So, remember how I mentioned at the very start of this review that one of the reasons we picked this itinerary was because it ended on a Saturday, and that would allow us a leisurely morning to get off the ship, retrieve our car, and enjoy the rest of the day in LA before driving home on Sunday?  Also, do you remember how I mentioned that we had a lot of things going on in our personal/family life before the cruise?  Well, unfortunately, our plans changed when we woke up this morning to some news that we were dreading, and we decided it was best to just drive back to Phoenix today.

We woke up to that reality check at 6:45am, and when I looked outside, I saw we were already docked in San Pedro.  We woke up Ian, finished packing up the cabin, and left by 7:40am.  I will say we had quite a struggle fitting everything into our 2 carry-on suitcases, especially since we had to squeeze in the black out curtains used to frame Ian’s bed.  Those went in the checked luggage originally, and they are very bulky, so that required some advanced Tetris skills to make everything fit. 

Everyone had to be out of their cabins by 8am, so we knew we were in for trouble when we arrived at the elevators.  We went to the aft elevators and of course, every time a down elevator opened the door to let us in, it was completely filled with people and their luggage.  After a few tries, we gave up and pressed the up arrow.  Sure enough, the first elevator to arrive opened its doors to reveal an empty elevator, so we got on and rode it all the way up to deck 17, then all the way back down to deck 6.  Whatever works, right?!

We wanted to avoid the Lido buffet at all costs, especially since we were towing Ian in his stroller plus 2 rolling carry-on bags, plus our backpacks.  That was way too much to juggle in addition to a plate of food in the buffet, all while searching for a table.  Instead, we wanted to eat breakfast in the dining room, where we would be escorted to a table and could enjoy one last peaceful meal before the long drive home.  When we arrived at the dining room, they told us we could leave our carry-on bags along the sides of the entry hallway, so I locked the locks on our bags, then followed the hostess to our table.  In the end, while this was an easy way for us to get food for breakfast, it was far from fast.  Jason and I both ordered fried eggs and a bagel with lox and cream cheese, and Ian wanted waffles.  It took the waiter 30 minutes to return with our food, and even then he didn’t bring our bagels because he said they were all frozen.  Ummm, what?!  Firstly, I was under the [apparently misinformed] impression that all baked goods were freshly baked on cruise ships by the bakery staff, but apparently not, since these bagels were kept in the freezer.  Why didn’t they have them defrosted this morning?  He said it would take another 20 minutes for our bagels.  While we were waiting for our food, we could hear the announcements for each bag tag group, and they had called “Blue 16” a while ago.  We just wanted to eat and get going, so instead we opted for croissants with our lox and cream cheese.

We ate quickly, and just as we were exiting the dining room, we could hear the announcements for the final call to exit the ship.  We grabbed our bags and went up to deck 7 midship to exit the ship.  That was at 8:45am, and by then, there weren’t many people left to disembark, so the line moved quickly.  We scanned our medallions one last time, then zig zagged through the gangway to reach the warehouse with our luggage.  One good thing about our late departure was that pretty much everyone else in group 16 had claimed their bags, so it was very easy to find our big blue suitcases as they were the only ones left!  

That was the point when we could no longer manage all of our bags without assistance, so we flagged down a porter.  He loaded our 2 checked bags and 2 carry-on bags onto a trolley, and escorted us to an express line for immigration.  The line for people not using a porter was very long, but there were only 3 groups ahead of us in the express lane.  When it was our turn, we just had to look at a camera and facial recognition technology was used to clear us through immigration.  No need to take our passports out of my purse, and they didn’t even care that Ian was traveling with just a birth certificate.  

The porter said he could walk with us all the way down the sidewalk to the gate closest to where we parked our car, but he couldn’t take our bags into the parking lot.  He left me and Ian with all of our bags, and Jason went out to the parking lot to get the car and pull it around to me.  This photo was taken at 9:14am, so the whole disembarkation process took about 30 minutes.  I still cannot believe how efficient everything was with the embarkation and disembarkation process.  I’m not sure if I should give the credit to Princess or to the port of San Pedro, but either way, it was a nice experience (especially compared to the disaster we had on both ends of last year’s cruise out of Long Beach!!).

Jason paid $140 for parking for the week, which was very reasonable since the alternative was to park at his brother’s house in Redondo Beach and Uber both ways and that would be around $50 each way.  Plus, it worked out better to just get in our car right at the port and hit the road to drive home, as opposed to wasting at least an hour waiting for an Uber to pick us up, drive us 30 minutes, transferring the luggage to Jason’s car, and then finally starting the drive home.  When Jason pulled the car around, I loaded Ian into his car seat while Jason loaded the luggage into the trunk, and we were on our way by 9:30am.  

Being a Saturday morning, there wasn’t much traffic getting out of Los Angeles.  We stopped at Costco in Palm Springs to fill up the gas tank and our bellies around 11:30am.

The rest of the drive was uneventful, and we were back in Phoenix by 5pm Arizona time.  I’ll leave you with a few photos from our drive home…

*The End*

This morning, we slept until 8am, and woke up to cloudy skies and cool temperatures.  I’m not sure if I really mentioned this, but the weather was cool on all 3 sea days such that I needed a long sleeve shirt and pants.  On the bright side, the weather was absolutely perfect for our 3 days in Mexico, with sunny skies and temps in the 70s.  Today, it was in the 50’s and 60’s throughout the day.

We got dressed and went up to the Lido buffet to eat breakfast.  I didn’t take any photos, but I’m sure my meal looked the same as every other day this week.

I decided to bribe Ian with the promise of ice cream if he went to camp this morning, and he agreed!  Thank goodness, because I had some chores to take care of and none of them involved keeping Ian with me.  

After we dropped Ian at camp, we went down to guest services.  This was the first time all week that we needed to go there, so that’s a great sign as to how much we enjoyed our Princess cruise.  I had a partially-used gift card and I wanted to use it to pay off the balance of our shipboard account instead of having the charge default to my credit card.  When we got to guest services, there was only one person ahead of us in line, with 4 agents working.  While we waited for our turn, I overheard another lady at the desk.  She was very upset because she was charged for a dinner at Sabatini’s that she never ate.  She said she had dinner there one night earlier in the cruise and was not happy with her experience, so she didn’t show up for a second reservation she had made later in the week.  She was very upset that she was charged when she didn’t eat that second meal, but honestly, I tried all week to get a reservation at Sabatini’s but I couldn’t because it was fully booked all week.  Had she cancelled her reservation, then someone else could have had the chance to eat there, maybe even me!  Just like restaurants and doctors offices at home charge a no-show fee, I thought it was fair game for Princess to do the same, so she didn’t get any sympathy from me.  Given the way she stormed off in a huff, I got the feeling the guest services agent didn’t have much sympathy either and kept the no-show fee on her account.

When it was my turn, the guest services agent told me that she could not just charge a certain amount to my gift card, and that she had to apply the full remaining balance of the gift card to my account.  After deducting the current charges we had made on the cruise, I was left with a credit of  $24.88 on our account.  She said if we had more than $25 credit, Princess would automatically mail us a refund check, but if we didn’t spend the $24.88 tonight on the ship, we would lose the remaining money.  She offered to cash it out for me but then had to lock the account, meaning we couldn’t charge anything else to the room for the remainder of the cruise.  Given that it was the last day of the cruise and we didn’t plan to spend any more money anyway, we opted to do that.  She actually gave me back $25 in cash, which was nice of her since I didn’t want to carry around $0.88 in loose change, and I’m sure she didn’t want to empty out that much change from her register (if she even had coins in there, which she might not have for all I know!).  That was an easy and quick trip to guest services, and I was glad I did it early enough on the last day of the cruise to beat the inevitable lines that would form as the day progressed.

My next order of business was to return to the cabin to pack.  There was very little floor space in the cabin to have our large suitcases open on the floor, so I knew I had to do as much packing as possible while Ian was at camp or he would want to climb into the open bags and delay my productivity.  On the way back to the cabin, I saw our steward and informed him that the safe in our cabin stopped working last night.  When I tried to lock it, I got an error message, and I couldn’t get the safe to lock.  He said he would call one of his supervisors to take a look, which worked well since I knew I would be in the cabin packing for a while anyway.  10 minutes later, there was a knock at the door!  These guys were so fast!  The supervisor said he thought the battery was dead, so he left to get replacement batteries and returned a few minutes later.  Apparently that did not fix the problem, so he said he would need someone from engineering to look at it.  I asked if they could wait until tomorrow morning when the ship was being turned over.  By then, I had done enough packing that I was ready to get out and explore the ship a little more.  He said that was fine.  I locked our valuables in our suitcase with the luggage lock and hoped for the best!

Before heading out, I took another peek at the weather.  It was now partly cloudy, but still too cold to comfortably sit on the balcony.

With no specific destination in mind, we went down to the Vista Lounge for a drink.  I ordered the Hawaiian Tropics, with Malibu Original coconut rum, melon liqueur, banana liqueur, pineapple, and lemon.

There wasn’t much happening in there, so we took the drinks down to the Piazza where  they were playing an officers versus guests trivia Jenga game.  I always enjoy watching these kinds of games, and there were lots of other passengers watching too.  

I tried to capture the moment that one of the officers made the Jenga pieces come crashing to the ground, but I missed it.

We picked up Ian from camp and decided to try out lunch in the dining room since we had yet to do that during this cruise.  The menu had a ton of options that I would have enjoyed, so I wished we had a chance to come here earlier in the week.

The kids menu was the same as what they have available at dinner time.  I’ll give you one guess what Ian ordered *insert eye roll emoji*

I ordered the fried calamari for my appetizer.  It was very good, with a light batter and the calamari was not too chewy.

I ordered the quinoa salmon poke bowl with corn, black beans, sweet potato, cherry tomato, bell pepper, red cabbage, pumpkin seeds, and honey-lime dressing.  We get poke bowls at home all the time, but I usually prefer the kind where I can pick all of the ingredients and which dressing they use.  Of course, that’s not possible on a cruise ship, but I didn’t love the variety of ingredients in this poke bowl.  It was a lot of flavors that didn’t necessarily blend well together.  The salmon was tasty, so I ate all of that and picked at the rest.

After lunch, Jason took Ian back to the cabin for his nap, and I went up to the Lido buffet in search of something to supplement my lunch.  I was delighted to find a huge fresh seafood display with crawfish, mussels, bay scallops, and shrimp.  I took a sampling of each, and it was all very good.

I wanted a little something sweet, but none of the options in the buffet were calling to me.  I decided it was finally time to try out the premium desserts from the gelato place.  These desserts were included in the plus package, but we never had the chance to try them all week.  I am lactose intolerant, so the giant ice cream sundaes didn’t excite me, but I wanted to try a slice of cake.  The cakes looked very good, and were certainly fancier than anything you can get from the buffet.  

I ordered a slice of the red velvet cake.  This is normally one of my favorite cakes, especially because of the cream cheese frosting, but this slice of cake was mediocre at best.  The frosting was plain vanilla, definitely not cream cheese flavored, and the cake itself was bland.  I’ll give them credit for the portion size as it was a huge slice of cake, but I had trouble justifying the calories since it just wasn’t that tasty.

I went back to the cabin to nap and take a shower, then we took some time to FaceTime with my parents in Florida.  It is always amazing when you can make a video call to people over 3000 miles away, especially when floating on a cruise ship in the middle of the ocean!

We had to put our checked luggage outside the cabin by 8pm tonight.  Instead of needing to return to the cabin in the middle of our evening activities, we decided to fill them as much as we could and put them outside now before going to dinner.  

If it seems like all we did today was eat, that’s pretty much correct!  Before we knew it, it was time for our last 5:20pm dinner reservation at the Ketchikan MDR.  Funny enough, we were seated at the same table as last night, with the same couple seated at the next table over.

Continuing with my trend, I ordered the Seafood Medley appetizer with shrimp, bay scallops, and creamy herb vinaigrette.  As always, this was refreshing and tasty.

Throughout the cruise, Jason and I made a habit of ordering the nightly pasta dish to share and it was consistently good.  It made for a nice side dish, and most of the time Ian was even tempted to try it, despite it usually being a flavor or sauce he’d never tried before.  Years ago, I remember reading a review by a woman who traveled with her son when he was around Ian’s age.  They cruised on Celebrity Cruises, where they were able to order the escargots appetizer from the “always available” menu and he devoured them.  There was something about teaching your child to try and experience new things that might be out of his comfort zone that stuck with me, so I was really proud of Ian when he was willing to taste things off our adult plates throughout the cruise.  Even Jason and I enjoy trying new things when we take cruises, knowing that if we don’t like something, there’s always more food available around the corner.  We tried to instill that in Ian, and I think he caught on considering he was willing to taste this “green pasta” tonight.

I ordered the Slow-Roasted Prime Rib in Rosemary Jus.  Not pictured is the included baked potato, green beans, and char-grilled tomato because they were hiding under the steak.  Of course, everything was delicious, including the yorkshire pudding, which was light and airy and paired well with the heavy dish.

We especially enjoyed our meal because we were seated near a window with an incredible view of the sunset.  One of my favorite things about Mexican Riviera cruises is that the sunset is dynamic and colorful every single night, both this year and last year too!

Looking at this menu for After Dinner Beverages, I just realized we never remembered to try the dessert wine.  We saw that on the menu earlier in the week and meant to try it, but never remember to do it.  I’ll have to add that to my to-do list for our Enchanted Princess cruise later this year!

We had skipped dessert in the dining room most nights this cruise, but tonight, I wanted to try the Princess Love Boat Dream.  This is Princess’ signature dessert, so I had to try it at least once on our first Princess cruise, right?!  

Jason ordered the cheese plate for dessert.  If you read my Paul Gauguin review back in 2017, you will remember Jason’s love for a good cheese plate (cruising in French Polynesia meant lots of fancy French cheeses).  Since then, he routinely orders a cheese plate for dessert at least once on every cruise.  He was very happy with the selection of cheese, fruit, and nuts, but he requested some extra pieces of bread to pair with it.

After dinner, Ian was willing to go to camp for one last time, so we took him upstairs to drop him off, then went down to the theater for the Farewell Variety Show.

There was only one showing of this show tonight at 7:30pm, and then there would be a different show at 9:30pm featuring Willis White (the performer who did the Lionel Ritchie show earlier in the week).  We weren’t surprised to see a full house since there was only one chance to catch the variety show.  At 7:25pm, there was a little pre-show to get the crowd hyped up, and some of the dancers came out to lead the audience in a rousing rendition of YMCA.  Of course, we couldn’t resist throwing our arms up in the air and singing along to the chorus!

When they raised the curtain to start the show, the first act was the Princess singers and dancers.

Next up was the magician, but halfway through his act, our pager went off signaling that Ian needed us at camp.  Despite all of our troubles convincing Ian to go to camp and that the bully wouldn’t pick on him anymore, we managed to make it through the entire cruise without ever hearing that dreaded pager buzz.  As soon as it went off, I immediately knew it was because Ian needed us to change his pull up.  Whenever we brought Ian to camp, we made sure he was in a clean, dry pull up, to maximize our chances that he would make it through the 2ish hours we left him there without needing a change.  I guess our luck had finally run out in the last session of camp at the very end of the cruise.

We waited for the magician to finish his close-up act (which once again, we felt was hard to follow in the large theater, and was better suited for a more intimate venue), and snuck out of the theater to go back to camp.  We fully expected to take Ian back to our cabin to change him, so imagine our surprise when the staff said they have a drop-down changing table, diapers, and wipes in their bathroom!  Really?!  So while we were so afraid the staff wouldn’t let us send Ian to camp because he wasn’t potty trained yet, they were secretly hiding a stash of supplies for parents to use?  We aren’t picky about brands of products, so the convenience of using what they had on hand and not needing to schlep all the way back to the cabin was worth it.  Plus, we were very worried that if we took Ian out of camp, even just for a quick change, we would never get him to agree to return for the rest of the night.  

Mission accomplished, Jason and I were free to enjoy the last few hours of evening entertainment on the ship.  By now, we had missed most of the Farewell Variety Show, but we wanted to catch what we could of the ending.  Instead of going all the way back to the theater, we decided to watch it from Princess Live because they were playing a simulcast from the theater show there.  That saved us a few minutes of walking, and meant we wouldn’t disturb the other passengers who were watching the show.  

Since we had good seats, we decided to stay in Princess Live for the Rock the Room game show that was coming up next.  While we waited for the entertainment staff to get set up, I went next door to the Crown Grill Bar to pick up another glass of Cosmo Champagne for me, and a Manhattan for Jason.

Rock The Room was a game show style show where they divided the audience into 2 teams and we had to agree on an answer to the trivia questions.  This worked well for us because we could watch from our seats towards the back of the room and we didn’t really have to participate if we didn’t want to.

The game had several different rounds.  In the first round, they played a song and we had to guess the name of the band and how many members were in the band.  The songs were all well-known songs, so the band name was usually easy to guess.  Similar to when they asked us to guess the year the Queen song was released in addition to the song title during music trivia yesterday, having to guess the number of members of the band made the question much harder.  In the second round, we had to dance the signature dance for the song they were playing (ie: Macarena, Gangnam Style, and Cupid Shuffle).  In the final round, it was just Name That Tune plus guessing what year the song was released.  We enjoyed watching the other passengers play, and guessed some of the answers between the two of us.

We saw a roaming bar waiter deliver drinks to the table next to us, so we flagged him down to order another round of drinks.  This time, I ordered the Elderflower and Meyer Lemon Spritz, with St. Germain Elderflower liqueur, fresh citrus, mint, prosecco, and meyer lemon soda.  A few minutes later, he returned with our drinks.  I don’t recall my drink being pink in color, so I guess we can blame that on the lighting in Princess Live.

After Rock The Room, the next activity was karaoke.  It started at 9:30pm, so we only had time to stay for the first 3 songs before needing to pick up Ian from camp.  He was all smiles tonight, and he couldn’t wait to show us the stuffed crab that he colored.  All in all, we had a wonderful experience with the staff at camp.  They were very caring and really went above and beyond to make sure Ian felt comfortable while he was there, even if he didn’t always want to go.

Back in the cabin, we had 2 notes waiting on our bed.  

