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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two side notes:

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

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

Ok, back to the review…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They even printed special menus for dinner tonight

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

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

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

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

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

For dessert, I ordered the dark chocolate mousse cake.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can you find it?…

Here it is:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A few photos as we sailed out of the marina…

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

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

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

Yea, that wasn’t accurate at all…

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

The Holland America ship Koningsdam was also in port today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh, and there’s our ship again…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This was tonight’s menu for formal night:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cheers!

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

Ian was having a lot of fun too!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There goes the pilot boat helping us exit the harbor…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So you know the 1.5L water bottles left in the cabin on embarkation day that they want you to buy?  We bought a 12 pack of smaller bottles of water and had no use for the big bottles, so we put them on the top shelf next to the vanity mirror to keep it out of the way for the week.  There were some rough seas coming into Long Beach this morning.  At 6:35am we heard a loud crash!  We jumped out of bed not knowing what happened.  Jason panicked and ran over to the crib, thinking it somehow collapsed and Ian was hurt.  Then we realized what actually happened… The bottles of water had rolled off the shelf and tumbled onto the vanity, and then down to the floor.  Ugh!  That was a very rude awakening!  There was no chance any of us would fall back asleep after that, and we had to wake up soon after that anyway, so we just got up to get dressed and finish packing. 

I peeked out on the balcony to see a beautiful sunrise as we sailed into Long Beach.  I really must say that the sunrises and sunsets on this cruise were so pretty!  

As excited as I was to see this dome last Saturday morning, I wasn’t nearly as thrilled to see it right now.

The shipping container cranes welcomed us back to Long Beach.

We had to leave the cabin by 8:30am so the steward could clean up for the new guests embarking today.  We were done packing and ready to go by 7:45am, so we just decided to get an early start for the day.  Getting an elevator to go up one deck to Lido proved to be rather challenging.  By this point in the cruise, most people seemed to figure out how to operate the “smart” elevators, but I don’t think anyone realized that they needed to account for their luggage when typing in the number of people in their party.  Several elevators were packed beyond their limits and it took a few minutes to get one with space for our party of 2 adults, one stroller containing a toddler, one carseat, 2 big backpacks, one diaper bag, and 2 rolling carry-on suitcases.  We weren’t in a hurry or we would have considered just dragging all our stuff up the one flight of stairs.

We wanted to have one last Blue Iguana burrito and an arepa for breakfast.  Of course the line was long, but that was to be expected.  Luckily, it went pretty fast because there were 2 guys working behind the counter. 

Finding a table proved to be another tricky task because people were just camping out at tables even after they finished eating.  Fortunately, Jason spotted one couple getting up and he snagged their table so we could sit down to eat.

According to our debarkation paperwork, FTTF was supposed to meet at the casino on midship deck 4 at 9:15am if you had left your checked luggage outside the cabin last night.  We finished breakfast at 8:40am, but we didn’t want to hog the table, so we figured we’d just go down to the casino and hang out there until it was our turn to get off the ship.  We went over to the mid-ship elevators, but the touchscreen wouldn’t let us select deck 4.  After trying for a while, we gave up and decided to go down to deck 5 to see if we could figure out what was happening.  Jason left me and Ian with our carry on bags and went to investigate.  From what he could tell, there were definitely people down on deck 4, but neither the forward nor the midship elevators were letting us select deck 4.  By this time, it was 9:10am and he could see people on deck 4 were getting off the ship, so we took Ian out of the stroller and took turns carrying all of our stuff down the stairs to deck 4.  There were 2 ladies in motorized scooters who were very frustrated that the elevators weren’t allowing you to get off on deck 4.  Obviously they eventually got it sorted out because it’s not like Carnival would trap them on the ship forever, but we were curious how long it took for them to allow you to select deck 4 on the elevator touchscreens.

Once we were down on deck 4, we joined the line of people walking off the ship.  It started from the mid-ship casino entrance, went all the way down the hall to the aft of the ship near the comedy club, then it went out the door onto the outside deck below the lifeboats, and back up to near the midship elevators.  It was a loooong line and a really far distance to walk with all our bags, but at least the line did keep moving forward, albeit very slowly.   At one point, the line split into 2 lines and they told us to keep right because we had a stroller.  The weird thing was, once we bing bonged our sign and sail cards for the last time and stepped onto the bridge, the lines became one line again to walk across the bridge into the terminal building.  I’m still not really sure why they separated us into a separate line, but oh well, at least we were officially off the ship. 

Once we were back in the terminal, we had to walk down the long zig zagging ramp (so there was no need for an elevator with our stroller).  Again, they split us into 2 lines, with passports to the left, and birth certificates to the right.  Since Ian only had a birth certificate, they told us to take that line and they could process our passports with him.  That meant we could fly down the ramp and bypass everyone else in the passport line.  Not that I would recommend traveling with a birth certificate just so you can cut the line, but that definitely did get us down the ramp faster.

At the base of the ramp, we went into an open warehouse to find our luggage.  Ours was right there in front and very easy to find as we entered the room.  We knew we needed a porter because there was no way we could manage 2 large suitcases, 2 carry on bags, a pack n play, a car seat, 2 backpacks, a diaper bag, and a stroller with just the two of us.  Once again, I got the feeling that it was everyone’s first day of work and no one knew what they were doing.  We could see a few porters at the far side of the warehouse, but we couldn’t get to them because there was a barricade set up around the checked luggage.  I caught someone’s eye and he said I had to speak to this other guy because he’s in charge.  Ooookay.  The guy in charge said we had to wait for the porters to get cleared by customs.  Shouldn’t that be something they take care of before passengers start debarking and entering the warehouse?  And then once they did get clearance, the porters couldn’t get to us with their dollies because the barricades were blocking them!  It was just so disorganized and really felt like none of these guys had ever done this before, when I know that can’t really be the case.

Once we finally got a porter, he piled all of our stuff onto his dolly and we went to the far exit to have our documents checked.  Again, this saved us some time because we were the only ones down at that exit whereas everyone else went to the passports exit.  It took us less than a minute for the lady to look at Ian’s birth certificate and Jason and my passports, and then we were on our way outside to the ride share pick up location.  The porter unloaded our stuff, we gave him a tip to thank him for his help, and our cruise was officially over.  The timestamp on this photo is 9:41am, so it took us just half an hour from the time we joined the line to start leaving the ship to the time we were outside the cruise terminal.  Not too bad at all!

I’m not sure why I didn’t think to leave out jackets or extra layers of clothing, but OMG!  It was freezing outside!!  We all were just wearing a thin long sleeve t-shirt, and that was not nearly warm enough.  I considered searching for our sweatshirts, but I knew they were packed somewhere in one of the big checked bags, and I wasn’t even sure which one.  I wasn’t going to open up and dig around both bags and right here on the sidewalk, and I figured we’d be in the car soon enough, so we just made do.  Jason opened the Uber app on his phone and requested an Uber XL to take us back to his brother’s house where our car was parked.  It stayed on the screen where it said it was looking for an available driver for 10 minutes, then it bopped us out to the home screen again.  What?!  So Jason requested the ride again.  And again, after 10 minutes, it kicked us out of the request and sent us back to the home screen.  We have never had this happen before, especially not in a major city, but apparently there either weren’t any XL drivers available at 10am on a Sunday morning, or none of them were willing to pick us up at the Long Beach cruise terminal.  That was frustrating, so he tried Lyft.  Same thing!  After half an hour of trying and not getting anyone to accept our ride request, I took out my phone and tried too.  Jason used Uber and I used Lyft, hoping that one of us would get a driver and then the other could just cancel the request.  

Finally, after 40 minutes, an Uber XL driver accepted Jason’s request.  The problem was, he was still 20 minutes away!  We knew it would be hard to find a different driver who was closer to the port, so we just went with it.  We kept watching the car move along the map and get closer to the terminal, and watching the arrival time count down.  Then, when the clock said our driver was 5 minutes away, everything came to a halt.  Uh oh!  Remember all of that traffic we had trying to get to the port to be dropped off for our cruise last week?  Well the same thing was happening this morning!  It was all so chaotic, as more and more people got off the ship and were crowding onto the narrow sidewalk, with nowhere else to go as we all waited for our rides who were stuck outside the port gates in traffic.  At one point, Jason called our driver to ask if he wanted us to walk out to him in the line of traffic (not that I have any idea how Jason thought that was possible with all our stuff and just the two of us to manage it).  The driver said he was dropping off a family who were going on today’s cruise so he didn’t have space for us and our bags in the car quite yet.  At least we knew he wouldn’t make a U-turn and abandon us here!

Finally, at 11:10am, our driver called us to say he was here!  We had been standing outside on the sidewalk waiting for a ride for exactly an hour and a half.  No joke, my feet and fingers were completely numb from being so cold!  The only person who was happy was Ian, who was nice and warm, sitting in his stroller, snacking on graham crackers the entire time.  Lucky boy!  Anyway, the Uber driver said he was on the far side of the pick up area because that’s where they directed him to go when he arrived.  That must have been just as frustrating for the passengers he dropped off as it was for us!  So now, we had to figure out how to get all of our stuff across to his car, including crossing two lanes of cars.  Jason ended up going back and forth, taking as much as he could manage on his own, and I just stayed with the pile of stuff and with Ian until the last load when we all went to the Uber together.  Oye, this was definitely the worst drop off and pick up experience I have ever had for a cruise!  The good news was that our Uber XL was a nice big minivan with plenty of space for all our bags.

The driver was very patient as Jason installed Ian’s car seat, and soon enough, we were on the road to Jason’s brother’s house.  By the time we got there 30 minutes later, it was noon.  Considering we started the process to exit the ship with the elevator fiasco starting at 8:40am, it had been a looooong time since we had bathroom access!  Good thing we could fix that problem at the house prior to starting our long drive back to Phoenix.  We loaded all the luggage into Jason’s car, re-installed Ian’s car seat, and finally hit the road at 12:30pm, way later than we ever expected to start the 6-hour drive home.  

Luckily, there was no traffic and we managed to conserve gas enough to wait until the Costco in Palm Springs to stop and fill the tank and get something to eat for a late lunch.  After that, we drove straight through until we finally pulled into our garage at 8pm (thanks to the one hour time change).  

So that’s all, folks!  This cruise certainly had its ups and its downs, but overall it was a great first family vacation and hopefully we’ll get to cruise again one day soon.  We don’t currently have anything booked or planned, and I’m okay with that for the time being.  I’m sure a few months will pass, and I’ll start to get that itch to want to travel again.  And when we do, you know I’ll be right back here to write up another detailed review upon our return!

Last night, the seas were very rocky and I could hear the wind howling inside our cabin, over the white noise from our sound machine.  I woke up at 7am again, as I had done for the whole cruise.  Why can’t I ever manage to sleep in?!  The boys were still sound asleep, so I quietly got ready in the bathroom, then sat on the floor by the front door of the cabin and folded everyone’s dirty laundry and put it back into packing cubes.  I always hate the nagging feeling of needing to pack on the last day of the cruise, so at least I could be productive for an hour while waiting for Jason and Ian to wake up.  

Ian woke up a little after 8am, and woke up Jason in the process, so that meant we could go to the MDR right when they opened at 8:30am.  We made brunch reservations on the app and got the alert that our table was ready as we were walking down the hall to the elevator.  How convenient!

Service was very slow this morning.  It took a long time for the waiter to take our order, and even longer for the food to arrive.  This was the first time we had a table in the main section of the aft dining room as we had been seated in the very front by the windows on the other two sea days.  I didn’t even realize until now that there was a second level to this MDR!  The midship MDR where we eat dinner is only one level and it feels kind of claustrophobic to me, but this dining room felt more grand and I really liked the square chandeliers hanging over the middle section.

While I waited for our food to come out, I took screenshots from the Hub app of all the specialty dining restaurants on the ship.  I am not going to post all of them, but please let me know if you would like to see anything in particular and I can post it for you.

In an attempt to add some variety to my order, I got the mozzarella sticks off the kids menu.  They were very good!  The plate came with 4 mozzarella sticks but I ate one before I remembered to take a photo… oops!

As usual, I also got a bagel with lox to share with Ian, and I got the 12-hour French Toast.

After brunch, we still had some time before Camp Ocean opened at 10am, so we went up to deck 10 aft to look at the view.  It was a beautiful morning, but you could feel a slight chill in the air as we traveled further north towards Long Beach.  I liked how we could always see land in the distance on all 3 sea days.  With a Caribbean cruise, you usually see nothing but water on all sides of the ship on sea days, but we sailed close enough to the west coast that we could see land all day long if we wanted to.

At 10am, Jason took Ian to camp, while I went down to the Liquid Lounge for the towel folding demonstration.  I have done this before on other cruises and it’s always fun, but it’s been a few years so I decided I wanted a refresher course.  On the way, I passed through the atrium to admire the ever-changing funnel:

As you entered the theater, they had a huge bin filled with towels, so there was no need to bring your own from the cabin.  The chairs in the theater were set up in rows to watch a show on stage, but I knew I would need space to spread out my towels.  I chose to sit on the bar-height stools at the back of the room because there is a cocktail table in front of the stools which works well for making towel animals.  

