Detailed Photo Review of Carnival Panorama 8 Night Mexican Riviera New Year’s Cruise 12/30/23

[deladane]

14 hours ago, pinto18 said:

Looking forward to this as well. in a month we will be on the Panorama doing the same 8 day itinerary 

 

How fun!  Hopefully this review will help get you even more excited for your upcoming cruise!!

[deladane]

11 hours ago, AKR2011 said:

What a great start to your review! I'm excited to follow along! Thank you for sharing with us ❤️⚓️

 

Thanks for following along!

[deladane]

10 hours ago, SenatorsFan said:

It's nice to see another one of your reviews! I still remember how much I enjoyed your Paul Gauguin review.

Your little boy is so cute. 😊

 

Aww, thank you!  Of course I remember you following along with my other reviews, so I"m glad you found this one!  Good to "see" you again!

[deladane]

9 hours ago, jerseygirlinAZ said:

We were on this cruise as well! Was going to do a review myself, but I'll let you have at it!  We, too, live in AZ.  Missed our flight home since we booked too early.  Rented a car and drove home.  No big deal, but something for others to consider.  The debarking and embarking on this cruise were both a bit of a mess.

 

I hope you had a great cruise!  I am definitely going to talk about our experiences with embarkation and debarking when I get to that part of the review.  Spoiler alert:  It took us an hour and a half to get an Uber to pick us up after the cruise!  It was absolutely insane!  I kept saying that people are going to miss their flights not because they couldn't get off the ship (which went pretty smoothly for us), but because they were stranded in the Long Beach cruise terminal parking lot!!  I'm so sorry you missed your flight, but luckily we live in driving distance to the port (even if it is a long drive!), so you make alternate arrangements.  I am sure there are others from our cruise who flew in from further away and missed flights that needed to be rescheduled.

[deladane]

1 hour ago, TeresaJ said:

Thanks for sharing your cruise! An 8 day cruise is always nice with the extra day! We were one of the cancelled cruises in December so we didn't get to go. Someday we will try again!

 

Oh no!  I'm so sorry your cruise was cancelled!  That must have been a huge disappointment, but hopefully you can make use of your FCC and rebook for a new cruise!

[TravelGirlinDallas]

Oh hey!! Glad to see you're back! Congrats on the sweet addition to your family. ♥️

[Jeafl]

Following along!  We've done the Panorama twice with this itinerary, and have the same itinerary (more or less) booked on the Firenze this fall.

[matt082600]

I'm coming along for the ride.  Can't wait to read the rest of your review!

[deladane]

1 hour ago, TravelGirlinDallas said:

Oh hey!! Glad to see you're back! Congrats on the sweet addition to your family. ♥️

 

Thank you!

[deladane]

48 minutes ago, Jeafl said:

Following along!  We've done the Panorama twice with this itinerary, and have the same itinerary (more or less) booked on the Firenze this fall.

 

Thanks for following along!

[kpark895]

I can't believe it's been five years since I read your last review!  Time really does fly.

 

Your son Ian is a really cute kid!  Congrats!

[deladane]

46 minutes ago, matt082600 said:

I'm coming along for the ride.  Can't wait to read the rest of your review!

 

Glad to have you along for the ride!

[deladane]

15 minutes ago, kpark895 said:

I can't believe it's been five years since I read your last review!  Time really does fly.

 

Your son Ian is a really cute kid!  Congrats!

 

Thank you!  Crazy how fast time flies, right?!  Part of me feel like our Dream cruise was forever ago and soooo much has happened since then, but part of me remembers every detail of that trip like it happened yesterday! 

[deladane]

So many ports, so many options of things to do!:

 

So now that we know our ship and our cabin, it’s time to figure out what to do in each port.  Pre-child, I prioritized itinerary over ship amenities when choosing a cruise.  I loved waking up in a new port every day and having something different and exciting to experience.  I really hoped that I could continue that same philosophy when cruising with a toddler, but I knew I’d have to adjust my expectations on what exactly we could do each day.  Jason and I used to love going on full day excursions in a small boat to go snorkeling, and we even went scuba diving for the first time on our last cruise in 2019!  Unfortunately, that just doesn’t work when cruising with a toddler.  