I think this is the first time I have ever changed my clocks on the last night of the cruise, and I have to say, it was wonderful!  We set the clocks ahead twice earlier this week, so I knew we had to set them back two times to get back on Pacific time.  I assumed that would happen on Wednesday and Thursday nights, so I was surprised last night when no one said anything about changing our clocks.  In fact, this morning I made sure to double check in the Princess app for ship time versus the time on my watch, just in case I missed a notification somewhere, but nope!  They were waiting until Friday night for us to set the clocks back one last time, which gave us an extra night of sleep on the last night of the cruise.  That was much-appreciated, especially considering how early they expected everyone to disembark the ship and go through immigration!  9am?!  That’s crazy!!  So at least they helped the situation by letting us set our clocks back one hour so it would feel like 10am, which is much more reasonable if you ask me.

Today’s drinks total for the 2 of us = 17

Drinks total for the cruise= 110

A note about these tallies I have been tracking all week:  We thought it would be fun to keep track of how many drinks we had all week since that only entailed checking the app each night (we never would have kept track if we had to do it manually every time we ordered a drink throughout the day).  We were curious if we got a good value from purchasing the Plus Package.  We paid $60 per person, per day for the package, so that came out to $840 for the week.  Had we not purchased the package, we would have paid $17 per person, per day for crew appreciation tips, so $238 for Jason’s and my tips.  We were charged $17 per day for Ian’s tips, but we expected that since he did not have the package and 3 year olds count as people too in terms of charging us for gratuities on the cruise.  Deducting our tips from the package price, that brings us down to $602.  I am not sure if we would have paid the $10 to ship our medallions to our house pre-cruise, and I am also not sure if we would have tried any of the paid casual dining restaurants, so let’s just assume we wouldn’t have done that.  Did we drink enough to justify spending $602 on drinks?  Looking at the prices of the drinks we ordered most frequently, they averaged $12 per drink.  Paying a la carte, Princess automatically adds an 18% service charge to every drink, meaning we would have paid $14.16 per drink.  At that price, the 110 drinks we ordered throughout the cruise would have cost us $1,557.60.  In fact, we could have only ordered 42 drinks if we wanted to stay under $602 total.  I’ll say we got an excellent deal, and for the amount we ended up drinking, it was the equivalent of paying half price on every drink!  Plus, having the package encouraged us to try the paid casual dining restaurants we probably would have otherwise skipped.  We were very happy with our decision to purchase the Plus Package!

The last two days of this itinerary are sea days as we sail back north to Los Angeles.  Normally I’m not the biggest fan of sea days and find them rather boring.  This cruise was a more laid back cruise for us, so the sea days just gave us more time to relax.  We slept in until 8am, but that really felt more like 9am because we set the clocks back one hour last night.  We quickly got ready, then went down to the Ketchikan MDR for breakfast.  This was the first time we sat in the main section of the dining room.  It was such an elegant and modern space.

This flyer was on the table, promoting an event tomorrow morning.  I made a mental note that it might be fun to attend…

For breakfast, I started with the cinnamon-flavored apple wedges.  They were delicious, and tasted like the inside of an apple pie.

I also asked for a glass of orange juice, but laughed when they brought me a cup so small I thought it might be a shot glass.  Here it is, next to the water glass for comparison:

For my main dish, I ordered fried eggs over hard, and a bagel with lox and cream cheese.

After breakfast, we went back to the cabin for a few minutes and found the disembarkation information waiting on our bed.

Taking a peek out on the balcony, it looked like a beautiful day out in the Pacific Ocean.

We told Ian it was time to go to camp, but he reverted to saying he didn’t want to go because of the kid who was mean to him back on the first sea day.  I couldn’t believe this older kid left such an impact on Ian.  The staff assured us that there weren’t any other incidents after that first day, and I know they kept an eye on Ian even more than the other kids because of what had happened, so this was all still from that one original incident.  Even reminding Ian how much fun he had at camp on the last 2 nights wasn’t convincing enough for him to agree to stay at camp.  Rather than wasting the whole morning, we decided to give up on camp and just take Ian with us to what we wanted to do.  Cruise director Jayson was about to host a Behind the Scenes Talk about life working on cruise ships, so we took Ian down to the theater and looked for seats in the back row.  

I always find these kinds of talks interesting because, while we are guests onboard for just a few days, the crew lives there months on end.  I actually follow several Youtube channels by crew members for Royal Caribbean, and they make some of my favorite content to watch as I enjoy seeing what happens behind the scenes.  And don’t get me started on the Below Deck series!  Anyway, Jayson spoke for about an hour about everything from the hiring process to work on ships, how he started his career and worked up the ranks to become a cruise director, what cabins look like, and general information about life on board.  At the end, he took questions from people in the audience. 

We left the theater around noon and decided to try out the pizza on the Lido deck for a quick lunch.  We opted for the plain cheese slice, and we all agreed this was very good for a free pizza option (as opposed to the paid option for pizza at Gigi’s).  

After finishing our pizza, I walked around the ship a little bit while Jason and Ian went back to the cabin to nap.  Despite the sunny skies, temperatures were only in the low 70s today, so I wasn’t surprised to see only one brave person swimming in the aft pool.

I hung out back there for a little while, enjoying the view, then went back inside and down to the Piazza for musical trivia.  When I got there, I found out it was actually all songs by the group Queen, and you had to guess both the song title (1 point) and the year it was released (2 points, or you got 1 point if within 5 years above or below).  I like Queen and thought I’d do really well but I only knew 10 of the 20 songs.

Trivia was scheduled from 1pm until 1:45pm, but Arts and Crafts was scheduled to start at 1:30pm.  After they played the final trivia song, I knew which clues I got right and wrong and that I was not going to win the game, so instead of listening to all the answers and staying until the end, I left early to get a seat in the Juneau dining room for arts and crafts.

When the lady from the entertainment staff arrived, she said we would be making origami boxes.  She handed everyone an instruction sheet and 2 pieces of origami paper, and let us follow the directions at our own pace.  If anyone had questions, she tried to help us, but mostly this was a Do It Yourself experience.  I was surprised that it was kind of hard to create the box, but I befriended another woman at my table and we helped each other figure out the tricky parts.

We were advised to use the second paper to make a lid for our box.

When we were done, we were given a piece of ribbon to tie around the box.  Of course, that meant we could no longer open it to put something inside, but that’s okay.

Later that night, Ian found my origami box on my nightstand and thought it contained a present for him.  Poor kid was very disappointed to learn it was just an empty box!

Just as I was finishing up at arts and crafts, Jason texted me to say he was up from his nap.  He wanted a drink and suggested I pick it up on my way back to the cabin, since that would be faster than ordering room service.  I was already planning to swing by the Lido buffet to pick up some cookies to bring back to the cabin in case Ian woke up hungry from his nap, so I stopped by the Lido bar to pick up some drinks too.  I got the Ultimate Cooler for me, and a whiskey for Jason.  Whew, it was soooo cold and windy up there!  I was only wearing a light hoodie and leggings, but I wished I had on my puffy winter coat!

I got back to the cabin with our drinks around 2:30pm, so we just relaxed for a while and I took some notes for this review.  Ian woke up an hour later, but by then, I was getting sleepy and wanted to take a nap.  Jason took Ian up to the Lido buffet for a special treat.  Cute story: Ian has only ever had ice cream in a bowl.  When Jason took Ian to the soft serve ice cream place on Lido and they handed him his ice cream in a cone, he asked for a spoon.  Every time we notice one of these things that Ian has never seen or done before, and we get to teach him or show him something new, and watch him do something for the first time, it warms our hearts.  Jason taught Ian how to eat ice cream from a cone, without a spoon, and he was the happiest he had been all week!

Before:

After:

(Jason needs to work on his photo composition skills lol  I promise Ian wasn’t beheaded, but maybe it’s for the best that you can’t see how messy his shirt was when he returned to the cabin!)

By the time they returned to the cabin, I was waking up from my nap.  I took one look at Ian and said that he definitely needed a shower before we could get dressed for “Dress to Impress” night tonight.

Side note: Prior to this cruise, I was curious how they would handle the logistics of formal nights and New Year’s Eve.  Last year, New Year’s Eve fell on the first sea day of our cruise, which is typically a formal night anyway, so it was easy to predict that we would stick to the typical formal nights schedule.  This year, New Year’s Eve was on Tuesday.  We boarded the ship on Saturday, so usually this itinerary has formal nights on Sunday (sea day #1) and Thursday (sea day #2).  But what would they do about New Year’s Eve?  Would they move one of the two usual formal nights to Tuesday?  Would they keep the schedule the same and leave Tuesday night as Smart Casual?  If so, we planned to do our own thing since I definitely wanted to wear my black dress with gold sequins on New Year’s Eve, even if I was overdressed at dinner when other people could wear typical Smart Casual attire.  As it turned out, Princess opted for the third option: have 3 formal nights!  Well, sort of, because they called Thursday night “Dress to Impress” attire.  I had packed 3 formal outfits for each of us, not knowing how the ship would handle the dress code and wanting to be prepared, but I am sure some people on the ship only packed for 2 formal nights.  “Dress to Impress” attire basically allowed everyone to wear whatever they wanted, so maybe it felt more like “semi-formal” versus the usual “formal” night.

We all got showered and dressed for the evening, and set out in search of somewhere to take some photos.  We decided to return to the mural beside Princess Live, and luckily, tonight there was nothing blocking our access.

Why won’t Ian just stand between us for a photo?!

Since we were right near there and only had 10 minutes to get down one deck for our dinner reservations, we decided to stop by the Crown Grill Bar to pick up some drinks to take to dinner.  This was our first time ordering from this drinks menu and I ended up finding one of my favorite drinks all week, the Champagne Cosmo with Absolut Elyx vodka, Cointreau, Champagne, cranberry, and lime.

We took our drinks down one deck to the Ketchikan dining room for our nightly 5:20pm reservation.  This time, we were escorted to a table in one of the smaller rooms to the side of the ship, but we were so far forward that we thought he was taking us into the galley!  This ended up being a great table because the room was quieter than sitting in the big main section of the dining room, and we were on the port side of the ship looking west towards a beautiful sunset.

I appreciated that the waiters always asked Ian what he wanted for dinner when we first sat down, and they brought out his dish very quickly, sometimes before Jason and I even placed our order!  No one wants to be near this child when he is hangry, especially not us as his parents, so it worked out great that the waiters sensed our urgency and brought Ian his food ASAP.  Tonight, as usual, Ian ordered the Mac and Cheese.

For my starter, I ordered the prosciutto and melon.  I noticed the portion sizes throughout the week were all very generous.  I am used to other cruise lines giving tiny portions so you have to order multiple dishes for each course, but these dishes were all generously portioned, which was a nice change of pace. 

I ordered the Sauteed Shrimp and Sea Scallops, with polenta, herbed vegetables, and garlic, as my main dish.  The seafood dishes in the MDR were consistently good throughout the week.

Jason ordered the Veal Scaloppine with marsala wine sauce, garlic mashed potatoes, green beans, and tomatoes.  I tried a bite and it was delicious as well.

Another funny story:  One of the waiters asked Jason what he wanted to drink, so he ordered something included on the generic menus throughout the ship.  We never saw an actual cocktail menu in the dining room, but we assumed it was the same as the menu we had seen in various bars around the ship, so he ordered the “007 Classic Martini.”  Imagine his surprise when the waiter returned a few minutes later with TWO glasses of martinis!  We were both very confused at first, so when Jason asked why there were two glasses, the waiter said “Because you ordered a double.”  Ummm, no he didn’t!  The drink is called a “double-oh-seven classic martini” and it is shown on menus all over the ship!  Luckily we were nowhere near our 30 drink limit because he did charge us for two drinks, even after Jason explained that he really ordered.  The waiter said that once the account is charged for the drink, he can’t remove it from the system, even if we were charged in error.  That was annoying, but it was still a story too funny not to share!

Ian received his dinner plate before Jason and I received our appetizers, yet by the time we both finished our main dishes, Ian was still working on his food.  He literally eats one noodle at a time, so it took him an hour and a half to finish all of the mac and cheese.  By then, it was nearly 7pm and we didn’t want to miss the production show in the theater, so we opted to just keep Ian with us instead of wasting time convincing him to go to camp.  As per usual when we had Ian in tow, we sat in the back row of the theater in case he got fussy.

Tonight’s show was called Spotlight Bar.  It was set in a local neighborhood bar from opening to closing time one night, and the patrons visiting the bar sang familiar pop songs to share stories about their lives.  This was my favorite show of the cruise, and I really enjoyed the song choices and choreography.  It featured “Brave” and “She Used To Be Mine” by Sara Bareilles, “Havana” by Camila Cabello (although I did find it odd that they used this song in the Latin show earlier in the cruise… I guess whoever Princess put in charge of acquiring the rights to songs for their production shows really likes that song?), “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing” by Stevie Wonder, and “When I Was Your Man” by Bruno Mars.  

There were 2 songs that I found particularly entertaining.  They sang “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X, and the choreography featured the male dancers dressed like cowboys, dancing a country line dance on top of the restaurant tables.  I was so mesmerized that I forgot to take a photo!  I also really enjoyed when they sang “Haven’t Met You Yet” by Michael Buble because it was from the perspective of a girl meeting a bunch of first dates from a dating app.  Each man acted out a stereotypically bad first date behavior, until the last guy came out and was a perfect gentleman.  They stayed together for the rest of the show, and as the patrons left the bar at the end of the night, that couple left together.  It was very clever, and I appreciated the creativity.

All 3 of us really enjoyed the show, even Ian!  He especially liked the singing fish hanging on the wall behind the bar.  After the show, we originally planned to hang out in the Piazza until it was time for the silent disco.  I think Ian would have loved that activity, but it didn’t start until 9:30pm, so we opted to skip it and just go back to the cabin to get Ian to sleep at a decent hour.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned this yet, but I used some of our magnetic hooks on the wall next to the cabin door to hang our medallions each night.  This was a good way to ensure we didn’t lose them, and that we always wore it when we left the cabin.  

Remember those cookies I picked up from the buffet earlier this afternoon?  Well they came in handy now as Ian said he was hungry, and cookies are always an acceptable late night snack for this child!

We were all in bed by 10pm tonight, continuing our quest to get lots of sleep on this vacation.

Today’s drinks total for the 2 of us = 14

The one downside to this Princess itinerary versus some of the other options was that we would be in port starting at 8am on New Year’s Day.  When I was planning what to do each day, I hoped we would stay up until midnight the night before, so I didn’t want to plan an early excursion.  You already know that we did not make it until midnight last night, but we were still happy to not have anything specific planned requiring an early wake up today.  Jason and I spent a week in Puerto Vallarta in 2018, plus we were here last year on the Carnival cruise, so there weren’t many things left that we wanted to do and hadn’t yet done.  Back in 2018, we stayed in a hotel in the Romantic Zone that was a few blocks up from the Playa Los Muertos.  We have fond memories of walking down to Cuates y Cuetes for happy hour on several evenings of our trip, located right along the beach with great views and fun people watching.  There were several restaurants along the beach, all with a similar vibe.  This seemed like a good plan for a casual port stop, where Ian could play in the sand and we could sip some margaritas and relax for a few hours.  

When we put the room service door tag outside last night, we requested a 7:30-8am delivery time.  Sure enough, I heard a knock on the door at 7:27am.  I opened the door and asked the delivery man to put the tray on our coffee table.  Luckily, we thought to clear it off last night as I didn’t want to turn on the lights while Jason and Ian were still asleep!  Once I’m up, I’m up, so I didn’t bother getting back in bed and just opened the lids until I found my breakfast sandwich.  Unfortunately, it was cold, and the layers of the sandwich slid apart in the foil bag so it was very messy and not good at all.  Instead, I moved on to eating a croissant, which was very good.  I will give credit where it is due- we ordered a bunch of different things, including writing in some off-menu modifications, and everything was delivered correctly.  It just wasn’t all to my liking.

Ian must have been very tired because he managed to sleep through all of this.  I took a peek inside his blackout curtain bedroom and he was fast asleep.

Finally, at 8:45am, Ian woke up which then woke up Jason.  By then, the food had been sitting for over an hour.  Jason drank his coffee since it was still hot inside the thermos, but he agreed that the egg sandwich was a total mess and didn’t want to eat it.  We decided to just get dressed and go up to the buffet to find something else to eat.  While Jason got dressed, I took a peek outside on the balcony.  The first morning of 2025 blessed us with yet another perfect weather day.

We got up to the buffet around 9:45am.  Since we had been docked for nearly 2 hours at this point, the buffet wasn’t crowded at all because most people were already off the ship.  Either that, or they were still sleeping from partying so late last night!  

Today was our 4th breakfast on the ship and I finally found where they hid the smoked salmon!  I could eat lox for breakfast every day, so it was very frustrating not knowing where it was being served.  I finally found it in a cut through in the middle of two aft sections of the buffet (think of it as the horizontal line in the middle of a capital H).  I picked up some pastries, plus a wedge of french toast and a waffle for Ian, and I picked out a window table. 

I had a great view overlooking the port shops, and I could see a colorful umbrella display hanging in the middle of a building, so I hoped we could see it when we got off the ship.

Bellies full and satisfied, we left the ship at 10:30am.  It was a very long walk to the port exit, and we had to walk through a big shopping mall.  

Sure enough, those umbrellas I was eyeing from above in the buffet were located in the middle of this mall.  They were so colorful and pretty, so I couldn’t resist taking a bunch of photos.

We eventually found our way out of the port gates to the street, and I requested an Uber to Los Muertos pier.  There were plenty of taxi drivers waiting around who probably would have been happy to drive us down there, but I didn’t want to deal with negotiating a price and risk being ripped off as a tourist.  Uber is incredibly easy to use and affordable, as we experienced on our prior visits to Puerto Vallarta.  Plus, it eliminates the logistics of a language barrier.  Our ride request was accepted right away, and the driver took about 10 minutes to arrive to pick us up from a side street right next to the cruise port.

It cost us $15 USD for the 20 minute ride down to the beach.  The Uber dropped us off at 11:11am, one block in from the beach.

We walked out towards the beach, spotting the Los Muertos Pier straight ahead.

Even though our hotel was right near here in 2018, we never walked out onto the pier, so we decided to do that today.

It gives a great view looking out along the shore, and you can actually see the cruise ships docked all the way up the coast in the distance.

Ian thought the black squiggly line running the length of the pier looked like a road, so he had fun walking on it, weaving in and out of the other people nearby.

There was a path off one side of the pier that led down to the ocean.  This is where the smaller tour boats could pick up passengers for snorkeling, whale watching, and sightseeing tours along the coast.  

This is the only photo of me from the entire day, so you can see I was wearing my “Happy New Year” shirt.