Deon stood up on stage to give step by step instructions on how to fold the towels, while Cadet from housekeeping demonstrated what to do.

Props to Deon because he did a great job giving specific verbal instructions that were easy to follow.  People spread out around the theater in search of enough space to lay out their towels… on the stage, on the floor, and some people just turned around the chairs in front of them to make a table from their seat.

First, we made a dog.

Then we made an elephant:

The whole thing took about 30 minutes, and I had a fun time making my animals.  

After that, I met Jason back at the cabin to spend an hour packing.  This little bunny was waiting for us when we arrived:

We also had some more paperwork about debarkation.  Boo!  Hiss!

At noon, we went down to deck 5 to finally try the BBQ buffet for lunch.  I’m not sure if it was because of the chilly weather, because people had already had their fill of BBQ earlier in the cruise, or because we got there so early, but there was a very short line and we got our food right away. 

We tried the chicken, beef, mac and cheese, and the bread.  It was all very good, but we just got a little bit to share so we could try other things too.  After all, this was our last lunch on board and we wanted to get as much variety as possible.

Today was the chocolate extravaganza at the Lido buffet.   In years past, they had a chocolate fountain and lots of other chocolate goodies, but all I could find was that the fancy cakes were all chocolate flavored.  “Extravaganza” was somewhat of a misnomer, but at least the chocolate cheesecake was very good!

 After lunch, we went to Ocean Plaza at 12:45pm for the Q and A with the production cast.  I always find these kinds of things so interesting, giving guests a chance to get to know the crew a little better and learn something about life on the ships.  The production cast usually has 8 performers in total: 2 female singers, 2 male singers, 2 female dancers, and 2 male dancers, but the dancers also know how to sing, and the singers can also do some dancing.  Apparently they were down one of the female dancers but I couldn’t tell anything was missing from the shows I saw.  They said someone had a new opportunity come up so she left her contract early, but it happened during the time the ship was in dry dock so they had time to re-block the shows and practice with a cast of 7.  They said it helped that everyone in the cast can both dance and sing so that gave them more flexibility to distribute the parts that had been performed by the girl who left.

The “bat phone” rang at 1pm during the Q and A.  Ian was upset in camp because he was hungry.  We knew that they do not feed the kids lunch on sea days, and we had planned to pick him up after the Q and A, hoping his big brunch would hold him over, but I guess not!  We left the Q and A early and immediately went upstairs to get Ian.  He ended up eating a whole margarita pizza on his own, so I guess he really was hungry!  While Ian ate his pizza, I tried some of the options from the antipasto section.

We went back to the cabin at 2pm to do some more packing and put Ian down for a nap.  He was finally getting the hang of napping on the ship and went down without a fight, and he slept for 2 hours.  Yay!  When he woke up, we got ready for the evening and noticed another pretty sunset outside.

We went down to the atrium before dinner for one last attempt at getting a photo of the 3 of us dressed nicely for dinner, but of course, Ian had other plans.  We tried to pose him in front of the stairs, but he kept running up and down and wouldn’t stay still for a photo with us.  This was the best we could get… oye, so much for the nice collection of family photos I was hoping to accrue this week!

Eventually, he did settle down enough to take a photo by himself!

And then it was time for dinner!

Tonight’s appetizers menu didn’t really appeal to me, so I opted for the always-available and always-tasty caesar salad.

I got the penne mariscos for my entree, but Ian stole most of my penne haha

Before dessert, the waiters paraded around the dining room with platters of Baked Alaska, and then sang “Leaving on a Jet Plane.”  Unfortunately for us, we were seated in a section of the dining room that had no view at all of the show, so we could hear it but we couldn’t really see what was happening.  Ian didn’t seem to mind… he was having fun clapping to the music!

I don’t care for Baked Alaska, so I ordered the Carnival Melting Chocolate Cake for dessert.  As perfectly well cooked as it was earlier in the cruise, tonight, my serving was completely liquidy and I only ate the top layer of crust and left the rest behind.  It’s funny how the photos look identical, but the insides of the dish were completely different.  You win some, you lose some!

Unfortunately, tonight’s dinner was extremely slow and took way too long, so we missed the 7pm comedy show we were planning to attend.  We didn’t even leave the dining room until 7:10pm and we still had to run Ian upstairs to Camp Ocean.  That was a bummer because we wanted to see another one of Jaylyn’s shows, but it wasn’t meant to be.  When we got up to deck 11, there was a long line to drop off Ian at camp.  It ended up taking 15 minutes, and I wondered if more people brought their kids to camp tonight than earlier in the week in an attempt to enjoy their last night on the ship?

Once Ian was checked in, we ran downstairs to the Liquid Lounge for the 7:30pm show called “The World Works Here.”  Deon explained that the Panorama has 1800 crew members from over 60 countries, and they announced each one and someone came out carrying that flag.  He also said that we had 4700 guests on board this week, which is mindblowing since it honestly never felt THAT crowded.  I guess there are just enough different areas for people to hang out on the ship so no one place ever felt too congested.

After the flags part was done, the production cast came out and sang songs about love. Sure enough, there were only 7 of them on stage.  I totally wouldn’t have noticed that without the Q and A earlier this afternoon.

The kids from the 2 older groups in Camp Ocean came out to each sing a song, but the penguin group must have been too young so we didn’t get to see Ian on stage.  Funny enough, Ian loves singing the songs he learns in daycare at home, and he literally wakes up in the middle of the night to sing!  But I guess the counselors on the ship didn’t want to take on the task of teaching the young kids a new song in just a few days, so that was understandable.

After the show, we exited into the atrium to see colorful marbles falling through the funnel.  I think this was my favorite of all the designs we saw in the funnel all week.  This was such a fun feature on the Panorama and I really loved seeing something totally different every time we were in the atrium.

Earlier this afternoon, I remembered that I never got the loyalty pin from the VIFP program.  I am used to them leaving it for us in the cabin, but then I remembered we have to pick it up from Pixels now.  I have a collection of all my sign and sail cards and all my VIFP pins from prior cruises, so I definitely wanted to grab the one for this sailing.  Even though it was now 2024, they gave us the 2023 pin.  I guess that’s okay because technically this cruise did start in 2023, and maybe we will take another Carnival cruise this calendar year so we won’t end up with a duplicate (not that we have anything booked at this moment, but you never know!)