 

Also, my philosophy has always been to avoid booking excursions through the cruise ship.  In my experience and based on the comments of other cruisers, they tend to cost more money to see fewer attractions with more people on the tour, and in a shorter time frame than private excursions. With one exception (see the Panama section of my Celebrity Equinox review!), I have had nothing but wonderful experiences working with private tour companies and/or planning a DIY excursion on all of my cruises.  Would that still be possible when cruising with a toddler?  Toddlers are unpredictable by nature, so I needed to take that into account when planning what we would do each day.  At home, Ian is a trooper when we take him along for whatever we have planned on the weekends, so I kept my fingers crossed that he would be so excited in interesting and unfamiliar settings that he would be happy and entertained through whatever we were doing.

 

Here is Ian having a wonderful time at his first professional sporting event, a Phoenix Mercury WNBA game last summer…

 

 

And here is Ian LOVING a rugged Pink Jeep Tour in Sedona, Arizona:

 

 

Expectations adjusted, I started looking into our options.  I will go into more details on what we did each day as I get to that day of the cruise, but here is a summary of our plans:

 

Cabo: Aquabulle Underwater View Boat to the Arch

La Paz: Explore downtown DIY

Mazatlan: All-Inclusive Day Pass at Playa Mazatlan Hotel

Puerto Vallarta: Vallarta Zoo, then walk along the Malecon

 

Seeing as how I am an obsessive planner, I created a calendar listing our activity for each day of the cruise. We hung this in our cruise cabin, which made it easier to remember what was on the agenda each day.

 

 

I have made countdown candy jars for all of our previous cruises.  The idea is that we eat one piece of candy each night and gradually watch the jar become empty as we get closer to the start of the cruise.  Ian is still a little young for this tradition, so I only made it for Jason and myself.  It's fun to have a daily reminder of such an exciting vacation coming up!

 

 

[TravelGirlinDallas]

19 minutes ago, deladane said:

Part of me feel like our Dream cruise was forever ago and soooo much has happened since then, but part of me remembers every detail of that trip like it happened yesterday! 

We sailed on the Dream's first cruise after the shutdown, in September of 2021. Your Dream review was really helpful!

[deladane]

Eight weeks before our cruise, the Carnival Panorama struggled with engine problems which required the ship be taken out of service and sent to dry dock for immediate repairs.  The cruise scheduled that week had a drastically modified itinerary (the ship was moving so slowly that they only had 1 port day in Cabo and the rest of the week was sea days!), and they canceled the next 4 weeks of cruises.  The plan was for the ship to go to Oregon for an emergency dry dock, and regular cruises would resume the week of December 9.  I felt so horribly for the people booked on those 4 weeks of cruises as they must have been so upset to have their cruises canceled at the last minute (especially those who planned to spend their Thanksgiving holiday on board!), but I was very thankful that our New Year’s Eve cruise would not be affected and we could still enjoy our vacation as planned… or would it??

 

A week later, John Heald announced that they needed to remove the whale tail from the ship in order to pass under several fixed bridges to reach the dry dock location in Portland, Oregon.  This meant they had to cancel 2 more weeks of cruises, and the first cruise back would be the week of December 23, one week before our cruise.  It actually turned out that the ship had to travel up to Victoria, Canada to have the whale tail removed, then back down to Oregon for the engine repairs, then return to Canada to have the whale tail re-installed, before coming back down the west coast to Long Beach to resume its normal cruise schedule.  This was pushing it too close for comfort, but there was really nothing we could do but keep our fingers crossed and wait it out to see what happened.  It was such a stressful few weeks with very limited information available about if the repairs were on schedule.  Luckily, we had a very active group on a certain web page (I don’t think I’m allowed to type the actual name here, so you’ll have to fill in the blanks), and people who lived in the Pacific Northwest posted a few photos of the progress visible from the outside.  I did not take these photos, and I honestly don’t even know who did take them so I am technically posting them here without permission, but hopefully they don’t mind since they took the photos as a source of information…

 

After the whale tail was removed:

 

 

When the ship made it safely to the dry dock in Portland, Oregon:

 

 

A view of the azipods being repaired while the ship was in dry dock:

 

 

Our best source was information came from one of the people on our cruise page who had a connection to a crew member who was on the ship.  He kept her identity private until the very end (after the repairs were finished), but she gave us frequent updates based on whatever information she could find out.  Interestingly, Carnival didn’t really update the crew with much information either, so we were all thankful for whatever she could find out for us.

 

The planner in me was going crazy since I did not want to start packing until I knew for sure that the cruise was happening.  I didn’t want to jinx anything by packing too soon, so I refused to pull out anything from my closets until the week before we were leaving.  Once the ship was sailing south down the west coast with her whale tail reattached, I breathed a huge sigh of relief and finally felt confident that we would be spending New Year’s week aboard the Carnival Panorama!