We walked around the full circle on the pier, then continued back to the sidewalk towards the beachfront restaurants.  The first one was Cuates y Cuetes where we went back in 2018, so today we wanted to try something new.  The restaurant next door was Langostinos.  Not really in the mood to read every menu on the strip, we decided this place looked nice enough.  They had an open air inside section to the restaurant, then out on the beach, they had several rows of tables for 4 and an umbrella over each table.  We requested a table in the sand and were seated immediately.

This was the view from our table looking back towards the sidewalk (you can see some people walking along the raised path), with the thatched roof of the restaurant behind it.

The atmosphere was very relaxed and no one rushed us to place our order.  Jason went inside to find the bathrooms so he could change into his bathing suit, and I took Ian out onto the beach for some photos.

As soon as Jason returned, Ian couldn’t wait to run into the ocean.  

He has only been on the beach once before, in the summer of 2023 when he had just turned 2 years old.  He hated the sand back then, and screamed and cried when we tried to take him into the ocean.  Obviously, he has grown up a bit since then, and now he plays in the sandbox at school all the time.  He was so excited to come to the beach today, and I was so proud of him for venturing out into the water and experiencing something new.

The boys stayed out at the edge of the ocean for a while, and I went back to the table to peruse the menu.  There were lots of drink and food options.  $9 USD for the large glass of margarita sounded a little pricey to me for a drink in Mexico, but you are also paying for the table on the beach and the atmosphere, so that helped justify it.

As I was sitting at the table, my phone beeped with a notification for a new email.  It was from Jayleen’s Whale Watching Tours requesting I pay the deposit for our excursion in Juneau for our upcoming Alaska cruise this summer!  I found the timing to be very funny, but I guess it made sense.  I had emailed Jayleen several months ago to reserve our spot on her tour, and she said she did not collect payment for the deposit until 2025.  Well, today was January 1, 2025, so I shouldn’t have been surprised to get that email, but it was definitely funny timing since we were sitting on the beach in Mexico on one cruise while she was requesting payment for the deposit on an excursion for our next cruise.  Who knows, maybe those whales we saw in Cabo would be the same whales Jayleen would take us to see in Juneau!  I marked that email as ‘unread’ so I would remember to pay the deposit when we returned home.

When Jason and Ian returned to the table, we ordered our drinks.  I ordered the Malibu Punch and Jason got a margarita.  

The Chanukah gift Ian opened last night was a set of sand toys with a bunch of shovels and molds and a big bucket.  We don’t live near the beach, so we don’t have toys like that at home to bring with us.  I thought that would be a fun Chanukah gift to give him the night before I knew we were going to the beach in Puerto Vallarta so he would have something fun to play with today.  It worked like a charm, and Ian played nicely in the shaded section of sand right next to our table.

By the time we finished our drinks, we had been at Langostinos for just over an hour.  We debated a second round, but held off, knowing we had “free” drinks waiting for us back on the ship.  We were all getting a little hungry, so we looked at the menu for something we knew Ian would eat.  His go-to order at Mexican restaurants at home is a cheese quesadilla, but they didn’t have any quesadillas on their menu.  We asked the waitress, and she said it wasn’t a problem and they were happy to make it for us.  Funny enough, a few minutes later, I overheard the table behind us make the same request!  Maybe they should add the popular Americanized dishes to their menu, considering this is a touristy section of town.  I forgot to take a photo but it looked and tasted good, as expected. 

Meanwhile, the beach started filling in.  When we arrived here at 11:30am, there was only one row of sand chairs in front of us.  Now, at 12:45pm, another row of tables, chairs, and umbrellas appeared out of nowhere, closer to the ocean.  Since this is a public beach, I’m not sure if that row was set up by the restaurant or by locals arriving at the beach to spend New Year’s Day with their families.

When we finished eating, we decided it was time to head back to the ship so we flagged down the waitress to ask for our check.  The total was $25 USD and we paid with credit card, plus a 3% service fee.  I do have an ATM card that waives the fees if we withdraw local currency at an ATM, but we decided it wasn’t worth it to take out pesos as this was our last day in Mexico, so it was just easier to pay the 3% credit card fee. 

We brushed off all the sand, packed up Ian’s toys, and walked back up to the main street to request another Uber for the ride back to the cruise port.  This time, it took 18 minutes for the driver to arrive, so that was kind of annoying, but it still cost just $15 to ride back to the port.

The Uber was able to pull right up to the entrance to the cruise terminal, so that was nice to save us some walking.  He dropped us off at 2:30pm, and luckily there weren’t any crowds or lines to get back on the ship.  We went straight up to the cabin for showers and to put Ian down for a nap.  This flyer was waiting for us on the bed, but of course it wasn’t relevant to us since we wouldn’t be flying home at the end of the cruise.

Ian took nearly an hour to settle down and he finally fell asleep at 4pm, so I used the app to cancel our 5:20pm MDR reservation.  Nothing on the menu seemed that exciting to me, anyway, so I was okay eating somewhere else tonight. 

At 5pm, Ian was still asleep, so that meant we had to miss the final night of Chanukah candle lighting.  We had our own toy menorah in the cabin, but it was sad that we didn’t get to see all of our new friends one last time, since we never ran into them around the ship over the next 2 sea days.

While we waited for Ian to wake up, Jason and I ordered some pre-dinner drinks to be delivered to our cabin.  I ordered the French Martini, and Jason ordered another variety of whiskey.  Both drinks were delivered within 10 minutes, so we took them out onto the balcony to enjoy as we watched the ship sail away from Puerto Vallarta.

We looked down and saw the pilot boat pulling away, so we waved goodbye.

Ian slept until 5:45pm, which must be the latest we have ever let him nap!  We figured, if he’s still sleeping, then he must need the rest, so forget anything resembling our normal routine and let him sleep as long as he wants.  Of course, he woke up starving, so we took him up to the Lido buffet for dinner.  I sat with Ian while he ate his mac and cheese, one noodle at a time.

Jason made a better use of the time and ran down to Good Spirits to pick up a few drinks for us.  As great as the app was for ordering drinks on demand, it didn’t give you the option to order any drink available on the ship.  They had a very long list of options, but I wanted the Tahitian Sky again, and Jason wanted a specific whiskey that was only available at Good Spirits, so since we knew Ian would be eating for a while, Jason went down to get our drinks and brought them back up to the buffet. 

Ian finished eating at 6:45pm, so since we were already so close to camp, we just went up to deck 17 aft and walked out onto the outside deck to watch the rest of the sunset.  Once again, we were treated to a marvelous view.  The sunsets we saw both on last year’s and this year’s Mexican Riviera cruises were by far the prettiest and most colorful sunsets we have ever observed on any of our cruises.

After the sun dipped below the horizon, we went back inside to wait for camp to open at 7pm.  Ian seemed more agreeable to going to camp tonight, so that was a nice surprise.  Outside of camp, they have this interactive screen with turtles and fish swimming in the ocean.  I saw some of the older kids playing with it another night while they waited for camp to open.  I’m really not sure what you are supposed to do with it, but Ian had fun watching the turtles, and anything that keeps him in a good mood just prior to camp drop off is a win to me!

Ian was the first kid to arrive at camp tonight, and Irene commented that she kept meaning to tell us to show up a few minutes early because she thought Ian would be more agreeable to staying at camp if he got there first before the other kids.  It looked less intimidating and he could feel like he had control over where he played and what he was doing.  It did work out like that tonight, so we left our happy child at camp and went out in search of dinner for us.

We enjoyed our meals at the other two casual dining restaurants, so we decided to try out O’Malley’s Pub tonight.  When we arrived, there weren’t any tables available, so the hostess said we could sit at the bar to eat.  I didn’t love that idea because I prefer sitting in table-height tables where my feet touch the ground.  A moment later, someone got up to leave from one of the regular tables, so we grabbed it!  It looked like a lot of people camped out at the tables, waiting for the live music to start later at night, so that made it hard for people to get a table when they just wanted to eat dinner here and I think we got lucky with our timing.

There were several things on the menu that looked good to both of us, which is a good problem to have!

For my drink, I ordered the Clover Breeze, with Absolut Vodka shaken with lavender, lemon, and melon.  Jason ordered… you guessed it!  Irish whiskey.  I guess I shouldn’t really judge him since this is an Irish pub, after all!

For the starter, we both ordered the Irish Onion Soup.  This is a spin on French onion soup, with Guinness-infused caramelized onion soup, a bowl-sized crouton, and melted cheddar cheese on top.  This soup was HUGE and way more than either of us could finish.  If we did it again, we should have let one of us order the soup, and the other person order the stack of onion rings (which we both also wanted, but opted against because we thought it would be too many onion rings for one person to eat).  Now that I’m thinking about it, we totally should have come back here one evening when the band was playing, and just ordered the onion rings stack a la carte for $5.  **makes mental note for our Enchanted Princess cruise**  

Anyway, the soup was delicious, even if it was way too big of a portion!

For his main dish, Jason ordered the Bushmills Blue Burger without bacon, and said he really liked it.  Jason has very high burger standards, so the fact that he liked this burger says a lot!  I ordered the Drunken Mussels, and I was blown away again by the presentation and portion size!  It felt like a bottomless pot of mussels, and I really had to force myself to stop eating because I was so full, but they tasted so delicious in the garlicky sauce!  

We were both full, but really wanted something sweet to end the meal, so we opted to share the Boozy Brownie, with whiskey-spiked chocolate-hazelnut brownie, chocolate ganache, and toasted hazelnuts.  This was the one downfall of the meal as the brownie was so dry we could barely eat it.  The ganache on top was yummy, so I had a few bites of that and we threw in our napkins.

After dinner, I went up to Bellini’s Bar to order a Summerberry Fizz, with blueberry, blackberry, raspberry, white peach puree, and prosecco.

Jason picked up a drink for himself, and we took our drinks down to Princess Live for the Liar’s Club.  I’ve seen this game played on other cruises and found it funny, so I was looking forward to seeing it tonight.  It was already pretty crowded when we arrived, but we found seats on a banquette towards the back.

The game was hosted by the assistant cruise director, Callum, and the contestants were Faku from the entertainment team, cruise director Jayson, and a woman (I missed her name).  

I actually want to take a moment to acknowledge the entertainment staff on this cruise.  Assistant cruise director Callum was everywhere!  He hosted so many events that I was shocked he could seemingly be in 2 places at once!  Cruise director Jayson was very visible and seemed to never take a break as we saw him working at all hours of the day and night!  I have been on other cruises where I didn’t even know who the cruise director was, so this was a nice experience to have such involved leadership in the entertainment department.

Ok, back to Liar’s Club… If you haven’t played before, the idea is Callum says a word and the 3 contestants have to explain the definition of the word.  The word is a real word in the English language, but it’s not a word most people would have heard before.  Only one of the 3 contestants is giving the true definition of the word, and the other two are just making something up, hence the name “Liar’s Club.”  When I’ve seen this played in the past, the contestants kept their answers to one or two minutes in length, so while they were very funny, they kept it short and sweet.  Tonight, the answers seemed to drag on and on, and it just wasn’t funny at all.  We have seen Jayson and Faku be funny earlier in the week, so maybe they were just having an off night?  We stayed for 2 rounds, and then left early.

We decided to go back to the atrium in search of live music somewhere, but didn’t see anything happening.  We went into Crooners to order another drink.  This time, I ordered the Dunes Martini, with Malibu Original coconut rum, melon liqueur, banana, pineapple, and lemon.

Since we had missed the 7:30pm showing of the specialty act in the theater because we were just arriving at dinner at that time, we decided to go check out the 9:30pm show.  We knew we could only stay for about 15 minutes before needing to pick up Ian from camp, so we found seats at the very back of the theater to minimize disruption when we had to leave.  Tonight’s show was called Illusions with Elliott Hunter, and he was performing magic.

I usually enjoy magicians, but his act wasn’t our favorite.  Maybe it’s because it had been a long day and we were tired, maybe it was all the alcohol, but neither of us could focus on his tricks and we weren’t all that upset when we had to leave so early.

We made our way all the way aft, and up to deck 17 to pick up Ian from camp.  Of course, he had a great night and was all smiles when he came out to us.  Tonight he colored a plastic stained glass dragonfly, but I would bet money that most of this was colored by one of the counselors and Ian did the parts with red marker.  I know my kid’s style of art haha

As we walked back to the cabin, I ordered Jason and I another round of drinks.  We knew we would be back at the cabin before the drinks arrived, so once again, it was so convenient to make use of this feature in the app!

Back at the cabin, we got Ian changed for bed and let him light the candles for the 8th night of Chanukah.

Our drinks arrived a minute later, and then we put Ian to sleep.  Tonight, there was a paper on our bed instructing us to set the clocks back one hour tonight.  After losing an hour of sleep on two nights earlier in the cruise, I was looking forward to finally gaining an hour of sleep now.  Too bad tomorrow would just be a sea day, with no real need to wake up early.

Today’s drinks total for the 2 of us = 16

Happy New Year’s Eve!  When deciding what to do in port today, I wanted to prioritize getting back to the ship early enough for Ian to take a nap in the afternoon.  Last year, Ian did not nap on the afternoon of New Year’s Eve.  Funny enough, it was a sea day on that cruise so he had plenty of opportunities to nap in our cabin, but he was too hyped up from the excitement of the cruise to give in and fall asleep.  That night, he had a complete meltdown in the atrium when we were trying to take photos all dressed up before dinner, involving loud screaming and crying, and laying on his belly in the middle of the atrium, kicking his legs and yelling.  Good times.  Then, he crashed and fell asleep in his high chair during dinner, but when he woke up, he just went right back into tantrum mode and we had to leave dinner before eating dessert.  Long story short, Ian’s skipped nap ruined New Year’s Eve for us last year and I wanted to do everything in my power to avoid a repeat performance.

Last year, we spent our day in Mazatlan at an all-inclusive resort called Hotel Playa Mazatlan.  We had a great day there and would definitely consider going back at some point, but I didn’t want to go there today because it would mean missing Ian’s nap time.  Also, we paid for the beverage package on this cruise, so an all-inclusive hotel didn’t make as much sense as it did on Carnival where we had to pay for each drink on the ship.  My back-up plan last year in case the all-inclusive didn’t work out was to visit the brand new aquarium that opened in Mazatlan in 2023.  As soon as we booked this cruise, and I realized that we would be in Mazatlan on New Year’s Eve, I immediately knew the aquarium was the perfect activity for us this morning, and we could return to the ship for lunch and to put Ian down for a nap.  Well at least that was the original plan… stay tuned to see what we actually ended up doing…

One of our top priorities on this cruise was to make sure Ian got enough sleep, so we decided not to set an alarm and to let Ian sleep as late as he wanted to every morning.  Today, Ian slept until 8:45am.  If we were going to the aquarium, we needed to be off the ship right when the gangway opened at 9am to have time to get there, see the aquarium, and get back to the ship by noon-ish for lunch.  Since we slept in so late this morning, we decided to skip the aquarium.  It didn’t seem worth it at this point since by the time we ate breakfast and Ubered over there, we would only have an hour or so to enjoy the aquarium.  Tickets were kind of pricey and it would have cost nearly $100 USD for the 3 of us, so instead, we opted to just hang out around the ship.

I took a peek outside on the balcony a few minutes after 9am and we were already docked, but our side of the ship was facing away from the city.

We went upstairs to the Lido buffet for breakfast, hoping it might not be crowded because you could already get off the ship by then.  Of course, it was mobbed as always.  I got Ian an assortment of things and he ate a little of everything, and I ate the rest.  

We purposely sat at a table near the window facing the city because I knew Ian would love watching the action in the industrial container port.

After breakfast, we took Ian up to camp at 10am.  When we arrived, the tree house room was closed, with a sign posted directing us to the room next door usually used for the older kids.

Because it was a port day, they combined the 3-7 ages with the 8-12 ages.  Ian was still so upset and traumatized from the kid who pushed him two days ago that he refused to let us leave him at camp.  The counselor Carla tried so hard to convince Ian to stay, and she literally spent 30 min with us trying to convince him she would sit with him and keep him safe and no kids would hurt him today, but Ian refused.  I feared if we didn’t make him go now, he would never be willing to go back later in the week, but every time we tried to leave, Ian started crying and we eventually gave up at 10:45am.  I am so frustrated that this bratty bully ruined camp for Ian.  You could see on Ian’s face that he wanted to go do the activities (Carla showed him the octopus and turtle stuffies that the kids would be coloring on today), but he was just so scared of the bigger kids hurting him.

Two side notes:

1) It is very strange that the kids club doesn’t have a single car or truck toy for the kids to play with.  Every single boy in Ian’s preschool class has been obsessed with cars and trucks for a year, so it’s an obvious crowd pleaser for little boys.  The only toys they have are animal-focused, and they have tons of crafts and video games, but that is more appropriate for the older kids.  If they had even just one toy car, Ian would have been thrilled and would be more likely to go to camp.  I was tempted to let Ian take one of the toy cars he had in the cabin, but the counselors discouraged that (which I understand- he knows he’s not allowed to take toys from home into school, so it was the same rules here on the cruise ship.)

2) The information available online prior to the cruise to register a child into the kids camp indicated that children must be at least 3 years old and potty trained to attend camp.  We knew this when we booked the cruise back in January, and we didn’t think we would have any issues training Ian over the next 11 months.  Very long story short, Ian was not potty trained when we embarked the ship for this cruise.  I totally understand if the kids camp staff cannot/will not change diapers, and I was willing to pick Ian up early if the staff paged me that he needed to be changed.  I was very nervous about how it would play out, since the registration paperwork required me to sign off that Ian was potty trained.  Jason and I discussed our options and we decided we would send Ian to camp in pull ups (which he has been wearing to school since August).  Hopefully the staff would not be as strict as the online registration indicated, and they wouldn’t mind that he wasn’t potty trained as long as we didn’t expect them to change him.  As it turned out, no one said anything regarding Ian’s potty situation.  He was obviously wearing pull ups (you can see them sticking up out of his shorts/pants), but the staff never said anything to us about it, so either they somehow didn’t notice, or they just didn’t care.  I wished there was a way to know it would play out that way in advance as it would have saved us a lot of stress in the weeks leading up to the cruise, but I am sure it varies based on the ship and staff, and my scenario might not be how things play out for other people in the same situation.

Ok, back to the review…

We decided to get off the ship for a few minutes, just to say we did something today.  I knew Ian would enjoy riding the tram through the container port, so we decided to head down to the gangway.

