mitsugirly

FINAL THOUGHTS: Whew what a trip. I love "firsts"! I have been saying I'm expanding my travel horizon...except not on the Horizon but on the Panorama this time. I have to say this was definitely different than what I had expected. I expected to have some chilly weather here and there. I expected to have cooler water temps. I expected to not have blue water. But I don't think I really expected it to be THAT cold for THAT many days during the trip. I definitely didn't think the sea water would as cold as it was either. For a family that lives in the water...I'm pretty sure it threw me into depression. The color of the water...I was actually pleasantly surprised for the most part. It was definitely pretty (except for the green cloudy water during scuba). With it being so cold outside, it made it impossible to use the pools or the water slides, which we really wanted to do but wasn't willing to take on all the shivering afterwards. So my conclusions on cruising the Mexican Riviera...I will NEVER go again for Spring Break. It's just too cold for my liking. I WILL go back however, maybe during the summer, warmer months. The PORTS: CABO: I really had the most amazing time here. Seeing the show the whales put on is at the top of my list (and yes I have a very long list) of one of the most exciting things we've done. Never in my life have I experienced this and I highly recommend going during whale season. You won't be disappointed. If it's not whale season, taking a boat ride over to the arch, past the sea lion colony and pelican rock is still a great thing to experience. I really hope some day to go back and make it to Lovers/Divorce Beach. It looked a lot more beautiful than Pelican Beach. LA PAZ: I guess there's not a lot of beach choices for beach-y people like us but the one that we went to was definitely beautiful along with everything around it. Had the water been warmer, we would have definitely stayed longer and enjoyed our time there. Walking around the Malecon was beautiful and all of the statues they have there makes for a good day of exploring the area. Had the statues not been there, well I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it at all. The free bus service is an added plus and super simple to use...even with a long line, it moved rather quickly I thought. Hopefully they will continue this service. MAZATLAN: Going to the aquarium was a good day/choice of things to do. It might seem a little on the expensive side to visit such a place, but we enjoyed ourselves and it gave us something interesting to do. I'm still amazed at the parrots that flew so far and managed to come back. The sea lion show was good, despite not being able to understand what they were saying. The aquarium itself, which is the highlight of the place, had so many aquatic animals to see and it was definitely worth it. Walking along the Malecon afterwards was pretty as well with the waves crashing against the rocks, various statues, and visiting the "Beatles" area was unique and great opportunities for pictures. I'm sad that we missed the cliff diving so we may have to give that another shot on a different trip. PUERTO VALLARTA: If you have a chance to either snorkel or scuba at Los Arcos...you MUST go. Simply amazing. I've never witnessed anything like that before...even in Roatan. You won't see the beautiful coral as you would in the Caribbean but the traffic jam of fish definitely makes up for that! All the unique fish we've never seen in the past...so many firsts for us! If you ever want to see a puffer fish...THIS IS YOUR PLACE!! I have to make note of that unclear green water on the swim there though is less than desirable. Just saying... Of course all the things I said I had on my list do to...I'm definitely going to have to return here one way or another (either by ship or land vacation). I will one day make it to Bandaras Bay/Marietta Islands some day and I will make it to Las Caletas Beach (during the day) to experience what a beautiful place it seems to be and also going back at night for Rhythms of the Night. On my bucket list of things to do for sure!!! EMBARKATION: It was super simple and super fast, other than our blooper of not printing off our boarding passes on separate pieces of paper. Oops. I'll know next time to change my printer settings. I know people have said it was a cluster...but our experience was totally opposite. Maybe it was because we were a little late to arrive at our scheduled time and we were catching the tail end of our group going in? The traffic...well, that's another story. People are not lying when they say they waited in traffic to get there...forever! DEBARKATION: It was a lot slower than getting on for sure. But, we were constantly moving for the most part and it was super easy to walk up to security, scan your beautiful face, then walk on out. THE SHIP: Oh the ship. What a beautiful and clean ship she was. With over 4000 people on it, and during Spring Break, I have to say I was a little skeptical about how crowded it would be. I had read that the flow of the ship makes it feel like there are not as many people on there with you...and people were right. We never really felt overly crowded and needless to say, I was shocked. It was pretty comfortable. The elevators, I think during the muster drill, there needs to be a short presentation on how to use them so that everyone knows...push the button for as many people as you have in your party and life will go so much better. The non-existent bar in the casino was definitely an issue and if this is going to be what they do, they need more bartenders running around. The service was terrible and those people were running around trying to please everyone. I definitely didn't get my "free drinks on us" from the casino as much as I had planned. OUR ROOM: Our room steward was great. Always cleaned everything nicely and even left clean towels...even when we would hang them back up saying we'd use them again. He always spoke to us in the hallway and was always pleasant. He brought me ice daily and even gifts we had no idea where they came from...too bad it wasn't something we could use. LOL We were excited to see a new towel animal each day. We definitely picked the right side of the ship to be on while cruising and I was happy about that. The shows: Ehh, they were ok but not as good as other ships we have been on. I felt like only a few of the singers could really sing. They were all very energetic though and put on quite the show so props for that. My favorite was the show with the drones. The comedian was good and we enjoyed him. Jonathon Timpanelli has an AMAZING voice and we liked his show. Tenna Torres had an amazing voice as well...just it wasn't an interesting show. THE FOOD: To us, it was a hit or miss. Some days were good and others not as good. This is in the buffet. I mean it kept us alive, but.... Now the MDR the food was always good but the service was a hit or miss. You win some then you don't. The Dr Suess Breakfast just wasn't the same and I will not do that again...especially for the price. We all know the JiJi story so I'll let that be. THE PARTIES: They were all fantastic and Dion knows how to get the party going. He is entertaining, can really sing and dance and we had a blast. Just the repeated singing at the end after the music stopped and him getting carried away was only funny the first few times. Just saying... His announcements that always started out with "Heyyyy yaaaaaaa'lllll. I sAid Hey" got to be a little annoying...especially when my kids would non-stop say it after the first few days. I've heard enough Hey ya'll's to last a lifetime by now. Of course our absolute favorite party was the Silent Party. We will always seek this out now for sure. THE PHOTOGRAPHERS: I normally don't mention them too often but they were amazing and took so many pictures that you are sure to get a good one that you liked. Bravo! It wasn't a click one and done type of deal. FLYING INTO/OUT OF LONG BEACH: We absolutely loved it. I love small airports. It seemed to run efficiently and didn't seem too crowded. I will probably always do this when I take a cruise out of here. HOTEL: We really enjoyed our stay at the Hyatt Regency Long Beach. It was a beautiful hotel. We loved the location and being within walking distance to almost anything we needed. It was an added plus that they had the swan boats there as well. Even though it was colder than all get out, it was fun. The staff there was so amazing and friendly and the room was clean. There was only the one blooper with no electric during the middle of the night (although I should have been in bed sleeping) but management did reach out to me via email after our trip apologizing and told me there was some type of outage in the area and it had never happened before. Of course I did get a discount during check out so I was happy about that. I would 100% stay here again in the future. That's all I can think of right now. It's been a busy day at work and my brain is spent for the day. If you have any questions, please let me know and I'll try to answer them the best I can. Yes, I will be back to the Mexican Riviera. Yes, I will repeat this cruise some day in warmer weather. Until then...it had me wanting to head back to the Caribbean. 😄 I'm looking into doing a land vacation next. Probably some time in August. So many things swirling around in my head for options: Curacao Bonaire Anguilla Dominican Republic Turks & Caicos Costa Rico Some of these Southwest fly to and others do not. Sometimes that's a factor on what we decide...sometimes not depending on the price. We were looking at a few older vacation photo's with Karl and he loved the idea of trying out a SeaTrek walk too. They do have them in Curacao, Anguilla, DR. But he's just excited to go anywhere again at this point. All he has talked about it trying scuba again. I told him I think I'm going to take him to the local dive place here (where Sakari first took her PADI seal diving classes when she was 8 years old) and have him to a few Discover Scuba Dives there in the pool to get used to it and actually SEE what he's supposed to be doing. I think that will help him a lot. Until our next adventure...HAPPY CRUISING!!

