deladane

Hi Kim! I just found your review now, so I'm a bit late to the party as it looks like you're already done with all your posts! I was busy prepping for and taking our New Years Eve cruise so I missed it when you started your review. I look forward to catching up on your posts in between writing up my own review. I linked it below in my signature in case you want to read it... **shameless plug** haha Thanks again, as always, for taking the time to post your reviews!!

Oh no! I'm so sorry your cruise was cancelled! That must have been a huge disappointment, but hopefully you can make use of your FCC and rebook for a new cruise!

I hope you had a great cruise! I am definitely going to talk about our experiences with embarkation and debarking when I get to that part of the review. Spoiler alert: It took us an hour and a half to get an Uber to pick us up after the cruise! It was absolutely insane! I kept saying that people are going to miss their flights not because they couldn't get off the ship (which went pretty smoothly for us), but because they were stranded in the Long Beach cruise terminal parking lot!! I'm so sorry you missed your flight, but luckily we live in driving distance to the port (even if it is a long drive!), so you make alternate arrangements. I am sure there are others from our cruise who flew in from further away and missed flights that needed to be rescheduled.

Aww, thank you! Of course I remember you following along with my other reviews, so I"m glad you found this one! Good to "see" you again!

Thanks for following along!

How fun! Hopefully this review will help get you even more excited for your upcoming cruise!!

Thanks Jeff! So glad to see you are reading along! I actually thought of you and Patti on the last sea day... I sat in the seats I know you prefer at the back of the theater for the towel animal demonstration to use the table when making my animals. You do get a great view of the stage from back there, but I don't think I could watch a whole show there as the bar stools don't have back rests (at least not in the theater on Panorama).

Thank you! It was crazy to think it had been nearly 5 years since our last cruise, but it was definitely nice to be back on a ship!

Aww, thanks!

Thank you! Spoiler alert: circumstances aligned that I'm not sure FTTF was worth it for us on this cruise, but more details on that later...

Thank you! Glad to have you following along!

Thank you! I'll be sharing lots of experiences!

Thank you! And thanks for reading the review!!

Thank you! And thanks for following along!

Picking the perfect itinerary: So now that I knew we were cruising with Carnival, it was time to pick a ship and itinerary. There aren’t many options from Southern California, so it was a pretty easy decision. The Radiance and the Miracle have some 3 and 4 day itineraries to Ensenada and Catalina Island, but there was no way I was going to pack up all the stuff entailed with traveling with a toddler, and drive 6+ hours each way, to take a cruise that short. The Miracle also has a few 5 and 6 day itineraries to Cabo, but that was also too short for my liking. That left the Panorama. I loved the idea of sailing on a newer ship, although I was a little nervous about sailing on such a big ship. Panorama’s capacity is just over 4000 passengers with 2 people per cabin, and I would be cruising during school vacation when many cabins would have 3 or 4 passengers. I am more used to having around 3000 passengers on the ship, so I kept my fingers crossed that it wasn’t too crowded to enjoy the ship, and I just hoped the benefits of a new ship with lots of amenities would outweigh the possible negatives of a big ship. Most of the time, Panorama sails 7-day itineraries, leaving Long Beach every Saturday, and visiting Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, and Cabo. I considered the cruise leaving December 23, but then I noticed the following week would be an 8-day cruise, including New Year’s Eve, with an extra port stop in La Paz. Once I found this itinerary, there was no turning back! I’ve always wanted to cruise over New Years, and I liked the idea of having 4 port days at places I’ve never been (aside from Puerto Vallarta… we spent a week there in December 2018). Now, it was time to pick our cabin. In the past, we have cruised in inside, oceanview, and balcony cabins, and there was usually a specific reason I chose that cabin for that cruise (inside cabin on a port-heavy cruise, a great promo where the balcony was the same price as the oceanview, etc.). Now that we are cruising with a child, I wanted a balcony so Jason and I would have somewhere to hang out while Ian was sleeping. There were still plenty of cabins available, so I opted for a balcony just aft of the forward elevators on deck 9. Checking the deck plans, it lined up to be under one of the cabins on deck 10 (I definitely did not want to be further aft where the lido pool would be above us and we would hear lounge chairs scraping on the ceiling, and noise from the DJ by the pool while Ian was trying to sleep!), and this would put us just 2 decks below Camp Ocean, and one deck below the Lido buffet. I also liked that deck 9 had passenger cabins for the whole length of the ship so we could easily access any of the 3 sets of elevators (forward, mid-ship, or aft), and we could leave our cabin and go across on deck 9 to the elevator nearest our destination, then go up or down. With the perfect cabin selected, I officially booked the cruise on Carnival’s website. We were officially going on a cruise as a family of 3!! I booked with a rate that included price protection, so of course that meant I spent nearly every day until the cruise checking the prices of our cabin to see if I could get some money back. As it turned out, the price remained surprisingly consistent, going up or down by only a few dollars here and there, but there was never a drop big enough to be worth submitting the price drop form. I debated whether or not I should purchase Faster to the Fun. We had it on our 2019 cruise and it definitely had its benefits, but they have since raised the price drastically and I wasn’t sure it was worth it. Then I started thinking… We would be traveling with our toddler for the first time, and that comes with its own set of challenges. Wouldn’t it be nice to go straight to the cabin upon boarding and drop off all our carry-on bags? I don’t know how we would manage chasing after a toddler who wants to explore every square foot of this huge cruise ship, while also schlepping our carry-on bags, backpacks, bottles of wine, and cases of soda for the cabin. It would also be nice to have early access to the cabin and have our checked bags arrive early so we could quietly unpack while Ian took his afternoon nap. Another benefit would be that we would have priority tendering in Cabo. We don’t arrive until 10am that day, so it was already going to be a late start and it would be nice not to stress about what time we’d actually make it off the ship in a non-priority tender. That seemed like enough good reasons to me, so I went ahead and purchased FTTF for $130 for the cabin.