You would never know this kid was crying moments earlier.  It’s amazing what a tram ride will do to boost a 3-year-old’s spirit!

The ride is only 4 minutes long, but it is meant to prevent tourists from wandering around the busy container port while people are working and driving trucks and cranes.  Safety first!  The tram let us off at the port terminal, so we went inside to peruse some of the shops.

When we exited the port building, there were a few more shops outside, but still within the port gates.  

After the small section of outdoor shops, there is a large parking lot where I assume the shore excursion buses line up early in the morning.  By now, these were long gone and what remained were about 50 pushy taxi drivers soliciting our business.  We had no desire to explore Mazatlan today, so it was annoying when they refused to take “no, thank you” for an answer and kept asking if we wanted a tour or a ride somewhere.  Finally, we continued walking past them to the far side of the parking lot to walk around the crafts market.

I don’t know what I was expecting to find in this building, but there certainly wasn’t anything I was interested in buying.  There were 3 or 4 rows of stalls, all selling extremely touristy trinkets, like t-shirts, shot glasses, purses, and jewelry.  I have to wonder- do people actually buy this stuff?  Do these vendors sell enough merchandise to be worth their time sitting here all day?

It took us all of 5 minutes to walk through the market, and that was enough to satisfy the need to say we did something today.  We walked back past the taxi drivers, through the outside and inside port shops, and got back on the tram to return to the ship.

By now, it was nearly noon, so that seemed like a socially acceptable time to start drinking.  We went straight up to the Lido deck so I could order a pina colada.  Even though we were very stressed with Ian not wanting to attend the kids club, we hoped a fun, fruity drink by the pool would help relax us.

Of course, Ian seized any opportunity to watch the trucks and forklifts working in the port below us.

Warning to anyone with a fear of heights: The see-through floors of the SeaWalk are no joke!  I don’t really have a fear of heights, and even I got nervous standing in this area of the ship.  We could see straight down to the gangway and watch people as they reboarded the ship.

We pulled up a few chairs and positioned them along the windows so Ian could watch the action in the port while Jason and I enjoyed our drinks.

Around 12:30pm, we went inside to get some lunch at the buffet.  For once, it wasn’t crowded because everyone else was probably still enjoying their time in Mazatlan.  That gave me the opportunity to leisurely walk through all the stations of food and find some options for Ian and I to share.  The tortellini in a brown butter and sage sauce, and the arancini balls were both delicious.  Also, the egg salad (which was available every day) was very good and always something I could fall back on as an option for Ian if I didn’t see anything else he might like.

After a quick lunch, we went back to the cabin for Ian’s nap.  Remember, one of our biggest goals today was making sure Ian had enough sleep that he would be in a good mood for the New Year’s Eve festivities.

Once Ian fell asleep, Jason said he also wanted to take a quick nap, so I slipped out of the cabin to walk around in the warm sunshine.  Back outside on deck 17 near the Lido pool, I saw they arranged the furniture into roped-off sections.  I later learned that anyone could purchase these seating areas for a VIP experience for New Year’s Eve.  They ranged from $450 to $600 depending on location and how many people were in your group, and they included a private waiter to bring you drinks.  That seemed like a great idea if a group of friends were traveling together, especially since you could sit comfortably and avoid the crowds down on deck 16 closer to midnight.

 Here are some views of the container port, with the city of Mazatlan in the background.

https://flic.kr/p/2qEufsv

The lounge chairs were filling in around the pool, so I guess people were returning to the ship from their excursions.

I went back to the cabin at 1:45pm just as Jason woke up from his nap.  We decided to test out  the scheduled delivery feature in the room service app.  We ordered some drinks to be delivered to the room at 3pm.  I tried the Illusion…

Once the order was placed, I went to sit outside on the balcony so I wouldn’t wake Ian.  3pm came and went.  While we waited for our drinks, I decided to take a shower and start getting ready for New Year’s Eve/Formal Night.  At 3:45pm, the drinks still weren’t delivered so we called room service from our cabin phone.  They couldn’t really explain what happened, but they placed the order again, and it came within 10 minutes.  I guess the moral of the story is: don’t use the scheduled delivery feature because they will forget about your order!  Otherwise, we really did love the convenience of ordering drinks to the room through the app, but it worked much better when you requested delivery ASAP instead of scheduling it in advance.

When Ian woke up from his nap, we got him showered and dressed so we could find somewhere with a nice background around the ship to take family photos.

Down on deck 6 in the Piazza, I was surprised that the ship’s photographer hadn’t taken over the prime location in front of the spiral steps, so we took advantage and asked someone walking by if she could take our photo.  I’m not sure if that woman is reading this, but thank you for being so patient as we coaxed Ian to pose with us.  She did a beautiful job taking several photos on my phone.

I remembered that there was a beautiful gold and silver mosaic on the wall near Princess Live and thought it would make the perfect backdrop to coordinate with the gold sequins on my dress.  For reference, this was a photo I took of that wall later in the week:

Imagine my huge disappointment when we got there, only to see that the ship’s photographers hung a solid gold backdrop in front of the mosaic.  Why would they do that?!  I saw them using the mosaic as a backdrop for the professional photos on a different night, so it’s not like the reflection from the tiles caused any issues.  Couldn’t they have set up this solid gold backdrop somewhere else so it didn’t block the beautiful mosaic that was already installed on the ship?  To make it even worse, they set up this ugly bulky black lighting equipment right in the middle of the backdrop so we couldn’t even take a good photo here.

We tried scooting to the other side and zooming in, and this was the best we could get.  Such a bummer when the mosaic would have looked so interesting as a backdrop.

By then, it was nearly 5pm, so we went upstairs to the Lido buffet for tonight’s Chanukah menorah lighting.  I didn’t take any photos, but I was impressed that there was still a good turnout despite it being night 7 of Chanukah and New Year’s Eve, when it would be understandable if people had other things on their mind and might forget to come.  We only stayed for a few minutes because we wanted to be on time for our 5:20pm dinner reservations in the Ketchikan dining room.

After we checked in with the hostess, she told us to pick out a party hat for New Year’s Eve.  I loved that Princess supplied these custom hats with the Princess logo.  It created such a festive atmosphere with everyone on the ship wearing the same hats, tiaras, and glasses.

They even printed special menus for dinner tonight

This little boy was thrilled when I said it was okay for him to order Mac and Cheese for the umpteenth time this week.

The drinks waiter asked if he could get us anything so I ordered a prosecco, and then another refill or two as the meal went on.  It is New Year’s Eve, afterall!

I ordered the seafood salad for my starter, with citrus-marinated mussels, shrimp, calamari, octopus, mixed greens, and lemon-dill vinaigrette.  

Jason and I also shared the almond-crusted baked brie appetizer, which worked out well because it was served with 2 brie balls.

I debated ordering the surf and turf, but instead opted for the seafood trio as my main dish, with broiled lobster tail, shrimp risotto, and seared scallops.  I was really in a seafood mood this whole week, and everything was delicious.

For dessert, I ordered the dark chocolate mousse cake.

Jason ordered the Baked Alaska, which gets an A+ for presentation!  Maybe I’m just used to how Carnival serves this dessert, but I have never seen Baked Alaska look like this and it was quite impressive.

By some miracle, Ian agreed to go to camp tonight!  I think we actually made a deal with him that he could only order the Mac and Cheese for dinner if he went to camp, but I didn’t think it would work!  That meant Jason and I could enjoy tonight’s production show from seats closer to the front of the theater.  

The theater doors open at 7pm, but that’s also the time camp opens for drop offs.  Since we knew both of us needed to be with Ian at camp to maximize the chances he would agree to stay there, and since camp is on deck 17 aft while the theater is on deck 6 forward, we didn’t get to the theater until 7:20pm.  By then, all of the best seats were taken.  Princess reserves many of the best seats in the theater for people who paid for the Premier Package.  When we got to the theater, most of those reserved seats were empty, but we were still told that we had to wait until 7:25pm, 5 minutes prior to show time, before we could sit there.  I took a seat immediately next to a long row of reserved seats, but much further to the side of the stage than I wanted to sit.  Promptly at 7:25pm, there was an announcement in the theater that we were cleared to sit in the Premier reserved seats, so I moved over to the aisle seat with a much better view.  

While I was figuring out where we would sit, Jason tried to find a crew member in the theater to order our drinks.  He found out that Princess does not take drink orders in the theater because there isn’t enough walking space between the rows for the servers to deliver drinks to your seat unless you are seated in an aisle.  That was a bummer, but not a huge deal- he left the theater and found a bar somewhere nearby to get us some drinks.  By the time he returned, I had already moved over into the Premier seats, so he was a little confused why I was allowed to sit there and I had to explain to him about the announcement he missed.

Tonight’s show was called Viva La Musica, with a theme of Latin music.

I was expecting to hear a full show of Top 40 songs by Latin artists.  While that did happen for part of the show, with songs like “Rhythm Is Gonna Get You” by Miami Sound Machine, “Havana” by Camila Cabello, “Maria Maria” by Santana, and “Hips Don’t Lie” by Shakira, there was also a large portion of songs sung in Spanish which I have never heard before.  Yes, I suppose that does fall into the same genre, but I would have preferred the show only use familiar Top 40 songs.  I will say that there was a Latin ballroom dancing duo who were fantastic.

The show was over by 8:15pm.  As we were leaving the theater, I spotted another mosaic wall that matched my dress near The Shops of Princess on deck 7, so we stopped for a quick photo.  

Up next in our Ian-free evening, we went to Princess Live for the Majority Rules trivia game.  Do you know how in the game Family Feud, they poll 100 random people and contestants try to guess the most popular answer?  This game was similar, but instead, they had us divide into small teams and we had to write our answer to each question on a piece of paper and hand it in to a crew member at the front of the room.  He tallied up all the responses and whichever teams guessed the most common answer got the point.  They asked around 6 or so questions, and whichever team had the most points at the end was the winner.  We sat at a small table with another couple, so naturally we paired up with them as a team.  We didn’t do very well with guessing the most popular answers, but we still had a lot of fun.  Cruise Director Jayson hosted this game and he was very clever and quick on his feet to make jokes in response to reading the various answers aloud.  The game was supposed to be family friendly, so he got creative in censoring some of the responses.

When the game ended, we went down to the Piazza to see what was going on around there.  I went to Good Spirits and ordered the Vanilla Sky, with vanilla vodka, fresh pineapple, orgeat syrup, lime, agave, and triple sec.  I really enjoyed this drink and ordered it a few times over the rest of the cruise.

Jason ordered another whiskey as he continued sampling all the options on the ship, and we took our drinks across the piazza to O’Malley’s Irish Pub to listen to live music from the Landlubbers.

By then, it was 9:30pm and we had a tough decision to make.  Camp Discovery ends their complimentary evening session at 10pm.  We either had to pick Ian up before 10pm, or we could leave him up there and pay the $5 per hour rate for late night group babysitting.  Prior to the cruise, we planned to leave Ian in camp until after midnight so we could enjoy the New Year’s Eve festivities around the ship and take part in the countdown to 2025.  Now that we were on the cruise and saw that Ian was so hesitant to go to camp, we thought it made more sense to go pick him up early.  We were afraid we would overstep our luck if we tried leaving him there past 10pm.   

I was curious if the party started on Lido deck so we went up there at 9:45pm on our way to get Ian.  It was still pretty empty at this early hour, but I saw photos the next morning from people who went later at night and it was completely packed.  I hope everyone else enjoyed their New Year’s Eve on the Discovery Princess, but unfortunately, that just wasn’t in the cards for us this year.

When he saw us arrive to pick him up at camp, Ian came running out with a huge smile on his face.  He had so much fun and said that no one pushed him or was mean to him.  Time would tell if he would willingly return to camp later in the cruise, but we were glad he had a good time tonight and gave us a much-needed night off from parenting duty.  Back in the cabin, this not-so-welcome paper was sitting on our bed:

I know Puerto Vallarta is in a different time zone than Cabo and Mazatlan, but did it really make sense to lose an hour of sleep overnight from New Years Eve into New Years Day?  As it was, our earliest arrival time of the cruise was tomorrow when we were scheduled to be in Puerto Vallarta at 8am, but setting the clocks forward one hour meant it would feel more like 7am.  Ugh!  This seemed like a good day to try out the room service breakfast door tag.  I put this outside our cabin, turned off the privacy button, and decided to let the knock at our door be our wake up call tomorrow.

Today’s drinks total for the 2 of us = 22

I was very conflicted about what we should do during our day in Cabo.  We didn’t arrive in port until noon, and it’s a tender port so I wasn’t sure what time we would actually step foot on land and what time would be safe to schedule a private excursion.  If you read my review from last year on the Carnival Panorama, you know that we paid for Faster to the Fun to ensure we got onto one of the first tenders, but Princess does not have an equivalent program, and since we don’t have any seniority with Princess and we weren’t cruising in a suite cabin, all bets were off as to when we would actually get in a tender.  Last year, we had quite a debacle with our planned excursion which ended up getting canceled with no notice when we arrived at the tour meeting spot.  In an attempt to salvage our day, we booked one of the small boats to take us on a 1 hour ride out to see the Arch.  The tour was fine, but not really something I cared to repeat, especially since you basically get that same view from the ship for free.

One stress-free way to avoid the logistics of taking a tender is to book a shore excursion through the cruise ship.  If you have read my prior reviews, you know that as a rule, I never book excursions through the ship.  I usually find them to be more expensive, with more people on the tour, and doing fewer activities within the time of the excursion, as compared to booking a private excursion.  I decided to just take a look at what tours Princess offered, since it might be worth doing for the right price.  Most of the excursions cost $100 or more per person, so that was hard to justify.  For some reason, they had the Cabo by Land and Sea excursion priced at $50 per person (and Ian was $45 for the child rate), for a 5 hour excursion!  That pricing honestly seemed like a mistake!  This tour would take us on the same boat ride out to see the Arch as we did last year, but I assumed it would be on a larger boat (last year, our boat only held around 10 people, but surely a ship excursion would contract with a larger boat to fit more people on the tour).  We would also take a bus to visit a glass blowing factory, a church in San Jose del Cabo, and a restaurant with a scenic overlook.  Honestly, no part of this excursion was overly exciting to me, but it sounded like a nice way to spend the day, and it was one of the few excursions that allowed 3-year-old children to join, plus it solved the logistics of how to get off the ship that day since Princess gives priority tender access to people booked on their shore excursions.  I decided to book the excursion before the price went up (in case this was, in fact, a glitch), and since you can cancel for a full refund at any time before the cruise, I kept my eyes open for other options I liked better.  In the end, my suspicions were right about the super low price.  I don’t think it was a glitch, per se, but I monitored the price all year and it peaked at $99 per person, so we got a great deal by booking so early!

Nothing in life is easy, right?  So it should come as no surprise to you that when I checked my email one morning in late October, I saw a notification from Princess that my excursion had been cancelled due to a “pricing discrepancy.”  My first thought was to check the Princess website to see if the excursion was still available for booking.  It was… for $85 per person.   I called Princess customer service to see if they would honor the price we booked in April, and the representative told me it was the 3rd party vendor’s fault that our tickets were cancelled.  She said there was nothing she could do and that if I wanted to take the tour, I had to rebook at the new price.  I asked to escalate this matter to a supervisor, and it took over 2 weeks (and many more follow up phone calls and emails) to finally speak with someone who had more authority than the initial customer service rep.  The supervisor really held his ground in blaming the cancellation on the tour vendor.  Princess contracts with local vendors for most of their shore excursions, so to me, that means they are taking ownership of the logistics.  I booked on the Princess website fair and square, so Princess has the responsibility to honor that price.  This really bothered me and left me feeling like Princess was nickel and diming us.  Did it really make sense for them to anger a family of first-time Princess cruisers over $35 per person?!  And why did it take them 6 months to figure out that they weren’t happy with the price we paid. If I go into a department store in April and buy a dress for $50, the store employees can’t come into my closet and take back the dress in October if they decided the dress should cost $85 instead!  That’s not how pricing works!  It is fine if Princess wants to charge more for people who book the tour at a later date- supply and demand causes price fluctuations all the time.  People who book early should be grandfathered into that original price.  Finally, after a lot of back and forth, the supervisor said he would give us onboard credit to cover the difference in price, so I was satisfied with that solution and rebooked our excursion, immediately applying the onboard credit so my net out of pocket expense remained the same.  Unfortunately, this whole scenario left me with a sour taste in my mouth.  Can I really trust anything I book with Princess going forward?  Or do I need to consider all bookings as unconfirmed indefinitely?  

When we boarded the ship on Saturday, I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the excursion tickets waiting for us in an envelope on our bed.  Part of me was still expecting to be notified that our excursion was cancelled again, but this seemed like a more promising sign that we were good to go.

So that brings us back to real time.  Here is the copy of today’s Princess Patter that our steward left in our cabin last night:

We all took advantage of the late arrival into port and slept in until 8:30am.  Once awake, Ian wanted to go outside on the balcony.  I purposely booked our cabin on the port side of the ship so we would have a good view of the Baja Peninsula as we sailed closer to Cabo.

It looked like it would be a beautiful day with bright blue skies and not a cloud in sight.

Our scheduling today was a little weird because we had to meet in the theater at noon for our excursion and we wanted to eat lunch before then.  By the time we all got dressed and ready for the day, it was nearly 9:15am, so we had to eat 2 meals in 2 and a half hours.  We decided this would be a good day to try out the International Cafe, as they had smaller, lighter options compared to the buffet.

I don’t think I have mentioned this yet, but we put Ian’s medallion in a bracelet Airtag holder, and fastened it around his ankle.  I can’t imagine giving Ian his medallion with the included lanyard to wear around his neck and expecting it not to get lost all week.  The bracelet I bought him was velcro, so it was hard for him to remove, and we told him he had to wear it if he wanted to be on the cruise ship (which, of course, he did).  This photo shows it well since this was the first time it was warm enough to dress Ian in shorts.

The line at the International Cafe had only 2 or 3 people ahead of us when we arrived, so that gave us a minute to pick out what we wanted while we waited for our turn.  I ordered the Princess Egg Muffin, but was disappointed to learn the egg wasn’t fully cooked… no thank you!  I think Jason finished it for me, always taking one for the team!  

I went back and ordered an almond croissant, which was much more to my liking.  I didn’t take a photo of it though.  Ian had a donut, which I am fairly certain was the first one he ever had.  I know they served munchkins at his preschool class holiday party, but he refused to try one.  Seeing all the colorful donuts in the display case, he couldn’t resist, and of course he loved it.  

