When I originally looked at this cruise itinerary, I assumed we would keep this as a “free” day of scenic cruising from the ship (obviously it wasn’t free since we paid to be on the ship, but you know what I mean!).  I read a few reviews and watched a few YouTube videos showing how beautiful it is to cruise through Tracy Arm Fjord, and I assumed that we would get fairly close to the Sawyer Glacier with the cruise being in late July, so the risk of icebergs blocking our path was low, and that would be that.  But then I got to thinking… this would be our only chance to see a glacier up close on this cruise.  What if the ship couldn’t get close to the glacier and we could only see it from a few miles away?  I’ve read so many reports about how the glaciers are receding and who knows when we will get back to Alaska, and maybe the glaciers will all melt before then?!  Or more realistically, maybe they will recede so far that they are not visible from where we could easily see them?  I would kick myself if I had the opportunity to do something really special and I didn’t seize the opportunity.   

Every Alaska cruise review that I have seen where people went on a small boat excursion to get closer to the glaciers has said that it was 1000% worth the price and they would highly recommend taking the tour.  If you have read my reviews in the past, you know that I avoid cruise ship excursions as much as possible.  I made an exception on our New Year’s cruise with Princess to simplify the logistics with the tender situation in Cabo, and that worked out pretty well, so I was open to booking another cruise ship excursion if that was our only option.  Since this day in Tracy Arm Fjord only involved scenic cruising and there was no dock or place to get off the ship, the only way to book an excursion out to the glacier was to book directly through the cruise line.  I had to be okay with booking a cruise ship excursion in this case because there was no alternative!  With all of my planning, I read a thread that tracked the prices of Alaska cruise ship excursions over the year prior to the cruise and they came close to doubling in price as the cruise got closer!  One of the advantages to booking this cruise so far in advance was that I was fairly certain the excursion was priced at its original low price, and if the price did go down with a sale or something in the future, I could always cancel and rebook the tour or call Carnival to have them refund the difference.  One evening, I brought up to Jason the idea of taking this excursion, and with the way I was describing it, he thought it would cost something crazy like $5000 per person haha When I told him the actual price of $250 per adult and $175 for Ian, he thought it was a no-brainer to book the excursion!  I guess it’s all about perspective, right?!  I thought $675 was a lot of money to spend on a 3 hour excursion, but was able to justify it considering all of the reviews and that it was a very rare opportunity, so with Jason in agreement, I went ahead and booked the tour!  

I spent the next year+ checking the price of this excursion (and also if it was sold out because I had heard it usually sells out early and I was curious how it would play out), but surprisingly enough, that never happened.  The price remained exactly the same until 2 months before the cruise when it went up to $270pp, and it never sold out (or at least not before we got on the ship and I stopped tracking it.)  Of course, your mileage may vary, but this was our experience.  It was still nice having the peace of mind that we knew we had the lowest possible price, even if the price didn’t fluctuate much.  

When we originally booked, the only time option available was for 7am.  Honestly, that alone almost convinced me to scrap the whole excursion because ship tours usually meet in the theater 30 minutes early and there was no way we could all be awake, dressed, and fed to be in the theater at 6:30am!  I still booked the tour and figured the timing logistics would work themselves out.  At some point in the spring, I noticed that the time of our excursion changed to 1pm!  What?!  That’s perfect!  I called Carnival because I wanted to make sure there wasn’t a glitch.  They said that due to the time it takes the ship to sail from Seattle up to Tracy Arm Fjord, we wouldn’t arrive in time for a 7am tour and they pushed it back to the afternoon.  They actually had the option of both 1pm and 4pm start times, but I preferred 1pm because 4pm would interfere with dinner.  Sometimes the Luminosa goes to Juneau as their first port, and Tracy Arm is scheduled for the next day.  On those cruises, the ship is already up in Alaska and can probably get to Tracy Arm for a 7am tour, so I was very thankful I didn’t book that itinerary!

Sigit delivered the tickets for our excursion at some point yesterday, so I used one of my magnetic hooks to hold it on the wall near the cabin door so we wouldn’t forget to bring them to the theater for our 12:30pm meet time.

There was something really weird going on with my sleep on this cruise.  We all slept in this morning until 7am, but I still didn’t feel well-rested.  I checked my sleep graph and was shocked to see this:

I don’t think I’ve ever seen that bad of a sleep pattern in my life!  Zero REM or deep sleep for the entire night?!  And it looked like I was awake more than I was asleep.  Luckily the adrenaline and excitement running through my body was enough to power me through the day!

I stepped out onto the balcony and was greeted with cloudy, gloomy skies.  Without the sun shining, everything appeared as a shade of grey.  The water was grey, the mountains were grey, the clouds were grey.  This photo was taken at 7:30am, so had we actually taken the early morning tour, it wouldn’t have been all that spectacular.  You really do need the sun to come out if you want the colors to pop.  Luckily, we still had 5 hours to hope the weather cleared up.

We all got dressed in layers, as it was in the 50’s outside and we knew we would want the option of checking out the views throughout the morning.  We went up to the Lido buffet for a light breakfast around 8am.  We didn’t want to eat too much because we needed to eat lunch around 11:30am before the tour, but we certainly needed to eat a little something to start the day.  I picked up 2 slices of french toast, 2 hashbrowns, and 2 hardboiled eggs, and shared 1 of each item with Ian.

The big question on our minds this morning was if we would actually be able to visit Tracy Arm Fjord.  Even as late as last week, there were too many icebergs for the ship to safely sail into Tracy Arm, so every cruise so far this season was diverted to Endicott Arm.  I was really surprised because if it wasn’t possible to visit Tracy Arm on July 26, was it ever possible??  Without an internet connection, Google Maps didn’t have any details or locations labeled, but I knew from my research that when the ship reached the fork in the “Y”, if it turned left/north, we were going to Tracy Arm, and if it turned right/south, we were going to Endicott Arm.  I checked our location using my phone’s GPS and saw we were still too far away to know which Arm we would take.

Thanks to Camp Ocean, we had fun plans to take our minds off the Fjord drama.  The Dr. Seuss Parade was scheduled for 8:45am this morning, and we knew Ian would love it!  I couldn’t resist posing Ian in front of the tub of supplies, with the woman statue appearing to lay on top.

We participated in this activity on our Carnival Panorama cruise a year and a half ago, so I knew what to expect.  One of the crew members handed each kid a bell or maraca to use during the parade.

They ran through a few warm up exercises to get the kids excited and encouraged them to make lots of noise.

Cruise Director Zach came out to introduce Thing 1 and Thing 2…

…and Sam I Am

And then they all walked down the stairs to kick off the parade.  

On the Panorama, we chanted “Dr. Seuss is on the loose”, but on the Luminosa, we chanted “1, 2, 3, Seuss at sea!”.  I’m not sure why they made the change, but we marched from the atrium, through the casino and Ocean Plaza, and into the theater.

Once all the kids and parents took their seats, Zach hosted story time for a reenactment of Horton Hears a Who.

First, they brought the Cat in the Hat out on stage.

Ian got a kick out of that!

Then, Zach introduced all of the characters from Horton Hears a Who.

And then Zach took his position behind the podium to read the story of Horton Hears a Who.

The story was over around 9:20am, and Ian had fun watching the characters on stage.  We left the theater and went outside on the deck 3 promenade to see if the weather had cleared up, but there didn’t seem to be any change in the last 2 hours.

We still had some time before we needed to eat lunch, so we went back to the cabin.  While we were out, Sigit cleaned our room and left us a new towel animal.  I think this one is a ram?

Sigit also left us information about the Port Valet.  We weren’t flying home on debarkation day so we had no use for this, but it is a great option for people with late flights who want to explore Seattle sans-luggage before going to the airport.

We spent some time chilling out on the balcony, and I do mean chilling!  With the wind from the moving ship, it was cold enough to need our jackets and the fleece blankets from the cabin.

At 10:15am, the Captain made the inevitable announcement: we were diverting to Endicott Arm Fjord because Tracy Arm Fjord had too much ice.  I wasn’t surprised given that last week’s cruise also made that itinerary change, but now it was official.  Cruise Director Zach came on the speaker to tell those of us taking the small boat excursion that we needn’t worry, and our excursion would continue exactly as originally planned.  We would still meet in the theater at the designated time, and the tour boat would still come find the Luminosa wherever we were in Endicott Arm.  

Next, Daryth the naturalist came on the speaker to convince us that Endicott was very similar to Tracy, and we shouldn’t be upset that we were missing out on anything with the itinerary change.  Since we had never visited either location, we didn’t really know the difference, but apparently Tracy Arm is windier, making for a more dramatic view, but that makes it harder for the cruise ship to navigate.  Endicott Arm is straighter, so the ship can navigate easier, and people not taking the small boat excursion will have a better line of sight towards the glacier in the distance.  Basically, it sounded like the itinerary change would benefit those not taking the small boat excursion, which made me second guess all that money we were paying since our view might not be all that different.

Around 10:30am, the clouds finally started to clear, and by 10:45am, we saw blue skies for the first time since leaving Seattle!  Okay, now I was finally getting excited for our excursion!  Fingers crossed the skies stayed clear for the rest of the day!

At 11am, we went back up to the Lido buffet in search of lunch.  We weren’t necessarily hungry yet but we decided to eat early so we would have time to go back to the cabin and put on more layers of warm clothes afterwards.  All of my research said that it gets very cold on the small boat as it moves quickly towards the glacier, and close to the glacier itself can be cold too, so I wanted to layer up so we could spend as much time as possible on the excursion outside taking photos.  I realized it wouldn’t be ideal to eat lunch wearing all those layers, so we went for an early lunch.  

I decided to get a pizza to split between the 3 of us.  When I got to the pizza counter, they had just pulled about 10 pepperoni pizzas from the oven, but not a single option for people who don’t eat pepperoni.  What was it with pepperoni pizza on this ship?  This would actually become a routine issue every time I wanted pizza.  They only ever had pepperoni ready to serve, and if you wanted anything else, you had to order it and wait 15 minutes for them to make it fresh.  On the one hand, it was nice always eating hot fresh pizza, but it was annoying that they didn’t just automatically have other options available.  When I ordered my Funghi pizza, the man spread out 10 new balls of dough, turned 9 of them into more pepperoni pizzas, and then saved the last one to make my mushroom pizza.  It seemed very inefficient if you ask me!

While my pizza was in the oven, Daryth came over the speaker to say she was up in the Bridge and could see a pod of 5 humpback whales approaching along the port side of the ship!  Everyone ran over to the windows, and sure enough, we could see subtle circles in the water up ahead.  As they got closer, we saw the blow spout!

Then we watched as the whale came up to the surface to breathe, then dove back down under the water, flashing us his tail!  Our first whale sighting from the ship!  It was so exciting!  It was really hard to take photos through the blue-tinted glass windows, especially with all the water spots and dirt on the outside, so this was the best I could get:

When my pizza was ready, I brought it back to where Jason and Ian were sitting.  We continued to watch the pod of whales while we ate our lunch, just marveling at how surreal it was to finally be here in Alaska after over a year of planning this vacation.

When we finished eating, we went back down to the cabin to put on some more layers of clothing.  I opted to wear my fleece leggings underneath my regular leggings, with a pair of wool socks pulled up between the two pants.  On top, I wore a long sleeve base layer with a tshirt on top, a fleece long sleeve shirt, and a zipper-down sweatshirt over all of that.  I also packed my backpack with my packable puffer jacket, rain pants, gloves, and a fleece headband to cover my ears in case I was cold on the tour.  I dressed Ian in several layers, and threw an extra hoodie, gloves, and a hat in my backpack for him too.  Jason just wore his jeans, a tshirt, and a long sleeve shirt on top, and carried his jacket just in case.

Just as we finished getting dressed, Daryth announced that we were coming up to Sumdum Glacier on the starboard side of the ship.  When she said it, I thought it was called “Some Dumb” Glacier, but later figured out the correct spelling haha!  Our cabin was on the wrong side of the ship to see the glacier, so we grabbed everything we needed for the excursion and went down to the deck 3 promenade, using the forward elevators so we would only be one deck away from the theater to meet up for the tour.

I stepped one foot outside and my jaw hit the floor… err, the deck!  It was absolutely stunning!  The bright blue water!  The lush tree-lined mountains!  The cotton ball puffy white clouds!  It was everything I imagined Alaska to be!

If you walk too far forward on the ship, the open railing is enclosed and there are giant oval open holes in the wall like windows.  This would probably be a perfect place to see the views on a rainy day, but we needn’t worry about rain today!

As the ship continued its course, we started to see Sumdum Glacier peek out from behind a mountain.

It was amazing to see the frozen river of ice cascading down the side of the mountain (which Google just informed me was Mt. Sumdum… duh!).  

As we stood there admiring the views, I noticed a Princess ship rounding the corner from behind the mountain.  I guess they had their glacier viewing earlier this morning and were now heading back out of the fjord.

It was now 12:25pm, so we had to pull ourselves away from the view or we’d be late for the excursion.  This was the description of the excursion from the Hub app:

When we got to deck 2 of the theater, someone checked our excursion tickets and told us to take a seat in one of the rows.  I made an assumption that they would ask us to leave the theater row by row to walk down to the tour boat, and they would likely start at the back of the theater, so we opted to sit in the last row.  

And then we sat.  We sat, and sat, and sat, and sat, and sat, and sat, and sat (Sorry, the potty training book “Once Upon a Potty” is on regular rotation in this household. IYKYK).  The shore excursions guy talked about the excursion as if he was trying to sell us tickets, highlighting all the amazing scenery and wildlife we would see.  Didn’t he realize that if we were sitting there, then we already bought excursion tickets?  Don’t sell past the close!  I figured out that he was basically killing time until the excursion boat was ready for us.  Apparently there was some kind of delay, but he assured us that we would still get our full 3 hour excursion, and if we left late, we would return to the ship late as well.

