you call in advance with a solo supplement for mom, and cancelation penalty for dad if within that window. No-show. You should be allowed to board, just make up an excuse for dad coming later or the like. Chances are the offer may not be honored since dad was the primary, but it's also likely the difference in fare/price/offers will not be significantly different than had you called in advance. I'd take my chances with the no-show.

So what I'm hearing is.... If I board a cruise that debarks at a port where USCBP doesn't require a zero count, I could totally stow away and go on another cruise?