After breakfast, we had some free time so we took Ian back up to camp.  We thought it wouldn’t be crowded this morning since most people were getting ready to get off the ship when we arrived in Cabo, and we were right.  I think there might have been one kid playing in camp when we arrived.  Ian still insisted he didn’t want to go to camp because he was afraid the big kid would push him.  We tried to show him that the big kid wasn’t there, and he would practically have the whole room to himself, but he wasn’t having any of it.  One of the counselors, Irene, was so patient with him, and she really tried to convince him he would be safe.  She even went and got a stuffed animal for him that she said was left over as gifts from the Christmas cruise last week, so it wasn’t something the kids this week were meant to receive.  We really appreciated her efforts, but in the end, Ian wanted to stay with us.  Irene said she would look into what happened yesterday and see if any of the staff witnessed it so they could speak to the child who did it.  I do believe Ian that it happened, as he has gone to school at home every day for 3 years and has never made an accusation like that, but I don’t think the staff ever figured out who did it.

We decided to take Ian and his new stuffed leopard back to the cabin to hang out on the balcony for an hour and watch the sail into Cabo.

At 11am, we went back up to the buffet for an early lunch.  As expected, it was very crowded with everyone trying to grab some food before we anchored in Cabo.  I grabbed a few things and searched for a table.  Maybe it’s just because our sailing was booked to capacity, but it didn’t seem like there were enough tables in the buffet for the number of guests on board, and we were always searching for several minutes before we could find a table.  Luckily, we saw someone getting up from a table next to the window, so I ran over to grab it before someone beat me to it.

As we were eating, we noticed a lot of commotion.  Someone saw a whale!  I heard that people saw several whales jumping and putting on a great show, but we weren’t that lucky.  I did happen to see one whale tail though, so that’s better than nothing.  

Can you find it?…

Here it is:

We finished up eating as the ship continued into the bay.

Once I saw the rocks at Land’s End, I knew we were nearly there.

We went down to the theater at noon and were given a color/number coded sticker to wear, then we were directed to sit in a specific row for our excursion.  One whole row was already filled with people wearing stickers for our tour, so we started a new row behind them.  In the end, there were 3 full rows with people from our tour, and nearly every seat in the theater was occupied with people taking other excursions.  

A few minutes later, they started calling tours to leave the theater and head down to a tender, but unfortunately for us, we were one of the last groups called.  Finally, it was our turn at 12:35pm.  We followed the people ahead of us out of the theater, down the forward stairs, and out to the tender.  They used one of the lifeboats from the ship as a tender, so we found a seat on the lower level and waited for the rest of the boat to fill up.  I usually like sitting up on top of the tender so I can get a photo of the ship anchored in the bay, but it just didn’t work out that way today.  Once it was filled, the ride out to the pier took about 10 minutes.  

By the time we got off the tender, it was 1:05pm.  When they said our tour started at 12:30pm, I’m not sure if they meant that was the time we were due to leave the ship, but something tells me the tender ride was not supposed to be part of the tour timing.  In fact, I actually expected that the tour would start with the catamaran portion of the itinerary, and that boat would pick us up directly from the ship, avoiding the need to tender at all.  I was wrong, and all of this timing will come into play later in the day.

Once we got off the tender, we were told to line up along the pier with another tour group.  Those people were also doing a catamaran ride to the arch, but after that, they were going to the beach.  I will give Princess credit for good logistics and planning because they put everyone from our tour and the catamaran/beach tour together onto one tender boat, so at least we all arrived on the pier at the same time if they wanted to lump us together on the same catamaran.  

Sure enough, the guides led us all through the port area to a large catamaran for the boat portion of our tour.  This is usually where I would insert a photo of our catamaran, but it looks like I didn’t take any photos of the boat itself.  I was probably too busy holding Ian’s hand to guide/drag him through the marina to make sure he didn’t run off and fall in the water.

As we boarded the catamaran, we were handed a slip of paper to redeem for a beer at our next stop.  I thought that was weird- why are you asking me to hold onto this piece of paper for something happening nearly 2 hours from now?  Couldn’t you have waited until I was on the tour bus to hand this out?  

Anyway, we were then offered complimentary a cup of water, cola, or a Shirley Temple, but I didn’t take anything because it would be hard to juggle the open cup while also watching after Ian on a moving boat.  I was surprised to see that there were already a bunch of people on the catamaran, so apparently there were 3 different tours all combined on this boat.  Those people got dibs on the best seats up on the top deck, so we went back down to the middle deck to find a seat.  It actually worked out well for us because we prefer to stay in the shade, so we could easily duck inside the covered seating area, then go outside to look at the views, whereas on the top deck, there was very little shade.  Plus, since most people wanted to be on the top deck for the best views, the middle deck wasn’t crowded and we had plenty of space to move around.

Once everyone was aboard the catamaran, the crew turned on some loud upbeat music and we set off into the bay.  This photo was taken as we first started to move, so you can see how close we were to the tender drop off spot… basically just around the corner.

A few photos as we sailed out of the marina…

This looked like a nice beach that was probably within walking distance of the tender drop off.

Last year, the smaller boat took us much closer to the rocks and narrated what we were seeing.  This tour wasn’t like that.  I understand that a bigger boat can’t hug as closely to the shore, but it would have been nice if the guides gave us some narration or something.  I actually just looked back at the tour summary I saved after booking this tour.  This is the description of the boat portion of the tour:

Begin the day when you board a catamaran for a 40-minute sail to the very tip of the longest peninsula in the world. To enhance your voyage, narration by J.M. Cousteau details the marine life you will see, the views from Land’s End, El Arco and the early history of Baja California.

Yea, that wasn’t accurate at all…

Anyway, I walked around to the other side of the boat to get some photos of the Discovery Princess anchored in the bay.  

The Holland America ship Koningsdam was also in port today.

I think this beach is popular with tourists visiting Cabo, and it looks like there are a bunch of hotels along this stretch of beach across the bay.

It took about 15 minutes for us to reach the Arch.  I apologize for these photos… The angle of the sun put the Arch and other rocks along the coastline in silhouette.  This photo was taken at 1:45pm.  Given that we were just 8 days after the Winter Solstice, the days were short and the sun had already progressed to the West, leaving the Arch in a shadow.  As I recall, we encountered the same problem on last year’s visit to Cabo.  I know some of the Carnival itineraries visit Cabo in the morning from like 6am until 1pm or something like that, so that might be what it takes to get a better view of the Arch in the sun.  Maybe that’s an excuse to book another cruise??

We spent about 20 minutes out in this area of the bay, looking at the Arch.  There were lots of staff on the boat who offered to take our photo, so we tried our best to get a decent photo, but it was very windy and the waters were choppy, so this was the best we could get…

The perfectionist in me just can’t handle that, so pardon me while I edit this photo to a somewhat-horizontal horizon…

Ian was such a trooper on this boat ride.  He stayed with us and loved looking out at the views.

It felt like we were just killing time out there, spinning around in circles.  Oh look, there’s the arch again…

Oh, and there’s our ship again…

Towards the end of our time out there, we noticed some smaller boats further out in the ocean.  When they all started congregating together, I had a feeling there was a whale nearby.  I snapped a few photos, hoping to capture something I missed with my naked eye, but nope, I can’t see the whale.  Maybe there was something swimming beneath the surface and they were waiting for it to breach?  That would have been fun to see, but that’s when our catamaran started making its way back towards the marina.

It took us about 15 minutes to return to the dock, and then everyone filed off the boat by 2:20pm.  I could already tell that the 5 hour timeframe quoted in the original description of this tour was just a suggestion.

Back in the port area, we were instructed to line up, two by two, and follow the guides through the shopping area and around the corner to a parking lot behind the stores.

We were then given a second sticker to wear with the company name “Tropical Tours”.  We were given a pink sticker, and I later noticed other people had an orange sticker, and the two guides split us onto two large coach buses.  Our guide was Cecelia, and our driver was Elmer.  Cecelia explained the itinerary for the day, and requested that we sit in the same seats each time we got on the bus.  Ian and I sat together, and Jason sat alone in the row behind us.  We thought someone might need to sit next to him, but no one did, so I guess the bus wasn’t completely full.  Once everyone was seated, Elmer drove away towards our first stop, and Cecelia got on the microphone to narrate.  She actually did a great job of narrating for the entire bus ride all day.  Sometimes it felt like she had too much information to share and I would inadvertently tune her out, but I prefer that over silence.  After all, it is her job to be our guide!

Twenty minutes later, we arrived at our first stop, the glass blowing factory.

Cecelia said we could spend 30 minutes here, and told us where to go inside the building to watch the glass blowing demonstration.  The building had a beautiful old brick facade with giant stained glass murals.  I really liked this one of two men blowing glass…

Inside the factory, there was a small seating area with bleachers where we could watch the men work.  Back in 2016 and again in 2018, we cruised on 2 Celebrity ships that had a glass blowing studio.  We spent many hours watching them work, and they did an amazing job of explaining everything they did and answering audience questions, so I expected today’s demonstration to be similar.  It wasn’t.  We just watched the men work and I’m not even sure if they knew we were sitting there.  No one explained what they were doing or anything about the art of glass blowing, and we were glad we were at least somewhat familiar with the techniques to appreciate what we were watching.

It took the man about 10 minutes to create this sea turtle drinking a beer, and wearing a sombrero.  When he was done, we walked around the store where they had hundreds of glasses, plates, and figurines available for purchase.

We weren’t interested in buying anything, but the prices were quite reasonable.  I found a shelf filled with the same turtle figurine we just watched him make, and that cost $35 USD.

Being in that store was giving me too much anxiety with worrying that Ian might break something, so we went back out to the entry area to look at the other stained glass murals.

The outside of the building was very pretty, with a huge bougainvillea in full bloom, and a view of the stained glass murals from the outside.

We were told to meet back on the bus by 3:30pm, then we set off for our next stop.  On the way, we spotted our ship and the HAL ship floating in the bay.  It’s always reassuring to see they haven’t left without us!

Ian always loves riding the bus, partly because he doesn’t have to be strapped into his backwards-facing car seat like at home!  He had a great time looking out the window.

We drove for 10 minutes, then the bus stopped on the side of a busy street and we were told to get off as we had arrived at the restaurant Puerto Vieja for our scenic view and complimentary beer.  This is when we would need that small slip of paper that was handed out before the catamaran tour.  Wouldn’t it have made more sense for Cecelia to hand it to us as we got off the bus at this stop?  We were told to be back on the bus in 15 minutes.

We walked up a few stairs and entered a small restaurant with an old wood bar along one wall.  This was where they exchanged our slips of paper for either a Dos Equis Amber or a can of soda.  

Cecelia had given me 3 slips of paper to redeem for 3 drinks.  Ian does not drink soda and is perfectly happy drinking water from his sippy cup, so I redeemed his slip for a third beer that Jason and I shared.  Why not, right?!  We took our beers into an indoor seating area at the back of the restaurant.  

The room had one window with a view out to the bay in the distance.  This was the view… 

Now maybe I’m being overly critical, but I was disappointed.  This was the restaurant description from the original tour summary:

Pause for a refreshing, complimentary beverage at a cliff-top restaurant with sweeping views of the bay.

Yes, I suppose this can be considered a “cliff-top restaurant”, if you can look past the cars and debris in the parking lot immediately outside the window.  But “sweeping views”?!  That seems like an over-embellishment.  I was envisioning a restaurant with an outdoor patio or yard with a clear view of the bay or the ocean.  This was a dirty window with a limited view, and definitely not what I thought we were signing up for.

Anyway, we sat down at one of the tables to sip our beers.

Shortly after we sat down, Cecelia said it was time to return to the bus, so we asked if it was okay to take our beers with us since most people weren’t finished yet.  She said that was okay, so we went back outside to get on the bus.  As we were leaving, the second bus arrived with the other people on our tour, so I guess they staggered us a few minutes apart.  The restaurant wouldn’t have been big enough for everyone to be there at the same time anyway.

This was our tour bus.  It was a large bus with comfortable seats, individual air conditioner vents at each seat, and a good sound system to hear Cecelia when she spoke over the microphone. 

Once everyone was back on the bus, we drove 30 minutes along the coast towards San Jose del Cabo.  Cecelia pointed out all of the high-end resorts with beautiful landscaping.  I have only been to Cabo on a cruise ship, so it was interesting to see some of the hotels and all-inclusives that I’ve heard about.

Ten minutes into the drive, I looked down to see that Ian had fallen asleep.  We knew it was inevitable that he would fall asleep on the bus since we had to skip his nap with the afternoon port times, but I had hoped he would hold off until the long bus ride back to the ship at the end of the tour.

Cecelia said this beach is very popular for surfers, although we didn’t see anyone riding the waves this evening.

We arrived in San Jose del Cabo at 4:30pm.  Elmer parked the car in the outskirts of the downtown area, and Cecelia led us down the street to the main square.  Ian was still asleep, so we tried to pick him up to carry him off the bus, but of course, that woke him up and he wasn’t very happy about it.  We hurried down the block to catch up with Cecelia because we needed the information on where and when to meet the group.  

We caught up with the group just as Cecelia was setting everyone free to explore the town on our own.  She told us to meet back in 1 hour at this spot in front of the mission.

She recommended a restaurant called Natalie’s if anyone wanted to grab a quick drink or some Mexican food.  It was located a block away behind the church, so we walked up there to check it out.

As it turned out, Natalie’s did not have a normal menu.  Their only option was to order a combination of one appetizer and one drink for $18 USD.  That wasn’t really what we had in mind as we just wanted to share a snack like a quesadilla or some tacos between the three of us, so we walked back down to the main square, assuming there must be plenty of restaurants down there.

The main square was pretty deserted.  I assume it comes more alive later at night, but at 4:45pm, we couldn’t find any restaurants or places to buy something quick to eat.  We kept walking and turned onto a tree-lined side street with colorful flags hanging overhead.  It was a cute little town and made for a pleasant walk, but we couldn’t find anywhere to eat, and it felt like we were just wasting time until 5:30pm when we had to meet the group back at the church.

We walked back towards the meeting spot to look around inside the church.  I didn’t notice any plaques with details of the history, so I looked up an article on Wikipedia.  The mission was established in 1730, and was the southernmost of the Jesuit missions on the Baja California peninsula.  It was then moved several times and changed control over the next century until it was closed in 1840.  The building was damaged by several storms in the early 20th century, but was renovated and expanded to the building that stands today.  

The doors to the church were open and anyone was welcome to enter.  No one else was inside besides one other couple from our tour group, so we looked around and took some photos.

By then, it was nearly 5:30pm, so we went back down to the sidewalk to meet Cecelia and the other people from our group.  Funny enough, I don’t recall seeing anyone from the second tour bus, so I wonder if they had a different meeting spot?  Once everyone arrived, we walked back to the main road where our bus was waiting for us.  It was now 5:35pm.  According to the original description of this tour, it was supposed to start at 12:30pm and last for 5 hours, meaning we should have been back at the starting point near the tenders by now.  As it turned out, we hit traffic on the drive back, and we didn’t arrive until 6:30pm.  We were sitting near the front of the bus, so I could overhear when Cecelia received two phone calls from the tour company because they were worried that we weren’t back yet.  Overall, this tour was mediocre at best.  The stops were boring and underwhelming, and while I’m glad we booked the tour as something different to do, it ended up being a very long day and part of me wished we just relaxed on the ship instead.

We got off the bus at 6:30pm and walked through the shopping area to find an enormous line for the tenders back to the ship.  The last tender was scheduled to leave at 7pm, so I was really glad this tour was booked through the cruise line and we didn’t need to worry that the ship might leave without us.  Even still, we were hungry and tired, and just wanted to get back on board as soon as possible.

We waited in line for 20 minutes until it was our turn to board the tender.  On the bright side, it’s always fun to see the lights twinkling on the water in the marina when you are in port after dark.

Even after the last person boarded the tender, we remained tied to the dock until 7pm, so I guess they wanted us to be the last tender of the night.  That’s definitely a first for me, as I never cut it this close to making it back to the ship on time!  We were sitting on the lower level again, but I tried to get a photo of the ship all lit up at night…

We finally got back to the ship at 7:15pm, so by then we definitely missed the 6pm reservations I had pre-booked for the Ketchikan dining room.  Hopefully it wasn’t a problem that I didn’t cancel the reservations, and they could see that my medallion wasn’t on board yet so they knew I wasn’t coming to dinner.  This was the dinner menu that night.

Instead, we decided to go straight to Gigi’s Pizzeria to redeem our second casual dining meal.  We thought that would be a faster dinner than going to the MDR without a reservation.  Luckily, they were able to seat us immediately, and we quickly scanned the menu to place our order as soon as the waitress came to our table to greet us.

I ordered the antipasto platter for my appetizer, with prosciutto, salami, mortadella, artichoke hearts, sun-dried tomatoes, kalamata olives, aged cheeses, and crostini.

For my main dish, I ordered the Pizza Capricciosa, with tomato sauce, mozzarella, artichoke hearts, mushrooms, ham, black olives, and basil.

Both dishes were very good, but we skipped dessert because while we thought Ian would be thrilled to share our pizzas, he was overtired and cranky and therefore in a bad mood and being difficult.  We took him upstairs to the buffet so he could have some mac and cheese (obviously).  While he ate, we used the app to order drinks to our table, but it took over 30 minutes to arrive and by then, Ian was done eating so we took the drinks to go.

We knew we were on borrowed time with Ian’s lack of a nap today, so we went back to the cabin.  Knowing room service would take a little while to arrive, we used the app again to order drinks to be delivered to our cabin.  That was such a great feature in the app- it allowed you to request the drink be delivered to your current location or to your cabin, so we could order in advance, knowing we would get to the cabin before the drinks arrived.  

Sure enough, it took an hour for this drink to finally be delivered to our cabin, but that gave us time to get Ian ready for bed.

We enjoyed our drinks in a dark cabin after Ian finally fell asleep.

Today’s drinks total for the 2 of us = 10

Ian woke up this morning at 6:30am because he couldn’t find the Hot Wheels car he took to sleep with him.  This kid is obsessed with his toy cars and he always takes one or two into his crib at home.  Who needs a stuffed animal when you can cuddle with a metal car?!  Once we found the car (at the foot of his bed, where he always puts his cars when he sleeps so I’m not sure why he didn’t check there first?), I was too awake to fall back to sleep so I just got up to get ready for the day.  While I was scrolling through the Princess app, I was a bit confused by the ship time as compared to the time on my phone…

When I continued browsing on a different screen, it went back to normal. Weird!  I actually noticed this a few times during the cruise, so it always left me second guessing what time it really was.