We finally got up to leave the theater at 1:10pm, so we sat in there for 40 minutes.  If it was just Jason and I, I wouldn’t have cared, but Ian was getting antsy and overheated in all his layers.  My assumption was correct and we were, in fact, asked to exit the theater starting with the back row.  We walked down the stairs to deck 1, across to the midship elevators, then down another flight of stairs to deck A to board the tour boat.  There were 2 tour boats for the 1pm excursion, each with about 75 people.  The downstairs level had booths and tables, and there was a bar with drinks and packaged snacks for purchase.  They also had complimentary coffee, hot chocolate, and donut holes.  Upstairs, there was a big outdoor deck and a smaller indoor viewing room surrounded by windows, with benches inside to sit.  It was very warm in this room, so while we were one of the first to enter, and we got great seats in the front row, it was way too hot to sit in there the whole time.  This photo was from the end of the tour when we were side by side with the 2nd boat doing our tour, but it is the best photo I have of the tour boat itself.  I never thought to take a photo from inside the seating areas upstairs or downstairs.

Just as an aside, most of the photos I have posted so far have been from my iPhone (aside from a few of the Seattle skyline and Mt. Rainier photos taken on embarkation day).  As I post my port day photos, those were mostly taken on my Sony a6100 mirrorless DSLR camera.  I didn’t want to carry it around the ship as it is heavy and fragile and not convenient for quick photos of our food or activities throughout the cruise, but I did enjoy using it on the port days.  Anytime you see a photo with me in it, that was taken on the iPhone as I didn’t ask strangers to use the fancy camera (and usually, you can see me wearing the Sony around my neck so obviously it wasn’t used to take those photos!).  

It took a few minutes for everyone to board the boat, so I tried taking a photo through the window from inside the viewing room while we waited.  I quickly realized the glare from the windows made it impossible to capture a good photo and I would need to take all my photos from outside.

I left Ian and Jason inside with our backpacks and I stepped outside to take some photos of the Luminosa.  It is so rare to see the cruise ship from this perspective, and I was excited to take as many photos as I could.  

I could feel the tour boat pull away from the Luminosa at 1:25pm, and we were officially on our way.

I turned around and spotted the Carnival Legend in the distance.  She must have also been cruising through Endicott Arm Fjord this morning with the Princess ship.

Ok, now back to focusing on the Luminosa!

Carnival contracts this excursion through Allen Marine Tours.  The guides spoke over the speakers about some of the history of the fjord and stories about the people who discovered it.  Unfortunately, you could only hear that if you were inside (either upstairs or downstairs).  They turned off the speakers on the outside decks to avoid disturbing the wildlife.  Since my top priority was taking photos, and because we were so incredibly lucky with perfect warm sunny weather, I spent most of the time outside and missed most of the commentary.  Jason and Ian alternated between standing outside and sitting on the benches inside the upstairs cabin.  As you can see in this photo, most people on the tour chose to stand outside along the railings for the best views.  I was worried it might be hard to get a good spot, but people moved around throughout the 3 hour tour, and I was always able to squeeze in to get a photo if I wasn’t already in the perfect spot.  The guides told us at the start of the tour that if we do pass any wildlife, they will rotate the boat so people on both sides can see it without having to move.  

While it was very windy outside, it really wasn’t all that cold and I was comfortable in the layers I wore.  At some point I took off the extra fleece long sleeve shirt, but I kept on my sweatshirt.  Wind always bothers my ears, so I did end up wearing my fleece headband to cover my ears to keep them warm from the wind when the boat was moving.  When we stayed still, it was surprisingly warm in the sun, and none of the extra winter gear inside my backpack was needed.  Of course, there was no way to know it would feel so warm, and I was glad I brought it just in case. 

I took several hundred photos today, so in an effort to avoid boring you, I’ll try to only share some of my favorites throughout the tour:

Remember how we diverted to Endicott Arm because there was too much ice in Tracy Arm for the Luminosa to safely navigate it?  I honestly think those of us who paid for this excursion were given a disservice because there were only a handful of small icebergs the entire time we cruised through the fjord.  Before our cruise, I read countless reviews of people saying they saw tons of wildlife on the icebergs.  If there aren’t any icebergs, then there also isn’t any wildlife!  Each time we approached one of the small icebergs, I eagerly scanned its surface in hopes of spotting an otter or seal or anything, but nope!  No such luck!

Downstairs at the bar, they sold margaritas made with ice from the glacier for $12 a cup.  We knew about that in advance and planned to share a cup just to say we tried it.  We figured that since we didn’t have a drink package on the ship, and we had to pay out of pocket for any drinks we drank on board, we might as well pay a similar price on this excursion and try the glacier ice margarita.  Once the excursion started and the other passengers started buying their drinks, we quickly learned that no one liked them!  Everyone said they were way too sweet, and some people were trying to give away the drinks they bought because they couldn’t finish them!  Needless to say, we skipped the glacier ice margaritas.  It was gimmicky and we originally thought we would just embrace the cheesiness, but not if people said they were that undrinkable!

Finally, 30 minutes into the tour, the boat noticeably slowed down.  I was outside so I didn’t hear the announcement of why we stopped, but I had a hunch there was an animal nearby.  I was on the port side of the boat, but I noticed people moving to the starboard side.  Keeping in mind that the Captain said he would rotate the boat if we saw wildlife, at first I stayed put where I was standing.  

After a while, we still didn’t rotate the boat and it seemed like everyone else was moving to the starboard side and getting very excited.  I couldn’t wait any longer, so I crossed the boat and squeezed into a small space along the railing and just started blindly taking photos.  I honestly didn’t know what I was looking for, or where the animal was located, but I just aimed my camera in the direction where others were pointing and hoped for the best.

I asked the person next to me if he knew what we were looking for and he said there was a bear!  Where?  Over there!

I finally spotted the bear, just in time!  A second after I took this photo, he disappeared between the rocks, and I definitely would have missed it if I stayed on the port side of the boat.  Not cool, Captain!

Inside the cabin, I saw Jason trying to show Ian where to look, but I don’t think either of them spotted the bear, so I showed them the photo from my camera.

After that excitement, we continued drifting through the fjord.  We saw a few small waterfalls, but the boat didn’t stop so I just snapped photos as we passed.

Every so often, I turned back but I never saw the other excursion boat behind us.  I honestly don’t know where they were this whole time, as they should have been following behind us.

As we got closer to the glacier, there were a few more small icebergs, but none had any animals on top.

This waterfall seemed very powerful.

And then we finally spotted it!  The thing we came all this way to see… Dawes Glacier!  I made my way all the way to the front of the starboard side of the boat to get the best view I could.

I took this photo at 2:55pm, so it took us an hour and a half to reach this point, although we still had a ways to go before we stopped.  This was definitely a pinch-me moment that we were actually here.  Thinking back to all the anticipation and planning for this trip, I tried to stay present in the moment and appreciate everything I was seeing with my own eyes.

Ooh, a bigger iceberg!

Nope, no animals on top.

At this point, I kept turning around to wave for Jason to join me outside.  He was such a champ on this whole excursion by staying inside with Ian to avoid the wind, but this was it!  The final push towards the glacier, and I didn’t want either of them to miss it!  When Ian saw the glacier in the distance, he got so excited, so we picked him up for a better view.

As we continued to approach the glacier, the water turned to a lighter aqua color, and we saw a few more larger waterfalls.

I did think it was funny that they allowed us to get so close to the front of the boat.  There were control levers and a steering wheel right there that I could have touched and possibly operated by mistake.  I can only assume they have a way to turn off those controls during tours and only steer the boat from inside the bridge.

As we glided closer and closer to the glacier, we all took turns standing at the very front so everyone had a chance to see the unobstructed views.

The Captain stopped the boat a quarter mile from the face of the glacier.  It was so close that we could see all the details and jagged edges of the ice.

We all took turns handing off our cameras to have others take our photos.  

Just then, I noticed the other tour boat coming up alongside us.  I honestly have no idea where they were for the last hour, but they joined us at the glacier so I had a chance to show them in some photos for size perspective.

We decided to move towards the back of the boat to give other people a chance to stand up front.  

Funny enough, I think we actually got better photos back there because it was less crowded and the person taking our photo could back up a bit more.  There was a photographer from the ship who offered to take our photo on her camera, but we declined since we could just have another passenger take it on my phone for free.

One of the crew members walked around with a big chunk of ice from the glacier, so now I can say I have touched glacier ice.

We stayed at the face of the glacier for about 30 minutes, and the Captain rotated the boat so we could all see it, but most people were walking around to see all the different angles anyway.  Around 3:40pm, we started to motor away from the glacier.

I took this photo 9 minutes later.  I was surprised to see the Luminosa right there behind us!  

I guess I thought they were much further back up the fjord and we’d have a long ride back to the ship, similar in how long it took us to first reach the glacier.  Nope!  We tied up to the ship at 3:55pm, so only 15 minutes after leaving the glacier.  I will say that there was some big excitement during that short time.  As we got closer to the bigger of those 2 pieces of ice, the man next to me spotted a seal!

That man must have excellent vision because the seal was really on the opposite side of the ice and the seal was fairly small.  When I zoom in all the way, I can see it better, even if it’s a bit blurry from the lower resolution…

And that was that.  We spent the next few minutes inching closer to the Luminosa for the end of the tour.

So let’s talk through some final thoughts about this excursion…  I have read so many reviews of people raving about this tour and how many animals they saw and how they got way closer to the glacier than the ship did.  Well we only saw 2 animals (the bear from a far distance that I nearly missed because the Captain never turned the boat for the other side to see it, and that seal at the very end which, again, only the people on that side of the boat would have seen it, and the Captain didn’t even acknowledge it was there!).  The ship ended up getting within 3 miles of the glacier, so honestly I do not think this tour was worth the $675 my family paid for it.  Had we gotten to visit Tracy Arm, then the ship wouldn’t have gotten so close to the glacier and maybe I would have felt differently.  I will say it was incredible to stand at the front of the smaller boat and watch us drift through the water, breathing the fresh air, with the cool wind blowing my hair as we moved closer to the glacier.  The boat stopped a quarter mile from Dawes Glacier, so yes that was much closer than the 3 miles away that the ship got.  I’m just not sure it was worth what we paid considering the ship saw everything we saw in the fjord and still got fairly close to the glacier.  Oh, and I got to touch ice from the glacier, if you think that is worth $675?  Of course your mileage may vary, but that was our experience.

When we reboarded the Luminosa, I asked Jason to keep Ian occupied somewhere else around the ship so I could go back to the cabin to shower with some privacy.  I think he ended up taking Ian to a top deck to look at the glacier in the distance.  Opening the door to my cabin, I was struck by the beautiful view through the windows!  

It was tempting to just sit out on the balcony and continue to enjoy the views, but I really needed to shower before Jason and Ian returned.  I showered and quickly dried my hair just as the boys entered the cabin.  I wasn’t really paying attention to the view outside, but when they came in I looked up and saw that the ship had rotated and we could now see the Dawes Glacier straight ahead.

So this is a good comparison of how close the ship got to the glacier compared to how close our excursion got.  I could also see the 4pm excursion boat sailing down towards the glacier.  I guess they would see the glacier for the first part of their tour, then slowly sail out of the fjord behind the Luminosa for the next 2 hours?  I’m not really sure how the timing worked out for them- is anyone reading this who took the 4pm tour?

Anyway, I finished getting dressed for the evening, then got Ian dressed so we could take some photos on the balcony.  The color of that water was just so incredible!

This background and lighting was just too perfect to not capture it in a photo.  I mounted my phone on the glass of the balcony window using a suction cup mount, set the timer on my phone’s camera, and this was the photo we got:

It was perfect!  I called into the cabin for Jason to hurry up and get dressed so we could take another one with the 3 of us!

 That was my absolute favorite photo of us from the entire vacation!

This was tonight’s MDR dinner menu:

The scenic cruising was too important for us to waste an hour eating dinner in the center of the MDR with no windows to admire the view.  Instead, tonight we decided to eat dinner in the buffet so we could get a table next to the window and enjoy the views while we ate.  When we got upstairs to the buffet at 5:20pm, we were literally the only ones there and had our pick of any table in the room.  We opted for this table next to the angled windows so we had views looking forward and out the starboard side of the ship.

Ian had a meatball sandwich from the deli.  At home, he would eat mac and cheese for every meal of the day if I allowed it, so it was great that he loved the meatball sandwich from the deli so much.  Unlike some of the other buffet stations, the deli was open for both lunch and dinner, so I am fairly sure he ate at least one meatball sandwich every day of the cruise.  

I really wished Chopstix and the pasta station were open for dinner because that would have been perfect for me tonight.  Instead, I had a sampling of a few options from the MDR menu, but I didn’t take a photo, so I don’t remember exactly what I had.  There was only one small station set up for dessert, but I didn’t care for the options so I just skipped it.

We finished dinner by 6:15, so I went back to the cabin to pack our bags for tomorrow’s excursion while Jason took Ian to the atrium to listen to the guitarist.  A few minutes before 7pm, I met up with them up at Camp Ocean so we could drop off Ian, then Jason and I went down to the theater to watch a few rounds of Family Feud, which started at 7pm.  I’ve never watched that before on a cruise ship and thought they did a good job at keeping it true to the original show.  The host made it clear that there was no talking allowed in the theater because they didn’t want the audience helping the contestants think of answers.  You were also not allowed to take photos of the show because they reuse the questions on every sailing, but we still had fun watching and trying to play along in our heads.  

At 7:30, we left Family Feud to get a seat for Jeff Shaw’s 7:45pm PG comedy show.  I was surprised to see the room so crowded for a family-friendly show, but we found 2 seats at the back of the room so all was good!

He was funny, but I liked last night’s over 18 show better.  Tomorrow, the comedians from the beginning of the cruise were getting off the ship and we would have 2 new comedians for the rest of the week, so I was looking forward to that.  

