11 day California Coastal

[LawDog61]

I usually don’t pay too much attention “sale “ emails from Princess. (How can there always be a sale?). But I got one today which caught my eye. An 11 day California Coastal! As a homeport cruiser.,we like to sailing out of LA, and do a lot of coastal‘s. 11 days would be a very welcome change from the usual seven day cruise.  Sadly, upon further investigation, it seems that this cruise is round-trip from Vancouver. Now, if princess would only do an 11 day round-trip from LA. Up to coast all the way to Canada and back down.  I think that might be pretty popular.  How about it Princess?

[dianef]

Sounds good to me.Round trip Los Angeles

[seacrystal]

Count me in!

[JoRoy218]

That would be great! Hate traveling to/from Vancouver, we’re on East Coast. 

[DRS/NC]

I'm in NC.  I'd like a LA to LA 11-day coastal!

It would be a relax-not-get-off-the-ship for me.

Edited January 17, 2023 by DRS/NC
more info

[MsSoCalCruiser]

Count me in too!  

[cruisingrob21]

Princess has been on the forefront of the pacific coastal cruises.  Although LA departures are probably the most popular, follow by San Francisco, Vancouver seems to get a few every year.  And in 2020 I think they had planned to run a few from Seattle.  I'm guessing its a market that PCL is trying to gently encourage without throwing a bunch of ships on it and flooding the market with capacity.  I think there is an allure for passengers east of the Rockies to see the varied landscapes and cities of the US west coast, and certainly, for west coast based travelers, its a convenient getaway and change of pace from Alaska or Mexico.  While those of us on this post are few - I think there is enough market to warrant this sort of domestic cruising and 11 day RT from LA would make sense since it would allow visiting Vancouver/Victoria/Nanaimo as well as Seattle, Astoria, and even potentially Eureka in addition to the standard ports on Coastal voyages.

 

In the past there have been ways to cobble together different cruises (on different ships/lines to avoid violation of the Passenger Vessel Services Act) so that you might take a 7 night voyage from LA to Vancouver and a 3 night voyage back to San Francisco.  It wouldn't be roundtrip and would require you to change ships in Vancouver, and you may visit some ports more than once, but it would give you a close to a 10 day cruise (in that description anyway).

 

An example this spring would be to take the Celebrity Solstice from LA to Monterey and Seattle before disembarking in Vancouver and then getting on the Royal Princess the same day in Vancouver to cruise to victoria and then disembark in Seattle.  Thats a 4 and 3 day voyage respectively, but occasionally you can cobble together voyages like these.  HAL and Princess have the most options, but NCL has a fair number as well.

[Grammy J]

We would sign up for a 11 night, round trip LA to LA in a heartbeat. We would love to see a round trip, LA to LA trip to Alaska! 

 

 

[OccasionalSanta]

3 hours ago, Grammy J said:

We would sign up for a 11 night, round trip LA to LA in a heartbeat. We would love to see a round trip, LA to LA trip to Alaska! 

 

 

Princess did a number of L.A. roundtrips to Alaska pre-covid. My brother did this twice, I believe. Having dealt with the multiple customs hassles of Vancouver RT to Alaska (technically a B2B Vancouver to Whittier and back)  it would be nice to save the pre and post cruise travel by going out of L.A.

 

Also, a West Coast cruise out of L.A. with Vancouver or Victoria as the foreign port (Ensenada gets old) and Washington/Oregon ports would be nice.

[bjkTX]

You got me to look at it - but an 11 day cruise with 4 ports just doesn't appeal to me not being a fan of sea days.  I was hoping they added some different ports.

[LawDog61]

The pre-Covid RT Alaska from LA was a great cruise on the Discovery, and seemed to be well subscribed.   I was disappointed that Princess did not bring it back after the restart.   Not exactly a RT, but we are doing a B2B, sailing 5 day coastal from LA to Vancouver, followed with an 8 day Alaska, fly back from Vancouver.   At least we only have to fly once.

[senior lady]

You can not start and finish in a US port without visiting a foreign port.   That's why the Hawaii cruises stop in Ensenada and the Seattle cruises stop in Victoria BC 

[XBGuy]

53 minutes ago, senior lady said:

You can not start and finish in a US port without visiting a foreign port.   That's why the Hawaii cruises stop in Ensenada and the Seattle cruises stop in Victoria, BC.

 

The OP proposed a R/T cruise out of Los Angeles that would include a stop in Canada.  That would comply with PVSA rules.  The Los Angeles-Alaska R/Ts that have been referenced in some of the above posts included stops in either Vancouver or Victoria to comply with the PVSA.

 

Personally, I think it's a great idea.

 

I also suspect that many who regularly cruise out of Los Angeles would view an itinerary that did not include Mexico as a nice change of pace.

 

The big question is whether Princess could sell enough cabins.  