I spent the next few minutes unpacking the rest of our checked suitcases as quietly as I could.  The closet area has a motion sensor on the light.  Maybe there was a switch somewhere, but we never found it, so we just relied on turning the light on by motion.  The problem was, when I was sitting on the floor sorting through our luggage, the light kept turning off.  Simply waving my arms in the air wasn’t enough to turn it back on, so every couple of minutes, I had to stand up to trigger the light, then go back down to continue what I was doing on the floor.  Who needs a gym when you have a motion sensor in your cruise cabin?!  

This is not the best photo because the cabin lights were still off while Jason and Ian were sleeping, but this is how I set up the closet.  Jason’s dress shirts and pants hung on the left side, then I hung my dresses.  The pink and black hanging shoe organizer provided extra shelf space for Ian’s small clothes, and finally I hung our hanging shoe rack with pockets on the far right side of the closet for little odds and ends like sunscreen, sunglasses, and spare diapers for Ian.  You can’t see it in this photo because it was too dark and shadowy, but all of our shoes are piled on the floor under the clothes, as is Ian’s stroller folded up on the far left side, and our 2 rolling carry-on bags on the far right side.  The closet is actually the perfect depth for the 2 rolling carry-on bags to tuck in side-by-side behind the closet with shelves on the right of this photo.  You can also see the top shelf with our collapsible storage cubes for laundry, and the rest of Jason’s t-shirts too.

I heard Ian squirming in bed around 7:30am, so I got him dressed quietly and we went upstairs to the Lido Buffet for breakfast while Jason slept in.  The temperatures were in the low to mid 50’s all morning, so we put on pants and hoodies to keep warm.  That is definitely one downside to these Mexican Riviera cruises… the weather is a bit cooler than I would prefer on the sea days going out and back into Los Angeles.  It did warm up on the port days down in Mexico, but in the meantime, we needed a few layers to stay comfortable.

When we got upstairs to the buffet, it was moderately crowded, which surprised me considering it wasn’t even 8am yet.  I walked through the buffet again an hour later and it was packed, so maybe it’s always busy in there?  I don’t know.  I wandered around for a few minutes, trying to get the lay of the land.  I’m not sure if I should consider this a good thing or a bad thing, but I found the buffet layout to be very confusing.  I am used to other ships that might have several stations or lines in the midship area of the buffet and again towards the aft of the buffet, but these stations all had the same foods.  You could just commit to one of those stations and know you had seen all of the foods available for that meal.  On the Discovery, the foods were different at every station, so you had to walk through both the midship section and the aft section to see all of the options.  In one way, that’s a good thing because it meant there were tons of options.  Unfortunately for me, it was also a bad thing because it meant a lot of extra walking while trying to keep track of a 3 year old who liked to run ahead and get lost.  Usually I get the hang of the flow in the buffet after a day or two on a new ship, but even on the last morning of our cruise, I still found myself getting turned around and lost.  

The one hidden gem of the buffet line was the pastry shop in the midship section of the buffet.  At breakfast, they always had a ton of varieties of croissants, muffins, and danishes, and at lunch and dinner, they had the cakes, cookies, and other desserts in this area.  

I picked up a few different options from around the buffet so Ian and I could share everything, and we found a table to enjoy our breakfast.  In another example of the excellent service on this ship, every time we sat down at the buffet, one of the crew members came over within seconds to ask what we wanted to drink.  Before traveling with a child, I used to get my own drinks from the fountains in the buffet area.  That was not possible on this cruise as I needed one free hand to hold Ian’s hand and prevent him from running away, and another hand to hold my plate of food.  I actually often took a second empty plate and nested it under the plate of food so when we got to the table, I could divide up the food for us each to eat.  I really appreciated that the crew were so attentive in getting us drinks, even if I only wanted a cup of water, because I simply didn’t have enough hands to get it for myself.  It was also convenient that they kept each table stocked with silverware rolled into a cloth napkin so there was no need to juggle that along with the plate of food while searching for somewhere to sit.

After breakfast, I took Ian for a walk around the ship to explore and get a better lay of the land.  It was still chilly outside, so we went down to the Piazza, which was nice and quiet as it was still only 8:30am.  My apologies in advance as now that I am looking back at these photos, I noticed that I only captured about half the venues in this area of the ship.  Clearly my mind was elsewhere, as I missed taking photos of several of the venues.

I must say this was one of the prettiest atriums I have seen on a cruise ship.  It felt grand in size while displaying a modern, tasteful, and elegant design.  Stepping off the midship elevators on deck 5, we looked forward towards a beautiful view of all 3 decks, with Ocean Terrace Sushi centered in the middle and the Bellini Bar up on top.

The chandelier hanging above the Piazza was beautiful, with different shades of blue mimicking the ocean.

I walked over to the International Cafe to sneak a peek at the goodies available behind the counter and made a mental note to come back another time to try some things.

We walked up to deck 6 to take a look at Crooners in the morning light.

Directly across the hall was Ocean Terrace Sushi, where we ate dinner last night.

If you eat at one of the tables in the middle of Ocean Terrace Sushi, you have a great view of all the actions happening in the Piazza.  I loved the look of the two spiral staircases, with under-lighting beneath each step.

Next, we walked up to deck 7 to look at Gigi’s Pizzeria, another one of the casual dining venues.

Across from Gigis, overlooking the middle of the atrium from deck 7, was Bellini’s Bar.  I stopped here to pick up a drink enroute to the theater several times during the cruise, and while it was always crowded with every seat occupied, I was always able to order my drink quickly at the bar and be on my way moments later.

By then, it was 8:50am, so I turned around and walked all the way aft through the rest of deck 7 (not taking any photos along the way… oops!), and took the aft elevators up to deck 17 to drop off Ian at camp when they opened at 9am.  Jason texted me that he was awake, so I sat with him while he ate breakfast in the buffet.  I think this was the first time we made use of an incredible feature in the Princess App.  Using the medallion, you can look in the app to find the location of other people in your cabin.  This technology was incredibly precise and saved us a lot of frustrations we have experienced on prior cruises with not knowing where the other one is.  I just opened my app and could see that Jason was sitting at a table on the starboard side of the buffet, just forward of the aft stations of food.  I walked over to that area and sure enough, there he was!  We called it the “Find My Husband/Wife” app, and we used this feature every day.  Honestly, I’m going to miss it when we cruise with Carnival this summer!  

While we are talking about the Princess App, I will mention one downfall that we noticed.  If we tried to use the chat feature in the app, it did not send the other person a push notification that they received a new message.  If the other person happened to be in the app, looking at the chat page, then there was a notification icon and they could see the new message in real time, but it wasn’t really practical since we didn’t have our phones out and open to the app at all times.  Since we both had the wifi package included with Plus, we instead opted to use our Google Voice accounts to text each other.  I have an iPhone, but Jason uses an Android so we couldn’t just text using iMessage, but luckily we both have Google Voice numbers so that app worked perfectly for texting each other around the ship.

Sorry for the tangent… Now back to Jason’s breakfast at the buffet…

Remember when I mentioned the Pastry Shop is where they hide all the good stuff?  This area is also where they hide the Juice Bar.  When you purchase the drinks package, it says it includes juices from the juice bar, but it was really hard to find as it’s not on the deck plans and most of the crew we asked didn’t know where it was.  We finally found a manager who knew what we were looking for and showed us this little machine behind the counter inside the Pastry Shop.  I was envisioning fresh pressed juices, but this was more of a “fruit drink” machine. I ordered the “So Lucky” and expected the lady to press and blend some fresh fruit.  Instead, she pushed a few buttons on the machine and it dripped out of the dispenser like those customizable soda machines you sometimes see in restaurants or movie theaters.

After Jason finished breakfast, we ran back down to the cabin so he could finish unpacking and we could slide the big suitcases under the bed for the remainder of the week.  I took that time to decorate our door for New Years Eve.  I originally intended to make custom decorations for our door, but I didn’t have time for that with everything going on in our personal life in the weeks leading up to this cruise.  Instead, I reused the generic decorations from last year’s cruise.  We keep a storage box in our garage with all the items we only use for cruising, and I found the bag of these decorations stashed away from when I unpacked after last year’s cruise.  Some of them said “Happy 2024” so I couldn’t reuse those, but the rest were generic enough that it worked to reuse them this year (and as I type this, I realize I should save them to use again on our 2026 New Years cruise too!).  The real reason I wanted to decorate our door was so Ian could recognize our cabin as we walked down the hall.  He often likes to run ahead of us so he can be the winner, so I wanted a way for him to know which cabin was ours and stop running down the hall.  It worked out perfectly and by that night, he recognized the decorations and knew when he was “home”.

Another comment about the door… It was wonderful not having to dig into my purse to pull out a key card every time I approached the cabin.  The medallion technology is amazing in that it can sense when we approach the cabin and unlock the door so by the time you put your hand on the handle, it is unlocked and you can just walk inside.  The only issue we had with the door was they do not provide door tags to hang outside when you want privacy or for the steward to clean the room.  Instead, you need to press one of the two circles on the bottom corners of the screen.  The problem was, it wasn’t as obvious as the door tag that always falls on the ground when you open the door, so you can’t forget to take it down.  This button was discrete enough that we usually remembered to turn it on at night when we were sleeping, but there were several mornings when we forgot to turn it off when we left for breakfast, and our steward didn’t realize he could have gone in to clean the cabin.  We felt bad about that, but we just kept forgetting because we were so focused on getting our things together for the day and getting Ian dressed, that by the time we exited the cabin, we forgot to check the privacy button.

Of all the activities listed in the Princess Patter for this first sea day, there were 4 activities that we wanted to attend, but of course, all of them were scheduled at 10:00am this morning.  That meant we had to just pick 1, although we were open to splitting up if we couldn’t agree on which we wanted to attend.  We received a letter in our stateroom yesterday that invited us to a welcome event, seemingly for all first-time Princess cruisers.  We nixed that idea, as we have been on 10 prior cruises and pretty much know the drill.  Carnival and Celebrity aren’t THAT different from Princess that we would miss out on vital information by skipping that event.  “Let’s Get Quizzical” sounded fun as I usually enjoy trivia, but they didn’t tell us the topic.  It would only be fun if it was questions about a topic I was familiar with, so the lack of details made me rule out that option.  There was a lecture in the theater about 30,000 years of art history that reminded me of a class I took in college which covered the same material over the course of one month.  I did want to go to that, but in the end, we opted to stay together and attend the martini demonstration in the piazza.  We arrived at 9:50am and the bartender was still setting up.

It was already crowded on deck 5 when we arrived, so we went up to Ocean Terrace on deck 6 and had unobstructed seats overlooking the action.  

They called up people from the crowd to assist in making the drinks, and I think they got a little more than they bargained for as the bartender got them to dance as they shook the drinks shakers.

A word of advice: if you want free samples of the martinis, sit downstairs as they passed out all the drinks they made to people in the audience.  We were okay not getting them as it was 10am and we can just order those drinks later in the day with our drinks package, but people did seem excited about getting some free drinks.  Of course, the people who participated in the demonstration and got up there to dance and be embarrassed were also given a glass of the drink they made.  I was glad we went as it was fun and entertaining, even if I didn’t learn anything new like I might have at the art lecture.

When the demonstration was over, we went downstairs to Good Spirits.  I decided not to get a drink, but I did take photos of the drinks menu.  This menu was available in several bars around the ship, so it was handy to have it on my phone so I could text Jason what I wanted if he was going to get drinks at a bar while I was getting seats at a show or somewhere else around the ship.

We returned to our cabin to see that the steward had cleaned up and left us some papers on the bed.

I have a feeling this paper was in the cabin yesterday, but it looks like I didn’t take the photo until today…

I wanted to sit outside on our balcony, but it was still too cold, so we relaxed in the cabin until it was time to get Ian from camp at noon.  He came out holding this paper, so I asked one of the counselors what it was.  Apparently, it is the solar system.  I grew up in a world with 9 planets in our solar system, so I often forget that Pluto isn’t a planet anymore.  It seemed like a random thing to teach the kids on a Mexican Riviera cruise, but if Ian had fun, that’s all that matters.

We went down one level to eat lunch in the buffet.  Given the chilly weather, the seafood ramen with shrimp and mussels was the perfect lunch for me.  If I recall correctly, Jason saw what I got and liked the idea, so he went and got himself a bowl of the chicken ramen.  Funny enough, as I looked around at the tables near us, every single table had at least one person eating a bowl of ramen, so I guess I wasn’t the only person trying to warm up!  

I know Ian was with us, but I didn’t take any photos or notes about what he had.  As is typical when gathering food from a cruise ship buffet, my dessert plate was a mish-mash of fruit, cookies, and chocolate raspberry mousse.  That oatmeal raisin cookie was so good that I had one (…or two!) nearly every day.  Even Ian loved it, and he’s a picky toddler so not many things gain his approval!

After lunch, we went back to the cabin at 1:30pm for Ian’s nap.  It was still too cold to sit on the balcony so I just sat in bed, jotting down notes for this review, and inevitably, I fell asleep.  I woke up at 3pm, and decided to take a shower and start getting ready for formal night.  When we were all dressed, we went down to the Piazza to take some photos in our formal attire.  I knew once we ate dinner, at least Ian would get messy and have food on his outfit, and possibly Jason or I would too, so that meant we had to take photos before doing anything else.

Ian was in a phase this entire cruise where he refused to stand in between Jason and me.  You will notice in every photo of the 3 of us that Ian is off to one side, usually next to me because he’s a mama’s boy, and the photo looks off balance.  Every time, we tried to nudge him to stand in front of us in the middle, but it wasn’t worth risking a tantrum when he refused, so please excuse our poorly staged photos on this cruise.

Our next stop was to pick up a drink at Crooners.  Ian’s favorite color is red, so of course he cooperated for a cute photo when sitting in the giant red velvet chair in Crooners!

Despite the cool temperatures and seemingly choppy seas, the skies were clear and it was a lovely sunset tonight.

I ordered a French Martini with Grey Goose vodka, raspberry, and pineapple, and asked the bartender to serve it in a glass that was easy to walk with (ie: anything besides a martini glass!) so we could take it upstairs to the Chanukah candle lighting in the Lido buffet.  We arrived promptly at 5pm, just as they were starting the prayers.

Once again, there were about 100 people in attendance, but tonight, we only stayed for 15 minutes so we could be on time for our 5:20pm dinner reservations in the Ketchikan MDR.  When we got down there, the hostess scanned my medallion to see our reservation, then directed us inside towards another hostess who walked us to our table.  We were seated in a small room along the starboard side of the ship, with 3 tables on either side, and a larger round table for 8 people in the middle.  This felt more intimate than eating in the large main section of the dining room, and as it turned out, there was only one other couple seated in our little room, on the opposite side from us so we felt like we had a private room.

This was tonight’s menu for formal night:

Since half our table was a banquette bench, we skipped getting Ian a high chair and just let him sit on the bench with me.  

None of tonight’s starters appealed to me, so I ordered the French Onion Soup and shrimp cocktail from the always-available menu.  Both were delicious!

Jason and I ordered one portion of the gnocchi dish intending to share it, but Ian loved it so much that he ended up eating 90% of it!

For my main dish, I ordered the duck a l’orange.  This is one of those dishes that I always enjoy, but only ever order when I’m on a cruise ship.  

We decided to skip dessert, so we went over to the Piazza to watch the Captain’s champagne waterfall.  I know this is something special that Princess always does on its cruises, so I wanted to see it for myself.  In an effort to prevent Ian from running over and knocking down the table of perfectly-balanced glasses, we opted to observe from the safety of deck 7.  I wonder, can anyone wait in line to take your photo pouring the champagne?  Or is it only done by invitation?

I went over to Bellini’s Bar to get a Bellini Classico with Absolut Citron, Prosecco, and peach puree.

At 7pm, we took Ian back upstairs to drop him off at camp.  When we arrived, he refused to go in.  It took a few minutes of talking to him before he admitted the problem.  He said that this morning, one of the big kids was mean to him and pushed him.  This room has kids aged 3 through 7, so not only is Ian one of the youngest in the room, he is also very small for his age (5th percentile for height, 15th percentile for weight).  I can see how one of the 7 year olds might be tempted to push Ian aside, so we immediately spoke with one of the camp staff members.  She spent a few minutes trying to convince Ian that he would be safe and she would protect him, but Ian was adamant that he would not go back to camp.  This kid really traumatized Ian.  Every single time we took him upstairs to camp for the rest of the cruise, Ian said he didn’t want to go because the big kid was mean to him and pushed him.  I lost track of the amount of time we spent trying to reassure him, and how much time the staff spent trying to convince him that he would be safe.  I was really afraid to give in tonight because I feared that if we kept Ian with us and let him skip going to camp, then he would never go back for the whole rest of the cruise.  We tried going inside with him, helping him take off his shoes, and saying goodbye, but he was hysterically crying and we just had to give in and take him with us.

Tonight’s show in the theater was Rock Opera, and I was really looking forward to watching it.  We told Ian that was what mommy and daddy were going to do, and we thought he would have more fun playing in camp.  Ian said he wanted to watch the singing and dancing with us, so we took him downstairs to the theater and hoped for the best!  We decided to sit in the very last row of the theater, so hopefully if we did have to get up and leave in the middle of the show, we wouldn’t bother anyone else trying to enjoy the show.

We arrived at the theater at 7:20pm and nearly every seat was filled, so you definitely need to arrive early if you want a good view.  Luckily, we still had a good view because we were fairly centered even though we were seated so far back.  

Rock Opera featured a medley of pop and rock songs, plus some musical theater.  There was a large cast of 2 female and 2 male singers, and approximately 10 dancers, plus a live orchestra at the back of the stage.  The show included a few songs from the movie The Greatest Showman (The Greatest Show, Never Enough, and This Is Me), Total Eclipse of the Heart, Dream On by Aerosmith, and 2 songs by Celine Dion (I surrender, and It’s All Coming Back To Me Now), plus a few other songs that I didn’t write down.  All 3 of us enjoyed the show, even Ian!

After the show, we went back to the Piazza to watch the ABBA party.  Ian was in good spirits and enjoyed dancing to the music, but we stayed up on deck 6 because it was a huge turn out downstairs on deck 5 and we didn’t want him to get trampled.

