Need-a-vacation

Underwear

It's so funny you said that. Somehow Hubby's dress socks were awol even though he knew he packed them and I was short a couple pair of skivvies when I know I counted them out and stacked them with each day's clothes as I laid them out. No idea what happened!

Besides that, nothing important was missed.

We're back from our cruise and I want to thank all the locals for helping me sort out the details to make our trip as smooth as possible. Everything went as expected and we didn't get lost for even a minute!

We rode it and it was backwards. We weren't too wild about it backwards. We rode all the major rides at least once. But I guess I'm old because man I could feel my brain bouncing around in my head on some of the rides!

One pleasant surprise was that there is a trolley circuit that includes our hotel, so that made things a little easier.

We hit the road again tomorrow morning and head to long beach!!!

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Maybe a credit card or cash for on board spending and parking at the port, but that's all you'll need.

oh definitely. just trying to make sure i dont forget something unfixable.

Before we leave town, do I need anything besides passports, driver's licenses, and boarding passes to get on the Imagination in Long Beach?:eek:

The port scanners are more like what airports had years ago.

 

You leave shoes on, etc. Even if you set it off, they use a wand and do not "grope" you.

 

It is NOTHING like the airport. You can take liquids, etc.

Thanks! I didn't remember it being any big deal in the past, but stuff changes all the time.

The last 2 times we went thru LB (April & May), we arrived about noon and there was no wait in the Priority boarding building and about a 10 minute wait in the dome for everyone else.

 

If you get there before either is open, Early Check-in is in front of the Dome, not at the Queen Mary.

I just meant go see the Queen Mary to kill time. I have no idea when we'll get there. I'm hoping before noon.

We got the "please don't arrive until 1:30" email. Phone rep told us 11 with FTTF when I called on Friday to pay gratuities.

I guess if we do get there and they really aren't doing any check-in or boarding then we'll just go visit the Queen Mary or something. :)

Long Beach uses standard metal detectors and wands. My bra hooks haven't set them off.

 

We sailed out of there as recent as two weeks ago.

Thanks!! I just hate getting groped because the machines aren't happy!! On our trip to Cancun last year, I deliberately avoided an underwire for our flight day, but then had to have "enhanced " screening because I had sparklies on my shirt that didn't work well with the body scanner. Not a big deal, but aggravating.

So just take keys and phones out of our pockets and walk through and hope for no beeps. :)

Have the cruise ports started using the body scanners like at the airport, or just a walk through metal detector? Are the metal detectors hyper sensitive like at the airport where bra hooks can set them off? A couple years ago I still had my cruise card on a lanyard on my neck and even that little bit set off the metal detectors at LAX!

We're leaving from long beach later this week.

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JMHO, but I think you're suffering from too much info overload :eek:! My suggestion is that you try to relax and go back to the day of the paper map.

I wouldn't worry about gas price's at all. Look at a paper map. See where you need to go from your house to the port. Save that map! Ignore the "savings" that show up.

 

JMHO, again,

We don't live in the LA area, so we're going to need specific directions to get anywhere. Like I said, I don't do well trying to navigate while we drive. I can follow directions, but I'm too slow finding stuff on the map, electronic or paper.

I totally agree it's not worth going on a search to get gas. Gas buddy won't tell you that nobody in their right mind would get off the freeway in a particular area. If I'm in charge, I get the gas closest to the hotel and ignore the price.

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No disrespect intended. ..... But how do you "Decompress" on a Carnival Ship....Especially a kid crazy magnet like the Imagination:confused:

 

Take a new Princess Cruise and you will "COME BACK BRAND NEW" :)

LOL. Even more reason to like a nice, simple, quiet ride to and from the port. :D That 30 minute ride is a chance to shake off the crazies from the prior portion of the travel day and get ready for the next phase. :) I'm not wild about small talk in general and definitely not on a travel day. I have no desire to be packed in with the person that insists on trying to talk to me, the person that sucked down 3 cigarettes in the 10 mins before getting on the van, and the person that's talking all their personal business on their cell phone loud enough that I can't talk to my own companions. Those things stress me out and I know it and choose to avoid it when possible. On ship, I can always get away from anyone truly obnoxious (even those sharing my cabin ;) )

I've never been on Carnival before so I'm not sure how hectic they can be. We wanted to try a cruise without needing to fly and they were the only game in town.

When we went from San Pedro to LAX a couple years ago, we rented a private van and I think it was about $45 - $50 for both of us with tip. They had a large party at the last minute and ended up sending us a fancy SUV, which was totally fine. I think it was rapidshuttle. I was totally fine reserving a van instead of a towncar. What mattered to me was having private transportation and not be waiting for other passengers to get their stuff and get loaded.

I think a lot of it depends on your travel personality. I know after going through the headaches of flying and being crammed into a plane, I really don't want to be crammed into a bus or shared shuttle. I want my space!!! Kind of the same thing at the end of a trip -- I'm over being herded like cattle at that point. When all 4 of us went to Cancun last year, it was a no-brainer to rent a private van to take us to our hotel rather than cram on a shared bus/shuttle. The cost difference was negligible but the convenience was priceless! And we were definitely ready to decompress a little bit.

For some people, the social interactions in those shared transport arrangements is fun and exciting and adds to the experience. For others it's draining and adds to the stress. I would definitely sacrifice a DOD to have private transport over the bus!!!