We wanted to make tonight an early night because we had an early morning wake up time tomorrow, so we picked up Ian at 8:30pm and went back to the cabin.  I couldn’t resist a quick peek out on the balcony to see the views.  The water was so calm, aside from the ripples caused by our ship.  

Earlier in the night, Daryth announced that there was a good chance to see the Northern Lights tonight between 11pm and 2am.  We would have to leave the cabin to do that because she said it would be best viewed from one of the top decks.  We didn’t want to wake up Ian in the middle of the night, so only 1 of us could go.  Jason wanted to see it and I thought it was so unlikely to happen that sleeping would be a better use of my time, so I told Jason that if it was visible from the balcony, he should wake me.  If he had to go upstairs, I told him to take photos and show me tomorrow.  Plans in place, we all got ready for bed, and we went to sleep by 9:30pm.  

Up next: Skagway!

Ian did a great job sleeping on the big boy bed all night, but around 5am, he woke me up with his fidgeting and tossing and turning.  I think we both fell back asleep, but I continued to wake up on and off.  Around 6am, he started stirring again, and I heard him get out of bed around 7am so I decided to admit defeat and get up then too.  You will notice in my sleep chart that I never entered deep sleep the entire night.  It was a good thing today was a Sea Day and we didn’t have much planned because I definitely felt less pep in my step.

Jason woke up then too, so we all got ready for the day.  Stepping out on the balcony, we could see it was cloudy and gloomy, and the temperature was only 57 degrees.  I guess we would be wearing pants and hoodies today!  

When we were all dressed, I used the app to request a table for brunch at 8:12am. It was a 30-40 minute wait.  Too bad I didn’t think to check the wait time when we first woke up, as we probably could have gotten dressed quicker if that meant we could be seated sooner.

With some time to kill, we went up to the Lido buffet to get Jason some coffee and Ian some pancakes while we waited.  Life is always easier when Ian is not hungry, so it made sense to get him some pancakes to eat now.  Even after we got seated at brunch, it would take a while before they brought out our food.  By the time we got Ian’s pancakes and found a table, I checked the app again and our table was ready!  At 8:25am!  So much for a 30-40 minute wait, as that only took 13 minutes!  Jason didn’t even have a chance to get his coffee, but we took Ian’s plate of pancakes to the MDR so he could eat while we ordered our food. 

As is often the case at Sea Day Brunch, the service was extremely slow this morning.  Jason and I each ordered a glass of orange juice, but they only brought one glass.  Jason let me take it and he ordered another glass.  Five minutes later, after the table next to us got their drinks from the same waiter, Jason asked a second time for OJ.  10 minutes later, still no OJ so Jason asked a third time, this time from an assistant waiter.  Finally, they brought the OJ.  That was kind of ridiculous, especially since the guy selling the $6 glasses of freshly pressed juice walked by our table several times in the interim.  Maybe this was their secret ploy to get us to pay for the juice?

In the meantime, we ordered our food.  They brought out the bagels and lox first, which worked well because I planned to let Ian eat the bagel and I just wanted the lox and cream cheese. 

Fifteen minutes later, they brought our hot dishes.  I ordered 2 eggs over hard, and the skillet cake.  I order this exact combo on every Carnival Sea Day Brunch, and this was honestly the best skillet cake I’ve ever had.  It tasted freshly made, and while it was hot, the marshmallows were still solid and hadn’t melted yet, meaning it probably wasn’t sitting out too long. 

While we ate, I checked the weather forecast for the week.  For the 2 weeks prior to the cruise, I checked both Accuweather and Weather.com several times a day, desperate to see if we would have good weather for our cruise.  As of Wednesday when we flew to Seattle, it didn’t bode well, with about a 50% chance of rain and temperatures in the 50’s every day of the week in Juneau.  I figured since all the ports (except Victoria) were close together, I could just use Juneau as a central location to check the weather.

Now that we were on the cruise, I liked how they had one spot in the Hub app which listed the weather expected at each port on the day we would be there.  It seemed like things were changing for the better, as the predicted temperatures in each port were much higher, and only a few days expected rain.  Fingers crossed this forecast was more accurate than what I saw before we left home!

After brunch, we went to the theater to listen to the naturalist’s lecture.  We arrived a few minutes early, so we caught the end of cruise director Zach hosting The Wave morning show.  He was announcing the teams that qualified to play Family Feud later in the week.

The naturalist on our cruise was Daryth.  She is a retired middle school science and marine biology teacher from Southern California, and we always enjoyed listening to her commentary.  Throughout the cruise, she came on the overhead speakers to point out when she saw wildlife passing the ship.  She also hosted several lectures in the theater throughout the week.  We missed the one last night called North to Alaska, but were looking forward to this morning’s lecture titled Glaciers, Volcanoes, and Wildlife in Alaska.

It was very informative and even Ian was captivated. She did a good job of explaining the science behind how glaciers work and how volcanoes were formed, and since she was a teacher, she really knew how to explain things in a way that made it interesting.

Camp opened at 10am so after the lecture, we took Ian upstairs to drop him off.  We went back to the cabin to finish unpacking and getting settled in the room without Ian there.  By then, Sigit had already cleaned our room, and he left us a customs form to fill out for Canada.  It’s funny how much work there is for this 4-hour port stop when half the passengers won’t even get off the ship! 

I decided to just fill out the form right now when we didn’t have much else going on.  We dropped it off in the box in the atrium, then went upstairs to the Lido buffet.  Neither of us were hungry at all, but we knew the easiest way to keep Ian happy when we picked him up from camp was to have lunch already waiting for him.  We got him a grilled cheese sandwich and a meatball sandwich from the deli, and I planned to eat the one he didn’t want.  The buffet was very crowded, which was surprising since it was only 11:30am.  The deli line took 20 minutes to get our food, but luckily we found a table next to a window, which is where Ian kept asking to sit at dinner last night and brunch this morning. 

Jason sat with Ian’s food while I ran up to camp to pick him up.  I will say it is very convenient that camp is on deck 10 forward.  It is just one flight above the buffet, and a straight shot up the elevators from the theater and comedy club, which were all places we found ourselves right before/after dropping Ian at camp.  

I was worried Ian would be having so much fun playing with the toys at camp that he wouldn’t want to leave.  Luckily, my plan worked perfectly and Ian was thrilled when I told him about our window table and the sandwiches waiting for him.  He devoured the meatball sandwich, and he asked to take the grilled cheese back to the cabin for his post-nap snack.  Ian’s meatball sandwich looked so good that I went back to the deli to get one for myself.  This time there was no line and it only took me 3 minutes.  When I brought it back to our table, Jason got up to get some food for himself for lunch. 

When everyone was done eating, we went back to the cabin to get ready for Ian’s nap.  He loved seeing the towel animal bear on the bed.  I made Ian’s embarkation day shirt using my Cricut, and while it said “I’m just here for the towel animals,” I don’t think he really remembered what they were from his prior cruises.  On this cruise, he loved coming back to the cabin each day to see what Sigit left for us, but he still needed some practice on being gentle with them so they didn’t fall apart (unlike his stuffies at home!).

I left the boys to nap in the cabin, and went down to Ocean Plaza for trivia.  I picked a banquet along the windows so I could watch the views as I listened to the questions.

The first round was general knowledge, followed by “Mind Game” trivia which was more like riddles.  I won’t share my answer sheets so I don’t ruin the game for anyone playing on future cruises.  I wasn’t really sure what “Mind Game” trivia was, so just as an example, they asked how many animals Moses brought on the ark.  None!  It was Noah’s ark!  So that was the kind of thought process you needed to answer all of the questions, although some were definitely harder than others.  I only got about half right for each game, but it was still fun to play along.  The third round of trivia was going to be sports trivia, so I took that as my cue to leave and find something else to do since sports are definitely not my forte.

I stopped by Pixels Photo Gallery on deck 3, as that’s where we had to go to pick up the VIFP pin.  It is disappointing that I don’t think Carnival will hand out these pins anymore after they start the new VIFP program in 2026.  I have a collection of pins from all our prior cruises, so I guess this will be my last one.

I noticed we could see land off the starboard side of the ship, so I stepped outside onto the Promenade Deck.  This area offered a great view close to the water, with coverage overhead in case of too much sun or rain.  It was surprising that there was hardly anyone else out here whenever I stepped out to admire the scenery.  Yes, we had a balcony cabin but we were on the port side and only had a view of the ocean today, so it was nice having the option of using this public space.  

I headed up to Serenity Deck for a different perspective.  It was still very cloudy outside, but it did look like the clouds were starting to break up a little bit.  If you look very closely at the horizon, you can see some land… that’s Canada!

It wouldn’t be a cruise if I didn’t snap a photo of the wake on a sea day!

…and also a photo of the life ring displaying the name of our ship!

As I came back inside and walked through the Lido pool area, I noticed they were setting up for an activity.  A quick check in the Hub app told me the Great Alaskan Race was starting soon.

One of the benefits of using the Luminosa for Alaska cruises was the main Lido pool had a retractable roof.  I think they kept the roof closed for the entire cruise (at least, I never saw it open!), so that allowed people to use the space no matter what weather was happening outside.  I will say that having an indoor pool gave the space a different feeling than when the Lido pool is open to the sky.  It’s kind of like going to an indoor pool versus an outdoor pool when we are at home.  The indoor pool just sets a different tone compared to the outdoor pool, and I noticed that here on the ship.  The pool on the Serenity deck was open to the sky, but they couldn’t hold big activities back there because the space is only for adults, so that left us to use the indoor pool space for most activities.

A few minutes after I arrived, Zach called for people to volunteer to play the game.

Everyone was given an animal hat to wear, and they had to answer questions to move forward a certain number of spaces.  Whoever got to the end of the mat first, won a prize, but I didn’t stay long enough to see who won or what the prize was.

It was now after 3pm, so I headed back to the cabin to see if the boys were awake from their naps.  We did not pay for Carnival’s WiFi package on this cruise because we knew our phones would work like normal when we were in port, so we wouldn’t be totally disconnected for the week and we would just make due on the ship without internet access.  We figured out that when our iPhones were connected to the ship’s free internal WiFi, iMessage worked!  On our Carnival Panorama cruise a year and a half ago, we both paid for the chat feature in the Hub app, but quickly realized it was useless because it doesn’t send you a push notification of an incoming text.  The only way to know we had a new text was to manually check, and that just doesn’t work in real life scenarios.  We knew we were not going to pay for the chat feature again on this cruise, so it was great when we realized iMessage worked for free.  The only glitch was that it only worked while connected to Carnival’s free WiFi.  For whatever reason, the signal inside our cabin was very weak and we both kept getting disconnected while we were in the cabin.  It was actually very annoying because if I wanted to check the daily schedule or look at the dinner menus, I first had to re-log in to Carnival’s free WiFi before opening the Hub app.  Anyway, because of the poor signal, I couldn’t text Jason to ask if he was awake yet, so I had to physically go down to the cabin.  I am sure we would have had the same issue with the WiFi disconnecting even if we paid for Carnival’s chat feature in the app.  Texting with iMessage worked out great when we were walking around the ship, so I could get us seats in the theater and text Jason where I was sitting, or other little things like that.

Anyway, I got back to the cabin and found Jason awake and reading his Kindle in bed, but Ian was still passed out.  How does he sleep in that position?!  

Ian woke up from his nap around 3:45pm, so we all got dressed for formal night.  I wanted to take a nice photo before we all got disheveled during dinner, so we went back to the same spot we used yesterday and asked someone to take our photo.  

It was only 4:45pm, so we went down to deck 2 to listen to the Take Two duo perform inside their little box stage.  Every time I saw someone perform in there, it made me chuckle that they looked like puppets.

We listened to their set until 5:15, then made our way over to the MDR for dinner.  When we arrived at our table, we were happy to see that the waiters had a booster seat already installed on Ian’s chair, so that saved us the headache of negotiating with him about if he needed one or not.  “Oh look, Ian!  Your chair is all set up for you!  Do you need help climbing into your seat?”  The icing on the cake was that the waiters also left 2 duckies as a surprise for Ian.  He was so excited, and the waiters were doing a great job of winning him over.  They were so thoughtful that they brought him one or two new duckies every night of the cruise!

I didn’t take a photo of Ian’s food, but I think he ordered pasta with red sauce tonight.  The waiters were always great about bringing up Ian’s food with our appetizers.  Not only did this mean he wasn’t sitting there bored and watching us eat while waiting for his entree, but it gave him a ton of time to work through his meal since he is a very slow (and easily distracted) eater!

The only time I ever eat escargots is on a cruise ship, so you know I had to order it tonight!  I noticed it is now served in a flat ramekin, like what they use for crème breulee, instead of the dishes with the little pods like they used to use.  No worries though- it still tasted just garlicky and buttery as always. 

I also ordered the Tuna Crudo from Emeril’s section of the menu.  It tasted fresh and light.

For my entree, I ordered the Grilled Jumbo Shrimp and Fish Cake.  On our Panorama cruise, we ate in the buffet on the night they served this menu.  I remember loving the fish cakes, so I was looking forward to ordering this dish tonight.  It lived up to my expectations!

I ordered the chocolate melting cake for dessert.  When the waiter served it to me, I was surprised to see it in this oval bowl.  I guess they ran out of the cups they usually serve it in because they were also serving the Grand Marnier Souffle in those cups tonight.  This actually worked better for me because I prefer my chocolate melting cake to be cooked well done (ie: not liquidy in the middle), and this dish was shallower so the whole thing was cooked though solid like a chocolate cake.  Winning!

After dinner, we went back to the Atrium to hear the end of Take Two’s set.

Jason and I decided to get a few cocktails.  He got a regular martini, and I got a Funstar Martini, with Grey Goose Vodka, Chinola Passionfruit Liqueur, citrus, and prosecco.  I asked for it on the rocks so I wouldn’t spill it while walking around the ship.