 

On the Wednesday before the cruise, I got a phone call from the 305 area code.  I usually ignore spam calls, but something told me I should answer that call.  It was Carnival!  They were calling to offer me an “upgrade” from our regular balcony cabin on deck 9 to an Ocean Suite on deck 7 for a $600 upgrade fee.  As he was rambling off all the benefits of a suite, I was quickly searching on the Carnival website for more information.  The suite was much further aft than our current cabin, almost at the aft elevators, so that wasn’t ideal.  I was really hoping this type of suite had a floor plan which would give Ian a separate space to sleep in, or even a walk-in closet or some place big enough to put his crib so he wouldn’t wake us up every night.  I wasn’t thrilled about the $600 fee, but if it meant Ian had his own “room” to sleep in, I might have gone for it.  Sadly, that is not how the Ocean Suite is layed out, so I couldn’t justify the extra $600 cost and I declined his offer.  That was the first time the upgrade fairy ever called me, so it was nice to know I had the possibility of a good deal.  Other people from the web page group got much better deals, like $300 to go from a regular interior to a Havana balcony!  Now THAT was a good upgrade deal!  

 

The rest of that week was a blur, filled with last minute errands and all the packing that I usually do over the course of several weeks.  I took Ian for a haircut, and I did my nails for the cruise.  Recently, I have been playing around with the nail polish stickers with fun patterns that I could never create for myself, so I thought these were a fun design for New Year’s and the week of the cruise:

 

 

Before we knew it, our countdown candy jars were empty and it was time to leave for the cruise!

 

 

[deladane]

Just now, TravelGirlinDallas said:

We sailed on the Dream's first cruise after the shutdown, in September of 2021. Your Dream review was really helpful!

 

Oh good!!! I'm so glad you found it helpful (although I imagine a lot had changed between my pre-pandemic cruise and your cruise after the shutdown!)

[john91498]

I gotta say you weren't kidding when stated a "detailed" review 😀

[deladane]

22 minutes ago, john91498 said:

I gotta say you weren't kidding when stated a "detailed" review 😀

 

Hahahahahaha that's how I roll!

[EllieinNJ]

So enjoying your report.  We will be on the Panorama in April in conjunction with the Radiance right before.

[deladane]

2 hours ago, EllieinNJ said:

So enjoying your report.  We will be on the Panorama in April in conjunction with the Radiance right before.

 

Thanks!  That's a good idea to do a side-by-side cruise to extend your trip, especially if you are coming from NJ!  

[Kingsmom]

Looking forward to your review.  We board the Panorama in 38 days, 22 hours, 28 minutes.  Not that I'm counting. 

 

Edited to add:  I'm getting a bit concerned I haven't left enough time to disembark and get to Long Beach airport.  Flight leaves at 12:45am.  Next available is 3:00pm.  I live 3 hours from the nearest airport......hoping I can make the early one!

Edited January 10 by Kingsmom

[deladane]

32 minutes ago, Kingsmom said:

Looking forward to your review.  We board the Panorama in 38 days, 22 hours, 28 minutes.  Not that I'm counting. 

 

Edited to add:  I'm getting a bit concerned I haven't left enough time to disembark and get to Long Beach airport.  Flight leaves at 12:45am.  Next available is 3:00pm.  I live 3 hours from the nearest airport......hoping I can make the early one!

 

Hmm, if you were on my sailing, you would have been cutting it very close.  We docked at around 7am, but the ship still had to clear immigration so I don't think they started letting anyone get off until around 9am.  Getting off the ship/through the terminal/getting a porter for our luggage/passport checks all took about 30 minutes from start to finish, so that wasn't the problem.  The problem was that there was a lot of traffic for vehicles trying to enter the cruise port, and since it happened on both embarkation and debarkation day, I don't really know what caused the traffic.  This was my first time cruising from Long Beach, so maybe someone else can chime in about if this is normal, but it certainly didn't feel normal. 

 

I guess there are just a lot of things that need to go "right" for you to make a 12:45 flight.  Might be wiser to switch to the later flight, even if it means getting home later that night... that would be better than missing your flight, the 3pm flight is full, and you have to spend the night in California!!

[karriec]

Love this idea!

[Love-to-ride]

Great start to your review, we'll be sailing on the Panorama for the first time this March.