January 4th-19th Star Panama Canal with kids

travelnut1 · January 24, 2015

January 3nd 2015

Day One-Actually the day before as we flew from Sacramento to LA on Southwest for only $62 a person which was much cheaper than renting a car and driving down. I really felt like we were the gong show as we were traveling with DH’s mother, aunt and aunt’s friend, 2 boys ages 10 & 13 and 14 bags plus cary on’s…eek! The aunt and her friend might as well have been extra children as that is what they acted like. We took the crack of dawn flight and arrived in LA around 8:30am. It took us another hour to get the bags and all the “children” rounded up and to the super shuttle stand. We waited about 20 minutes for our shuttle to load us up and drive us to the Doubletree in San Pedro. I did enjoy not stressing about making the boat and we decided we will always fly in the day before a cruise.

I am a gold member with Hilton due to business travel so we only had to wait about an hour for our rooms even though we arrived so early. The upgraded both rooms for us to the HHonors floor. Yes this hotel needs some renovation. But it was very clean and the staff was fantastic! We also really enjoyed the waterfront setting. We decided to eat a second breakfast and the aunt; friend and mom went to bed. We took the boys out to ride their skateboards for about an hour to burn off some energy. It was a beautiful day and there are nice walking/jogging trails in front of and across the street. The only thing marring our day was when we walked out the back of the hotel and turned left I did not see any signing prohibiting skateboards. The boys were not riding faster than I could walk or doing any tricks. This older lady with a huge dog started yelling at me and the kids calling us names. Apparently if you walk to the right there are signs saying no skateboards. We obey the rules but it really annoyed me that she thought she could speak to me and the boys like that. As soon as we discovered this we walked across the street to the other trails which had no restrictions.

We had a pretty lazy afternoon and an early night due to such an early morning. We ate dinner at the hotel. It was good (not great) and priced a little high in my opinion. . The hotel was a little crazy because a different cruise line had a Noro outbreak and passengers had been told to wait until evening to go to the dock to board. I cannot for the life of me remember which ship.

I didn’t take any photos this day L But the rest of the trip will have many if I can figure out how to resize them :P

January 4th 2015

Day 2:

We were up bright and early due to excitement. We had breakfast and packed up. I had arranged for the 11:30am shuttle the night before. We managed to grab a slightly earlier one and headed off to board our first cruise. We were dropped at the dock and porters quickly came over to help with our bags. MIL has a degenerative spine issue so I had arranged for a wheelchair for her. However Aunt and her friend which do have some issues grabbed them themselves and just left the rest of us sitting there with the bags. They are both very capable of the walking and standing the time it took us to check in. Since one of our sons was booked in Aunts room and I had no idea how this all worked I had to have my 10 year old run to catch up with them. Once he did they left him behind while they went through the handicap security. Thankfully he is well traveled but it really pissed me off. (We moved him to MIL room after we boarded the ship). We made it through security and check in and finally got back to our son to find out that neither Aunt or friend had a credit card for the trip..even though I told them 10+ times that they needed one. I was so annoyed at that point we took the kids and MIL and left them behind to figure it out themselves..Ok Rant OVER.

We boarded the ship and went straight to our rooms 10660, 10662 and 10666. The rooms were all ready and our baggage even started arriving. DH’s bag was the last to show up but even it arrived before we sailed. I was slightly shocked at the room sizes at first but they really do have everything you need to live comfortably for weeks at a time. DS10 room key did not have the soda package sticker so I went to straighten that out. Afterwards we headed to the Red Lion Pub ordered a bucket of beer and watched the football game for a while. We went to sign the kids up for kids club and there were no other children there. I did expect this as school was in session. There ended up being around 50 kids ages 0-17 on board and most from other countries. We headed back to our balcony to relax and wait to sail away.

DH called me out to see another ship sail away but we were actually sailing away. We enjoyed the view.

We enjoyed watching these security boats escort us in and out of port

We watched the sun set and then headed to dinner at Versailles

We all ate together; dinner took 2.5 hours which was too long for us. Afterwards DS10 wanted to go to the kids club so we took him but there were no other kids there. He wanted to stay anyway so we dropped him off. DS13 promptly disappeared into the teen club and was only seen rarely for the rest of the cruise. He was the youngest teen on board but had no problem fitting into the older group. He is very social so I could see this being a problem for a shy teen. DH and I set off to explore the rest of the ship until the 9pm show time. I was surprised at how well done each evening entertainment was with the exception of the crew dancers and singers. Tonight was a little taste of several performances. Ian was our cruise director and he warmed up the crowd. I really started looking forward to his “Joke of the Day”. We went to bed shortly after as we were tired.

Day 3 coming soon..

newmexicoNita · January 24, 2015

January 3nd 2015
Day One-Actually the day before as we flew from Sacramento to LA on Southwest for only $62 a person which was much cheaper than renting a car and driving down. I really felt like we were the gong show as we were traveling with DH’s mother, aunt and aunt’s friend, 2 boys ages 10 & 13 and 14 bags plus cary on’s…eek! The aunt and her friend might as well have been extra children as that is what they acted like. We took the crack of dawn flight and arrived in LA around 8:30am. It took us another hour to get the bags and all the “children” rounded up and to the super shuttle stand. We waited about 20 minutes for our shuttle to load us up and drive us to the Doubletree in San Pedro. I did enjoy not stressing about making the boat and we decided we will always fly in the day before a cruise.

I am a gold member with Hilton due to business travel so we only had to wait about an hour for our rooms even though we arrived so early. The upgraded both rooms for us to the HHonors floor. Yes this hotel needs some renovation. But it was very clean and the staff was fantastic! We also really enjoyed the waterfront setting. We decided to eat a second breakfast and the aunt; friend and mom went to bed. We took the boys out to ride their skateboards for about an hour to burn off some energy. It was a beautiful day and there are nice walking/jogging trails in front of and across the street. The only thing marring our day was when we walked out the back of the hotel and turned left I did not see any signing prohibiting skateboards. The boys were not riding faster than I could walk or doing any tricks. This older lady with a huge dog started yelling at me and the kids calling us names. Apparently if you walk to the right there are signs saying no skateboards. We obey the rules but it really annoyed me that she thought she could speak to me and the boys like that. As soon as we discovered this we walked across the street to the other trails which had no restrictions.

We had a pretty lazy afternoon and an early night due to such an early morning. We ate dinner at the hotel. It was good (not great) and priced a little high in my opinion. . The hotel was a little crazy because a different cruise line had a Noro outbreak and passengers had been told to wait until evening to go to the dock to board. I cannot for the life of me remember which ship.

I didn’t take any photos this day L But the rest of the trip will have many if I can figure out how to resize them :P

January 4th 2015

Day 2:

We were up bright and early due to excitement. We had breakfast and packed up. I had arranged for the 11:30am shuttle the night before. We managed to grab a slightly earlier one and headed off to board our first cruise. We were dropped at the dock and porters quickly came over to help with our bags. MIL has a degenerative spine issue so I had arranged for a wheelchair for her. However Aunt and her friend which do have some issues grabbed them themselves and just left the rest of us sitting there with the bags. They are both very capable of the walking and standing the time it took us to check in. Since one of our sons was booked in Aunts room and I had no idea how this all worked I had to have my 10 year old run to catch up with them. Once he did they left him behind while they went through the handicap security. Thankfully he is well traveled but it really pissed me off. (We moved him to MIL room after we boarded the ship). We made it through security and check in and finally got back to our son to find out that neither Aunt or friend had a credit card for the trip..even though I told them 10+ times that they needed one. I was so annoyed at that point we took the kids and MIL and left them behind to figure it out themselves..Ok Rant OVER.

We boarded the ship and went straight to our rooms 10660, 10662 and 10666. The rooms were all ready and our baggage even started arriving. DH’s bag was the last to show up but even it arrived before we sailed. I was slightly shocked at the room sizes at first but they really do have everything you need to live comfortably for weeks at a time. DS10 room key did not have the soda package sticker so I went to straighten that out. Afterwards we headed to the Red Lion Pub ordered a bucket of beer and watched the football game for a while. We went to sign the kids up for kids club and there were no other children there. I did expect this as school was in session. There ended up being around 50 kids ages 0-17 on board and most from other countries. We headed back to our balcony to relax and wait to sail away.

DH called me out to see another ship sail away but we were actually sailing away. We enjoyed the view.

We enjoyed watching these security boats escort us in and out of port

We watched the sun set and then headed to dinner at Versailles

We all ate together; dinner took 2.5 hours which was too long for us. Afterwards DS10 wanted to go to the kids club so we took him but there were no other kids there. He wanted to stay anyway so we dropped him off. DS13 promptly disappeared into the teen club and was only seen rarely for the rest of the cruise. He was the youngest teen on board but had no problem fitting into the older group. He is very social so I could see this being a problem for a shy teen. DH and I set off to explore the rest of the ship until the 9pm show time. I was surprised at how well done each evening entertainment was with the exception of the crew dancers and singers. Tonight was a little taste of several performances. Ian was our cruise director and he warmed up the crowd. I really started looking forward to his “Joke of the Day”. We went to bed shortly after as we were tired.

Day 3 coming soon..

So far I am smiling at your review: sounds like family trips don't always go smoothly but are fun to remember as years go by. We did one with 13 of us about 4 years ago; the age range was from 4 to 74. We did have a great time, but too many challenges to try it again.