The fact that you're pre-planning and asking means you're not an idiot...and therefore you will be fine ! :)

LOL. It also means I really really hate being the navigator and having no idea where we are going and trying to wing it from a moving vehicle. And I'm not fast enough with the map apps to find something before we've gone far enough that I have to find a different location and try to figure out the new directions, especially on the small screen! Navigation issues are one of those hot buttons that can get ugly when we travel and I really try to avoid any hiccups if possible!! Hubby is already talking about using GasBuddy to find the cheapest gas before we go to Long Beach and I'm like saving 15 cents a gallon on gas can not possibly be worth the risk of getting turned around in an unfamiliar place!!!

Another question looking at the maps at the port: if you try to find a spot in the parking lot and it's full, is there any way to get back to the garage?

Wow Steve! Thanks for all the great info! We should be able to find one wherever we are at lunchtime!

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I would use mapquest and/or a GPS. That makes it simple.

I am definitely using those tools, but real world experience is very helpful, particularly when there are so many options. Sometimes, mapquest or Google maps is stupid and the shortest route isn't always the best. When we drove home from Escondido a couple years ago, Google sent us to I-10 off on a bunch of 2 lane rural roads that were slow and we were just lucky that we never got stuck behind a slow truck. It might have been a few miles shorter, but it would have probably been easier and faster to stay on freeways.

How long we want to wait will probably really depend on what time we get out of the port!! But it's probably very likely we'll end up at the one way out east near palm springs.

Hopefully the traffic won't be particularly bad anywhere on a Sunday morning.

Thanks for the feedback. Now that I look at it, I think the 60 to 91 might have been how we went to disneyland a couple years ago.

The important thing is finding the in-n-out along i-10 again. :)

I was looking at the Google Maps links posted above and they seem to be very helpful. But what is the white thing running the whole length of the NE side of the garage?

Also, how do you get to the surface lot if we'd rather park there than the garage? I haven't seen an obvious entrance on the google maps images?

We'll be driving back to AZ from Long Beach on a Sunday after our 3-day on Imagination. When I google the directions, it suggests the following

710 to CA-91

CA-91 to CA-60

CA-60 to I-10

Is this really the best way? It seems awkward. Is there any reason to not just take 710 directly to I-10? Or if we do take CA-91, is there a benefit to getting off on CA-60 instead of taking CA-91 straight to I-10?

We are going on the Imagination next week and I wanted to know if it has been warm enough to use the pool and waterworks?

I usually pack an extra 2-3 days for a week trip. I figure any delay longer than that and I can figure something out. None of mine are for life threatening issues, so missing a day isn't catastrophic. I get mine in 90 day bottles through the mail order pharmacy and I really don't want to take the whole bottle with me and risk losing a couple months worth of meds. I use a pill sorter or the tiny baggies and write the day on it.

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So for those of you more experienced with Long Beach -- is this problem better if you get off asap? Or if you wait until as late as possible?

I sent this post to my hubby and he was like "what am I supposed to do with this???" :p I don't know -- just not be surprised and make sure we have plenty of gas!!! On that vein -- we're going to be driving in from the Magic Mountain area probably on the 405 to 710. Any recommendations on the least painful, most idiot-proof place to top off close to port?

Also, are the spots in the garage big enough for a full-size, extended cab pickup, or should we just park in the surface lot? I know in San Diego we ran into hotels, etc where the spots were tiny, tiny, tiny.

We have a western state (AZ) rate for our Baja cruise in a couple weeks. Do they ever ask for proof of residency?

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Has anyone else had technical issues trying to submit the Shore Excursion price guarantee form?

I literally spent an hour the other night trying to get the bleeping form submitted. I started in Chrome because that's my usual browser. I get the form all filled out and click the submit button and nothing happens. I do that a few times and decide to try Explorer. I filled out the form again and it complains about the format of the competitor's URL and the format of the time field. It wanted "05" instead of "5" for the hours. :rolleyes: The link to the competitor's page is a whole different problem. The original link that shows in the address bar does not include "www", so I added that. It still didn't like that because there was no specific page name at the end of the address. So I changed it to the main site address and figured they could click on the link that matches the name of the excursion that was listed on the form. And then still lots of button clicking with no results. Finally out of aggravation I went back to the form I had filled out in Chrome and hit the submit button just for the heck of it and the form submitted. :confused:

But you guessed it -- the request was refused by Carnival. The response indicated that the link I provided brought up a "blank" page and they need the page to the actual excursion and included a description of what the link should look like. But their freaking form wouldn't accept the link to the actual excursion??:mad: And I can't see what I submitted to tell if it was maybe just a typo on my part. I'm adding a line to the comments with the working URL in case whatever is in their form field doesn't work.

So I'm running into 2 issues -- obnoxious formatting requirement on the form and then nothing happens with the submit button until some random attempt. All the forms that take my money seem to work perfectly no matter which browser I use, but these price protection forms are stubborn.

What seemed to finally work is opening the form in a new browser and starting over. It's like it locks up once you have an error rather than letting you correct the error and submit it again. I finally got both shore excursion forms submitted by doing this after nearly an hour of messing with it before trying a new browser window. If nothing else, I should get a credit for perseverance!!!:eek: