Vexorg

I've done Seattle to Fort Lauderdale a number of times for cruises, which is nearly the longest distance domestic flight you can take in the continental US (the only one that's slightly longer is Seattle to Miami.) Throw in a layover and time zone changes and it makes for a rather long travel day.

Here's the thread: It's a little tricky to sort through the spreadsheets, but some takeaways looking at this: - Regal Princess is doing mostly Western Caribbean itineraries out of Galveston; - Ruby Princess is doing mostly round trip 10-night Panama Canal itineraries; -Emerald Princess is doing the one-way Panama Canal full transits, but also has some longer Caribbean itineraries without returning to Fort Lauderdale in the middle; - Enchanted Princess is doing mostly 10-night Eastern Caribbean itineraries focused on the West Indies - Caribbean Princess and Sky Princess seem to be doing alternating East/West itineraries out of Fort Lauderdale. - The "standard" Eastern Caribbean itinerary has changed significantly, and now seems to be Princess Cays, San Juan, Grand Turk and Amber Cove. Stops in St. Thomas and St. Maarten seem to be mostly on the 10-night itineraries, - The ABC Islands seem to be limited to longer (14-day) itineraries and repositioning cruises that need them for PVSA compliance, which is a bit of a bummer because those are my favorite islands in the Caribbean); - Most Western Caribbean itineraries seem to have the usual 4 ports in some order (Cozumel, Costa Maya, Belize City and Roatan) although the Caribbean Princess "Western Caribbean With Bahamas (Princess Cays, Grand Cayman, Jamaica and Cozumel) seems to be the more interesting one. - There are almost no short cruises on the schedule; I see only 2 sailings shorter than 7 nights on the schedule. Maybe this is more of a West Coast thing?

There are some larger boats as well, but I think those ones tend to get used for ships excursions. There is also a small historical museum in Cabo near the marina (Museo de Historia Natural). If you're looking for more of a town square type place you'd probably want to go to the Misión San José del Cabo, which has a plaza next to it. I went there on a ships tour on my last cruise to Cabo. It's still touristy, but less so than Cabo itself. It is some distance away, but it shouldn't be too hard to find transportation to get there.

Based on the info I've been able to find, the "Beach Front Resort with Mexican Buffet" excursion in Cabo appears to be at the Casa Dorada resort, so it's possible that other excursions use that one as well.

In this case it's a 10 night itinerary (the "Baja Peninsula and Sea of Cortez" one with overnight in Cabo plus La Paz, Loreto and Puerto Vallarta), and it was a pretty good deal. The thinking is that for about the cost of a day pass for two at one of the resorts in Cabo we could book a hotel room for the night and get a lot more time to hang out by the pool and/or beach. Another factor is that the available Princess shore excursions for Cabo seem lacking on this itinerary. The ship arrives at 1pm, and the only excursion options seem to be the "short day" ones on the first day (the ones you'd see on a 7am-1pm or 1pm-7pm stop), with none offered on the second day even though the ship is in port until 6pm..

I don't know of any recent experiences, but several years ago I remember hearing of people who were able to make arrangements to disembark the ship in Victoria on Alaska cruises instead of Seattle or Vancouver. As far as I know this wouldn't be a PVSA violation for the Seattle round trip or the Whittier to Vancouver itineraries (although those don't generally stop in Victoria anyway) because the disembarkation isn't in a US port. The main issue with this is that CBSA would need to be available for passengers to clear customs, which isn't always guaranteed. Given the fact that the Victoria stops tend to be the bare minimum needed for PVSA compliance (some itineraries have stops as short as 3 hours, 9:00-11:59pm) and the ship arrives in Seattle at 7am the next morning I can see why Canadians might just get off in Victoria to save themselves from having to get back from Seattle and cross the border again.

My wife and I are booked on a cruise in October that includes an overnight stop in Cabo San Lucas, and we were looking at options to spend a night in a hotel on shore while the ship is in port. While inquiring about this on the Mexico Ports board, one person reported that on a recent Carnival cruise that had the overnight Cabo stop they were informed that they were not allowed to spend the night off the ship, and would not be allowed to reboard if they did. In the past I've read about people being able to either spend the night off the ship or to meet the ship at the next port as long as they notified the passenger services desk first, but I would be interested to know if anyone has done this recently and what your experience with it was. On a related note, does anyone know how late the tenders typically run on one of these overnight port calls?

My wife and I are going on the October 23rd Sapphire Princess Baja Peninsula/Sea of Cortez sailing and have been looking for info on Loreto as well. It seems to be a relatively uncommon port call for cruise ships (it only gets 2-4 port calls a month, and most of those are the Diamond and Sapphire Princess with one call each by Discovery Princess and Koningsdam for the rest of 2022) and it's a tender port, so those are things to take into consideration. Loreto also doesn't have the kind of Malecon \ touristy area that Cabo or La Paz has so it will probably be a bit more laid back compared to those.

Definitely something to consider, but if that happened it wouldn't be too much of a problem because we could meet the ship in La Paz the following day. Would need to spend another night on land though. As for not allowing people back on the ship if they stay on land overnight, I could see something like that being part of COVID restrictions, but even then I have generally seen other threads saying that in ports with overnight stays people have been allowed to stay off the ship overnight, but were instructed to inform the passenger services desk before doing so. I'm also guessing that tenders would stop running after a certain time until the next morning, but I'd have to ask when that would be.

My first thought was a new stage show, but I guess we'll see.

My wife and I will be on the Sapphire Princess 10/23 sailing which includes an overnight stay in Cabo, and are looking at spending that night at a beach hotel. After doing some research It seems like most of the all inclusive resorts require a 3-night minimum (and are rather expensive anyway) but it does appear we can book a one-night stay at Casa Dorada for around the same price as a day pass for 2 people (but without the all-inclusive). If anyone else has done a one night hotel stay in Cabo I'd be interested to hear where they have done this.

Based on running the numbers if you don't drink alcohol the numbers just don't add up for Princess Plus compared to the base fare. Even adding the soda & more package (11.80 per day per person), Wifi ($5 per day with Platinum/Elite discount, or $10 a day for the 4 device plan for 2 people) and crew gratuities ($14.50 per day per person) that comes out to $31.30 per day, $18.70 less than the $50 a day to add Princess Plus. Depending how much stuff you drink, I also suspect most people who don't drink alcohol probably aren't drinking $12 worth of soda and mocktails a day anyway, so ala carte would very likely be cheaper anyway. Adding unlimited coffee drinks to that is another $11.80 per day and puts you much closer to the $50 per day, but a coffee card costs $36.58 ($5.23 per day for a 7 day cruise) and would get 2 people a premium coffee drink per day for the entire cruise, or an elite member could swap the minibar for 2 coffee cards and have enough coffee to never fall asleep ever again. Now if you're ruby, need to keep 4 devices connected to the Internet at all times and 11 lattes a day to keep functioning then Princess Plus might make sense, but if that's the case you're probably too busy to take a cruse anyway...

My wife and I have the October 23rd (10 night Baja Peninsula/Sea of Cortez) sailing booked, so we're hoping to hear more soon. I will say that Sapphire is my favorite Princess ship that I've been on. I've always liked the older Grand class ships over the newer ones for having one less deck of cabins and the covered pool, and Sapphire comes with some quirks like the 4 smaller midship dining rooms instead of the 2 larger ones most Princess ships have, forward facing cabins on Baja and Caribe decks and a wider promenade deck. I'm looking forward to a chance to take another trip since it's been quite a while since she's been on the West Coast. I will also say that we sailed on a cruise on Caribbean Princess just a few weeks after her return to service from the shutdown, and although food and service was excellent during that cruise there were definitely some issues with our room, mostly with the plumbing. Mechanical systems don't like to sit around doing nothing for long periods of time, and on a ship of that size it's probably impossible to test every single thing, so it's possible you could run into some issues.