To cruise, or not to cruise…: I was daunted at the idea of flying to a cruise port with all of Ian’s “stuff”... his car seat, stroller, pack n play, 3 different kinds of diapers (for daytime, nighttime, and swimming!), all of his favorite snacks (because of course, a cruise ship full of wonderful food options isn’t good enough for my toddler… he prefers to live on a diet of Goldfish and pretzels *eyeroll*), a puddle jumper, the list goes on and on. If flying to a cruise port were our only option, we would need to wait a few more years before I’d even consider cruising. Luckily, there are several cruise ports about a 6-hour drive from Phoenix, plus a little more time to make a few stops along the way for gas and food and whatnot. This seemed a lot more doable with a toddler, so I started researching our options. There are a handful of cruise lines that sail from Los Angeles, Long Beach, and San Diego. Our options were severely limited when I learned that nearly every cruise line requires children to be at least 3 years old AND potty trained to use their camp programs. Luckily, Carnival allows 2 year olds in diapers to participate in the camp program (and thankfully they are willing to change diapers as needed!). The only glitch was that since he still uses swim diapers, he is not allowed to use the pool, splash pad, or any of the public water features on the ship. That wasn’t a deal-breaker for me… we would be cruising in the winter on a route that tends to be cold for the sea days, so I doubted any of us would want to use the pools those days. Plus, we live in Phoenix and have year-round access to a splash pad and heated resort-style pool at our community center. If Ian wanted to go swimming, he could do it while we were off the ship in port, or he could wait until we got home.

Background Info: Since you last heard from me, I’ve had a few changes in my life. Around 2 years ago, my husband Jason and I moved from San Jose, CA to Phoenix, AZ. Jason’s parents have lived here for 20 years and we wanted to move closer to them, partly because of the other major change. I would like to formally introduce to Cruise Critic the newest member of our family, our 2 and a half year old son, Ian. Needless to say, we have had our hands full for the last couple of years! Another reason I have stayed away from cruising was that I didn’t think it would be much fun to take a baby on a cruise. When Ian turned 2 this summer, I started to get the urge to consider a cruise again. His daycare schedule came out for the next school year and they would be closed for 2 full weeks at the end of the year. It’s been getting pretty hard to keep him entertained during the weeks of school vacation, so going on a cruise with endless options of fun things to keep him happy and entertained sounded very tempting.

Hi everyone! My name is Dana, and I just returned from an 8-night cruise on the Carnival Panorama (December 30, 2023 - January 7, 2024 sailing). As you can see from my cruise history listed below in my signature, I used to take one cruise every year for a decade, but then, you know, the world shut down. With all the uncertainty and variability in cruising for the last few years, I wasn’t really tempted to book another cruise and stress about cancellations, testing, and getting sick. I always knew I’d eventually return to cruising, but I preferred to wait it out until things settled down a bit and life was somewhat back to “normal.” I always used to write a detailed photo review when I returned home from my cruises, with a journal-style day-by-day format. This cruise will be no different! If you are looking for a short and sweet review, you might want to look elsewhere... I tend to write like I talk, so my reviews are very long and take a few weeks to complete. On the other hand, if you like reading about lots of details, and if you want to see TONS of photos (including all of the daily schedules and menus), this is the review for you! I do this as much to help others plan their vacations as to give myself a travel log to look back on and remember my wonderful cruise. Please feel free to ask questions and post comments along the way… I welcome your feedback! All of the posts for the review will be in this larger purple font so it stands out if you just want to read the review and skip the comments and other posts. It may take me a little while to get all of my photos sorted and loaded onto my computer, so please be patient with me. Here are some of my favorite photos from the trip as a little something to hold you over until it's time to post the rest!

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Okay, thanks for letting me know. We are cruising in January and I don't think they observe daylight savings time so there would possibly be a one hour time difference if the ship doesn't match local time.

Loving your review so far! I'll be on the Panorama for a New Years Eve cruise! Can you tell me if they changed ship time to match local port time? I'm trying to plan some private excursions, so that makes a big difference if they change the clocks or not! Thanks 🙂

Yes, I did think about that. I am trying to find an excursion with a good cancellation policy. Ideally, I will drop him at camp for short periods of time on the first few days of the cruise to see how he likes it. If he hates camp, then I would cancel the excursion and go with plan B (maybe just go to the beach? Definitely not as appealing as plan A!).