[OccasionalSanta]

2 hours ago, XBGuy said:

I also suspect that many who regularly cruise out of Los Angeles would view an itinerary that did not include Mexico as a nice change of pace.

 ... or perhaps out of San Diego

[cruisingrob21]

20 hours ago, OccasionalSanta said:

 

 

Also, a West Coast cruise out of L.A. with Vancouver or Victoria as the foreign port (Ensenada gets old) and Washington/Oregon ports would be nice.

Not LA, but 3 voyages RT from SF does pretty much what you are looking for

https://www.princess.com/cruise-search/details/?voyageCode=1312

 

[LawDog61]

2 hours ago, cruisingrob21 said:

Not LA, but 3 voyages RT from SF does pretty much what you are looking for

https://www.princess.com/cruise-search/details/?voyageCode=1312

 

Yes the RT SF-Alaska is a great cruise.  Did that last year.  But still involves 2 flights and a hotel stay pre cruise.

[Thrak]

4 hours ago, cruisingrob21 said:

Not LA, but 3 voyages RT from SF does pretty much what you are looking for

https://www.princess.com/cruise-search/details/?voyageCode=1312

 

 

2 hours ago, LawDog61 said:

Yes the RT SF-Alaska is a great cruise.  Did that last year.  But still involves 2 flights and a hotel stay pre cruise.

 

Those are also 7 day cruises - not the 11 days originally referenced.

[koreakruiser]

1 hour ago, Thrak said:

 

 

Those are also 7 day cruises - not the 11 days originally referenced.

The Alaska cruises out of San Francisco are 10 or 11 days.  7 days out of Seattle and Vancouver.

[Thrak]

22 minutes ago, koreakruiser said:

The Alaska cruises out of San Francisco are 10 or 11 days.  7 days out of Seattle and Vancouver.

 

D'Oh! Guess I should know that since our very first cruise was a 10 day RT to Alaska out of SF. My post above was in reference to the cruises that came up when I clicked on the link in your post. They were 7 days. My bad.

[OccasionalSanta]

On 1/20/2023 at 2:01 PM, cruisingrob21 said:

Not LA, but 3 voyages RT from SF does pretty much what you are looking for

https://www.princess.com/cruise-search/details/?voyageCode=1312

 

I've gotten to the point where, if I have to fly to and from a departure port, 7 days doesn't seem long enough. I guess one option could be to do the 7-day  NW coast on the Ruby leaving on April 30, then stay on for the 10-day Alaska trip, but that would hit Vancouver and Victoria (twice)

 

I would still be more intrigued by a 10- or 11-day coastal that hit a few California ports as well as Astoria and/or Seattle. Perhaps if the 7-day one noted above skipped one of the Canadian ports but also hit Santa Barbara or Monterey

 

7-day NW coast

https://www.princess.com/cruise-search/details/?voyageCode=R312

 

10-day Alaska

https://www.princess.com/cruise-search/details/?voyageCode=R313

 

[cruisingrob21]

17 hours ago, OccasionalSanta said:

 

 

I would still be more intrigued by a 10- or 11-day coastal that hit a few California ports as well as Astoria and/or Seattle. Perhaps if the 7-day one noted above skipped one of the Canadian ports but also hit Santa Barbara or Monterey

 

 

End of season HAL voyages often do something like this but you'd have to be careful about PSVA violations.  You need to find a 7 day RT Vancouver voyage that then continues to a 3 or 4 day repositioning voyage to San Diego.  Usually they only make 1 stop on the west coast however.

[nasa1974]

In October I'm doing a 3 day out of Vancouver to San Francisco and a 7 day San Francisco south back to San Francisco. 

Done Alaska but did the land portion first then the cruise.  A 10 or 11 day out of San Francisco or LA sounds like fun.

[OccasionalSanta]

1 hour ago, cruisingrob21 said:

End of season HAL voyages often do something like this but you'd have to be careful about PSVA violations.  You need to find a 7 day RT Vancouver voyage that then continues to a 3 or 4 day repositioning voyage to San Diego.  Usually they only make 1 stop on the west coast however.

 

1 hour ago, cruisingrob21 said:

19 hours ago, OccasionalSanta said:

 

 

I would still be more intrigued by a 10- or 11-day coastal that hit a few California ports as well as Astoria and/or Seattle. Perhaps if the 7-day one noted above skipped one of the Canadian ports but also hit Santa Barbara or Monterey

 

 

End of season HAL voyages often do something like this but you'd have to be careful about PSVA violations.  You need to find a 7 day RT Vancouver voyage that then continues to a 3 or 4 day repositioning voyage to San Diego.  Usually they only make 1 stop on the west coast however.