I see a lot of people doing that as well. The funny thing is, I didn't get one this time. 😶 It's like they new I had something to say. Aww, I hope he finds a good one. Some of them can be absolutely wonderful. Others...well... We anticipate some time in August we will go somewhere. I'm thinking we might do a land vacation to acquaint Karl with a better experience. Thank you so much. We absolutely loved coming in and flying out of there. I like the small airports. Things seem to go so smoothly there and not overly crowded. Ok, I'm going to look at my time stamps. Walking off the ship at 9:49. Picking up luggage at jumping in line for security at 10:01am. Not exactly sure what time we made it out but it was fairly quick. We were in our Uber at 10:17am and pulling up to the airport at 10:37am. I hope that helps. Thanks so much Maryann Thank you. I had a great mothers day and the hubby and Sakari took me out for dinner to celebrate both occasions. 🙂

I will be back after work to give my final thoughts on everything....stay tuned. I hope everyone enjoyed the review and maybe found some of the things we did interesting and it possibly helped you in deciding if it is something you might (or might not) want to do when in some of these ports. As always...happy cruising and enjoy the memories!

We arrived in Columbus safe and sound but man was we tired! It was such a long day. The time change difference really throws you off for sure. At least we had grown accustomed to the California time zone and it felt as if it was only around 11pm, that's still past our bedtime. Even though Columbus is a major city, our airport is pretty small compared to others. I honestly don't think a lot of people fly into it during the very late night hours. It always seems so abandoned after getting off the plane. We always try to have a "different" colored luggage than most so that we can easily spot them. I would notice that people are starting to catch on to this and there was a lot of color on that baggage carousel. Sometimes it's hard to spot your luggage now. We were in Karl's suv and our normal food stop on the way to our city was closed. It was later than we've ever arrived at home. We went ahead and headed home, greeted our eager dogs at the door...then back out to find SOMETHING to eat because we were all starving at this point. We ended up at Waffle House and I believe the kids darn near fell asleep at the table. Poor babies. They were so tired. We eventually made it home and in bed by around 3:30am....and life is back to normal.

I believe we had something like a little over 5 hours to wait for our next plane to home. We explored the airport, got something to eat (of course and Karl ate twice I believe), charged our phones and.... ....actually made some money while we waited. We went to play the slots several times during our layover and walked out with more than we walked in with so that was a plus. There was a little "store" that was a self serve check out. I've never seen anything like this before. You put your items in this area and it scans everything there and somehow knows what you have and then gives you the total price and you pay using your card. As we continued to wait for our plane, we made new friends and talked cruise and Caribbean talk. She and her friend were such lovely people. I told her about our adventures and my website and cruise critic and she told me of all the places they've been. Hi Debbie if you managed to find me on here. 👋 Then we got a notice on our phones...our flight was delayed. We were supposed to leave at 6:25pm, but now...it would be 6:47pm. Well, it wasn't much longer and we had yet another delay... Our time was getting later and later to arrive back home. It was definitely going to be a longer day than expected. We were now going to arrive back to our home airport of Columbus at almost 2am!! Yikes!! We were boarding the plane by 6:33pm and time to give us a little bit of luck and safety. The sunset approaching was giving off a pretty pinkish color to the mountains in the distance. We took our spot in the Southwest line of planes and awaited our turn for take off. We were airborne at 7:10 and FOUND THE SPHERE all lit up. Look how big it looks from above:

I think it was around a hour and a few minutes flight to Vegas and we could immediately see the "strip". Both Sakari and I were trying to find 1) The Luxor, which we stayed in when we came to Vegas once and 2) the new giant sphere they built since we've been there. We managed to find both easily. And we had officially landed and I managed to capture the plane going by the Luxor. I honestly did not realize the airport is THAT close to the strip. I knew it was close and you can see the planes coming in and out from the hotels, but geesh this seemed very close.

It was a fairly short flight over to Las Vegas and the scenery along the way was absolutely gorgeous! Just look at those beautiful mountains!