We started to walk back towards the elevators to put our luggage outside the cabin, but then I remembered that I had to redeem my free drink for having Gold VIFP status.  Every time I cruise with Carnival, this perk becomes less and less convenient.  At first, they had a big party for us in the main theater with unlimited drinks, then they stopped throwing the party and just gave us a coupon that we could redeem for a free drink.  Now they don’t even give you the coupon anymore!  You just have to remember on your own that you can get a free drink on the last night of the cruise between 5 and 10pm.  It’s like they are hoping you will forget about it and never redeem your free drink.  Well they don’t know me that well because I will never pass up a chance for a free drink!

Errands completed, we could now go back to the cabin to put our checked luggage outside.  This was actually trickier than it has been on prior cruises.  Usually, I just leave out pajamas, tomorrow’s clothing, and a few toiletries, and I only need a little space in my carry-on bag for what I’m wearing on the ship on the last night.  This time around, I had to make sure there was enough space in our carry-on bags for Ian’s black out curtains, extra diapers, panda stuffie, pre-packaged snacks for the drive home, and a  bunch of other stuff that we’ve never had to deal with before.  Once that was all sorted out, we put the bags in the hallway so we could get back to enjoying our last night onboard.

We decided to give Mat in the Piano Bar one more chance, but honestly, he just wasn’t doing it for us.  Maybe it was because it was during the open entry hour and not the 18+ adult show, but we just found Mat to be very low-energy.  

We were originally considering leaving Ian in camp late and paying for Night Owls so we could see the vibe after 10pm, but Mat took a 15 minute break at 9:45pm, so we just decided to leave then and get Ian from camp before they started to charge.

Ian came out of camp wearing a medal around his neck.  They said it was because he won the dancing competition, but that was a shock to us because dancing isn’t exactly Ian’s forte LOL  Maybe they secretly gave out medals to all the kids on the last night?  Ian also got to keep his name tag, and they gave us a drawstring backpack to take home.  

Back in the cabin, we all got ready for bed to rest up for a long day of travel tomorrow.

Up next:  Debarkation and driving home

As per usual, I woke up at 7am, but it was really like 8am because we turned the clocks back last night.  I guess we were all on the same schedule today because the boys woke up around 7:15.  Since the Sea Day Brunch didn’t start until 8:30, we got dressed and sat outside on the balcony, watching the waves pass by.  I think this little boy is really getting the hang of cruise life!

Hoping for the same success with the hostess checking us in a little early for brunch, we went down to deck 3 at 8:15.  Sure enough, our plan worked!  She checked us in, and a few minutes later, I got an alert on my phone that the table was ready.

Today, we were assigned table 301 in the very front corner of the dining room.

I ordered the bagel with lox to share with Ian because that worked out well on the first sea day.  I also ordered 2 eggs over hard and the skillet cake.  Service was very slow, and it took 30 minutes to get our food.  Unlike last time when they brought out the bagel first and I could feed Ian right away, today everything came at once. 

I wonder how long this skillet cake was sitting out… all the marshmallows, butter, and ricotta were melted into little puddles.  The presentation was much better on Sunday.

We finished brunch at 9:15am.  Camp Ocean didn’t open until 10am, so we went back to the cabin, but Nino was in there cleaning. 

Last night, there was a door tag hanging from our door knob saying they are cleaning our balcony today.  It was for everyone on the starboard side of the ship.  Why do they have to do that on a sea day when we want to use the balcony we paid for?  Why not clean the balcony on a port day when no one is on the ship?  They opened up all the dividers between the balconies, so the door tag should have said to lock the top lock on your balcony door for security.  I was glad we caught that while we were back in the cabin, and I locked ours right away.

We took Ian to camp when they opened at 10, then went up to the Sports Deck to get in line for the Ropes Course or Sky Ride.  When we got up there, there wasn’t anyone in line.  That’s odd… they were supposed to open at 9am.  One of the crew members was sitting up there, so I asked him about it, and he said both courses were closed because it was too windy.  He said it would open later if the winds died down, but honestly it wasn’t that windy now, and it only gets more cold and windy as we sail north, so I didn’t expect it would reopen again during this cruise.  Spoiler alert:  I was right, we never saw it open again.  Part of me wishes we had thought to try it while we were docked in one of the ports, but we were always so busy getting off the ship that we never thought of it.  Then again, maybe that is for the best, since I could barely handle the thrill of the Sky Ride, and the Ropes Course is even harder!

Time for Plan B!  We walked around the ship trying to think of something else to do.  On our way, we saw another beautiful graphic on the atrium funnel.

We decided to go out to deck 5 to hang out on the Lanai.  When we got there, it was totally empty, so we settled into the padded lounge chairs in the shade.  I like how quiet it is down there, away from the loud music on Lido.  We made sure to sit on the port side so we wouldn’t smell the smoke from starboard deck 5 forward.

I was still wearing my sneakers from our failed mission up on the Sports Deck.  Somehow that photo just doesn’t seem right without flip flops!

In his 11:30am daily announcement, the Captain mentioned we were passing Cabo on the Starboard side of the ship, so I decided to take a little walk to check out the views.  Since a photo from deck 5 Starboard would be shielded by the glass walls and leave a bad reflection on the photo, I went upstairs to deck 11 for a better view.  The Lido Pool was PACKED!  No surprise there, as it was a beautiful sunny day with temperatures in the 70’s!

Hi, Cabo!  It’s nice to see you again! …or should I say “sea” you again!

While I was up there, I went back to see how things looked around the Tides pool.  It was also very busy, but wow!  Look at those 2 hot tubs!  Were they competing to see which one could fit in more people?!  

I walked down the stairs to deck 10 so I could get a better view of the wake.  I just can’t get enough of this view!

If you look straight down from deck 10 aft, you can see right into the balconies below you.  I hope the people with those cabins realize they don’t have any privacy!  They do get a wonderful view, though!  Below that, I could see the Havana Pool and hot tubs.  Quite a stark difference from the pools and hot tubs with general passenger access!  This back deck is restricted for only people staying in the Havana cabins, so it was basically empty.

Jiji’s opened for lunch at noon, so while I was back there, I went to try it out.  The last time I cruised with Carnival, you could pick and choose what they put in your stir fry, but things have changed.  Now, they give you a menu and you must choose from 5 pre-selected options.  

I got the combo stir fry with wide noodles.  Since the dishes are all pre-made, it came out in about 5 minutes.  It was very good, and I liked that it was a small portion because that left room for more food later on!

Jiji is located on deck 11 aft, and the stairs to access it leads down into the Lido Buffet.  

I couldn’t resist a slice of chocolate almond cake for dessert!  Unfortunately, it was very dry and not good at all, so I only took 2 bites and that was that.