I was referring to the currently scheduled 7-day RT from San Francisco, which hit both Vancouver and Victoria, thinking that if would be nice if it hit just one Canadian port, but extended a few days to hit another California port 

[jeromep]

We did a 10-day Vancouver-to-Vancouver a number of years back.  Ports included LA, Catalina Island Santa Barbara and San Francisco (overnight port so my wife and I stayed out late and explored the city a bit).  It was a nice itinerary.  Since we live in Washington we drove to Vancouver, spent a couple of days there seeing things, then boarded the ship.  We went through customs like 4 times.  Once when we drove into Canada, then once in LA, once again in Vancouver when we returned, and then once again when drove back into the US.  It wasn't that difficult to navigate through all the customs and border crossing stuff.

 

I found the 11-day itinerary.  I don't like it as much as the itinerary we took.  The extra sea day is needed to get all the way down to San Diego (which is also the port of entry for that cruise).  We only went down as far as LA.  Plus the overnight port in San Francisco was really worth while.  The San Francisco port stop on the current itinerary is long 8am - 10-pm, but my wife and I found this jazz club in the financial district which was super cool and we spent a few hours there.  I think we left there about midnight or 1 in the morning and made our way back to the ship.  Felt like the crew and us were the only people up at that hour.

 

You could do 11 days out of LA, but the itinerary would be funky.  You'd have to hop from LA down to Ensenada immediately to get in the foreign port stop required by the PVSA.  Then your next port in on the US side would have to have customs capabilities since the ship is returning from a foreign port.  The other option would be to head north, visit ports on the California, Oregon, and Washington coast, kiss Victoria for a few hours for compliance, then return south.  The issue there is that you either have to head directly back to a port that has customs capabilities before you can touch more ports in the US, so that would mean that the ship would have to visit Seattle, or head all the way back to SF or LA to go through customs.  Seattle would be logical, from Victoria, but will still eat up most of a day to get the ship to Seattle and mill everyone on board through customs.

 

I suspect you'll see more California coastals out of LA, but they are all going to kiss Ensenada right before returning to LA.  It is the only time effective way to do that kind of trip.

[XBGuy]

15 hours ago, jeromep said:

We did a 10-day Vancouver-to-Vancouver a number of years back.  Ports included LA, Catalina Island Santa Barbara and San Francisco (overnight port so my wife and I stayed out late and explored the city a bit).  It was a nice itinerary.  Since we live in Washington we drove to Vancouver, spent a couple of days there seeing things, then boarded the ship.  We went through customs like 4 times.  Once when we drove into Canada, then once in LA, once again in Vancouver when we returned, and then once again when drove back into the US.  It wasn't that difficult to navigate through all the customs and border crossing stuff.

 

I found the 11-day itinerary.  I don't like it as much as the itinerary we took.  The extra sea day is needed to get all the way down to San Diego (which is also the port of entry for that cruise).  We only went down as far as LA.  Plus the overnight port in San Francisco was really worth while.  The San Francisco port stop on the current itinerary is long 8am - 10-pm, but my wife and I found this jazz club in the financial district which was super cool and we spent a few hours there.  I think we left there about midnight or 1 in the morning and made our way back to the ship.  Felt like the crew and us were the only people up at that hour.

 

You could do 11 days out of LA, but the itinerary would be funky.  You'd have to hop from LA down to Ensenada immediately to get in the foreign port stop required by the PVSA.  Then your next port in on the US side would have to have customs capabilities since the ship is returning from a foreign port.  The other option would be to head north, visit ports on the California, Oregon, and Washington coast, kiss Victoria for a few hours for compliance, then return south.  The issue there is that you either have to head directly back to a port that has customs capabilities before you can touch more ports in the US, so that would mean that the ship would have to visit Seattle, or head all the way back to SF or LA to go through customs.  Seattle would be logical, from Victoria, but will still eat up most of a day to get the ship to Seattle and mill everyone on board through customs.

 

I suspect you'll see more California coastals out of LA, but they are all going to kiss Ensenada right before returning to LA.  It is the only time effective way to do that kind of trip.

 

A roundtrip itinerary from Los Angeles that stopped at Vancouver instead of Victoria would not necessarily have to be "funky."  Passengers can clear U.S. Customs & Immigration in Vancouver which will allow them to visit additional U.S, ports prior to the disembarkation port.  This is how passengers on cruises from Vancouver are cleared to visit Alaska ports. You mentioned a roundtrip cruise that you took from Vancouver to various California ports.  Did you have to clear customs in San Francisco?

 

Over the yrears I have taken a couple 7-day California Coastal round cruises out of Los Angeles.  Typically, we would make a port stop in San Diego, then visit Ensenada before returning to Los Angeles.  For some reason on one of those cruises we visited Ensenade before San Diego.  As a result on the morning that we visited San Diego all passengers had to go to one of the lounges and present our passports to CBP personnel who came onboard.  It was no big deal.  Interestingly, when we disembarked in Los Angeles the next day, we still had to go through the regular CBP  routine.