It was time to board the plane and back outside we went to head up the stairs...I find boarding outside instead of walking down the loading bridge so Caribbean style. I love it! Off we went... We could see the cruise port in the distance: And of course our beautiful Panorama:

APRIL 7: SUNDAY AND BACK IN CALIFORNIA. Well there would be no Fun Times to view today...they were officially kicking us off the ship so I'll give you debarkation information instead. We were up a little before 7am and coming into port. We headed up to get some breakfast and I had one of my favorite breakfast goodies that I've always liked on every cruise I have been on. No they are not sugar free. Yes, I cheated most of the cruise. After pulling into port we headed back to get our things out of the room. At this point I stopped taking notes and my mental capacity is in overload so hopefully I'll get the days events in order from looking at my pictures I took that day. Sorry in advance if I miss something or get them out of order. I always find that last day of getting off the ship and trying to get to the airport in time a mass blur filled with various emotions and anxiety and hoping that nothing goes wrong. As we waited for them to call us to depart from the ship, I looked at my hub app and noticed the times had changed. Ok, now what's going on here? That's not what the app had told me before when I booked. I would notice that they were calling self assist off the ship before they started calling those who had checked their luggage. Was there a blooper in the scheduling system when I had decided to check our luggage over self assist with the times? I'm not sure. That was the only reason why we had picked that instead. I know I was getting worried for sure. Eventually we did make it off the ship and winding our way to the lines inside the port. Now I know this was a topic of conversation on these boards about whether or not to use a birth certificate or a passport. What WE experienced was the passport line was extremely long and somewhat slow moving...from the time we got off the ship and all the way down the winding ramps inside the building. They had us move aside, to the left, and made the right side the birth certificate line. The people with a b/c was just zooming past us all. Like there was barely a line. I can remember back in the day, when we first started cruising all the time, barely anyone had passports and we were the one's zooming by everyone. It's a different world now and I guess everyone has decided to get a passport. It really had me wondering if we would have been better off with our b/c instead. I know there's more involved at security with a b/c, but I still believe they moved quicker. Once we finally made it up to security it was easy-peasy with facial recognition and then we were out the door. I summoned for our Uber and he was there within 5 minutes. Some have said it's easier to just walk over to the Queen Mary hotel area and be picked up, because of the traffic jam at the port, but it didn't affect us at all. Arriving at the beautiful airport at Long Beach...gosh I love this small airport! After checking in and getting our tickets, we headed over to security and we noticed something...Karl was considered VIP this time with a TSA precheck listed on his ticket. Hmmm, that was weird. Did they just give this to him because we had it? They sure didn't do that on the way to CA. I found it weird that they had people line up in the middle of the walkway instead of over by the windows like it usually is at most airports.