We took our drinks to go, and brought Ian up to deck 10.  Camp Ocean was scheduled to open at 7pm, but that was the same time that the production show started in the theater.  I was hopeful that if we brought him to camp a few minutes early, they would let us drop him off so we didn’t miss the start of the show.  Sure enough, the door to camp was open when we arrived at 6:55pm, and they were nice enough to let us drop off Ian.  We were able to do this every night of the cruise, but honestly, I wished they coordinated the camp and show schedules better to avoid that unnecessary stress.  On both our Panorama and Discovery Princess cruises, camp opened at 7pm in the evening, but the shows didn’t start until 7:30pm.  We had plenty of time to drop Ian off, go down to the theater, find a seat, and see the whole show.  This cruise started all the evening shows at 7pm, so by the time we arrived at the theater, the lights were already off and we had to hunt for seats in the dark.  Fortunately, we always found somewhere to sit, but it was definitely not our first choice of seats as we were very far from the stage and it was hard to take good photos.  Apologies in advance for the quality of all my photos from the shows, but now you understand why we didn’t get better seats!

Tonight’s Playlist Production show was Flick, featuring songs from various movies.  When we arrived, they had already started the pre-show entertainment.

We saw Flick on the Dream in 2019, so I remembered some parts of it, but it was still enjoyable.  It featured songs from movies, but most of the famous songs from movies are ballads, and I personally prefer more upbeat songs, so this show was a little slow for my taste.  Despite the song selection, the singers and dancers did a fantastic job and we both enjoyed the performance.  

I will do my best to remember what song was featured in each of these photos.  I know for sure this first one was Adele’s song Skyfall from the James Bond movie.  Even though I knew what to expect from seeing the show 6 years ago, I was still amazed at how they synchronized the fans to make that piece of fabric dance above the stage.  

I think this one was from I Have Nothing by Whitney Houston:

I think this was from Footloose… what a great use of those light-up sneakers for this song!

You can probably guess what song and movie this was from without me telling you…

And this was from I’m A Believer by Smashmouth from Shrek:

Flick ended at 7:40pm, so we had some time before the 8:30pm comedy show.  We went to the Ocean Plaza for the 70s and Motown music trivia party.  They split the room in half and had us compete to name songs and sing along to them louder than the other team.  It was a fun way to pass the time until the comedy started.

Right next to where we were sitting at the back of Ocean Plaza was a spiral staircase.  This was very convenient as a secret path from deck 2 to 3 as it let you out directly in front of the entrance to the Limelight Lounge.  I hardly saw anyone using this staircase all week, but it saved us having to walk to the stairs near the elevators, and it got us between these two popular evening entertainment venues quickly.  You can sort of see it in the back of this photo from my ship tour:

Anyway, the doors to the Limelight Lounge opened at 8pm for the 8:30pm show.  We arrived at 8:10pm and there were only 5 to 10 empty chairs in the room!  Oops!  Last night, hardly anyone was there, but I guess word got out that the comedians were funny and more people showed up tonight.  We snagged 2 seats together at the back, but most other people who arrived after us had to sit separately from their partner. 

Tonight’s 8:30pm adult show was with Jeff Shaw.  We both thought his whole show was very funny.  I appreciated that he could get the whole room laughing without making gratuitous inappropriate jokes or cursing just for the sake of cursing, as some comedians tend to do.  I don’t want to give away the content of his material, but he was self-deprecating in all the right ways, and we hoped we could see another one of his shows before he got off the ship in Skagway.

When that ended, we went to the piano bar because we still had an hour before needing to get Ian from camp.  Michelle was the piano bar entertainer on our cruise, and we were looking forward to seeing her perform, but she was on a break when we arrived.  We haven’t had the best luck with our piano bar entertainers on our Carnival cruises.  The one we had on our last cruise on the Panorama just couldn’t get the vibe going and had a terrible song selection for a piano bar that should focus on well-known sing-along songs.  Michelle returned from her break at 9:20pm.  She won me over immediately as she started with Pink Pony Club, and had every girl in the room singing along by the first chorus!

We were sad to leave Michelle after just 30 minutes, but it was time to pick up Ian from camp.  They started charging for the Night Owls babysitting at 10pm, so we needed to get him before that.  We burst out laughing when this little boy came to the door to greet us!

King Ian had a wonderful night at camp and couldn’t wait to go back the next day!  Until then, we headed back to the cabin so we could rest up for our day of scenic cruising through Tracy Arm Fjord… or would we??

One thing’s for sure…

Next up: we finally see ALASKA for the first time!

Do you know that moment when you can feel someone watching you?  At 5am, I rolled over and opened my eyes to find Ian standing next to my bed, saying he was ready to wake up now.  It was still pitch black outside and I was nowhere near ready to wake up, so I took him back to his bed and told him to go back to sleep.  Of course, that didn’t work and I spent the next 2 hours trying to get him to go back to sleep.  I have a reputation for getting very little sleep on the night before a cruise, and last night was no different.  I kept waking up, tossing and turning for a bit, falling back asleep, then waking up again an hour later.  Having Ian continuously wake us up from 5-7am was just the icing on the cake!

I gave up at 7am, and got myself and Ian dressed for the day so we could go down to the lobby for breakfast and leave Jason to go back to sleep.  Once I was awake enough to realize what day it was, I checked Cruise Mapper again, and sure enough, the Luminosa was docked in Seattle awaiting our arrival!

The hotel set up a very nice complimentary breakfast in the lobby.  They had several stations, so we walked around to see our options.

Cereal and fruit

Warm cinnamon rolls

Scrambled eggs, cheese omelets, pork sausage links, and turkey sausage patties

Juice, yogurt, hard boiled eggs, and milk

I have never seen this machine before and Ian and I both thought it was interesting.  You push the “OK” button and the machine dispenses 2 tandem dollops of batter.  The batter moves along a conveyor belt and gets pressed flat between 2 heated plates, and then the pancakes drop out of the machine onto your plate at the end.  I have been to tons of hotels where you can make your own Belgian waffles, but this was a unique twist and Ian was excited to eat his pancakes for breakfast.

We took our food out into the seating area and found a table for 2 to enjoy our food.

When we were done, we went back up to our room and found Jason was already awake and getting ready.  I sent him back down to the lobby for breakfast with Ian so I could have the room to myself while I packed up all of our belongings.  When they came back to the room, we loaded up the luggage on a trolley and Ian helped push it down the hall to the elevators.

I completed the online check-in process for our cruise at exactly midnight Eastern time, two weeks before the cruise.  Conveniently, that was only 9pm in Arizona so I didn’t have to stay up super late at night to be one of the first to check in, and I was able to secure the earliest boarding arrival window.  For our cruise, that was between 11 and 11:30am.  I thought I remembered having earlier arrival windows on prior cruises, but even the people who had early access to check-in (either through VIFP status or by staying in a suite) said 11am was their earliest arrival time too.  At some point a week or two before the cruise, someone posted in the FB forum that they work at the terminal and they start letting people enter at 10am and let everyone in as they arrive.  I didn’t want to arrive right at 10am in case we really did have to wait for our 11am time slot so we just waited at the hotel until 9:30am before checking out and requesting our ride. 

Pier 91 is too far from our hotel to use the courtesy shuttle, so I requested a Lyft XL.   $90 seemed crazy expensive for the 30 minute drive, but Uber XL wanted to charge $105!  The driver arrived quickly and the ride took us through downtown with great views of the skyline.  

Ian spotted the Space Needle as we drove through the streets of downtown, and asked what it was.  We told him, and he spent the next week and a half talking all about the “Space Noodle”.  In fact, he still calls it that as I’m writing this review today, long after we returned home.  We did try correcting him the first few times he said it, but then gave up as the mispronunciation was too cute!  So I present to you, Seattle’s famous landmark, the Space Noodle!

Soon after that, we spotted our first glimpse of the Carnival Luminosa.  There was something weird about seeing a Carnival ship without the famous whale tale on the funnel, but I knew to expect that since she used to be owned by Costa and they didn’t add the whale tale during the Carnival refurbishment.

The Lyft dropped us at the port at 10:15am and there were hardly any cars around.  It looked like we arrived at that sweet spot after the debarking passengers from the last cruise had left the pier, but before the new passengers were being dropped off.  We handed over our checked bags to one of the porters, and walked into the terminal.  Someone looked at our boarding pass which clearly said we had an 11am arrival time, but they just waved us into the building.  Inside, there was no wait for one of the agents to look at our passports and take our photos to link our sign and sail cards to the facial recognition system.  Ian was sitting in his stroller so we went in the wheelchair line to take the elevator upstairs.  When we got to security, they wanted me to give them my disposable water bottle.  They didn’t have a bin where I could dump out the water, and I tried chugging it because I had intended to reuse that bottle throughout the week and didn’t want it taken away.  Eventually, they let me keep it if I said I needed water to take medicine.  There was a strong chance I would need a caffeine pill after my poor night of sleep and then Ian’s 5am wake up call, so I probably would need to take that medicine after all!  The final step of security was going through the x-ray machines, which was quick and they did not ask us to remove the two wine bottles from Jason’s backpack. 

By then it was 10:30am, so the whole process from the Lyft’s drop off to finishing security only took 15 minutes.  People were already boarding the ship, and at first one employee said they were only boarding people in suites, so we waited to the side. Then we realized that everyone who came around the corner from security was going right on the ship, and it was way too many people for them to all be suite guests so we approached the man checking boarding passes and he waved us through.  

We walked along a long sidewalk outside the terminal running parallel to the ship until we reached the zig-zagging ramps to the gangway.

I officially stepped foot on the ship at 10:38am, more than 20 minutes before our arrival window started!

I was debating about where to put my ship tour photos because I collected photos around the ship throughout the week, but I think I’ll just go ahead and share them now.  Most of these were not taken until the morning we arrived in Juneau because that was when I was out of bed early enough to take pictures in the venues when they were empty, but I don’t want to wait that long to share them.  Think of this as a sneak peek of several venues around the ship, long before I even saw them myself!

Starting on Deck 2 forward with the Luminosa Theater.  Even though this ship was originally designed for Costa, I thought the theater had a similar layout and design to some of the older Carnival ships I have sailed on.  The seats upstairs (technically deck 3) were individual seats with cup holders in the arm rests.  

The seats downstairs were long rows of padded benches with a small table for every 2 seats to share.  Relative to the size of the ship, this theater seemed huge and there was plenty of seating for the shows we attended.

When you exit the theater on deck 2, you walk down a short hallway opposite the elevators, then enter into Ocean Plaza (although this photo was taken from inside the casino when you approach Ocean Plaza from the midship venues):

This space was also more than large enough for the events they held here.  My only complaint was sometimes they had loud events happening in Ocean Plaza and you could hear it from inside the theater because the 2 venues were so close to each other.  That was distracting (like during some of the naturalist’s lectures where she wasn’t very loud and the activity in Ocean Plaza over powered her).

I really liked this piece of art at the back of Ocean Plaza:

When you walk from Ocean Plaza aft into the Casino, you will find Bonsai Sushi Express on your right.  I never ate here, but I imagine it would be weird to get your sushi from a restaurant inside the only place on the ship where you are allowed to smoke cigarettes.  I sure do hope the cigarette smoke didn’t impact the flavor of the sushi!

We are not gamblers and we usually avoid walking through the casino on ships because it is too smokey.  Unfortunately, the layout of this ship made it hard to avoid passing through the casino because it is located between the atrium and the theater/Ocean Plaza.  To give credit where it is due, we noticed that you could barely smell the smoke when walking through the casino on this cruise.  I do not know if that is because the Luminosa has a powerful filtration and ventilation system installed, or just because people smoked in the outside smoking areas instead of in the casino, but either way, we did appreciate that the smoke never bothered us.  

Not that I know much about what makes a good casino because like I said, we don’t gamble, but this casino looked fairly large, clean, and had a good variety of tables and slot machines from what I could see.

I thought it was clever that the ship’s arcade was located right next to the casino.  Parents could drop their kids off in the arcade, then play the adult arcades (aka: slot machines).  I took this photo at 6:44am, so clearly not prime time for kids to play arcade games.  The room looked a bit small and I could imagine it got very crowded during peak times.

Up next was the art gallery.  Instead of having a dedicated room, this was just in a section of the atrium.  At some point, we passed through and saw a table set up for the Iris art.  I wish I got a photo of that as it was really cool, although I am sure it cost a fortune!

Next was the atrium.  This was one of the few places I saw signs of life at this early hour as people waited for their morning drinks at the bar.

This giant statue of a naked lady laying prone on a platform took up most of the floor space in the lobby.  It was kind of a weird choice because it made it hard for large events to happen here.  

Next was the nightclub, but the door was always locked during the day so I never went inside and didn’t get any photos there.

Finally, we came to the Piano Bar 88.  This was probably the weirdest piano bar I’ve seen on any Carnival ship.  It was literally in a hallway, so there wasn’t a dedicated room for it, and people were always walking through between the MDR and aft elevators and the other venues further forward on the ship.  I imagine that must have been very distracting to the piano bar entertainer.  I think this is probably one of the venues that Carnival needed to find a space for when they converted the Costa ship, so it’s not like it was originally planned to be used as a piano bar.  On the Costa ship, it was just a generic bar/lounge, and I’m sure it worked fine for that purpose.

All the way aft was the bottom level of the one and only main dining room on the ship.  They used the lower level for anytime dining and the upper level was for fixed dining.

Now we are walking forward from the aft of the ship on deck 3.  Forward of the aft elevators was the Alchemy Bar.  Similar to the piano bar directly below it, this venue was a walk-through hallway as opposed to a dedicated room.  It was also just a regular bar/lounge on the Costa ship, but Carnival needed to find a spot for their Alchemy Bar, so this is where they put it.  It was always crowded whenever we walked through here (which was every night around 6:30pm when we finished dinner and wanted to get up to the atrium).  It wasn’t ideal, but I did think the decor was classy and fairly modern.

