wheezedr

Recognize that unlike your usual Caribbean cruises you will not be forced to do a closed loop cruise in Europe. Thus it will be reasonable to embark in 1 port and disembark in another. Many cruise lines take advantage of this on the Med by offering a rolling series of embarkations with other stops in between. You can thus easily add extra time at two places you might wish to do in more depth. I would look at cruises starting and or ending in Rome,Barcelona, Athens. A 2 week cruise might start in one and end in one of the others. Lots of interesting stops. Med cruises are very port intensive with great things to visit.

Unlike GTJ who appears to be a good historian but not a current Bay Area resident, my perspective comes from being a San Francisco native who still resides in the Bay Area. I regularly ride BART both to the city for activities as well as to both SFO and OAK. We have taken it for cruises on multiple occasions. It will be fine for your SFO to the hotel jaunt. It serves no purpose for travel within the city itself. That is best served by Muni. However, do not use the F-line to get to the cruise port. It currently runs a variety of historic trollies and they do not do well with luggage. When we cruise we take BART to the Embarcadero station and then walk a flat mile to pier 27. In your case, departing from the Parc55 it would be much better to go the Uber/Lyft route, or a taxi.

I bring an iPad mini but it also serves as my library since I download several books prior to cruises. DW has a Kindle for the same purpose.

Should not be a problem. We do about a mile from the other direction from BART and it works fine Will be doing it again tomorrow.. Figure about 20 minutes if you walk a steady pace.

You make the assumption that such a ship would be stopping at ports of call. More likely was the intent to build a pure floating resort at sea. The ship would have home ported from a port designed to embark and debark it and then spent, 5,7,10 days, whatever it was planned for as your full service floating island. Not for me, but the company that originally planned it must have felt such a market existed.

Ease would be to take a point to point vehicle such as a Taxi or Uber. Basically tell them the cruise port and off you go. Lowest cost would be to have the hotel shuttle you back to the airport and take BART from there into the city. From the Embarcadero station it is a flat mile to Pier 27. You can walk or you can taxi or Uber from the Hyatt across the street. You will need to handle your luggage more with that method. BART is actually half price for all of September. You get to decide what works best for you. We come from the east bay and ride BART all the time both for cruises and for activities in downtown SF but I have friends who will never do that, so it represents personal choice.

The simple answer is, no , you do not need a passport for that cruise.

Drinking policy is more country specific than line specific. If the cruise is from the US then it will be 21.

Got my best upgrade while flying out to cruise. It was a couple of days pre cruise as we were spending some time in New York pre a cruise to Canada. Have patience at worst they will give you a pillow and blanket and assign you a vacant tender 😁😁

I think a bigger concern would be enough water in the rivers to make the cruise work. Lots of ship switches and bus trips these days

It is a coastal , not an Alaskan. So stops in Astoria, Seattle, Vancouver and Victoria.

People develop spreadsheets to track other members of their rollcall and to keep track of various activities that the members may be participating in. It is not a specific spreadsheet perse, but one generated to fit the needs of a specific cruise. They generally track who is attending a meet and greet, different private tours, will track things like slot pulls, cabin tours, etc. Just a convenient means of seeing what is going on

16 years in time , and currently on my 4 th pacemaker, actually an ICD. I never avoid scanners, if you read the literature there is no risk to the second or two you might face walking through the scanner. Funniest time was when I went through a whole body machine and was berated by security for “not” removing my necklace. Lifted my shirt, nothing there. He was seeing the wires from the pacemaker to my heart. Really, speak with your own MD, but modern pacers have no risk with scanners.

Naughty

If you are arranging any transportation pre or post cruise I just want you to be sure that you set things up for the Port of Los Angeles, not Long Beach. You seem to be aware that you are cruising from San Pedro, that is correct, but your title was misleading. While they are next door neighbors the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are distinctly separate entities

If by European cruise you mean more specifically the Mediterranean then you should recognize that these are very port intensive cruises. You should certainly look for a line that fits your needs, we did 21 days on the Royal Princess a number of years ago but most of the major cruise companies can work. In those 21 days we had 17 port stops. You might also want to arrange your embarkation and disembarkation in 2 different cities that would allow pre and post tours that will add to your trip. Cruisers jump on and off at various ports but Rome, Barcelona, Athens, tend to be major starting and ending points. Those are all places that play well for an additional few days of visiting. Rick Steve’s book was helpful. I also got a lot of useful information from Tomsportguides.com. , check them out.

Which is not what the OP has concerns over and is not what I was addressing for him.

They cruise veeeeery slowly. They are just using Victoria as another port of call so that cruisers can have an additional stop. Unless overnighting is a part of the schedule, done in a few ports, cruise ships do not like to be in port from about 8:00PM to 6 or 7 in the morning. There are many other locales where a ship spends 8-10 hours to go only a limited distance

Apparently many of you are unable to recognize the inherent difference between a coastal cruise with stops in Astoria and Seattle, and an Alaskan cruise. What happened on your cruise to Alaska has no bearing on what happens on a coastal.

If you read both the Op’s and my post you will see that we are both on 7 day California coastal and Pacific Northwest cruises. We are not going anywhere near to Alaska. That is why a stop in PR would make no sense at all. It is entirely logical for an Alaskan cruise. The northern most port on our cruise is Vancouver so an additional 470 NM to PR is senseless.

Without any evidence that I can show, but understanding the practical nature of cruising I am going to suggest that you are over thinking what is likely a Paperwork glitch at the Princess HQ. It is a fact that Princess replaced Victoria with Prince Rupert for all of its 10 day Alaska's out of SF on the Ruby. Someone probably took the easy way out and instead of going cruise by cruise to cancel, they just hit a cancel all button and thus at the other end someone in Victoria put that in for all the Ruby arrivals. Lets be practical for a second. It is 470 nautical miles from PR to Vancouver and 570 NM to Seattle. You are suggesting that princess would spend all day at 20KPH to reach PR and then have to essentially turn around to get back to SF on time. NOT going to happen. Could Princess elect to skip Victoria? Yes but unlikely although the PVSA is satisfied by the stop in Vancouver. If we were on the cruise together I would bet you a drink, but that will not work as I am on the 9/17 coastal and I've got the drink package anyway. I'm not worried about the itinerary and do not think you should worry either

Medallion App would not allow me to book a table for 12 on my upcoming cruise on the Ruby, so I did 2 sixes. After a recent cancellation I was able to go back and book a 10 top on the app. Interestingly it would only take six nights of the seven day cruise.

There is a Whole Foods Market and a Total Wine store on 15th Ave W, about a mile from Pier 91. A little awkward to cross over to, but clearly within walking distance

Agree with your assessment of sea conditions. Remember they are on a closed loop so the number of days they can add in Hawaii is exactly zero.

Just repriced for a September cruise and saved over $400 with a half hour phone call. Have another 5 couples with us, together all have repriced and saved over $2000. Such a good deal that they are all willing to buy me a free drink. What a deal since we all have a drink package😁😁. I always check before final payment is due.