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In general, the higher the level, the higher the cabin, at least when it comes to ship operation. We can be pretty sure the big Kahuna has his cabin a very short distance from the bridge, similarly the Staff Captain etc. If not on the same deck as the bridge, then steps away one deck down. Senior non-bridge personnel, like the hotel director etc may be a bit "lower" to be closer to their major areas of influence.

Princess stopped selling their insurance to residents of NY a year or two ago. The same holds for us residents of the province of Quebec. Local laws apparently.

It was disappointing, given that it was a warm weather cruise and the Sanctury is our go-to place for peace and quiet. On our last trip, two weeks ago on the Discovery, we didn't even bother with the Sanctuary given it was a California Coastal, but we're on her again in February down to Cabo etc. We'll certainly be trying again, with very low expectations ;o( One thing in our favor is that one of the days we will want it is the Mazatlan port day, which hopefully won't be as heavily booked as a sea day, of which we have three anyway. And yes, I certainly agree with you that some spaces should be held back for arriving guests, as they do with specialty restaurant and excursion reservations. Allowing passengers from the previous cruise to fully book the place out is unfair.

We were on her two weeks ago and saw 2.98 down pretty much constantly, sea day or port day, regardless of time of day. On many ships, certain cabins, due to their physical location, can see worse reception than others. Have you tried the speed test in other locations on the ship?

Sad but true. Earlier in the year, on the Sky, we were among the very first to board thanks to Elite priority boarding. We raced upstairs in the faint hope of getting decent loungers and found that only two or three folks had beaten us up there. ALL of us were told that the Sanctuary was completely sold out for our entire cruise, because the 800 B2Bers on the previous trip had been given the opportunity to book for our voyage the previous week, thereby shutting out all arriving passengers.

Very true, except that only a small fraction of pax are in bulkhead or exit rows. We always buy the preferred seats with the extra leg room but never on an exit row as my wife insists that the seats on exit rows are colder due to the removable plug doors not being as well insulated as the rest of the cabin.

That is great news, thanks so much for the confirmation. We also love Take 5 as it's our absolute favorite spot for great QUIET ocean view seating on those long sea days. ;o) From what you could see, did it appear that those slot machines were permanent or temporary? When we were on board Oct 7-14, I could peer into Take 5 from a glass door in the casino and saw a few slot machines installed right inside the aft (Piazza) entrance into the area, as you entered, they were on the left side. Have they been removed? Keep up the great work, excellent thread ;o)

We were on her two weeks ago and I was VERY worried about this as well, as Take 5 was completely sealed off when we were aboard and we had no access for the entire week. I was told that on our cruise it was closed off for prep work/hardware installation for a gambling tournament the following week (i.e. last week), but that once the tournament is over, it was to be restored to normal operation. The few views I had inside showed a bunch of slot machines being installed. The OP here reports that this week some slot machines are still installed but Take 5 is open and operating.

One other point about Berth 91/92 which we noticed. The walk off the ship, down the gangway, down the escalator and through the big tent to the facial recognition cameras and freedom, was about the LONGEST walk we've ever had off a cruise ship. We had boarded at 93 which was much less of a distance than what we had when we disembarked. If anyone is disembarking into the big tent, be prepared for a long journey if mobility compromised.

SUPERB write up, thanks very much. We were on her the week of Oct 7-14 and can certainly agree about many of your points, particularly the mattresses in our Mini, the sound in the Piazza etc. Q: what is the current state of Take 5? On our sailing, it was closed due to the setup for a gambling tournament. We'll be back on her in early Feb, and we will be very unhappy if Take 5, our go-to place for peace and quiet on sea days, is still closed off. Re your comment about no erroneous charges, keep a close eye on your account on a daily basis. We also had the Premier package but did have an erroneous charge. I had booked and paid for a specialty restaurant reservation pre-cruise, and we used our two free diners from the package. Sure enough, we were incorrectly charged for one dinner for two. Assuming it was an honest mistake, I headed down to Guest Services to have the charge removed, a simple job I've done many times before on other sailings. The CSR went into some long winded explanation of why the charge was correct which made no sense to me despite my half dozen courses in accounting and finance in university ;o( Fortunately, his supervisor just happened to overhear the conversation, walked up to the computer screen he was using, took one quick look at our account, apologized profusely for the error and fixed it on the spot.

We sailed out of 93 and returned to 92 two weeks ago. There are elevators and escalators available. There were, however LOTS of ramps to negotiate getting on and off the ship up and down the gangways. Not steep, but very long. You may want to consider arranging for a wheelchair? Berths 91 and 92 are the ones that connect with the big "tent, right next to the USS Iowa. Berth 93 is the one at right angles to it, tucked away from the channel. The San Pedro schedule has you leaving from berth 92 on Nov 11. Have a great cruise. https://www.portsamerica.com/operations/cruise-los-angeles-terminal-schedule