Well Oops. My JiJi post was taken down because I mentioned the waiters name on here. I guess that's not allowed? I had no clue and my apologies. For those that missed that portion of the review: The kids finally woke up from their nap and I had almost everything packed so Karl started to complain he was hungry. I bet you couldn't have guessed that one! We decided to go some place new this time and headed upstairs to JiJi for some free Asian food. We did get there before they opened and there was already a very long line, down the hall, out the door, and past the elevators. Another lady in front of us said the line moves very slowly and usually takes at least 30 minutes to 1 hour to get into the place to be seated. She wasn't lying. The place is kinda small so not many seats and people take their time and then sit around talking afterwards. We finally made it in and was seated. They hand you a paper and you fill out what you want. You can pick the stir fry, which will come with noodles and whatever meat you pick or you can pick the broth and it comes without the noodles and in a soup form. The kids picked the broth and we picked the stir fry. Now this is where everything went downhill for us. They brought out mine and the hubby's within 5 minutes of ordering. We ordered the combo: chicken, steak and shrimp. My meal had 4 pieces of chicken, 2 pieces of steak and 1 shrimp. The hubby's had 1 of each. Seriously? A lady came back over and ask Karl about his order...He had originally marked stir-fry, then erased it, then marked broth and they wanted to make sure that he was wanting to broth. Sakari ordered the chicken broth soup and it came out another 11 minutes later: Karl continued to wait and wait and wait. We had all finished our meals and he was still waiting. We really didn't understand what the hold up was. Finally Sakari decided to get up and go over and ask someone (so not like her but she felt bad for Karl) and everyone completely ignored her. Then she went over to another person where they were cooking to ask. They told her "It takes a long time to make these" so we continued to wait. Finally I waved down the waiter again and ask about his food. Then he proceeded to tell me "You only ordered 3 meals" WAIT WHAT??? No, no we didn't, we ordered 4. There's 4 of us sitting here, we all ordered something and you collected the tickets from all of us. He actually stood there arguing with us "No you didn't. I collected 3 and 3 is all you gave me". Then the lady came over (the head)....and she also started arguing about it "You only turned in 3 orders". So then, "Explain to me how YOU came over to verify HIS order that he "didn't turn in"??? You want to explain that one???" I'm getting heated about now because if you would have heard the tone in their voice (BOTH OF THEM) and the way they were talking and arguing with us...it was enough for anyone to get heated. They rudely ask Karl what he had ordered and he told them and they ask his name. After awhile, they brought him out something that wasn't anything that he said (it was noodles with some type of sauce on it). He sighed and said "I'm just going to eat it". The rude waiter came back over after Karl had started eating and said "Sorry, I think I found your ticket". Now I think this pissed me off even more because him and the lead lady had argued with us non-stop and was so rude about it and they got so loud that everyone was looking over at us....and now all of a sudden they have his ticket in their hand WITH his name on it. I took the ticket and pointed at his name and said...there ya go. That's him. That fourth person that you said didn't order and you wanted to argue with us about it. He tried to grab the ticket back and I pulled away and refused to give it back to him. Yep, there's the ticket (I blanked out his name at the bottom) Meanwhile, they must have discovered they gave him the wrong meal and brought him out the correct one. Sakari said, "I'll try your other meal" and then Karl was happy. Well Karl being Karl, he wasn't full and wanted to head down to the buffet for more food. The hubby was still hungry as well because he didn't eat many of his noodles (he's more strict with the Keto diet than I have been) and that 1 piece of chicken, steak and shrimp wasn't cutting it. I decided I'd make up for my cheating with whatever sugar free desert they had and it was some type of chocolate (which I don't like but was willing to give it a try) and I believe the cake part was missing because it was just some type of mousse or something. They also had a chocolate buffet going on but they are nothing like they used to be back in the day (well at least what NCL used to have). They had a chocolate fountain and you could get various items at a station, dipped in the chocolate and smothered with different kinds of candy.

Yea, it wasn't the greatest. Good to know it's better at dinner. Probably because it's an added cost during that time. Thank you HAHA...oh whoops. Well, there you have it. Garret one t (what we sometimes call him among the names Gearbear, Uberret-because he says he's Sakari's Uber) and how we got Karl outta that name...go figure. No where near his name. LOL 😄 Oh my gosh so cute! One of our huskies (the girl) has REALLY large ears compared to the other two and when she does something wrong we always ask if she heard us...then follow up with we KNOW you did!

The hubby and I headed outside into the freezing cold because I wanted to take more pictures of the ship. The kids said they were going to walk around and find something to do. They ended up at the Awesome with Deon Talk and said he was hilarious...as always. She said he talked about what it was like to work on a cruise ship and other topics and it was a question and answer session. We all met back up at the room to find this lovely heart on our bed. What a great last gift on our last day. I wanted to grab some more of our gift cards to apply to our account and make a few more purchases...no need to walk the walk of shame if our room card declined suddenly. Then it was off to the comedy club for an early show with the same comedian as the other day, Spencer James. They said it would be the same show as the night before, however it had a lot of different material in it and we were glad we decided to stay. A few pictures of the sunset to remind us how beautiful this world is a we are just a small part of it all. Cherish every moment and we are grateful how blessed we are. You guessed it...someone was hungry already. Since it was the last night of the cruise, it's always so hectic with getting everything together and prepared for the next day that we just decided it would be easier to go to the buffet. They had my yummy sugar free desert that I liked so much from before: It may be a hectic last day, but we were going to fit in everything we could into our schedule...up next...Fun Farewell with Deon! He was in the atrium and it was time to sing and dance and get your groove on! Does anyone ever wonder if he's ever fallen off the bar during one of these shows? He really dances around a lot... And the shows don't stop here. Off to the next.... In the Liquid Lounge was a lady named Tenna Torres. As many others, she was on American Idol, actually twice. She had such a beautiful voice. However, they are not doing her justice with this show. It was kinda boring because she just stood up there and sang. Or, she would sit on the steps and sing. They need to give her some props or dancers or something...anything. She deserves so much more to make it interesting. We ended up having to leave the show early because I needed to get back to the room for last minute packing and to get our luggage out the door to no return... After everything was done, I noticed I still had $7.00 left on our account. I decided to go to the candy store to see if I could find the kids anything. I managed to spend $6.90. It doesn't get any closer than that folks! It was getting late and we would actually be on a time schedule tomorrow so off to bed we went.