Camp Ocean does not feed the kids lunch on sea days.  I think they do feed them lunch on port days, but we always took Ian off the ship with us so we never had a chance to try it out.  We picked Ian up from camp and brought him back to Lido for lunch.  He wanted grilled cheese, so we got a sandwich from the deli, but they didn’t do a great job with the “grilled” part.  It was basically just cheese on dry bread.  The person who made it the other day did a much better job!  Luckily, he’s not too picky about his grilled cheese and he ate it without complaints.

Ian wasn’t tired enough for his nap yet, so we took him back to camp.  I was still hungry, so I decided to try out the pasta bar across the hall from Jijis.  I ordered the farfalle pasta with pomodoro sauce, grilled chicken, garlic shrimp, onions, mushrooms, and zucchini.  I didn’t want to risk eating too much and spoiling my appetite for dinner, so I just got the half portion.  It’s nice that they give you that option!

While I waited for them to make my pasta, I heard a very loud thumping sound.  It took a few minutes to figure out what it was, but then I realized the restaurant is located directly below the basketball court!  I guess it’s better to put a restaurant here as opposed to passenger cabins, but they really needed better insulation between the decks as that thumping was giving me a headache!  My pasta came out very quickly, and it was delicious!

Camp closed at 3pm, so we picked up Ian and took him back to the cabin for a nap.  The starboard side of the ship is in the shade in the afternoon sailing north on the last 2 sea days, so I needed a jacket to sit out on the balcony while Ian napped.  

Ian woke up from his nap at 5pm, so we all got ready for the second formal night.  I tried to get a photo of the 3 of us together, but of course a little someone wouldn’t cooperate.  At least Jason and I got a nice photo of the two of us!

And I was able to sneak this photo of Ian in the elevator going down to dinner.

Tonight’s dinner menu:

I ordered the calamari and the beef carpaccio for my appetizers.

Of course, I ordered the lobster tail for my entree.  I probably should have ordered 2 of them… I forgot how small they are!

We decided to skip dessert tonight.  None of the options appealed to us, and it always takes so long to get the dessert that we decided to skip it.  This meant we were done with dinner by 6:45pm and we could be first in line to drop Ian at camp when they reopened at 7pm.  Tonight was the final big production show in the Liquid Lounge, and we wanted to get good seats!

We got there at 7:05 and there were plenty of seats available, so we sat in the front row of the mezzanine.

I flagged down one of the roaming bar waiters and ordered a Funship Special.  While I waited for him to bring my drink, I watched some of the pre-show entertainment on the lower level of the theater.  Some of the dancers were out in the audience, posing on the props and walking through the aisles.  

I saw the female dancer approach several passengers seated down there.  It looked like she was handing them a piece of paper, they wrote something on it, and then she brought it back to the male dancer so he could attach it to one of the props on stage, maybe a tree?  I thought this would all make more sense once the show started, but honestly, I have no idea what that was all about?  Does anyone know what they were doing?

Oh look, my drink has arrived!

Tonight’s production show was called Celestial Strings, and we thought it was the best show of the cruise.  The show featured the strings trio playing live, accompanied by a backing track, while the singers and dancers performed around them.  It was a fusion of classical music with familiar pop songs, and I loved how the sets and costumes were all white, creating an elegant atmosphere.  The setlist included songs like Air Tonight by Phil Collins, Bring Me to Life by Evanescence, Viva La Vida by Coldplay, Chandelier by Sia, Uninvited by Alanis Morrisette, and Show Must Go On by Queen.  We loved the song selection, and it was impressive to watch the strings trio play their instruments while performing with the dancers.

When I picked our seats, I didn’t realize that giant rose prop would block my ability to take a decent photo!  Sorry about that!  It didn’t obstruct our view of the stage too badly, but we probably should have opted for the same seats on the opposite side of the room so the rose wouldn’t be between us and the stage. 

After the show, the performers continued out in the atrium for an after show.  I think there was a similar performance before the show, but of course I didn’t see that because I had to reserve our seats in the theater.

After that, we walked back to Punchliner’s for Jaylyn’s 9pm comedy show.  It was very crowded when we got there, but we were able to snag the same seats we sat in earlier in the week.

This was an 18+ show, but we appreciated that Jaylyn was very funny without being overly raunchy or using too many curse words as most 18+ shows tend to do.  

The comedy show ended at 9:30pm, so we had just enough time to run up to Lido for a quick snack before we had to get Ian from camp.  Jason got a hotdog from the deli, and I got half a margarita pizza.  Neither of us had to wait in a line, so that was a nice surprise!

We got to camp just in time to pick up Ian before Night Owls started at 10, then we went back to the cabin to get ready for bed.  The debarkation paperwork was waiting for us, so that was an unwelcome surprise!  With FTTF, we were automatically given zone 5 luggage tags.  Works for me!  One less thing to worry about!  No need to mess with the new debarkation system in the hub app!

Up next: our third and final sea day

As I mentioned, Jason and I spent a week in Puerto Vallarta in December, 2018.  We stayed downtown in the Romantic Zone, and spent the week seeing all the major tourist attractions that interested us.  Luckily, PV is a big city with countless ways to spend the day, and traveling with a toddler opens up a new world of options.  Back in 2018, whenever I read a list of the top things to do in PV, the Vallarta Zoo was always on the list.  It is a non-profit zoo built into the side of a mountain in the jungle, and it houses mostly rescued, endangered, and injured animals in an attempt to provide them a better life than they would have in the wild.  At the time, we chose different ways to fill our days, but on this cruise, I knew the zoo would be perfect for us!  They only charge $12 per person admission, and children under age 3 are free.  They also encourage visitors to interact with the animals, and they sell a bag of food for $5 with treats specific to various animals so Ian could feed the animals.  We thought that would make the zoo a bit more exciting for him, so overall this seemed like a great way to start our day.  The plan was to take an Uber down to the zoo, explore for an hour or two, and then take an Uber to the Malecon to walk around and get something for lunch.  

No matter what time I fell asleep, I always woke up at 7am on this cruise, and today was no different.  The boys were still fast asleep, so I quietly got dressed in the bathroom, then snuck out onto the balcony to watch us sail into port.  

We weren’t due to arrive for about another hour, so we were still a bit far from the marina.  

15 minutes later, we turned into the marina, and I could see the Emerald Princess was already tied up at her dock.

I don’t think I have acknowledged this yet, but I took this photo below so obviously it was bothering me this morning.  When I booked our cabin, I knew there was a smoking section on the starboard side of deck 5 forward.  I assumed that being 4 decks higher, and being closer to midship, we wouldn’t notice the smell if people were down there smoking while we were on our balcony.  I assumed the smoke would dissipate before it got to our balcony.  I was wrong.  We could definitely smell it, both while docked in port and while out at sea.  I have no idea why Carnival decided to put the smoking section at the front of the ship so everyone on their balconies would be downwind and have to smell it.  There were several decks of balcony cabins below us, and many cabins forward of us, who could all smell it too.  We made the best of it, but sometimes had to go back inside if the smoke was too much to tolerate.

By 8am, we had pulled in beside the Emerald Princess and started the docking process.

The sun was shining and the high temperature was expected to reach 81 degrees today, but I could see clouds gathering in the distance and the forecast predicted rain later this afternoon and evening.

Ian and Jason slept in until 8:15am.  With the whole gang awake, we could finally get this day started.   We went up to Lido for breakfast at 8:45am, and surprisingly, there was only 1 person working to make burritos at Blue Iguana so it took a lot longer than the other mornings.  There had been 2 people at peak hours all week, so I’m not sure what happened, but eventually I got our burritos and we ate them at one of the nearby tables.

Today was also the morning when the cabin stewards set up towel animals on all the lounge chairs on Lido deck.  After I finished my burrito, I went off to take some photos while Jason helped Ian finish his breakfast.

The cruise ship docks in a commercial area of Puerto Vallarta, right across the street from a shopping mall and a Walmart.  The streets were already busy with traffic and the morning rush.

We got off the ship at 9:30am, and had a very long walk to exit the port area. 

First, we passed a check point where they looked inside my backpack to make sure I didn’t have any produce.  I packed a peanut butter sandwich for Ian in case he got hungry for lunch before we did, and I was worried they would take it away, but she said it was okay and let me pass.  Whew!  We continued walking on the sidewalk along the side of the ship, following signs to exit the port.

Eventually, we came to this door, and when we passed through, we were finally out on the sidewalk outside of the port area.  Luckily, the whole walk was on paved sidewalk because we had our stroller, but that was definitely the furthest we had to walk to exit the cruise port on this cruise.

We walked across the busy street, then stood in front of the shopping mall to request an Uber.

There was a ton of traffic, so it was no surprise that our Uber took 15 minutes to pick us up.

While we waited, we had a nice view of the ships docked across the street.

And look who I spied waving hello from the Panorama’s bridge:

Our Uber arrived at the mall just before 10am.  The ride went smoothly and it took us 50 minutes to reach the zoo down in Mismaloya.  You know that feeling of uncertainty when you don’t know exactly where you are going, and it seems to take forever to get somewhere you haven’t been before?  It was so nice that I could relax during our Uber ride because we had actually been very close to this zoo when we were here in 2018.  We bought a day pass to visit the Barcelo All Inclusive resort in Mismaloya, and the zoo is just up the street from there.  I remembered feeling like that Uber ride to get to the Barcelo took sooooooooo long because I didn’t realize how far down the coast we had to go.  This time around, I didn’t have any of that uncertainty with not trusting our driver, or any of those “are we there yet” feelings because I already knew… It was going to be a long drive!  We arrived at the zoo shortly before 11am, and the ride cost $12.50 USD.  I loved how affordable Uber was in Mexico!  Our Uber driver was even nice enough to offer to take our photo before we went into the zoo.

As I expected from the information on their website, the zoo charged us $12 USD per adult, and Ian was free.  The guy behind the register didn’t mention anything about buying a bag of food for the animals, but I saw them sitting next to him on the counter, so I asked about it and he sold it to us for $5 as expected.  Good thing I saw that information on the website or we wouldn’t have known to ask!

On the back of the bag, they listed which animals could eat which foods, so that was nice knowing it was safe for the animals to eat this food and that we weren’t going to cause any harm by feeding them.

There is just one very long path around the entire zoo that starts and ends at the front gate, so you can’t really get lost.  I do wish we had some kind of map so we would know how far along the path we were to help gauge our timing and dispensing of snacks to the animals.  One thing to note: while the entire path is paved, the zoo is built up into the mountains, so there are a lot of steep hills to climb and I would not recommend this place to someone with mobility impairments.  When we left the visitors center, we forked to the right to start the uphill walk to see the animals.  Later on, we passed people coming from the opposite direction, so they must have forked to the left to start.  I would not recommend that, as the last section of the path was extremely steep, so much so that Jason asked me to help him control the stroller as we walked down because we were afraid he might lose his grip and Ian would go flying down the hill!!  There were no animals to see during that 10 minute steep walk down, so the people who did the path in the reverse direction just had a super steep uphill climb with no animals to see and no chance to stop and catch their breath.  At least by forking to the right from the start, we had lots of animals to see along the path and kept stopping every few feet, so it broke up the uphill climb and it wasn’t as taxing.

Another thing to note, which is also mentioned on the zoo’s website:  The zoo is located in the jungle, so while it is fully shaded by trees and they say wearing sunscreen is unnecessary, they highly recommend wearing pants and long sleeve shirts to decrease the risk of bug bites.  We opted for a two-pronged approach.  I wore capris and I dressed Ian in long pants, and Jason wore shorts (he’s a risk taker!), but we all wore T-shirts because we knew it would be humid and we didn’t want to get too hot.  I bought a package of bug spray wipes, and we applied it to any exposed skin before entering the zoo.  That worked perfectly and none of us got any bites while we were there.  If there is a bug nearby, it will always find me and bite me.  I actually got 2 bites yesterday in Mazatlan, but nothing bit me today, so that felt like a win.

They wasted no time with the excitement as the very first animal we saw was an enclosure with 3 tigers!  The gate was low enough that Ian could easily see the animals from his stroller, and he was so excited to see the tigers up close!  There were 2 sets of gates, so we felt safe and didn’t think the tiger would attack us, but this was a good way to see what the zoo would be like.  

We definitely tested the limits of our stroller today, as while the path was technically paved, it was more like cobblestones and made for a very bumpy ride for Ian.

We passed a sign that said to be careful around the coati, and to closely guard the bags of food, as they can become aggressive and try to get the food.  Sure enough, we saw this guy approaching a few moments later…

I held our bag of food tightly and walked briskly up the hill, and the coati continued on his path, back into the jungle.

Up next, we saw the ostrich:

Then we saw a beautiful white tiger:

Usually when I go to the zoo, I have trouble finding the animals and half the time they aren’t even in their enclosures.  That wasn’t an issue here.  Every single enclosure was clearly labeled, and the animals were always easy to find.  It made the zoo visit fun for all 3 of us, as even Ian was able to spot the animals without our help.