Next up was the Carnival Store, where you can buy all of the Carnival-branded merchandise.  

After that, the ship opens up for the upper level of the atrium, with lots of space to stand around and overlook the activity in the deck 2 part of the atrium below.  They also used this for the Pixels Photo Gallery.  I didn’t take any specific photos here because it was closed when I did my early morning ship tour.

Next up was the Galleria shops, selling all the typical perfume, jewelry, and clothing sold on every ship.

Up next was Java Blue Cafe.  I didn’t take a photo of this area because it was busy with lots of people buying their morning specialty coffees and I didn’t want them in my photos.  I meant to come back another time, but every time we were in this area, there were always people around.  I guess people on this ship liked their specialty coffees throughout the day!

Up next was the Limelight Lounge, which was used for the comedy shows.  This space was a medium-sized room, so it probably depends on the sailing if the comedy shows are popular or not as to if this venue was big enough.  I have to wonder how popular the comedy club is when the Luminosa sails out of Australia.  The crew definitely tried to cram in as many chairs as possible into this room.  Most nights we needed to separate the rows a little more because otherwise there wasn’t any space for our legs when we sat in the chairs.

And then we were back at the theater in the front of the ship, so that pretty much covered all the indoor venues on decks 2 and 3.  That’s where my tour ended that morning, but I also found a few other photos from around the ship that I will include here.

This was the indoor Lido pool, featuring the retractable roof:

This was the outdoor Promenade on deck 3, running the length of both sides of the ship and offering excellent views of the water from a lower vantage point.

I liked that this ship had an open elevator bank with 3 glass elevators, running all the way from deck 2 up to deck 10.  There is something so grand about those open elevator banks that I always enjoy on cruise ships.

The top of that area had a huge skylight allowing lots of natural light to flood into the ship.  The steakhouse was also in this area on deck 10, but I didn’t take any photos inside that venue.

And finally, this was the mini-golf course.  Actually, I think Carnival calls it the putting green on their deck plans, which makes sense because it didn’t have all the fun things you usually find at mini-golf.  It was very small and I never saw anyone using it.

Okay, so that brings us back to 10:38am on Embarkation Day, just as we stepped on the ship…

As we boarded, someone noticed that we were traveling with a child and handed us this information about safety protocol for families:

Our first order of business was to visit our muster station to get that chore out of the way.  I love that we no longer need to cram together outside for the safety drill and the cruise lines have figured out a more efficient way to complete this requirement.  We found the crew members standing in the stairway near the deck 3 aft elevators for our muster station and they scanned our boarding passes to prove we were there, then they sent us on our way.  Easy peasy!

I wanted to see the view of the Seattle skyline from one of the outer decks, so since we were already near the aft elevators, we took that up to deck 9 aft.  This is where the Serenity Deck is located on this ship, and even though we were literally the only people out there, the crew were quick to shoo us away because Ian is under age 18.  We told them we just wanted to take a quick photo of the view, so they said that was okay if we left quickly.

Next, we went inside to the Lido Marketplace.  None of us were hungry after eating a big breakfast at the hotel, but we figured it was better to eat now while we could easily get a table.  I wanted nothing to do with the Lido buffet later in the afternoon when more people had boarded the ship.  It was just 11am when we got there, so it was no surprise that there were tons of open tables and no lines at the food stations.

I shared a make your own pasta dish with fusilli, chicken, mushrooms, onions, and pomodoro sauce with Ian.  I really wish this station was open at dinner time because it makes for a heavy lunch, but would have been perfect for a quick dinner one night.  There was no one ahead of me in line, so they took my order and made my dish within 5 minutes.

We sat at a table by the windows so we could watch all the people exiting the terminal to board the ship.  I’m not sure if it got busier later on, but at this early hour, there was still just a slow trickle of people approaching the gangway.

One of my favorite traditions on a Carnival ship is to have funfetti cheesecake for dessert at lunch on embarkation day.  It is the only day of the cruise when they serve this option, and it is always one of my favorites.  I noticed that the Luminosa didn’t have the fancy cakes on display like they do on some of the other ships.  I am not sure if Carnival doesn’t do that anymore or if it’s just a Luminosa thing, but I was happy to see they still served the funfetti cheesecake, just in smaller pieces than when they have the big cakes on display.

Ian was thrilled to have his first ice cream cone of the trip! 

I appreciated that these signs were sitting on all the tables near the buffet.  I can imagine that on a cold/rainy weather cruise, people might tend to hang out more at the indoor venues and it might be tempting to linger at your lunch table even after you finish eating.  That makes it very hard for people to find a table when they want to eat, so I hoped passengers would heed the request on these signs and vacate their tables when they finished eating.

While Ian was finishing his ice cream cone, I was playing around in the Hub app and noticed that you could already request a debarkation time.  It seemed crazy to think about debarking the ship when we were only 20 minutes into our cruise, but I went ahead and signed us up for the earliest time slot available.  I figured that time slots would fill up as more people boarded the ship and I may as well reserve the time we wanted now while it was available.

When I looked at Day 8 in My Planner, it now showed our debarkation group as a scheduled event.  Do you think if I clicked on the “cancel debarkation” button, they would let me stay on the ship forever??  **Wishful thinking!**

When we were all done with lunch, we took Ian up one level to deck 10 forward so we could register him for Camp Ocean.  This is the only time they allowed parents to enter the camp area and look around, so I wanted to see where Ian would be spending his time.  

They always had a schedule posted outside the entrance to remind us of the hours that day.

Inside, there were 2 rooms.  The front room was for the 6 to 8 year olds in the Stingrays group.  It had several large TV screens that they used to show movies and let the kids play video games.  Otherwise, it was just a big open room with plenty of space for the kids to run around and do other group activities.

There was a locked door with another room behind it for the 2 to 5 year olds in the Penguins group.  They had another TV screen in here so the younger kids didn’t have to watch the same movie as the older kids.  They also had lots of toys, including cars and trucks, so Ian was thrilled!  He loves anything in the transportation category (ie: cars, trucks, planes, boats, construction vehicles, etc.), so we were all happy to see the options on this ship because Princess didn’t have a single toy that interested Ian on our December cruise. 

This might be TMI, but parents of toddlers might be interested so I am going to mention it.  Anyone else can skip to the next paragraph… Both rooms in the camp had bathrooms set up for children of that size.  The front room for the Stingray kids had small toilets and low sinks as expected, but I was shocked at how small the toilets were in the Penguins room.  It was literally the size of a mixing bowl sitting on the floor!  Ian is newly potty trained, so this was his first cruise when we needed to worry about those logistics.  He loved that he was tall enough to stand or sit on the camp toilets, and we encouraged him to always use them right after we dropped him off, and immediately before we picked him up, because they were a lot more convenient than using the adult-sized toilets everywhere else on the ship.  I considered packing a foldable step stool for him to use in our cabin bathroom to reach the toilet and sink, but decided against it.  I regretted that decision, so it was great when he could utilize the camp bathrooms!

Our next order of business was to speak with the maitre’d in the MDR about our dinner table assignment.  We opted for the early seating of fixed dining on this cruise since all aboard times for all but one of our ports were early enough that I knew we could get to dinner by 5:30pm.  There was a lady at the desk who looked up our table and told me we were seated at a table for 6 with another family with a 7 year old child.  I was hoping for a private table because Ian has a reputation for displaying his worst behavior in the dining room on cruises.  I don’t know what it is, because sometimes he will be perfectly well behaved, but other times he starts yelling and throwing tantrums both at dinner and sea day brunch (so it’s not just that he’s ready for bed).  Anyway, I didn’t want to subject another family to Ian’s antics, and I knew I would be very stressed out with trying to keep him quiet and not disturb the other family, so a private table worked better for us.  I explained that to the lady at the desk and she said we could check the app later to see if they were able to honor our request.  I made a note that our original table assignment was #372, so if the table number changed then I knew we would have a private table.

By then, it was 1:30pm and our cabin was ready so we went up to check it out.  I knew we were close to the midship elevators, but I didn’t realize that we were the first cabin after getting off the glass elevators and turning into the hallway!  As in, if you were standing in front of the glass elevators waiting for one to come, and you turned to your right, you looked directly at the door to the cabin next to us (so I was glad we didn’t pick that one because they had no privacy if their door was open!)  I was very worried about noise from the elevator waiting area, from all the people walking down our hall to get to their cabins, and from the atrium a few decks below us, but I’ll just spoil it now and say none of that was an issue.  I actually loved our cabin location being so close to the elevators because that made it very quick and convenient when we needed to run back to the cabin to drop off backpacks after excursions, or grab something we forgot in the cabin, or whatever we needed.  So often on ships, I get off the elevator and hesitate before I get my bearings and know which way to turn to get to my cabin.  As long as we were using the midship elevators, I always knew exactly where to go by using the glass elevators as my landmark.  Also, I am thrilled to say that noise was not an issue at all!  If we were in our cabin with the door closed and we were all silent, then yes, I could hear the music from the atrium 3 decks below us, drifting up through the open elevator space.  It wasn’t loud enough to hear what song was playing, but we could hear it softly through the door.  However, if we were talking, or had our sound machine on at night/naptime, we couldn’t hear anything at all.  I would definitely pick this cabin if I ever cruised on the Luminosa again.

This cabin layout is different from anything I have seen on other Carnival ships (because it’s really made for a Costa ship!), so I tried to capture it with lots of photos.  Carnival called it a “premium balcony” but I would classify it more like a mini-suite on other cruise lines.  Carnival doesn’t have a mini-suite category, so I guess they just tried to work with terms they already used.

When you enter the cabin, there is a shelf to use as a drop zone.  This was great for setting out the things we would need each day for our excursions so we didn’t forget anything as we left the cabin.  There was a small cabinet above the shelf with the safe and an extra shelf at the very top where we stored our beach towels.  Below the shelf were 3 wide drawers.  These are wider than the drawers in the typical Carnival cabin, and while the top one was very shallow and best suited for holding papers and small items, the two bottom drawers were very deep and held a lot of our clothes.

Next, there are 2 standard Carnival closets.  Both of them had the option to hang clothes on the top, in the middle, or both, and they also had a shelf that could drop down in the middle of the closet or you could fold it up to keep it out of the way.  

One of the closets also had a full length mirror mounted on the inside of the door so I gave that one to Jason to use for the week because I had other plans for the inside of my closet door.

For my closet, I left the shelf folded up so I would have space to hang my dresses.  I also travel with a long hanging shoe rack that gives me tons of shelves for my folded clothes, plus an over-the-door shoe rack where we can store lots of small items to keep things organized.  I used to hang this in the bathroom, but now that we travel with Ian, I thought it was more convenient to hang it inside the closet to keep it out of sight so he wouldn’t try to mess with it.  

I will note one complaint I had with this closet configuration.  I am used to having 3 closets on Carnival ships:  two for hanging clothes and one with 5 shelves inside.  This cabin did not have the shelf closet because they used that space for the drop zone.  Usually the drawers are under the desk, so it felt like we missed out on some extra storage by switching things around like this.  When we cruise, we have a lot of non-clothing items that need to be stored away, so I struggled to find places for those items without the shelf closet.

The bathroom is located opposite the closets, just like in most Carnival cabins.  This was very similar to other Carnival bathrooms, but the shower had a glass door.  I knew I would appreciate not having the curtain cling to me while showering, but an added and unexpected benefit was it also helped keep the bathroom floor dry because all of the water stayed inside the shower stall.  

There were 3 shelves on either side of the mirror, plus a few little shelves under the counter, so we had plenty of space to store all of our toiletries for the week.

As you enter the main space of the cabin, there is a long desk next to the closets, similar to a standard Carnival balcony cabin.  The difference was that we didn’t have any drawers here because they are located by the front door.  They mounted a narrow shelf along the length of the mirror which seemed poorly thought out.  It was at the exact height that it blocked being able to see your face when standing in front of the mirror!  I suppose it wouldn’t have been a problem for someone shorter than 5 feet tall, but it was inconvenient for both Jason and me.  It would have worked better if they attached a shelf or two to the side of the closet like they do on other ships, and left most of the rest of the mirror unobstructed.  We ended up using this shelf to hold my hair tools and Ian’s snacks (so he couldn’t reach them and help himself without us knowing!)

The fridge is located in the cabinet under the desk.  It was empty when we arrived, so I appreciated that I didn’t need to remove a bunch of cans of soda that they would charge us for drinking, and the fridge kept our drinks cold throughout the week.

When we arrived in the cabin, there were two 1.5 liter bottles of water on the desk above the fridge.  We asked our steward and he said it would be fine for us to drink those bottles as our complimentary bottles through VIFP, as long as we didn’t also go to a bar to redeem the free bottle.  Obviously we didn’t plan to double-dip, so this was much more convenient than having to get the free bottles from the bar like we used to do.

This is also where the one and only US outlet is located in the cabin.  Because the ship spends half the year Down Under, there was also one Australian plug here.  I always travel with a universal outlet adaptor so we could make use of all the outlets in the room.

The couch is located opposite the desk.  This was a standard Carnival orange couch, which converted to be Ian’s bed for the week.  There are 2 large drawers under the couch, but one of them was stuffed with extra linens and unusable for us.  We used the empty drawer for our dirty laundry throughout the week, which made it much easier to pack at the end of the trip because all the laundry was condensed into one location.

Within the first 10 minutes in the cabin, I bumped into that coffee table so many times that I had a bruise on my leg, so we decided to slide it under the desk.  Luckily, it fit perfectly and opened up a bit more floor space for us to walk around.  This photo also shows the half-wall that helped divide the cabin and gave the feeling of Ian having his own space separate from our bedroom.  That half-wall is also what made this cabin feel like a mini-suite because it gave the illusion of having 2 rooms in the cabin.  There was also a small nightstand at the foot of Ian’s bed which he used to store his toys for the week.