+1

Welcome to Cruise Critic. Since you are sailing Carnival, that means you will be sailing out of Long Beach, a very nice area but a good haul from LAX. We've stayed there a few times though we sail from nearby San Pedro on Princess. It has a great selection of hotels, restaurants etc but checking Tripadvisor for your date of 19-20 Jan, it's a pretty pricey time and the usual nice hotels, like the Hyatt and the Renaissance are outrageously expensive, particularly for us Canadians, though there are some decent deals at the top of your price range. Given the price of hotels down there, we've taken to staying Torrance, on a direct line about half way between LAX and both Long Beach and San Pedro. There are a lot of good intermediate type hotels (Marriott Courtyard, Hilton Doubletree etc) as well as the huge Del Amo mall. We travel to the half-way point in Torrance the day before sailing, then Uber down to the ship on embarkation day. In fact, we did it two weeks ago and will be back down there in Feb. As a final crazy idea, look into staying on the Queen Mary. It's a very interesting place to visit, right next to where you will be sailing from, and the hotel recently re-opened. We stayed there a few years ago, it's a very interesting experience

FWIW, we at in the Crown Grill on the Discovery within a few days of the OP's incident, probably Oct 9, and had the offending Lobster Cake as well. To the best of our recollection, it was a lobster cake, surrounded by the tarragon foam, asparagus and a puree which tasted like olives, but no whole olives visible. Neither of us remember having an actual olive on the plate but an olive pit could have hidden in the puree. To the best of our recollection, it was pretty much like this:

No problem. It happens that we just flew home out of LAX last week, and our taxi drove down Century Blvd right past our upcoming hotel, the Hyatt. Century Blvd is heavily built up but there's not much in the way of restaurants. I don't even remember seeing any fast food emporiums let alone decent restaurants.

We're in a somewhat similar situation for our next trip into LAX this coming Feb, though our problem is that we are arriving very late into LAX rather than flying out very early as you are. Still, we chose to stay at one of the close airport hotels on Century Blvd. rather than try to get all the way down to San Pedro that time of night. We selected the Hyatt Regency, both because it was, surprisingly, one of the cheapest options for an airport hotel and because it is physically the closest hotel to the airport proper, and also has a 24/7 shuttle. As to your requirement for restaurants, that may be a problem as Century Blvd is a wasteland for that sort of thing, you may need an Uber from any local hotel to a selection restaurants.

We flew an AC 737 Max 8 from YUL to LAX and back just last week. While yes, it's a narrow body aircraft with a 3 and 3 configuration, the baggage bins were pretty much the largest bins I've ever seen. These bins were so large that carry-on bags are inserted standing on their sides rather than flat, thereby allowing more bags to be placed overhead. Of course that didn't stop MANY pax from bringing three or even four carry on items on board. One gentleman in Business up front carried on board a MASSIVE backpack easily 3' long and far bigger in every dimension than technically allowed, but the staff let him place it over head and it fit easily

Thanks for the feedback. A 10 or 15 minute walk is nothing for us, so it sounds like there are plenty of options. I had also noticed that there is a covered parking garage nearby as well, do you have any experience with that one? Even though we'll be sailing in July, the idea of a covered garage is appealing to us.

Thanks for the feedback and advice folks. Once SWMBO has chosen our cabin, I'll be contacting our hard-working TA and have her book it for us. Interestingly, when I scan the available Deluxe Balconies using the "3 passenger hack", it only shows Category DB as selectable, the other categories (DA, DD etc) do not show. Perhaps the other categories that are the ones Princess keep in their back pocket for upgrades, 3 or more pax, families etc?

My go-to drinks are the Chairman of the Board (3X Vodka, 3X gin, 1X Cointreau) or Ian Flemings's original James Bond martini from Casino Royale, the Vesper (1X Vodka, 3X Gin, 1/2X Kina Lillet) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesper_(cocktail) When I make a COTB here at home with the exact formulation above, it compares pretty well with what I received in a number of bars on the Discovery last week.

Question for those who had endured the hard mattresses on the Discovery: did you have the beds configured "normally" as a queen, or did you, like us, have Stewart split the beds into two singles? Is it possible that those who kept the beds together had a soft topper on the queen configuration, but those of us who had them split into singles did not have a topper as Princess didn't have a soft topper for the singles. Perhaps that's why some of us who felt the beds on the Discovery were too hard (and ours were), while others had no such complaint

We're thinking of booking either a Deluxe or PD Balcony on the Regal. As we know, when searching the Princess site, it's not possible to select your cabin in these two categories as they show as Guarantee only. We're extremely picky about cabin location so won't accept a Guarantee The well known work around is to put 3 passengers in the selection field then the cabin maps show which cabins are available. Q: Is it only Princess reps who can book one of these cabins for us (since we can't do it online), or can our long-time TA do it for us by contacting Princess? IOW if we tell our TA which cabin we want, will she be able to book it for us, or am I required to contact Princess myself? Thanks in advance for any advice and personal experience with this ;o)

I'm not really sure the mattresses we had on the Discovery were worn out, the ship is too new and the mattresses felt too hard to be old and worn out. I think they are just cheap, rock hard mattresses, not the famous Princess mattresses. Perhaps they just couldn't get the correct ones when they outfitted the ship, so they had to use whatever they could get and bought them in bulk from the lumber department at Lowes or Home Depot ;o)

Absolutely have to agree with the OP on this one. We disembarked off the Discovery a week ago. The beds in our Mini were hard as a rock, and nowhere near as comfortable as what we remember from other Princess ships. We'd been on the Sky three times and Enchanted once "post-COVID" and remember the beds as being the great, comfortable Princess beds we've all known for years. No idea why the beds in our cabin on the Discovery were like granite, but they were.