Jason kept an eye on Ian while I ran upstairs to deck 7 to get a Summerberry Fizz from Bellini’s Bar.  While I liked the taste of it, this drink was a little heavier than the other drinks I got from there, so it’s the only drink from that bar that I decided I wouldn’t want to get again.

We decided to head back to the cabin around 9:15pm to put Ian to sleep.  When we exited the elevator on deck 10, we tried to get one last photo of us all dressed up, but Ian still wanted to stand off to my side.  Oh well, we could try again later in the week!

Back in the cabin, we saw the notice that we needed to set the clocks forward one hour tonight.

We all got ready for bed and I think we were asleep by 10pm.

Today’s drinks total for the 2 of us = 16

I don’t know what it is about the night before starting a cruise, but I almost always have a horrible night of sleep.  Not surprisingly, that’s what happened last night, and I was awake more than I was asleep.  I don’t think I’ve ever had a sleep graph as bad as this:

Actually, I take that back… this was the sleep graph from the night before our cruise on the Carnival Dream out of New Orleans in 2019…

Like I said, I have a bad track record for sleeping the night before a cruise!  Annoyingly for me, my child has a ridiculously consistent internal clock.  At home, he wakes up at 6:40am no matter what time we put him to sleep.  This morning, he woke up at 6:40am… Arizona time. Meaning 5:40am where we were in California!  That was an earlier-than-expected start to my day.  I told Ian to go back to sleep, and tried to do the same, but not without first checking on the location of the Discovery Princess.

Of course, I couldn’t fall back to sleep with all of the excitement of embarkation day, so I continued to refresh the tracking until I saw that she was safely docked at her berth, awaiting our arrival in a few hours!

After that, I finally fell back asleep for a few minutes and woke up around 8am.  I guess that’s good enough and it’s time to start the day.  We packed up the room and checked out by 9am.  Since the hotel did not serve breakfast, I did a quick google search for bagel places nearby, and settled on The Bagel Factory in Torrance based on their good reviews and convenient location that was on the way between the hotel and the cruise port.  It turns out that I made a good choice as the bagels were excellent!  I totally forgot to take photos, but you probably know what a bagel looks like, right?

After we were done eating, we went back out to the car.  I realized I had forgotten to attach our luggage tags for the big checked bags, so I did that quickly, and then we headed off to the port.  We considered parking at my BIL’s house and taking an Uber to the cruise port as we had done last year on our Carnival Panorama New Year’s cruise out of Long Beach.  That ended up costing just under $100 roundtrip, but it was such a nightmare trying to get an Uber driver to accept our pick up after the cruise that this year, we decided to spend just a little more and pay for the parking lot at the cruise port.  The drive was easy, and 25 minutes later, we got our first glimpse of the Discovery Princess.

We arrived at the port at 10am.  Unlike our arrival at the Port of Long Beach last year, there was zero traffic and we followed the signs to Pier 92 to drop off our big bags.  Jason got out of the car to pull the bags out of the trunk, and a porter came over to load them onto a trolley.  We gave him a tip, then got back in the car to drive around to the parking lot entrance.  Again, there was no line and we pulled right up to an attendant who scanned my credit card.  She said there was a camera that recorded our license plate, and we would be charged at the end of the cruise.  I made a note that we entered the lot at 10:10am, so we needed to exit by 10:09am the following Saturday to avoid being charged for an extra day.  We circled the rows closest to the ship until we found a vacant spot in the third row back.  I took a few photos to try to remember where we left our car so we could find it quickly the following week.

I pushed Ian in his stroller and Jason pulled our 2 rolling carry-on bags as we walked up to the cruise terminal.  This photo was taken at 10:20am…

Once we got across the street, one of the employees directed us to the security screening.  The line was already moving, so I don’t know exactly what time they opened the terminal to embarking guests, but it was before we arrived.  There was a short line, but it kept moving as we walked through the corrals.  When we got to the entrance of the building, they directed us into the line for walkers, wheelchairs, and strollers.  This helped us avoid a much longer line for the regular x-ray machines, and we only had 3 or 4 people ahead of us until it was our turn.  We put all our bags on the x-ray conveyor belt, and took Ian out of his stroller so they could screen that too.  Once we were done, we noticed a specific lady exiting the regular security section who was wearing a captain’s hat.  We noticed her earlier, and she had been quite a ways ahead of us on the original line, so we did save some time by being in the wheelchair/stroller line.

After that, we entered a different building where we were directed to the green lane because we already had our medallions.  Again, there were only 2 or 3 families ahead of us, but with about 10 agents working, it was our turn within seconds and we stepped up to have our passports scanned.  At first, that lady directed us to sit and wait for our number to be called.  Oh yea, I didn’t take notes because all of this happened so fast, but at some point one of the agents gave us a piece of paper with the number 14, so we were supposed to sit and wait for them to call number 14 for boarding.  A moment later, another lady approached and said that direction required taking an escalator, so instead, she escorted us to the elevators.  We assumed we would still end up in the waiting room with everyone else, but when we exited the elevator, we were directed right onto the gangway to board the ship!  No one ever looked at or asked for our boarding number slip of paper, so having the stroller definitely saved us a lot of time!  This photo was taken at 10:38am, so it took us 20 minutes from the time we parked the car to the time we boarded the ship!  That was definitely a record for me!!

At the time, I had zero bearing on exactly where we boarded the ship, but I think it was deck 5 or 6 midship near the Piazza.  Our first piece of business was to drop off our carry on bags in the cabin.  I honestly wasn’t sure what the policy was on Princess regarding dropping off your bags before the cabins were officially ready.  I figured we would give it a shot, and if someone stopped us along the way, we would abort and just wait until 1pm.  We really wanted to ditch Ian’s stroller because we were more mobile without it, especially knowing how crowded ships feel on embarkation day.  When we got to our cabin, the door was open, but it appeared fully cleaned.  Before I let Jason and Ian enter the cabin, I took a few photos since the cabin would never look this clean again once we put all of our stuff inside!

We secured the locks on the 2 rolling suitcases, and collapsed the stroller, and tucked all 3 items into the corner of the closet.  As we were doing this, our cabin steward came over to say he wasn’t quite finished cleaning our room.  He said it was okay if we left our bags in the closet, but asked that we not hang out in the room so he could finish setting it up.  That was fine by us as we did not plan to stay anyway, so we told him we would be back at 1pm when the rooms were officially ready.

We took the elevators up to deck 16 and got our first drink of the cruise from the midship bar next to the Lido pool.  This was my first time ordering a drink with the medallion (Obviously!  You already know this was my first Princess cruise!).  I was under the impression that the bartenders could see me on their computers and could charge the drink to my account automatically.  As it turned out, they always asked for my cabin number first and then they found my name.  It was definitely more convenient than other cruise lines when I needed to hand over my sign and sail card to be scanned, but it wasn’t quite as seamless as I expected.  It was especially tricky when we were in a very loud venue (either from music echoing off the walls like in the Piazza, or just because it was crowded with lots of people talking nearby) so the bartenders couldn’t always hear when I told them my cabin number.  Another interesting thing to note was that if Jason and I ordered drinks at the same time, they usually charged both drinks to one of us (seemingly at random).  Each day, we made a habit of checking in the app for the number of drinks on our account because often Jason would show way more drinks ordered than I did, even though we should have had the same number for each of us.  We were always afraid he would go over the 15 drinks per day limit, so sometimes he would step away from the bar area after ordering his drink to ensure they charged both drinks to my account and that helped keep the numbers even.

I finally felt like I could relax when I had my aperol spritz in hand at 10:58am!  I only mention the time stamp because I can’t believe how much we had already done today and it was still before 11am!!

Cheers!

We took the drinks over to the covered section by the windows to check out the view.  I took a moment to search for our car in the parking lot, and decided this might be helpful if we really couldn’t find the car next week, so I took a photo and circled our car.  Isn’t technology fun?!

Ian was having a lot of fun too!

Before the ship got too crowded, we decided to walk around and explore the outer decks.  Up on deck 17 aft near the sports deck, there are a lot of murals painted on the walls, so we picked the one with the closest theme to our Mexican Riviera itinerary to take a makeshift embarkation day photo.  

I have a tradition where I take a photo with the life ring on embarkation day of every cruise.  Since it always says the name of the ship, it makes for a fun memory.  It was such a gloomy, foggy day in San Pedro, so the background isn’t as pretty as it could be, but it’s still fun to see the container ships and cranes on the other side of the port.

We continued our walk until we were back near the Lido pools.  It was too cold for anyone to go swimming, but it looked like the lounge chairs were filling in as more people boarded the ship.

By then, it was nearly noon when Camp Discovery opened for registration, so we made our way to the deck 17 aft elevators as that’s the only way to access the camp.

The hallway was still decorated for Christmas, but that was the only area of the ship that still had decorations.  I forgot to mention it, but I was actually very surprised when we first stepped foot on the ship, because there wasn’t a single Christmas decoration in the Piazza.  I assume there was a ton of decor for the month of December, so the crew must have removed everything earlier this morning as the prior cruise passengers disembarked.  Anyway, the kids camp was the exception to that as they still had some decorations in the hallway.

At 3 years old, Ian was assigned to the Tree House room, which was for kids aged 3 to 7 years old.  

There was a sign outside where they posted the hours of operation:

They also had photos and bios of all of the camp staff:

We had already filled out the registration documents during the online check-in process before the cruise, so if I recall correctly, all I had to do at this point was to sign a paper that what they had on file was accurate.  They told us that each time we dropped Ian at camp, we would be given a pager so they could contact us if needed.  When we returned to pick him up, we had to return the pager and they would give us a new one each session.  Camp wasn’t open for dropping kids off until later this evening, but they said it was okay to look around and take some photos since no one else was there.

We started getting hungry so we went down to the Lido buffet for lunch.  I knew it would be a madhouse as it was only 12:15pm so cabins weren’t ready yet and everyone was camped out at the tables in the buffet area.  I originally planned to go to the MDR or International Cafe for lunch, but with camp registration being at deck 17 aft, it was only one flight of stairs down to the Lido buffet and that just made more sense.  Sure enough, there were people everywhere and it was impossible to navigate with a toddler who refused to hold my hand and stay close to me!  I just grabbed the first thing I saw that looked good, so  I had a cheeseburger, Ian had a baked pasta dish with shells, red sauce and cheese, and Jason made a gyro from the make-your-own gyro station.  I forgot to take photos of the food because honestly, it was all too chaotic, but we did manage to find a table to quickly eat our food.  

While we were sitting there, we overheard a crew member talking to the table next to us about watching the muster safety video on the app.  All morning, I was wondering what to do about the muster drill as I am used to other cruise lines where the cruise director gets on the overhead system to make constant announcements about it.  Today, we never heard anything all morning and while I knew we needed to do something prior to sail away, I really didn’t know the details.  The crew member showed us where to find the video in the app, so we watched it while we finished eating lunch.  She also looked up our muster station location in Princess Live, and told us to go down there when we finished eating.  When we arrived at Princess Live, another crew member was standing there to scan our medallions and that was it!  The process was very quick and infinitely better than the pre-pandemic drills that involved standing shoulder to shoulder like sardines on the outside decks.

By then it was 1pm and we heard the announcement that cabins were officially ready, so we returned to deck 10 to go back to our cabin.  Sadly, our checked luggage had yet to arrive.  We handed it to the porter at 10am, so I really expected it would be delivered by then.  In the meantime, I unpacked our carry on bags while Jason got Ian ready to nap.  One of the reasons we booked this Deluxe Balcony cabin was because it had a loveseat for Ian to sleep on.  It is really intended to be a pull-out bed, but then we wouldn’t be able to open the balcony door and sit out there while he napped.  Luckily for us, Ian is very short for his age and was able to sleep on the loveseat without pulling out the bed.  Knowing we didn’t want to block the balcony door, we actually originally intended for Ian to sleep on the inflatable mattress he slept on last night for the entire cruise, but that still would have taken up a lot of floor space, so it was wonderful that he fit on the loveseat.  We put our sheet over the cushions and pushed the coffee table up against the side of the couch as a safety barrier.  

After I unpacked our carry-on bags, I took a few more photos around the cabin.  The bathroom was pretty standard for a cruise ship bathroom.  There were only 3 shelves near the mirror, so that was a bit cramped but we made it work.  It would have been nice if they also put 3 shelves on the left side of the mirror.

There were 2 refillable pumps on the counter, containing hand soap and body lotion.

While small by land standards, the shower was a decent size for a cruise ship.  I liked that there was a small ledge on one side so there was space for our shampoo, etc. in addition to the small nook behind the shower head.  

Mounted on the right side wall of the shower was a pump bottle with combo shampoo/conditioner, and another with body wash.  I prefer to use my own products that I bring from home, but Jason appreciated the option to use the ones on the ship as that meant fewer items to pack in his toiletries bag.

Immediately outside the bathroom was an open closet.  I have mixed feelings about this style of closet.  I usually hang a shoe rack on the inside of the closet door, so that was not possible on this cruise and I had to hang the bag on the clothes rack.  I was worried it might fall down when the ship was rocking in rough seas, but surprisingly enough, it did stay in place for the whole week.  Even still, I prefer having doors on the closet to keep the clutter hidden.  Also, the closet is just one big space with no separation, so it is very hard to stay organized, especially with 3 people sharing the cabin.  Next to the closet is a tall and narrow closet with 5 open shelves, plus the safe is on a 6th shelf.  These shelves weren’t very big, so I ended up cramming a lot of stuff in there and just hoped it didn’t all come toppling down every time I opened the door!

Above the hanging bar of the closet space is a long shelf.  The lifejackets took up about a third of the space.  I probably should have moved them under the bed, but I just never got around to it.  I brought some 12” foldable storage cubes from the Dollar Tree, and they fit perfectly on this shelf.  We used these to store our dirty clothes throughout the week.  I liked having the cubes because I didn’t want to risk just throwing our clothes up there and leaving something behind in a blind corner at the back of the shelf.  

There were also 2 nightstands, one on each side of the bed.  I thought I took a photo of the whole nightstand, but all I can find is this photo of the lamp.  The nightstand itself had 2 drawers, plus an open shelf.  I had also packed a couple of 6” tall collapsible bins, and that was the perfect height to slide onto that shelf to ensure nothing got lost at the back.  The drawers were a good size for storing socks and underwear in one drawer, and my electronics and chargers in the other.  I loved that both nightstands had a USB outlet in the lamp, but I just wished the lamp was moveable.  It was attached to the middle of the nightstand, leaving a big dead space in the back and side against the wall, and not really enough space on the surface of the nightstand for the things I wanted to keep there.  Of course, I made it work though!

I also just realized I never took a good photo of the desk/vanity area.  Opposite the loveseat, there was a desk with a drawer.  There were 2 US outlets, and 1 or 2 European outlets (apologies that I can’t remember exactly since we didn’t use them anyway).  The phone took up about a third of the space on this desk, so I really wished they had mounted it to the wall.  Adjacent to the desk was a cabinet with a minifridge that was empty so we could put whatever we wanted inside.  Above the fridge was one drawer which contained the hairdryer, but it was big enough that I could stash my personal hair dryer, flat iron, and a few other things.  Another missed storage opportunity was that the wall space above this drawer was completely bare.  Princess easily could have mounted 2 or 3 shelves in this space.  I had packed a hanging shelving organizer that I originally planned to hang next to my side of the bed, but I ended up hanging it in this space.  I used magnetic hooks attached to the ceiling as they are much stronger from the ceiling as opposed to on the wall (they would likely slide down the side of the wall from the weight of the items being stored).  This was a great place to store our snacks and unopened Chanukah presents.  I totally forgot to take a photo of this area of the cabin, but this is a screenshot of the hanging organizer I used…

So here is a funny story for you… We wanted to sit outside on the balcony while Ian was trying to nap, but we couldn’t figure out how to open the balcony door!  We tried pivoting the handle both up and down, and either way we couldn’t slide the door open.  Jason and I both tried, even using our feet against the side of the door frame for leverage, but with no luck.  It was kind of annoying that there is no indication on the handle as to which direction (up or down) is locked versus unlocked.  At least if we knew for sure which way was unlocked, we could focus our efforts on moving the door and know we weren’t going to break it.  I kept checking in the hallway for our cabin steward, but he wasn’t there.  I even walked down the hall to see if anyone had their cabin door open, just so I could ask which way the handle was supposed to turn, but all the doors were closed.  We tried calling the front desk, but the phone just kept ringing and no one picked up.  Finally, I spotted a crew member walking down the hall.  She tried to open the door, but said that she works in a different department, so she is not really familiar with balcony cabin doors and she left to find someone else who could help us.  To our shock, less than 5 minutes later, she returned with a housekeeping supervisor!  You know when you ask someone for help and they say they need to ask someone else and they will get back to you, but they just disappear and you never see them again?  We kind of expected that would happen, so we were blown away that she actually took the time to find someone to help us!  I really wish I had thought to write down her name because I would have commended her in our survey after the cruise.  Anyway, the supervisor explained that there was heavy wind sailing north the last two days on the prior cruise, and the wind was pushing against the balcony doors on this side of the ship, so you had to lean your body weight out against the door to knock it back onto its track and then the door would open.  Sure enough, he did that and the door opened!  This experience really set the tone for the level of customer service on this cruise.  We were off to a great start, and remained impressed with the professionalism and concern for customer satisfaction that we saw from the crew all week.

With all of that said, here is a photo from when I was finally able to step onto our balcony!  It had 2 chairs and a small side table, and was pretty standard in size as compared to other balconies we have had on prior cruises.

Back inside the cabin, I took a few minutes to look at the information left on our bed.  First, I saw a copy of today’s Princess Patter.  I was happy to see they still print and distribute paper copies of the schedule.  Yes, all of that information is available in the app, but that involves a lot of scrolling and sometimes it’s just easier to look at it all on one piece of paper.

We also received a paper from Camp Discovery with information about the schedule for the week.

There was a flyer about signing up for Princess Plus or upgrading to Princess Premier.  There was some debate on the forums about if it is possible to wait until you are onboard to purchase these packages, and most people report that they were told you can purchase it as long as it’s not sold out.  Well our sailing was booked at full capacity, plus many people received Move Over offers the week before the cruise, meaning the cruise was likely oversold.  Between that, and it being the week of New Year’s Eve, when most people have a party mentality and likely purchased the packages, I have to wonder if they ever really sell out.  I would love to know what percentage of passengers booked the 2 packages because I think everyone we met had it, yet they still gave us this flyer indicating we could purchase it onboard if we didn’t do so before the cruise.