On the other side of that half-wall, there was a desk/vanity area.  Typical Carnival cabins do not have this space, and I really enjoyed using it.  The desk had 3 small drawers which were perfect for me to store my electronics and chargers.  There was a hairdryer in the top drawer, which unfortunately cannot be removed and took up half the space in that drawer.  There was also a narrow drawer along the length of the desk, which is where I stored the Fun Times and any other papers our steward left in our mailbox.  There was also a second phone here, which seemed totally pointless as the other phone was literally 2 steps away on the opposite counter.  

One of the most useful parts of this desk was that it had 4 USB ports.  It was great being able to charge all my electronics simultaneously, and there was plenty of space on the desk for the devices to rest on while being charged.  I always travel with a 10 foot long phone charging cable because often the outlets in hotels are not convenient to charge and use my phone while I’m in bed, so we fed the cord behind the small lamps on our headboard over to Jason’s side of the bed for him to charge his phone at night because there weren’t any outlets or USBs over there.  There was also a standard EU outlet at this desk, so I could have used my travel adaptor here but we didn’t need it with all the USB ports.

This photo shows a good perspective on how big the cabin was.  That half-wall and desk space really helped to separate us from Ian when we were asleep.  The half-wall also blocked his view of us from when he was laying in bed, so it felt more private.

Lastly, we come to the balcony.  Although it was definitely deeper than a standard balcony, it likely would not have kept us dry if we sat outside in the rain.  The real benefit to this bigger balcony was that there was space for a third chair!  I sneaked a peek around the corner at our neighbor’s balcony, and they only had 2 chairs, so I don’t know if our steward intentionally gave us the third chair knowing we had 3 people in the cabin, or if it is always there because this cabin is allowed to have 3 guests whereas the one next to us can only have a maximum of 2 guests.  Either way, we loved having 3 chairs so we could all sit down and enjoy the balcony together.  

While still docked in Seattle, we had a great view of the marina and Ian loved watching all the smaller boats come and go.

They were still refueling the ship, so there was a lot of entertainment to watch from the balcony!

I went back inside the cabin to unpack our carry-on bags since our checked bags hadn’t arrived yet.  Our steward, Sigit, stopped by to say hello, so I asked him to turn the couch into a bed.  He said he usually does that in the evening, but I asked if he could do it now so Ian could take his nap, and he said that was no problem.  We ended up leaving it like a bed all week so it was always set up for Ian at nap and bedtime.  Sigit said he would come clean our cabin once a day, so I requested that he come in the mornings.  

I will note that the choice of art in the cabin was quite unique and random.  Cabins usually have some kind of painting or maybe a photograph, but this was a shadow box displaying what looked like women’s undergarments from a century ago.  I don’t know enough about costuming and the history of wardrobes to precisely identify it, but it was nothing I have ever seen displayed before in a cruise ship cabin.  Remembering that this ship was originally designed for a European market, I suppose I can imagine far more risque pieces of art they could have displayed, and I’ll count my blessings that it was only articles of clothing!

Before I forget, here is today’s copy of the Fun Times:

I left the cabin to let the boys take a nap.  As soon as I entered the elevator bank, I spotted our checked luggage sitting there with about a hundred other bags.  The crew member sorting the bags said it was fine if I wanted to take our bags back to the room, so I did because it was such a short walk only steps away.  I really wanted to unpack the bags, but I knew Jason and Ian were trying to nap so I just rolled them into the cabin and left again, knowing the rest of the unpacking would be a chore for later in the day.

It was now 3 hours since I shared my pasta lunch with Ian, so I went up to the Lido Marketplace in search of a snack to hold me over until dinner.  It wasn’t busy at all since everyone had left to go to their cabins, so there was no wait at the pizza counter and I was able to grab a slice to eat out on the Serenity deck (taking advantage of being sans-Ian).  The cloudy overcast skies from this morning had cleared and it turned into a beautiful, sunny day.  The Seattle skyline really shines (literally and figuratively) in the afternoon sun.

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw Mt. Rainier in the distance.  I have heard that it is rare to see it so clearly, so it felt so special to experience this view in person.  The point where the snow ends creates the illusion that the mountain is floating above the horizon, and I just couldn’t stop looking at this stunning view.

I snagged one of the coveted clamshells along the back railing so I could admire the view while soaking up the sunshine and taking some notes for this review.

After a while, the cushion got so hot from the sun that it was burning my legs.  I was trying to use the napkin from my pizza snack to keep me covered, but obviously that was not big enough to be effective and I eventually admitted defeat and got up to explore more of the ship.  I walked up the outdoor stairs to the Sunset Bar on deck 10 aft.  There was a circular sculpture up there which perfectly framed Mt. Rainier in the middle if you stood at the right angle.

Or, you could place it in the space between Mt. Rainier and the downtown skyline!

This is a good view of the Serenity Deck layout.  We didn’t spend much time out here throughout the cruise because we usually had Ian with us, but I found it odd that they put all those clam shells along the railing of the entire deck.  It blocked the view for everyone else not using a clam shell, and it was also nearly impossible to know which shells were occupied because you couldn’t see around them.  If you were lucky enough to see a vacant clamshell, it was really tricky to access it because there was no space to walk between them, and they were pushed all the way up to the railing, so it felt like you were walking through your neighbors bed to get to yours.  These were the only sources of shade out on the deck, so they were very popular, and I would imagine when the ship sails in the hotter climate out of Australia, they must be the most popular seats on the ship.  It is just a shame that they impede the view for everyone else who doesn’t get one!

Next, I walked up the port side of the ship to see the marina again.  

That is one huge yacht!  Also, do you see the big building with a brown roof in the background?  That’s where we will be eating dinner on the night we debark the ship next week!  It was fun to get a sneak peek at one of our upcoming activities.  More on that when we get to that day of the review.

Even though we could visit our muster stations at our leisure throughout the day, the ship was still required to do a safety briefing over the loud speaker, including sounding the emergency alarm.  When the Captain sounded the alarm at 3pm, it was so loud that I thought for sure it would wake up Ian, so I went back to the cabin.  The alarm did wake up Jason from his nap, but somehow Ian slept through it!  Ian naps for 2+ hours on weekends at home, so the longer nap he takes, the better.  The downside was that meant someone still needed to stay with him in the cabin.  Jason said I could go back out and continue taking photos, so I went back up to deck 9 for the best views of the skyline.

Seeing one of the ferries float across the water felt like such a quintessential Seattle view:

This sailboat looked like it was giving a tour of the Puget Sound:

I went back to the cabin around 3:30pm because that was our scheduled sail away time and I wanted to remind Jason to put his phone in airplane mode.  I was surprised to find that Ian was still asleep!  I still had a lot of unpacking to do, and I didn’t want to waste the whole night getting organized, so I quietly started unpacking the big suitcases in the dark, making every effort to avoid waking Ian.  He ended up sleeping until 4pm, so I sent the boys out to the balcony to watch the scenery as we sailed away from Seattle, and I stayed inside and continued to unpack (with the lights on!). 

We all changed into our evening outfits and got ready for dinner.  Although our fixed dining time was originally listed as 5:30pm, the app said that we could arrive between 5:15 and 5:45pm.  That helped ease the congestion of everyone showing up at the same time, all needing help to find their table.  I was very happy when I noticed that our dinner table number had changed to #367, and hoped that meant they were able to find us a private table.  When we got downstairs, one of the waiters escorted us to a table for 2 along the railing of the upper level of the MDR.  They had placed a third chair on the long side of the table to fit our party of 3.  I didn’t feel like I could complain considering they had accommodated us by giving us a private table, but it was very tight trying to fit the food and drinks for 3 people onto a 2 top table.  When this happened on our Carnival Panorama cruise, Ian was still sitting in a high chair, so his food went on the highchair tray and we had enough space for the adult food on the table.  He is too big for the highchair now, so we just had to get creative with finding space for all the plates.  We usually asked the waiters to clear our bread plates immediately, and we didn’t take the ramekins of butter (since we didn’t have anything to put butter on anyway), and I made use of the ledge along the railing next to our table as a place to put my purse and phone and other things that would usually be on the table with us.

After we were seated, our head waiter came over to introduce himself and his two assistant waiters.  They tried to give Ian a hi-five, but he played shy and tried to hide from them.  He is usually shy around strangers, so I told them not to take it personally!  They offered to get Ian a booster seat, but he refused.  When he tried to sit in his seat, he couldn’t reach the table.  As it was, I thought I would benefit from a booster seat because the chairs were all bottomed-out and in desperate need of reupholstering.  Eventually, we were able to convince Ian that it would be much easier for him to reach his food if he sat in a booster seat.  He hesitantly agreed, and the waiters brought one over and helped us buckle it to Ian’s chair.  Stubborn child!

Ian ordered the kid’s pizza with fries.  Ten minutes later, the waiter brought out his pizza, plus a dish of chicken nuggets “just in case”.  We appreciated his efforts to win over Ian, and this would continue throughout the week.

Here was tonight’s adult dinner drinks and food menu:

For my appetizers, I ordered the pappardelle with braised lamb.  I have had this on several cruises and it is always a highlight for me.

I also ordered the roasted duck rolls, which were refreshing as they were served chilled.

I ordered the BBQ salmon entree from the Emeril Selects section.  That might have been the first time I ever ordered salmon on a cruise.  For some reason I always feared it would be dry, but this dish was moist and delicious. 

I ordered the strawberry cheesecake for dessert.  Yes, I had cheesecake as dessert for both lunch and dinner, and no, I’m not mad about it!

Ian ordered the kid’s brownie for dessert.  The waiters made another attempt to win Ian’s affection by also bringing out some cookies.  From the look on Ian’s face, he was up to the task of eating 2 desserts!

We left dinner at 6:30pm, so we were there for an hour and 15 minutes.  That seemed reasonable considering the typical mayhem of dinner on night 1 of a cruise.  We usually try to keep our dining room dinners to one hour at most, so we hoped things would move along quicker the rest of the week.  Bellies full, we set out to explore some more of the ship.  There was live music playing in the atrium, so we headed there first.  I loved that you were able to walk the full length of the ship on decks 2 and 3 without having a galley in the middle to block your path.  That was definitely a huge advantage to the layout of this ship!  

There is a great spot for photos on deck 3 with the glass elevators in the background, so we found a fellow passenger to take a photo of the 3 of us together.

I loved the blue tear drops in the chandelier. 

We walked a little further around to the side and had a nice view overlooking the atrium bar.

We could hear the musicians, but at first, we couldn’t find them!  Then we noticed that there was a tiny stage behind the bartenders.  It reminded me of a puppet show stage, or perhaps a stage for marionettes where the people controlling the strings could hang down from where we just stood to take our photos!

I noticed the blue tear drop chandeliers continued up to the ceiling of the atrium.  A lot of the decor was dated on this ship, but I did love those chandeliers.

It was a little chilly on the ship, so we went back to the cabin to grab my cardigan.  While there, we went out on the balcony to check out the current view.  It was fun that we could almost always see land in the distance throughout this cruise, as opposed to Caribbean cruises when you see nothing but water on most sea days.

I also took a moment to hang up the door decorations I made at home.  I intended to hang these on our door to help Ian identify our cabin, but sadly, the door was not magnetic.  I ended up hanging the signs on the wall next to our door and mailbox, where the magnets held the signs in place all week.

Cardigan in hand, we went down to the Alchemy Bar to redeem our VIFP free drink.  I have been Gold for several cruises, but this was Jason’s first time also being Gold so we both got to redeem a free drink.  

I picked the Pain Relief, with Starr Rum, Bacardi 8 Rum, Malibu Coconut Rum, and fresh orange and pineapple juice.  Jason picked the Island Old Fashioned, with spice infused Flor de Cana 12 Rum, sugar, water, and bitters.  Jason stayed at one of the tables with Ian while I went up to the bar to order the drinks.  When I ordered Jason’s drink, the bartender looked at me funny and questioned if I liked alcohol-forward drinks.  I laughed and explained that it was for my husband, and he drinks Old Fashioned’s all the time so it was right up his alley, whereas the fruity rum drink was for me.  That seemed to ease her concern, and she scanned our Sign and Sail cards, then made both cocktails.

We took our drinks back to the atrium so Ian could listen to the duo perform.  We found a seat on the couches by the window, so we got to enjoy the view while enjoying the music.  I appreciated that they left the curtains open in the evenings all around the ship.  On most cruises, they close the curtains in the evening to create a more formal atmosphere.  On cruises to Alaska, it stays light so late at night, and the views from the ship are so pretty, it would be a waste for them to close the curtains and block the views, so I was glad they left them open.  

By now, it was 7:40pm, so we were surprised to see the pilot boat pull up alongside the ship.  We had left Seattle 4 hours ago, so it was surprising that the pilot was still on board.

Camp didn’t open until 8pm tonight, so we brought Ian upstairs when it was time.  He was so excited to play with the cars.  Thank you Carnival for having the kind of toys young boys like to play with (I’m looking at you, Discovery Princess).  If you read my review of that cruise, you know that Ian was bullied at camp by an older kid on the first night of the cruise and it traumatized him for the rest of the cruise and he never wanted to go back to camp.  Well, he spent the last 7 months worried that mean kid would be on this Alaska cruise with us.  He randomly brought it up all the time, so although I hoped he would forget about it, he never did.  We were thrilled when Ian willingly went to camp tonight, lured by the idea of playing with those cars, and we hoped he had a fun time.  This was our first cruise when camp did not issue us a phone or pager to contact us if Ian needed help, so I was a little nervous about how that would play out.  What if he had an accident?  What if he was bullied again and it made him upset?  There was no way for the counselors to contact us while we were around the ship.  Most likely, he would be fine because he is used to being at school for 10 hours a day, and we were only leaving him at camp for 2 hours tonight because they started charging for Night Owls at 10pm.  That seemed like a good amount of time for him to get to meet the new counselors and kids at camp on this cruise, and for him to feel safe that we would be back soon to pick him up.