Alrighty, I thought I'd try to do a few more "episodes" this morning. I didn't sleep well with my leg aching all night. HAPPY MOTHERS DAY to all the mothers out there! Today is a double whammy for my husband because not only are we celebrating Mothers Day but it's also our 19th Anniversary today. It's a day of celebration for us. I forgot to mention, when we purchased our pictures, they also handed the hubby this: Well since the kids were napping, we missed several things we had on our "entertain ourselves while at sea" list that we missed: Towel folding demo, the dance class and...THE DEBARKATION PRESENTATION!! Rut Row. This was definitely something I should have went to because I had absolutely no idea how this new way of getting kicked off the ship worked now. So, let's talk this new digital system.... Now a few days before now, I had played around with the Carnival Hub app, trying to find this system that I heard Dion mention. I have to say, for some reason every time I tried to find it within the app, I struggled with it. 🤷‍♀️ Maybe it was just me...idk. But it kept looking at it and trying to figure out which "time" we should pick. I went back and forth between just carrying off our luggage ourselves to putting them outside the door. Well, when I went to look the last time (after we had just decided to carry off our luggage) this is what I was shown. Notice the time of 9:40-10am? Well, if I picked a time to just get off (with checked luggage), this is what was shown: Um ok. Does that really make sense? You can get off the ship EARLIER if you check your luggage? So someone explain this to me....is this for real? Do they really allow some of the checked luggage people off before those bringing their luggage? I always thought it was the other way around. Well, I've heard what a mess getting off the ship and the port is so we wanted to get off as soon as we could. When we booked our airflights, I had made the decision to book an earlier flight than what we normally would because either way we were going to have a layover and what better place to have a layover than....VEGAS! That just sounded more appealing to me (and to give us something to do...gamble) while we were waiting for our flight. So, I just ended up picking the checked luggage time since it was earlier. We didn't end up getting our luggage tags and I had to call Ida to have him bring us some. I'm really hoping 16 is our lucky number!

Cheese=😍 Another thing that one of my patients taught me was grilled cheese with pepperoni on it too. It's amazing as well. Haha, he is. He said some day I'll grow into my body. lol That happens to be his weight too he said. Nope you didn't miss it. I never said it. 🙂 OMG I LOVE THIS! I told them and they laughed. Same here. The side of mine is screaming help about right now. Kendra started me on this. I'm sure there's probably a bunch of places I've missed (or have too many of a certain place) lol Costa Rica is always some place I've wanted to go and haven't been yet. Maybe some day. I hope you some day take the plunge with the Olympus. I love mine so much! If you get the tg 6, you can also buy lens for it. I have a wide angle lens as well. (Something the older models can't do)

There was no Dr Seuss music playing, there was no singing or dancing and I have to say it was pretty disappointing. I won't do it again. Thank goodness I have no more small children. (I did noticed adults coming to this with no children, and like I said, even elderly couples) That was a $60 meal that I would have rather spent somewhere else. We also felt extremely rushed the entire time. We were walking in at 8:15am, seated, pictures, food came, then leaving by 9am. We headed back to the room to pack and...the kids needed a nap already. LOL All that sugar and now they were crashing. Here's a collection of my magnets I bought while in port (I always collect them from everywhere we go). In between packing, we decided to go to check out our photos from the week. Man they take a lot of them! It was so hard to pick from. Then when we were in PV, they had a bird that Sakari took pictures with. I didn't purchase them because...well she has a bird at home and that's good enough. She was just excited to hold it.