lx200gps

Torrance is pretty much on a direct line between LAX and the port, so you won't be going very far out of your way and you will be stuck in traffic either way. If we arrive very late into LAX (as we did last Feb), we will stay at an LAX hotel and Uber the next morning, which is usually a Saturday or Sunday so little traffic. If we arrive into LAX on a mid-day flight, we will Uber down to Torrance for the area infrastructure and so as to already be half way to San Pedro. Then it is a simple, relatively short Uber to the port on Embarkation morning (short for LA anyway ;o). We have had decent luck with the traffic from LAX to Torrance on a weekday afternoon, though always before the evening rush hour. I wouldn't want to consider driving to Torrance at 5PM on a Friday night.

Excellent choice. Torrance has become our go-to area for pre-cruise hotels as well. Half way between LAX and San Pedro, and situated right next to the huge Del Amo mall, with lots of shopping and restaurants next door. For those times of year when the Crowne Plaza and Doubletree are to expensive, Torrance is a great option.

We rarely eat dinner in the Dining Rooms and frequent the SDRs at least 4 or 5 times on a 7 day trip. Aside from issues in the immediate post-COVID restart when staffing issues forced them to scale back, we have pretty much much never had any issue booking SDRs on board. Admittedly we prefer to eat early to ensure making theater shows, when the restaurants first open and the experience is at it's calmest, the staff is fresh etc. Bottom line is head to the restaurants IMMEDIATELY on boarding (and try to board early) or call the DINE line and make your bookings by phone. If you make your bookings early and are a bit flexible when as to dining times, you should be quite successful.

Absolutely agree. Although we have yet to do the Pier 11 to Red Hook trip, we have used the ferry across the Hudson from Weehawken to near the Manhattan Cruise Terminal, and the process seems identical. The ferry access is easy and level on both ends even for those, like us, who are dragging big suitcases. We did it early on a Saturday morning and the ferry was virtually empty.

I had made a VT reservation some months back, for a date this October. The reservation was booked and VT sent me the official confirmation Email. I then called the hotel to make sure they had the booking and was informed that our booked date was blacked out and VT shouldn't have allowed it to be booked. I don't know if it the cause, but Taylor Swift is closing down south Florida for concerts right on our dates, and the HP is selling for many times what we had booked through VT. To this date, VT have not sent us a cancellation notice for our reservation. VT is a great deal for sure, but I will ALWAYS call the hotel once I book to confirm things.

Thanks for the heads up on the November date, it's now in my calendar. I just submitted a request for a trip this October and the OBC is in my account in less than 48 hours. Interestingly, when I selected "Redeem Perk" on the app, it only asked for the trip details and immediately submitted the request and did not ask for a recent brokerage statement. The statement they ended using was from my last request many months ago.

Sorry, I'm not following. You said you must DECLARE EVERYTHING, yet you say "Just scan and go" which is not explicitly declaring. Can you please clarify.

How do you "...declare all goods purchased and gifts received" when you use a kiosk, do not talk to a human and are not asked by the NEXUS "process" whether you have something to declare?

If you are driving in from New Hampshire, then I would second the earlier comment about considering the big Marriott in Teaneck. We stayed there last year before a trip out of Brooklyn, but it would be an excellent choice if sailing out of the MCT. It's very near the west end of the GW Bridge and assuming you are driving in early on a weekend morning for your cruise, it should be an easy drive over the bridge and down the west side parkway to the MCT.

The issue of how to handle all the Premiers and their two allotted SD slots is a mystery. The idea of the Premier slots being "sold out" is a possibility I suppose, but the general consensus here on CC is that Princess hold a lot of SD restaurant slots (possibly up to 40-50%) back from on-line pre-booking to make them available for walk ups, and I would expect that those slots would be converted to use for last minute Premier bookers as well.

Very odd for sure. Some dates it shows up as available, other dates it doesn't even exist. Since Boston is a "seasonal" port, there haven't been too many reports for this season yet, but over the next few weeks we should be hearing from folks who have, hopefully, used C1 successfully. We plan to use it in mid-July as a drive up.

On the Sky you are probably out of luck, unless you want to sit on your cabin and watch the bridgecam ;o(. The Sanctuary would be the only place I can think of and it's for booked passengers only. You might be able to see forward from the extreme upper deck (19?) but it is only from mid-ship, not forward. On the older ships (Ruby, Emerald etc) there actually is a great forward-facing observation deck which is accessed by going full forward on the Lido deck and walking forward up a short flight of stairs. It's actually the roof of the bridge and makes a fantastic spot for sightseeing. Sadly, AFAIK the newer ships don't have it.

As soon as you walk on board, there will be a stand set up very close to the gangway with a very helpful crew member who will be happy to do the upgrade for you. You can use OBC if you have any, and the upgrade goes live instantly.

...and yet I just tried that and the C1 lot does not show up as an available parking lot. The ABM covered garage a block north shows up, but not C1. Dates don't seem to matter, any date shows no C1 lot exists on the Parkwhiz site

We bought our 100 shares of CCL years ago and apply it for every Princess trip we take. A great program. As previously mentioned, they recently outsourced the management called Stockperks, and it is to them that you send your information. Right now, it is done through a phone app, but Stockperks did mention that they were working on a web-based version as well. NOTE: many people report being up in arms over the intrusive amount of personal information that they claim Stockperks demands from the user when submitting the application. That turns out to be incorrect and unnecessary. Many of us who use it have successfully submitted our applications and received our OBC without submitting anything more than the minimum redacted brokerage information, cruise details etc. Just be careful when using the app and you will have your OBC very quickly.

It's not just about the food. We pretty much only eat in the specialty restaurants, because of the ambience, service level, atmosphere etc. For us, there is a big difference between a restaurant and a dining room....

In the other thread on Boston parking, someone just posted their experience with trying to book Lot C1. Seems pretty confusing. We will need parking for our July trip as well, and our current plan is to show up at C1 around 8AM without a reservation, then have the indoor ABM Marine Park Garage a block away as a fall back.

This certainly is my understanding as well, and my first thought when I read that post was whether the sister had failed to declare something that was beyond their allowance. We've been NEXUS holders since program inception and rarely, if ever, exceed our allowance, but if we do, we certainly make a point of declaring any overages. We are not about to jeopardize such an important privilege as NEXUS over a triviality. If we come back home and are within our allowance, for example, 1.14 liters of alcohol after a 7 day trip, we don't bother to declare.

Welcome to Cruise Critic. Heads up, it is against CC's rules to expressly state the name of ANY travel agency in these forums. Other entities like cruise lines, insurance providers, airlines etc can be discussed and named, just not travel agents.

Agreed, RCCL do have a lot of "toys", probably more than NCL. But when comparing cost/value etc., I was amazed at how expensive RCCL have become in recent times. In our experience, the cost differential is significant. When hosting a group of teens, if money is no object, then yes, RCCL would be a better bet.

A great option, but I'm not sure about the 100% when pricing is factored in. We've done a LOT of researching for the various alternatives to our usual line, Princess, given all the recent price hikes. We've sailed NCL and X a few times as well though prefer Princess. Apples to apples, HAL and X are very expensive these days and we also find that RCCL can also be too pricey. They tend to offer low initial pricing, but by the time you add a drink package and all the "extra" charges, their prices are up into X territory. RCCL seem to have very high drink package prices, and charge huge amounts for the right to select your cabin ahead of time, which is a killer for us, as we don't ever do guarantees, we need to select our exact cabin ahead of time. If we have to compare RCCL and NCL, Norwegian comes out ahead every time on price. While we prefer the calm and quiet of a Princess or Celebrity ship, we've sailed NCL enough times and had no issues with them. For a group with young people, I would consider them a great option and in our experience quite a bit cheaper, especially for Canadians with our weaker dollar. With young folks, definitely not Princess, HAL or Celebrity

I take it you are familiar with the Vesper, Ian Fleming's contribution to modern bartending and James Bond's go-to martini ;o) Three parts Gin (technically has to be Gordon's per Fleming's recipe), one part Vodka, one third part of Kina Lillet (or the modern equivalent Lillet Blanc) and a twist of lemon. All Princess bartenders either offer it on their menus or can make it upon request. It's right up there with the Chairman Of The Board as one of my favorite Princess Martinis

You don't even have to go to GS to buy the package. On our last trip two months ago we never made it that far and were virtually tackled by a crew member at a station right by the gangway wanting to sell us the upgrade within seconds of us boarding. And yes, it goes "live" instantly

Returning to Pier 92 (next to the Iowa) back in Feb, we "drove straight in" on our return, but had backed out all the way down the channel on our way out a week earlier. This may be due to the fact that Pier 92 is where the ship docks in the channel, so does not afford an easy way to turn around. We have also left Pier 93 many times, which is in the small cutout and on those trips, I'm pretty sure we always were able to back out and maneuver so that the ship was able to sail directly down the channel both departing and arriving.

We're Canadian, so we only started to receive our Medallions by mail a few months ago. It really makes very little difference to the check-in time, maybe two or three minutes, the length of time it takes to walk over to the big table, give them your cabin # then wait while they find your Medallions.