We went down to the Limelight Lounge for the 8:30pm comedy show.  There were plenty of seats open when we arrived at 8:05pm, and even a few open seats at the start of the show.  This will not be the case later in the cruise, so I think it was just a slow night with it being embarkation day and people still learning the flow of the ship.  

This show was rated for adults.  I appreciated that there was an adult show early enough in the evening that we could see it while Ian was at camp.  The comedy club host on this cruise was Jem Jem, and we both thought she was great at her job.  So often you have comedy club hosts who aren’t funny, and some of them are just plain annoying, but Jem Jem really knew how to warm up the crowd.  As the week went on, she got to know the people who always sat in the front row, so she made some inside jokes that only the comedy show regulars would understand.  I appreciated that she worked as more of an opening act than just someone who told us the rules of the show.

Tonight’s comedian was Paul Lyons, and we both thought he was very funny and not the typical cruise ship comedian.  He told us he was 65 years old and he played into that with jokes about his age and past career as a teacher.  We both laughed out loud through most of his show. 

When the comedy show finished at 9pm, we went just a few steps down the hall into the main theater to watch the Welcome Aboard show.  It was so convenient having the comedy club and the theater nearby (just on opposite sides of the elevators, as opposed to most ships where the theater is all the way forward, but the comedy club is all the way aft and on a different deck).   

Zach was on stage and he called up one of the kids from the front row to ask her a few questions.  After about 10 minutes, Jason and I looked at each other and we could tell we were both not very entertained at this show.  We decided to leave, in hopes of using our limited child-free time more productively.  Jason decided he was hungry, so we went up to the buffet.  By now it was 9:30pm and the only options were the deli, pizza, or ice cream.  I was hoping for a cookie or piece of cake, but couldn’t find any.  I think Jason had a sandwich from the deli, but I didn’t take a photo so I can’t be totally sure.  (That’s how I can include so many details in my reviews, by the way.  I take photos of everything to jog my memory weeks later when I’m at home at my computer, typing this up!)

A few minutes before 10pm, we made our way back up to deck 10 forward to pick up Ian from camp.  He had a huge smile on his face and we could tell he got over his fears of being bullied by the older kids.  I definitely think it helped that he was on the old side of the age range for the camp.  Later in the week, I learned that there were only 200 kids on our cruise, so camp wasn’t nearly as crowded as on our New Year’s Eve cruises with probably closer to 1000 kids on board.  The counselors handed us this note on our way out.  I don’t know if they do this for every kid or just for Ian because they knew he was hesitant to stay at camp, but either way, we really appreciated this gesture and knew he was in good hands when we left them to watch him all week.

Back in the cabin, Ian showed us the penguin he made at camp.  We used one of the magnets I brought from home to hang it next to Ian’s bed for the week.

As we got ready for bed, we could hear music coming from the atrium if we stood close to the door while inside the cabin.  Once we got into bed at the far end of the cabin, and turned on our sound machine that we sleep with every night at home anyway, we couldn’t hear the music at all.  By the way, this little sound machine was a game changer for packing.  We used to travel with the full sized one we use at home (we have a duplicate that lived in our suitcases, dedicated for traveling).  I found this tiny sound machine on Amazon and it is just as loud as the full sized machine, but is slightly smaller than a Keurig pod!  I actually bought 2 of them for the times Ian sleeps in a separate room, and even together they don’t take up nearly as much space in the luggage as one full sized machine.

We set our clocks back one hour tonight so we would be in Alaska’s time zone for the port days.  We made sure to switch our phones to not automatically adjust for time zones, and then manually changed the time before going to sleep.

Up next: Our only official Sea Day

This summer proved to be yet another scorcher for Phoenix with high temperatures over 105 degrees for most of July.  Here’s our weather forecast for the 10 days leading up to the cruise:

Needless to say, we were ready to cool off and couldn’t wait to fly to Seattle for more comfortable temperatures!  When I originally booked our flights, I was debating between a 10:10am flight which landed at 1:10pm, and a 1pm flight which landed at 4pm.  The 10:10am flight meant Ian likely would not get to take his afternoon nap (he usually naps from 1-3pm), but it would get us in to Seattle early enough that we could check into the hotel, run over to a store to buy our 2 bottles of wine for the cruise, and have plenty of time to go out to dinner before needing to return to the hotel to put Ian to bed.  The 1pm flight would have given Ian the opportunity to nap during the flight, but I knew there was no guarantee that he would actually fall asleep on the plane.  This kid has major FOMO and often fights his naps when we are on the go.  Plus, landing at 4pm would make it a little rushed to have time for all the things we needed to do before bedtime.  In the end, the 10:10am flight made the most sense and I booked our 3 tickets for 12,500 points each, using the points I earned from the Alaska Airlines credit card sign-up bonus.  

Six weeks later, I noticed that Alaska Airlines added a new flight to their schedule!  They pushed our 10:10am flight earlier to 9:45am, and they pushed the 1pm flight later to 3:20pm, which made room for a new flight to be added at 11:45am!  This was perfect for us because it meant Ian would have an opportunity to nap on the plane, and we would land at 2:45pm, with plenty of time to check into the hotel and go to the store before dinner.  The new flight was the same price as the original flight, so it was easy to switch the flights on the Alaska Airlines website.   

My alarm was set for 5:30am this morning, but I woke up at 4am and couldn’t fall back asleep, so I got out of bed at 4:30am to get the day started.  I guess I was just too excited to sleep any later!  I had just enough time to shower, get dressed, and eat breakfast before Ian woke up at 6am. 

I got an email from Lyft last week with a $3 off code because I haven’t used them in a while. Well, that’s because we have no need for ride shares unless we are traveling, but it was great timing with needing to get to the airport today.  We requested a Lyft XL, and a Chrysler Pacifica immediately accepted our request and was enroute to pick us up in 8 minutes.  When we travel with 3 people, 2 big checked bags, 2 carry-on bags, 2 over-stuffed giant backpacks, Ian’s backpack, and Ian’s stroller, I prefer to request an XL car.  We might save a few dollars by requesting a standard-sized car, but then we risk them sending something too small for all of our stuff, and that stress isn’t worth the few dollars upcharge for the XL vehicle.  We were on the road to PHX by 9:20am.  Ian was mesmerized by the TV screens mounted on the back of the front seat head rests, and he spent the entire ride staring at the cartoon that the driver selected.  I guess he saw us standing on the curb with a young child and assumed he would enjoy Disney’s Zootopia, and he was right!

PHX doesn’t have curbside check in for Alaska Airlines, so we had to take our 2 big bags inside to the bag drop counter.  Each bag only weighed 37 pounds, so for once, I wasn’t nervous to put them on the scale.  Next, we proceeded upstairs to security where there was only one person ahead of us in our line.  The good news was that TSA no longer asks you to remove our shoes.  The bad news was that the team scanning our bags in the X-ray were in training, so I just knew they would be overly thorough.  I was shocked they didn’t pull my rolling carry on aside because it literally weighed more than our big checked bag, but both carry-on bags and my backpack passed through without any problems.  Our last bag was Jason’s backpack and they flagged it. Ugh!  He hardly had anything packed in his backpack, but they took out every single thing.  They opened up a packing cube where I neatly packed all of Ian’s snacks (pre-packaged Chewy granola bars, fruit bars, cheese crackers, etc.) and they proceeded to swab each individual wrapper.  Next, they asked Jason about the Subway sandwich he packed for lunch.  They wanted him to open the wrapper to prove it was a sandwich.  Seriously?!  He was like, that’s my food that I am going to eat.  Don’t touch it!  What did they think was inside?!  It was wrapped in the paper from Subway with the Subway sticker sealing the wrapper, and it smelled like a sandwich.  They ended up letting Jason hold it and unwrap it so they never touched it, and then they gave him a piece of packing tape to wrap it up again.  They put everything through the x-ray machine again, and he was finally cleared to go.  The whole ordeal was very strange and just felt like they were targeting the wrong thing.  At least we got to the airport with plenty of time before our flight, so the 30 minutes spent giving Jason’s sandwich a pat down didn’t matter in the end. 

We had about an hour at our gate before boarding.  Ian loved watching all the trucks out the window as they loaded luggage and supplies on the planes.  When our plane pulled up to the gate, it was so fun to see that it was a special blue plane with orcas painted on the side.  Usually, Alaska Airlines planes are white with a man’s face painted on the back vertical wing, so this was a special plane.

Boarding went smoothly and the flight left on time.  Yesterday, I downloaded America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders through the Netflix app on my iPad to watch on the plane.  I purposely saved it to watch on this trip in case Ian started watching my screen over my shoulder.  I definitely didn’t think it would be wise for him to watch season 3 of Squid Games, so I made sure to watch something safe for him to see. (No spoilers of either show please!  I haven’t had a chance to finish either season yet!)  The flight was uneventful, which I suppose is the best kind of flight to have.  Ian spent most of the time watching movies on his phone and playing with his toys.

When we were approaching Seattle, we noticed that we were flying over downtown and could see the Space Needle from the plane.  It seemed like a strange approach because we knew that we had long passed the airport and had to make a U-turn to go back south to land the plane, but that was great because it meant we could see the cruise docks at Pier 91 and all of downtown Seattle while up in the air.

Our plane landed 10 minutes early, and our checked bags came out quickly, so we were off to a great start.  Before the trip, I had called the hotel to ask about the logistics of having the free shuttle pick us up at the airport.  They said I should call them as soon as we got our luggage and they would send the shuttle to get us.  As directed, I called the hotel to request the shuttle, and they gave me directions on how to walk to the pick-up spot for hotel shuttles.  This terminal of SEA-TAC is under construction, and we now had 2 big checked bags, 2 rolling carry-on bags, plus Ian in his stroller, and only the 2 of us to push it all.  It wasn’t a pretty sight as we struggled to squeeze down the narrow hallways of the airport to find an elevator upstairs, lugged everything across the sky bridge, down another elevator, and then across the street to the hotel pick up spot.  Had I known it was such a trek, I would have paid for one of those big luggage carts and made Jason do all the heavy pushing while I just pushed Ian’s stroller.  Flustered and sweaty, I called the hotel again and they said they would dispatch the driver and it would be a 25 minute wait.  This was very annoying because that’s why they originally told me to call them when I had my checked luggage at baggage claim!  So they could drive to the airport while we walked out to the pick up spot!  We stood there waiting, and anxiously checking every hotel shuttle bus as it passed, but as they said, our shuttle arrived exactly 25 minutes later.

The ride to the hotel took 10 minutes, so I’m not sure why it took the driver 25 minutes to pick us up.  As I mentioned, we stayed at the Holiday Inn Express- Seattle South in Tukwila.  By the time the shuttle dropped us off, it was after 4pm, so our room was ready and we were able to check in right away.  The suite was very nice, and way more space than the 3 of us really needed.  

Living room with queen-sized bed, couch, and a wardrobe and desk area to the left (not pictured)

Bedroom with a king-sized bed, dresser, wardrobe, and a comfy chair in the corner to the left (not pictured)

Mini fridge, microwave, and Keurig machine

Large spacious bathroom

We dropped off our bags in the room, and then went back to the lobby to ask the shuttle to drive us to Total Wine so we could buy our two bottles of wine to bring on the ship with us.  It was about a mile away, so the driver said that was no problem and she took us right away.  When she dropped us off, she said to call her when we were ready to be picked up and she would come get us.  Inside Total Wine, I picked out a bottle of Riesling and Jason picked a bottle of Cabernet, both with screw tops for easy opening on the ship.  We also picked up a few individual cans of beer from the coolers so we could drink them in the hotel room tonight after Ian went to sleep.

Goods acquired, we walked a half mile across the street to the Westfield Southcenter Mall so we could have dinner at the food court.  We considered a real restaurant for dinner, but Ian did not nap on the plane so we wanted something quick so we could get back to the hotel to put him to sleep.  We got Ian his all-time favorite food: mac & cheese.  It was very good and tasted very premium, especially considering it was from a mall food court.  Unfortunately, after he spent the whole travel day snacking, he didn’t eat much of his dinner. 

Jason and I got Poké burritos, which we had never had before.  It was like a Poké bowl, but in burrito form all wrapped up with a seaweed wrapper.  It was so good and I wished that we could find it in our local restaurants.  

When we were done eating, we called the hotel to have the shuttle pick us up from the mall.  By the time we got outside, the shuttle was there waiting for us to drive us back to the hotel.  I’m not sure what the hold up was with getting us from the airport, but the shuttle worked out great going to/from the mall and we appreciated saving some money on ride shares!  

By now, it was 6:30 PM and time to put Ian to bed.  Of course, he was very riled up from all the excitement of the day, so that took longer than we wanted.  Eventually, he fell asleep and we could crack open those beers from Total Wine and unwind for a while.  Jason made sure to finish up the rest of Ian’s mac and cheese as his late night snack.  We called it a night by 9:30PM, as it had been a long day after I woke up at 4 AM.  Before going to sleep, I checked the Luminosa’s location on Cruise Mapper, and was happy to see her docked in Victoria.  I couldn’t wait for the next morning to check again when she would be pulling into Seattle for us to board the ship.

Up next: Embarkation Day!

Planning- Background

Before we get into all the details, I should probably introduce us to those who haven’t read my reviews before.  We are a family of 3, including myself, my husband Jason, and our son Ian, who turned 4 in June.  This will be Ian’s 3rd cruise, but despite our best efforts to explain it to him, he has zero appreciation for how lucky he is to take 3 cruises in 4 years.