Up next, we found our first opportunity to feed the animals.  Up until now, the animals were either behind a fence or a window, or they weren’t listed as one of the options to feed from our bag of snacks.  It was very obvious that we were encouraged to feed the flamingos as soon as we got there because they come right up close to you, and there’s nothing separating them from us besides a low ledge, at the perfect height to put down some food where they can reach it to eat.

Ian was hesitant at first, so Jason showed him what to do.

When he felt comfortable, Ian took some of the food and put it out for the flamingos to eat.  He loved it and asked to do it again and again!  I think he felt safe because he was sitting in his stroller that he uses all the time at home.  He was doing this new activity in an unfamiliar place, getting him out of his comfort zone, and he did great!

Their enclosure looked quite large and extended back quite a ways.  The surrounding mountains and lush greenery made this zoo very scenic.

Up next was the barbary sheep (I would have said it’s a goat, but the signs indicated otherwise)…

He came right up to the gate to say hello…

…so Ian fed him a carrot!

I won’t bore you with photos of every single animal in the zoo, but I will say that I was shocked with the variety of animals and I was very impressed with what this zoo had to offer.  I honestly thought it would be a small zoo with a handful of animals, but they did an impressive job with laying out the path such that you could see lots of animals in a short time as you wind up and down the hills.

We turned another corner and there were a bunch of geese walking around.  Growing up on Long Island, I am all too familiar with geese, and not necessarily in a good way.  But Ian has never seen a goose before, so he was having a great time squawking at them.

Up next was the highlight of my day (and possibly my highlight of the entire cruise)… We got to feed a giraffe!!  He was so friendly and stuck his neck out, over the top of the barrier, just to say hello!

I took out a carrot from our bag of snacks, and he was so gentle as he took it from my hand.

OMG! This was so fun!  I tried to take Ian out of his stroller so he could do it, but I think he was intimidated by the giraffe (which is understandable considering their size difference!).  I just let him stay in the stroller and watch me feed him again.

I could have fed that giraffe our entire bag of carrots, but Jason made me stop and save some for the other animals.  Okay, okay, fine!

Moving on, we saw the Shetland ponies. 

After that, we had the chance to feed some parrots.  There were quite a few of them in their enclosure, and as soon as they saw I had food for them, they all came right up to the fence to say hello!

For the first hour or so that we were at the zoo, we only saw a few other families and for the most part, we had each animal to ourselves when we got to each enclosure.  It was now 12:30pm and while the zoo was far from crowded, we could tell that more visitors had arrived.  There were small groups blocking our view of some of the more popular animals (tigers, deer, bear, jaguar, etc.), so we took Ian to see some of the less exciting animals.  To adults, these aren’t as impressive as the bigger animals, but it was Ian’s first time seeing these animals in real life, so he loved it!

There were 4 or 5 raccoons in one of the enclosures, and the window went nearly down to the ground so Ian had a great view from sitting in his stroller.  We spent quite a while there, watching them eat and play with each other behind the glass.

After that, we found the rabbits.  There were tons of them!

This was another enclosure where the gate came down low enough that Ian could feed the animals while sitting in his stroller.  He had so much fun with this, and I think it was one of his favorite parts of the day!

After that, the path started a steep descent down the hill.  It is hard to get a good perspective in this photo, but notice the multicolored painted stones on the wall lining the path.  You can see the wall on the far left of the photo is much lower than where we were standing, yet not very far away.  

This hill was STEEP!  Jason had been pushing Ian’s stroller for most of our time at the zoo, but he asked for my help to control the stroller as we walked down the hill so he wouldn’t lose his grip and send Ian flying!  At one point, we passed a group of people walking up this hill and they looked sweaty and exhausted.  I think they were walking the path in the wrong direction because as steep as our climb had been going uphill, it wasn’t as steep as this portion and we were glad to at least be going downhill on the steepest part.  It took us 10 minutes to get down to the bottom of the hill.  In the photo below, the man in the blue shirt was standing right outside the visitor center where we bought our tickets and started our time here.  The bathrooms were to the right of the volcano fountain, beyond the frame of this photo.

The zoo’s website said it would take about 2 hours to go through the whole zoo and it took us exactly 2 hours, literally to the minute!  Overall, I was pleasantly surprised with our experience here.  I was shocked with the variety and quantity of animals, and I was very impressed with what they had to offer.  The highlight for me was feeding carrots to the friendly giraffe from just a few feet away.  When we arrived, there were only 3 or 4 other families in the whole zoo. By the time we left, it was a little more crowded, but still not busy at all.  I have a feeling very few cruise ship passengers go to the zoo because it is so far away from where the ship docks.  Having 12 hours in port gave us enough cushion that we felt safe venturing so far off the beaten path, but if we didn’t already know about the zoo from our 2018 trip, I’m not sure we would have found it this time around.

I was afraid it would be hard to get an Uber when we were ready to leave.  We were quite a bit south of the main tourist hub of Puerto Vallarta, and I remember it taking a while for an Uber to pick us up when we were ready to leave the Barcelo in 2018.  Shockingly enough, someone was able to pick us up in 5 minutes!  We mapped to a random hotel in the Romantic Zone so we could be dropped off close to the Malecon.  Uber charged us 190 pesos, or $11 USD, for the 30 minute ride.  Not bad at all!

We got into the Uber at 1:10pm, which is right when Ian starts naptime at daycare.  After a fun morning at the zoo, we could see in his eyes that he was tired.

Sure enough, just moments into the ride, we had this:

When we arrived at our destination in the Romantic Zone, we tried to gently transfer Ian into his stroller, but that has never worked out for us and sure enough, he woke up.  At least he got a 30 minute nap!  Better than nothing!  As always, he took a while to snap out of his grumpy mood upon waking up, so he was not cooperative when we tried to take photos with the statues along the Malecon.

We walked along the Malecon, taking photos and observing the people.  It was very cloudy and looked like it was about to rain any minute!  Thus far, we had perfect weather in all of our ports with temperatures in the 70’s, low humidity, and sunny skies.  I guess our luck in the weather department had run out.

We stopped for a photo in front of the Puerto Vallarta sign.  With it being so wide end to end, the photographer has to stand back very far to get the whole word in the photo, so you can barely see that we are standing there.  This is far from the best photo of our trip, but at least we can prove we were there!  

It was now after 2pm and we were getting hungry.  We noticed a restaurant on the beach side of the street called Ocean Azul, so we stopped in to check it out.

The restaurant had seating down in the sand, but we had Ian in his stroller so we opted to stay up on the deck overlooking the beach.  This was perfect and exactly what we needed after so much walking all day!