With all of the excitement of embarkation day, and all the things going on inside our cabin with the balcony and unpacking, it is no surprise that Ian couldn’t fall asleep for his nap.  He did eventually nod off, but 10 minutes later, the Captain came on the loud speaker for the safety drill and it woke Ian up.  He usually needs a 1-2 hour nap, so between no nap at all in the car yesterday, and maybe 10 minutes of napping today, we feared the potential of overtired toddler tantrums.  We tried to convince him to go back to sleep when the announcements ended, but Ian insisted he was done napping.  It was probably just as well as that’s when we realized the ship was moving!  It was time for sail away!  We went out onto the balcony to watch the excitement.

According to the cruise itinerary, we were scheduled to sail away at 3pm, and this photo was taken at 3:08pm so we left right on time.

We had a great view of the Battleship USS Iowa and could see people visiting the museum waving to us as we sailed away.

There goes the pilot boat helping us exit the harbor…

I love the swirl created by the wake of the pilot boat as it turned around…

Once we got out to the open ocean, I checked the hallway again for our checked luggage but it still wasn’t delivered.  I was starting to get nervous that they forgot to load our bags on the ship as it was now nearly 4pm, and we had given the bags to the porter 6 hours earlier.  I refreshed my AirTag tracker and it actually said the bags were still at the terminal!  I nearly had a panic attack!  The problem is that AirTags only update when they are in close proximity to an iPhone.  It doesn’t have to be my personal iPhone, it can be anyone’s iPhone, but if the bags were in the cargo hold of the ship waiting to be brought upstairs in the elevators, then it is unlikely anyone with an iPhone would walk by to ping the location of my bags.  We finally tracked down our cabin steward and he said the bags were still being delivered and it might not come until 6pm.  That was very frustrating since I saw lots of other cabins on our deck already had their bags and I knew that we checked in earlier than at least some of those people considering how early we got on the ship and how few people were onboard at that time.

We decided to go up to the Lido pool area to watch the end of the sail away party.  By then, it was after 4pm and it looked like things were in full swing, with a decent-sized group dancing when we arrived, and the DJ was playing a great mix of Top 40 songs. I noticed Stanley, the Princess mascot, was walking around taking photos with the ship photographer.  We took a photo on her camera, then I asked if she could also take one on my phone, and she said sure.  It turned out that the professional photo was horrible- Ian wasn’t looking at the camera, and Jason’s eyes were closed.  It was a good thing she also took the photo on my phone because this was my favorite photo of the entire cruise!

We got a few drinks from the poolside bar.  I got the Ultimate Cooler with vodka, watermelon, passion fruit, and cranberry.

It was freezing cold now that the ship was moving and the winds were blowing.  We discovered this sunken seating area in the middle of the deck between the two pools.  At first we thought it was a hot tub, but when we walked closer, we realized it was benches for sitting.  It was such a great spot to sit as it blocked the wind and was right in the middle of the action.  Ian had a great time dancing around in the enclosed space where he was safe from being stepped on.

I’m not sure why, but the DJ switched to playing some Latin songs that we didn’t recognize, and I guess the other passengers didn’t recognize them either because it totally cleared out the dance floor.  I took that as an opportunity to run back down to the cabin to check if our bags were there.  They weren’t in the hall outside our cabin, but I opened the door and they were sitting in the closet!  Finally!  I guess our steward pulled them in for us?  It was 4:50pm, so nearly 7 hours after we checked our bags with the porter.  Maybe they used a first in, last out method?  I was mostly just frustrated because this meant I couldn’t unpack while we were hanging around the room all afternoon while trying to get Ian to nap, and instead I had to find time during my first evening on the ship to get it done. Not ideal.  I went back upstairs to find Jason and update him about the luggage delivery, and noticed a beautiful view of the sunset.  

Tonight was the 4th night of Chanukah, and I was excited to see there would be a menorah lighting ceremony in the buffet every night at 5pm.  I was on a cruise during Chanukah in the past, and I have read other reviews of other people on cruises during Chanukah, and typically those ships have a giant menorah in the atrium, and they have a nightly candle lighting event that lasts for just a few minutes.  I was pleasantly surprised to see that this was not how the Discovery Princess handled Chanukah.  They had a whole section of the buffet closed off for us with a sign saying “private event” and a crew member guarding the entrance to ensure only people intending to attend the Chanukah event entered that section of the buffet.  They set up a plastic electric menorah and some prayer booklets, and they walked around serving complimentary glasses of Manischewitz wine.  There was even a buffet with sufganiyot, latkes, challah, and blintzes!  This was above and beyond what I have seen other ships do, and I was really impressed.  They also had about 8 staff members walking around to serve us, so they were prepared no matter how many people attended.  Being the first night of the cruise, I had expectations of minimal attendance, so you can imagine my surprise when we arrived at 4:55pm and couldn’t find a seat!  There were about 100 people already seated at the event, and it was moving to watch everyone chant the prayers together.  

After we lit the candles (or rather, after someone turned on the electric menorah… remember, we can’t light a real candle on the cruise ship!), we got some latkes and sufganiyot as a pre-dinner snack.  They even served freshly made gelt (although I must admit, it loses some of the fun when it’s not wrapped in that impossible-to-peel gold foil haha), and we chatted with some of the other guests.  Since this was a nightly event, it was nice to develop somewhat of a community as we saw the same people attend each evening.

Prior to the cruise, I had used the app to schedule dinner reservations in the Ketchikan Dining Room for every night of the cruise.  The fixed early seating for dinner was at 5pm, which felt too early for us, so I scheduled reservations for a private table at 5:20pm every night, except the night we were in Cabo, when our tour was scheduled to end at 5:30pm so I made a 6pm reservation for that night.  When I saw that the Chanukah candle lighting would be at 5pm for the first 5 nights of the cruise (nights 4 through 8 of Chanukah), I knew we would have a conflict with our dinner reservations.  Tonight, I opted to cancel our reservations at the dining room so we could stay at the candle lighting as long as we wanted to, and then we would go redeem one of the casual dining meals included in our plus package.  

Since we did not eat in the dining room, I took screen shots of the dinner menu from the app.  

We stayed at the Chanukah event for about 30 minutes.  Ian was starting to get hungry for dinner, so since we were already in the buffet area, I went over to the kids dinner section to grab some food for him.  He pretty much lived on Mac and Cheese all week.  At home, he is allowed to have that once a week, but this is his vacation too, so if he wants to eat his favorite food every night, so be it.  Ian ate his Mac and Cheese as Jason and I finished our glasses of Manischewitz.  When we were done, we went down to Crooners for a drink.  Jason had a goal of trying every whiskey on the ship over the course of the week, and he was pleasantly surprised at the number of options, all under the $15 limit of the Plus Package.  I opted for a glass of prosecco.

Being a Princess newbie, I wasn’t sure of the logistics when redeeming one of the casual dining meals.  I knew we couldn’t make a reservation, but would there be a long line for a table?  Tonight, we wanted something light for dinner as we had just had a snack at the Chanukah event, so we decided to try Ocean Terrace Sushi.  This venue is very small (at least by cruise ship restaurant standards), with only 10 tables for 2, plus 5 or 6 stools along the bar.  I took this photo the next morning as I was walking around the ship, so it wasn’t open for dining and no one is here aside from one crew member setting up behind the bar, but this was the venue.  It was located on deck 6 in the middle of the Piazza with a great view overlooking all of the action.  

Maybe it was because it was just the first night on the ship and people hadn’t discovered this venue yet, but there was hardly anyone eating here when we arrived for dinner.  There was no wait for a table, and they were nice enough to seat us in 3 chairs even though Ian was just keeping us company and wouldn’t be eating any of the sushi.  

The set menu included with the Plus Package allowed us to pick any 4 nigiri and any 1 maki roll from the menu.  The menu does list specific choices, and prior to the cruise, I was worried they wouldn’t allow you to make any changes.  It was wonderful that they were so flexible as I don’t eat anything spicy, so the included Spicy Tuna roll wouldn’t work for me.  I opted to order the 4 suggested Nigiri, and switch my maki roll to a barbeque eel, cucumber, and avocado roll.

Minutes after we ordered, the waitress brought over the edamame and seaweed salad.  At first I thought the bowl on the right only had regular salad, but when I moved the cucumber to the side, I saw a small scoop of seaweed salad underneath.  That was a unique twist that I wasn’t expecting, especially since I love seaweed salad and could have eaten a whole bowl of it without the lettuce and other vegetables. 

Next, the waitress brought out our sushi.  Everything was very fresh and tasty.  We actually talked about maybe coming back here for our second included casual dining meal, but of course I urged us to try out a different venue next time, for the sake of experiencing everything the ship had to offer.  We will definitely eat here again when we sail on the Enchanted Princess later this year!

The kids camp opened at 7pm for the evening activities.  By the time we finished our sushi, it was about that time.  One funny thing about cruise ships is that not every deck allows you to walk all the way from forward to aft.  On the Discovery Princess, we spent most of our time in the evenings on decks 5, 6, and 7, but midship to aft on decks 5 and 6 are blocked by the galley.  The only way to access the aft elevators to bring Ian to camp is by using deck 7 to walk all the way aft, then going up to deck 17.  I suppose we also could have taken the forward or midship elevators up to deck 17 first, but then we would have to walk outside and cut through the gym to get to the kids club entrance, and that didn’t seem like a good idea in the cold and dark evening.

While I’m talking about elevators, there was something else I wanted to mention in hopes that someone at Princess reads this because it really has an easy fix.  I probably should have mentioned it on our post-cruise survey, but I forgot at the time.  When getting off the elevators onto decks with passenger cabins, I wished there was a sign pointing right or left for even or odd numbered cabins.  It was always a 50/50 guess as to if I should turn right or left getting off the elevator to access my even-numbered cabin.  Once you committed to turning right or left, and walked out to the hallway, you could see a sign indicating from that spot which way to turn to get to specific cabin numbers, but by then, it was too late!  Half the time I was reading a directory for odd numbered cabins when I really wanted the even cabins.  A simple sign opposite the elevator doors would have solved that problem and made for a better passenger experience.  **Stepping down from my soap box now.**

Anyway, after we dropped Ian at camp, we went back down to deck 7, and walked all the way forward on the ship to the theater for tonight’s show.  We sure did get a lot of steps going to and from that kids club location!  You can enter the theater from both decks 6 and 7, so we always entered from deck 7 and walked down to find seats.  

Tonight’s performer was Willis White, and he sang a medley of Lionel Ritchie songs.  Honestly, I’m not the biggest Lionel fan, but Willis put on a fun show, with very high energy and a great voice.

After the show, I walked over to Sabatini’s to try to make a reservation for later in the week.  While we were still home, I tried to make a reservation using the app, but every time I looked, there weren’t any reservations available.  No joke!  Every night of the cruise was fully booked from months before our cruise!  At one point, I did notice one available reservation, but when I went to schedule the booking, they required my credit card as payment.  We had intended to spend our stockholder onboard credit to pay for the meal, so I didn’t want to pay for it with cash.  I know you can’t spend onboard credit prior to the cruise except for booking shore excursions, but I assumed I could schedule the reservation like I had done for the main dining room, and they would charge my account after we ate the meal onboard.  If they want you to pay in advance, why can’t they do it the same way they do the shore excursions and allow you to access your onboard credit.  By that time, I had already applied for and received my shareholder OBC so they knew we had it in our account.  Anyway, I assumed that they would save some tables for people to book the restaurant once they boarded the ship.  I have seen that happen on other cruises, and assumed surely Princess must do that too.  So tonight, after the show ended, I walked over to Sabatini’s to speak to the hostess about reserving a table for the end of the week.  Imagine my surprise when she said that was not possible and they were fully booked for the entire week!  She said my only option was to keep checking back throughout the week in case someone cancelled, or to call the dining line on the ship and they could also check for cancellations.  That was very disappointing, since we were looking forward to trying the restaurant.  

Spoiler alert:  I checked back several times throughout the week and they never had any cancellations or openings to accommodate us.  On the last day of the cruise, I went to guest services for a different reason, and I mentioned this to them.  Mostly, I was suggesting they might consider holding a few reservations in the specialty dining venues for people to book once onboard.  She said we should have paid for the reservation with my credit card, and once onboard, they could have refunded us and switched the payment method to use our onboard credit.  Honestly, I don’t think I would have taken the risk to trust it would play out like that.  We will see how things go with our Enchanted Princess cruise.  Maybe we will try that method next time, just to guarantee the chance to eat there?  We’ll see.

Anyway, after speaking to the Sabatini’s hostess, we went to the Vista Lounge for the 8:45pm family friendly comedy show with Kevin Jordan. 

I ordered an aperol spritz from the bar, and we had no trouble finding seats within 10 minutes of showtime.

We both loved Kevin’s act and found him so funny that we were laughing out loud nearly the whole time.  He spent a lot of time picking on the teenagers sitting in the front row, so they might have regretted sitting in the “splash zone”, but we were laughing the whole time.

After the comedy show, we picked up Ian from camp at 9:30pm.  When we dropped him off earlier, he whined that he didn’t want to go to camp, and it took a lot of coaxing to get him to stay.  I think he feared missing out on whatever fun things mommy and daddy were going to do without him.  When we picked him up, he was all smiles and couldn’t wait to show us the beaded bracelet and necklace he made.  

When we got back to the cabin, our steward left us a door hanger to order room service breakfast.  We didn’t intend to use it tonight, so I stuck it to the cabin wall with a magnet.  I spent a few minutes quickly unpacking our checked luggage (which was still untouched since we had been enjoying the ship all evening), while Jason got Ian ready for bed.  Jason also set up Ian’s “bedroom” by hanging black out curtains from the ceiling with magnetic hooks.  We bought these for last year’s cruise and they worked so well that we knew we wanted to use them again this year.  It actually worked even better because the loveseat is positioned in the corner between the balcony wall and the side wall of the cabin, so we only needed curtains on 2 sides, and it was far enough away from the ceiling sprinklers that we weren’t worried about any safety issues.

With Ian tucked into “bed” (the couch), we quietly did some more unpacking before crawling into bed.  Each night, Jason and I checked our drink totals in the app, just as a way to see if we got a good deal from purchasing the Plus Package.  I didn’t record how many drinks each of us had according to the app because that wasn’t a valid representation (as I already mentioned, the bartenders usually charged both drinks to one of us, more often to Jason, so it looked like he drank way more than me when in reality, we had about the same number of drinks each day).  I’ll include the tally at the end of each day’s posts.

Today’s drinks total for the 2 of us = 15

Last night, we loaded the suitcases into the car so we could be as efficient as possible when leaving this morning.  I set my alarm for 6am so I would have time to shower and get ready before Ian woke up.  Everyone ate breakfast and we finished up the last-minute packing before all climbing in the car by 8am.

Since it was a holiday week when many people take vacation, there was no traffic at all and we got to Quartzite around 10am to top off the tank with our last chance for cheaper Arizona gas before we crossed the border into California.

We were getting hungry for lunch around noon Arizona time (technically it was only 11am because by then we were in California and there is a time zone change this time of year).  We made our usual stop for lunch at the Costco in Palm Springs, and were back on the road an hour later.

Overall, the drive was uneventful, and even the typical LA traffic was tolerable as we pulled up to the Redondo Pier Hotel at 2:45 CA time.  I picked this hotel because it is about a half mile from one of my favorite South Bay restaurants, and I planned for us to walk there this evening as a chance to stretch our legs after the long drive.  The hotel got decent reviews for a smaller hotel, and the price was right at $140 for the night, including taxes.  The only downside was that it did not include breakfast, but that wasn’t a deal breaker.  I went into the lobby to check in while Jason parked the car in one of the covered parking spots.

The room was basic but it suited our needs for the night.  I just realized I never took photos of the room, but there was a king-sized bed, microwave, and minifridge.  There was a large dresser with a TV mounted to the wall above it, so that worked great for us to use the dresser as a changing table for Ian.  The bathroom had an open closet and shelving unit in the space for the sink, and the toilet and shower were in their own room.  The hotel does not offer roll-away beds or cribs, so we brought an inflatable bed for Ian to sleep on, and the room had plenty of floor space to give him his own area away from our bed. 

We spent some time unloading the car and getting settled in the room.  Most of Chanukah fell during this vacation, so I packed our wood toy menorah so we could “light” candles every night. Obviously fires and candles are a huge no-no on a cruise ship, so this seemed like a good alternative.  We lit tonight’s candles and opened presents in the hotel room, then headed out for the evening. 

We took the scenic route to walk down to the Redondo Pier.  Google Maps said the walk from our hotel to the restaurant should be a half mile, but looking back on the route we ended up taking, we walked over a mile!  Oops!  That’s okay though, as there was a lot to see within that mile.

When we got down to the water, we stopped to check out the view.  It was a gray and cloudy day, so the sky blended into the ocean at the horizon, with little color difference between the two.  Regardless, Ian loved watching the waves crash along the shore. 

We continued walking along the water towards the pier.  Of course, we had to stop and take a touristy photo!

The water looked really rough, and the waves were so dramatic as they crashed against the shore.

We continued along the path to the marina.  Ian loved seeing all of the boats tied up to the docks, but he was disappointed not to see a cruise ship in there!

We wanted to give Ian a chance to burn off some energy, so we didn’t bring his stroller for the walk.  Perhaps that wasn’t the best decision as it took us over 45 minutes to walk the mile from the hotel to the restaurant.  At least we made it on time to meet up with Jason’s brother’s family for dinner at Captain Kidds.  This is one of our favorite restaurants, and we eat there nearly every time we visit Jason’s brother.

Inside, they have a huge fish market to purchase seafood to cook at home.

They also have a restaurant with a huge selection of seafood dishes.  

We placed our order at the front counter, then went into the back room to pick a table.  Between it being the off season and a holiday weekend with many locals out of town, the restaurant was pretty empty and we had our pick of the tables. 

The lower level has long picnic tables that can seat 12 people with room to spare, so we went down there and waited for them to call our number when the food was ready.  I often order the lobster roll, and it was delicious as always!

It was fun to catch up with my BIL and SIL, and for Ian to play with his cousin. Luckily, my BIL offered to give us a ride back to the hotel so we didn’t have to walk since it was quite chilly by the time we were done eating.  He actually dropped us off first so Ian could sit in my nephew’s car seat, then went back to the restaurant to pick up my SIL and nephew.  After a long day, we all went to bed early to rest up for embarkation day tomorrow!