In general, I love warm weather and sunshine.  So why am I taking a cruise to Alaska?!  Well, it just intrigued me.  The scenery, the wildlife, the glaciers.  It just felt like it was time to finally see what the fuss is all about.  Ian’s daycare camp ended on July 18, and then he had two weeks off before the new school year started, so this was the ideal time for us to travel.  Plus, the idea of escaping Phoenix’s triple-digit summer heat sounded like a fantastic plan!  I spent a long time looking up all the itineraries on every cruise line going to Alaska this season.  I definitely wanted a roundtrip itinerary out of Seattle because airfare to/from Vancouver and Anchorage were very high.  That narrowed the options down quite a bit.  NCL had an amazing 9-day itinerary, but unfortunately it ended on Monday, August 4, which was Ian’s first day of school so obviously we couldn’t take that cruise.  I strongly considered the cruise on Royal Princess because it goes to Glacier Bay, but because of the configuration of the cabins on Princess, we needed at least a Premium Balcony to fit the 3 of us (there was no way I would let my 4 year old sleep on an overhead pull-down bunk, which meant we would need a Premium Balcony cabin to get a pull out couch for him), and those priced out to more than double what we ended up paying on Carnival.  Even before taking this cruise, I had a feeling we would do another Alaska cruise in a few years when Ian is old enough to take some more adventurous excursions, so it was hard to justify the very expensive Princess cruise right now when there’s always another opportunity to visit Glacier Bay in the future.

When I found this cruise on the Carnival Luminosa, I knew it was perfect for us.  There’s not much variety between the 7-day Seattle roundtrip itineraries, so that wasn’t much of a factor.  The dates were exactly aligned with when we were available to travel.  We would fly to Seattle on Wednesday, board the ship on Thursday, and when we returned to Seattle the following Thursday, we would have 3 whole days to explore Seattle before flying home on Sunday. 

Planning- Itinerary and Cabin

Originally when I booked this cruise, I selected a 4K interior cabin with an obstructed view.  On most ships, I only considered a balcony cabin because the interior cabins were too small for 3 of us.  The balcony cabins on all of the cruises I looked at were way out of budget, and I couldn’t justify the cost.  These category 4K cabins were priced the same as a regular interior cabin, but they were way bigger and had the same configuration as a standard balcony, only instead of a balcony door, there is a floor-to-ceiling window.  The view is looking out over the lifeboats, but that didn’t bother me because I doubted we would sit in the cabin looking out the window.  The cabins were located one deck above the wrap-around promenade deck, so I could totally see us hanging out down there to watch all of the scenery, or we could go to any of the other public spaces around the ship.  I know a lot of people say they will only cruise with a balcony to Alaska, but with the potential to be cold or raining, there was a risk we would never want to sit on the balcony and then we spent all of that money for nothing.  These 4K cabins were significantly cheaper than any other cabin on other ships sailing in Alaska, and it was even a lot cheaper than the Mexican Riviera cruises we took in 2023 and 2024, so it was just too good of a deal to pass up!  Plus, with the money saved by not getting a balcony, that opened up a lot more options for excursions!

I booked this cruise way back in April of 2024, a year and 3 months in advance.  Around that same time, my mom told me about the travel agent she used for several cruises.  My mom had some issues pop up while she was already on one of the trips, and the travel agent was very helpful in getting things sorted out and resolved, allowing my parents to enjoy their cruise.  My mom also mentioned that this travel agent gave her lots of money in onboard credit for each of her cruises.  I have always done all of the work with planning and booking my cruises by myself, and I have never considered using a travel agent before.  I guess I assumed that it would cost me money to use a travel agent, or that I would have to give up control over my cruise and hope the travel agent didn’t mess things up for me when dealing with my booking.  I really prefer to be 100% in control of things so I know they are done correctly, and I was very hesitant to have someone else in charge and risk that they made a mistake or something that would create more work for me in the long run.  Since my mom had worked with this travel agent for a while and had nothing but good things to say about her, I decided to give her a call.  Since Carnival gives you 90 days to transfer a booking to a travel agent after booking a cruise, I was still within the window and she was able to take over the booking and give us $100 in onboard credit.  It wasn’t a huge amount, but she explained that it is based on the base fare of the cruise, and since our taxes and port fees were one third of the cost of our cruise, the base fare wasn’t very much.  Of course, I wasn’t upset that we booked an inexpensive cruise, but obviously I would have liked more OBC!  Haha!  Regardless, $100 is $100 and I decided to go ahead with transferring our booking to her.  

Over the next 5 months, the price of our 4K cabin incrementally dropped by $225, so each time it went down, I was able to take advantage of price protection with the Early Saver fare and match to the lower price.  In late September, Jason closed a huge deal at work (the biggest deal of his career thus far!) which earned him a generous commission and he wanted to allocate some of those earnings towards our vacation.  Sounds good to me!  At first, I assumed we would upgrade to a balcony cabin, because while I was perfectly happy in our 4K interior cabin, a balcony is always better than no balcony, right?!  I looked closely at the deck plans and there were plenty of balcony cabins available to book, but then I saw the aft-facing balconies.  Oooh, those would be amazing for an Alaska cruise!  Unfortunately, there were only 4 aft-facing cabins on the entire ship with a 3-passenger capacity, and they were already booked for our cruise.  Then, I noticed there was a small section of cabins near the mid-ship elevators that were categorized as Premium Balconies, and there were a few left which could accommodate 3 passengers.  The balconies on these cabins are a little deeper, which I hoped meant that if it was raining, we could stay somewhat dry if we sat at the back of the balcony.  What really intrigued me about these cabins was their interior was bigger than a standard balcony.  There was a lot more space between the couch and the bed, so that would give us more space from Ian while we slept.  There was also a second desk between the couch and the bed, giving us even more space to stash our stuff.  The shower in these cabins had a glass door, so that was another nice benefit (although it was definitely not a deal breaker if we had the standard shower curtain).

The Premium Balconies were all located on decks 4 and 5 in a bumped out section of the ship, right near the mid-ship elevators.  Deck 3 is open to the atrium and lobby bar on deck 2, so I was afraid deck 4 cabins in that area would hear the music from below.  That left deck 5 as our best option, but there were only 3 premium balconies available which would allow for 3 passengers.  Two of those 3 cabins were at the back end of the bumped out section, and the side of their balcony was open on the side.  This meant that they wouldn’t have much privacy since everyone in a balcony along the section of cabins to their aft could see into the balcony.  It also risked having wind and/or rain blowing in from the side.  The only other cabin left was cabin 5312.  It was located very close to the opening into the elevator bank, and I usually try to avoid that location in case noise drifts up from the atrium a few decks below, or in case people are being noisy while waiting for their elevators, but the temptation to have this bigger cabin with a better layout and deeper balcony was just too much to resist.  I cleared the idea with Jason, and then called our travel agent to update the booking.  Since the cabin cost more than our original cabin, she could now offer us more money in OBC.  That didn’t quite make the upgrade pay for itself, but it did take the edge off, and Jason’s commission covered the rest.  We were officially booked in a premium balcony cabin for our Alaska cruise!!!  

In the midst of all that cabin research, I was also researching our tours and excursions.  Figuring out what to do in each port was quite daunting at first.  I mean, it’s ALASKA!  That’s a huge bucket list destination for so many people, and while it honestly was not really on my radar until relatively recently, I quickly learned all that our 49th state had to offer.  There are so many incredible options for people interested in more adventurous tours, but we had to keep Ian’s interests and safety in mind.  I will get into more details when we get to those days of the trip, but just as a quick summary, this is our itinerary map and what we had planned for each day:

Wednesday, July 23- Fly to Seattle

Thursday, July 24- Embarkation Day

Friday, July 25- Sea Day

Saturday, July 26- Tracy Arm Fjord and Glacier Explorer small boat excursion

Sunday, July 27- Emerald Lake Tour with Dyea Dave in Skagway

Monday, July 28- Jayleen’s Whale Watching Tour in Juneau

Tuesday, July 29- Tide Pools and Totem Poles with Alaska Puddle Jumpers in Ketchikan

Wednesday, July 30- Sea Day, then brief evening waterfront walk in Victoria

Thursday, July 31- Disembarkation, then Outback Kangaroo Farm in Seattle

Friday, August 1- Pike Place Market food tour, ferry to Bainbridge Island, dinner at Ivar’s

Saturday, August 2- walk along the waterfront, dinner with Jason’s friends from when he lived in Seattle

Sunday, August 3- Fly back to Phoenix

To break up all of the text from this post, here are a few of my favorite photos that I edited with special effects…

Planning- Airfare and Hotel

Our original plan for airfare to/from Seattle was to use some of the Southwest Airlines points that Jason has accrued on his work trips.  Unfortunately, Southwest released their flight schedule long after most other airlines so I based my decision on the 2024 schedule.  Southwest only had 2 direct flights per day from Phoenix to Seattle- one at 6am and the other at 6pm.  Both of those times seemed horrible and left me in search of an alternative.  I found a promotion through Alaska Airlines where if you opened their credit card and met the minimum spending requirements, you would get 50,000 points and a free companion pass.  Alaska Airlines has several direct flights between Phoenix and Seattle, so it would be easy to pick a flight with convenient timing, and we could use a combination of points and the companion ticket to cover the cost of airfare for all 3 of us.  Plus, everyone booked on a reservation with a credit card holder can check one piece of luggage for free, so I knew we would take advantage of that considering all the layers I would need to pack for an Alaska cruise!

When considering a hotel to stay at on the night before the cruise, I was very focused on our logistics.  One option was to stay up near Pier 91 to make a short drive to the cruise port for embarkation day, but there weren’t many options of hotels or things to do up there, so I didn’t love that idea.  Another option was to stay downtown in Seattle near all of the tourist spots, but since we were staying in Seattle for 3 days post-cruise, we could save our touring for then.  Our third option was to stay close to the airport.  While I was looking into airport hotel options, I noticed that there was a huge shopping center and mall located 4 miles east of the airport.  We planned to arrive in Seattle in the early afternoon, so all we needed from our hotel was a place to sleep and a location nearby restaurants for dinner that night and hopefully somewhere we could buy our bottles of wine to take on the ship.  

There were several hotels located within walking distance of this huge shopping center, so we decided to book a room at the Holiday Inn Express and Suites Seattle South Tukwila.  I was able to book the hotel using the Chase travel portal, so that allowed me to use up the $300 travel credit I received as a sign up bonus for my credit card.  I had no other use for this travel credit as most of my travel bookings are not done through the Chase portal, so I decided to splurge on the room type to use up our entire credit.  In theory, I could have booked a less expensive room and saved the rest of the credit for something else, but that didn’t seem likely.  The reason I picked this hotel was they had a suite that included one king-sized bed in its own room with a door that closed, then in the living room area there was a queen-sized bed plus a pull-out couch, and the bathroom door was in the living room too.  My plan was to let Ian sleep in the king-sized bed because we could close his door and let him go to sleep early while Jason and I watched TV in the living room and eventually went to sleep on the queen-sized bed.  Obviously we would have preferred to sleep in the bigger bed, but letting Ian have his own room was well worth the trade off.  This hotel included a free hot breakfast, a free shuttle from the airport to the hotel, and it was a one mile walk to the shopping center (although I hoped the shuttle could drop us off and save us the walk).  This seemed like the perfect place for us to stay the night before the cruise, and we could take an Uber up to the ship the following morning.

As I mentioned, we stayed in Seattle for 3 nights after the cruise.  We disembarked on Thursday, so it only made sense to stick around in Seattle through the weekend to extend our time away from the Phoenix heat.  We opted to book an AirBNB for the 3-night stay to have more space to spread out, and to have access to a kitchen for quick breakfasts.  After a quick search, I found the perfect spot!  It was a 2 bedroom/1 bathroom private unit on the ground floor of a duplex, where the hosts/owners live upstairs in case we have any issues or need them for anything.  The rental is just a 5 minute walk from the Space Needle in Uptown Queen Anne, with tons of restaurants within walking distance, and the price was cheaper than most decent hotels nearby!  We booked the AirBNB over a year in advance, which turned out to be very wise because I noticed sometime this winter that they were fully booked for all of June, July, and August so obviously this is a popular rental!

Up next: flying to Seattle… but first, a few more fun edited photos!

Hi everyone!  My name is Dana, and I just returned home from a 7-night cruise on the Carnival Luminosa (July 24-31, 2025 sailing). As you can see from my cruise history listed below in my signature, I have taken many cruises over the last 15+ years, but I have never been to Alaska!  I was so excited to finally check out this beautiful part of the world!  I always write a detailed photo review when I return home from my cruises, with a journal-style day-by-day format. This cruise will be no different!  If you are looking for a short and sweet review, you might want to look elsewhere… I tend to write like I talk, so my reviews are very long and take a few weeks to complete.  On the other hand, if you like reading about lots of details, and if you want to see TONS of photos (including all of the daily schedules and menus), this is the review for you!  I do this as much to help others plan their vacations as to give myself a travel log to look back on and remember my wonderful cruise. 

In preparing for this cruise, there were hardly any detailed reviews of the Luminosa doing itineraries in Alaska.  I am sure this was partly due to the ship splitting its time between Alaska and Australia (plus two cruises every year that are each over 3 weeks long to reposition the ship between those locations).  Also, the ship is relatively new to the Carnival fleet, as it was previously operated by Costa Cruises, and was renovated and transitioned to Carnival in 2022.  Whatever the reason, there was hardly any information on Cruise Critic about the Luminosa when I was planning for this vacation, so hopefully my review will help others who plan to sail her in the future.  I know she is transitioning to use San Francisco as a homeport for the 2026 Alaska season, but since there will still be other Carnival ships sailing from Seattle, and the Luminosa will still have an Alaska itinerary even with a different homeport, hopefully this review will hold value for its future cruisers. 

As always, please feel free to ask questions and post comments along the way… I welcome your feedback!  I would think this goes without saying, but please be respectful in your comments, and remember that this review is based on what I experienced with my family on this vacation.  YMMV.  All of the posts for the review will be in this larger purple font so it stands out if you just want to read the review and skip the comments and other posts.  It may take me a little while to get all of my photos sorted and loaded onto my computer as I took over 3000 photos in the 12 days we were away, so please be patient with me.  Here are some of my favorite photos from the trip as a little something to hold you over until it’s time to post the rest!

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