The waiter brought over a menu and said that they only take cash.  We asked if it had to be in pesos, but he said that US dollars were okay too, so that worked for us.  Side note: I have a debit card that allows me to take out money at any ATM worldwide and they will reimburse any of the fees.  I brought that along on this cruise but it was not necessary as we were able to use US dollars or a credit card everywhere we went.  YMMV but we found it convenient to avoid carrying pesos in case we didn’t use them up by the end of the trip.

The restaurant had a full menu of food and drinks, but we didn’t want to ruin our appetite for dinner so we just ordered some margaritas and nachos. 

While we waited for our food and drinks, the waiter brought out a basket of chips, crackers, and condiments.  Of course, Ian took one look at it and said “I want some!” so we gave him a chip.

A few minutes later, the waiter brought over the margaritas.  They weren’t very strong, but that was okay.  We were really just there for the view.

I forgot to take a photo of the nachos before we dug in, but they were good and made for a perfect mid-afternoon snack.  We considered ordering another round of drinks, but decided against it.  The dark clouds rolled in and it looked like it was about to pour, so we decided to get going so hopefully we could get in an Uber before the skies opened up.  We walked a block or two inland to make it easier for the Uber to get us, then requested a car.  It arrived a few minutes later, just as it was starting to rain.  Good timing!  The ride back to the ship was 110 pesos, or $6.40 USD.  Uber is definitely the way to go in Mexico, especially considering how reasonable the prices were!

It took about 30 minutes to get back to the port area.  We had the Uber drop us off in the Walmart parking lot across the street from the ships so we could save a few minutes in traffic, and we just walked back the rest of the way.  By then, the rain had stopped, so it was a pleasant walk as we went back through the security building to enter the port, then walked along the side of the ship to the gangway.

We got back on the ship around 4:20pm, so we went straight to the cabin to take quick showers and get ready for dinner. 

We noticed the Emerald Princess was sailing away, so we ran out to the balcony to wave goodbye.

Ian loved every opportunity he had to go out on the balcony.  I tried to tell him that was my chair, but he defended his territory!

We still had a few minutes before it was time to go downstairs for dinner, so we decided to check out the “secret deck.”  I kept meaning to go out there all week, but it is extremely windy when the ship is at sea, so we never had a chance until now.  The secret decks are located all the way forward on most of the upper decks on this ship, and anyone can access them if you know where to go.  Since we were on deck 9, we walked all the way forward, then turned the corner to the hallway with the forward-facing cabins.  There aren’t many doors up there so it was easy to find the door out to the secret deck:

This deck was above the bridge, so it is bigger than the other secret decks and extended out beyond the sides of the ship.  We were the only people out there, so it was a nice place to take some photos of the port area while we were still docked.

There was a staircase leading up to the secret deck on deck 10, but we didn’t go up there, much to Ian’s dismay.

It was now 5:27pm, so we went back inside through this door to get down to the MDR for dinner.

Not surprisingly, the MDR was half empty tonight because we didn’t sail away until 9pm.  I know a lot of people enjoy the Rhythms of the Night excursion which takes place in the evening and includes dinner, plus I imagine people were taking advantage of the late sail away and not ready to be in the MDR by 5:30pm for early dining.

I hadn’t gotten a chance to take a photo of Ian’s meals the last few nights because he grabbed the plate as soon as it came to the table.  By now, he had his preferences and Raf knew our routine, so he quickly brought Ian’s 2 favorite dishes within minutes of us arriving at the table each night.

I promise, he does know how to use a fork, but what fun is that when you can just shove handfuls of pasta in your mouth!  #Toddlers!

For my appetizer, I started with the fried shrimp.  

I also had the Antipasti from Emeril’s menu.  While each of the items only had a small, bite-sized portion, I was pleased with the variety of items on the plate.

I ordered the Seafood Newburg for my entree.  I have ordered this on previous Carnival cruises, and surprisingly enough, this was a much bigger portion of seafood!  Looking back on my old photos, half the plate was filled with a large scoop of rice, but not tonight!   This plate was covered in delicious seafood and I ate every bite of it!

Ian discovered a love for broccoli on this cruise.  It was served with most of the adult entrees, but he always asked to have it.  I think he liked that it was a “little tree.”

For dessert, I had the Dutch Double Chocolate Pave, and it was very good.

After dinner, we took Ian upstairs to Camp Ocean, then ran back to the cabin to drop off Ian’s dinner supplies.  While there, I stepped out onto the balcony to see a beautiful view of Puerto Vallarta all lit up at night.  

We went down to deck 5, and couldn’t resist a photo op as we passed through the atrium.

At first, we went to our usual spot upstairs in the Liquid Lounge to find seats for the comedy showcase, but when Jason saw so many empty seats downstairs, he convinced me we should go down there for this show.  

By the way, that photo was taken at 7:22pm, so clearly it wasn’t an issue to get seats for the comedy showcase despite there being nearly 5000 passengers on the ship!  It did fill in over the next 8 minutes, and I am sure people were still out exploring Puerto Vallarta, or had just returned to the ship and needed to get dinner, but you get my point.

I didn’t want to sit too close to the comedians for fear of them making fun of me, so we sat towards the back.

We found this duck sitting on one of the chairs, so we took it to give to Ian later tonight.

Two new comedians joined the ship today, so it was convenient to see them both back to back in this showcase and get a feel for their vibe.  We thought both of them were fantastic and we were laughing out loud for the entire show!  We saw 3 of the 4 comedians on this cruise and they were all extremely funny, so kudos to whoever is in charge of booking comedy entertainers for the Panorama! 

DJ Cooch went first:

And then we saw Jaylyn Bishop:

We made a mental note to try to catch more of their shows on the last 2 sea days because we really enjoyed their material.

When that wrapped up, we went to the Limelight Lounge for a karaoke competition.  Sometimes Jason likes to participate in karaoke, but this time we opted to just sit back and enjoy the show.

It was fun and the singers had great voices, but it was cut short because the karaoke machine rebooted when there was an announcement over the ship’s PA system.   The host explained that it would take 30 minutes to get the machine up and running again.  Seriously?!  It was a very antiquated system, so while he did start the reboot process, he later told us it would take too long and that he would have the competition rescheduled for the following day.  That was a bummer, so with nothing else to do, we went in search of a snack for Jason as he was getting hungry again.   We ended up at the Lido deli for grilled cheese, and sat near a window to watch as we sailed away from Puerto Vallarta.

After that, we went upstairs to pick up Ian from Camp Ocean, then back to the cabin to get ready for bed.  Tonight, we set clocks back one hour to prepare for our return to California in a few days.

Up next: Sea Day #2