Day 1: Embarkation on the Emerald Princess

We were up early today (that time change), but opted to skip breakfast at the Crown Plaza (buffet $27pp, a la carte items available). Instead we split a cheese stick from the USO and G ate some Oreos from the same place, we made coffee in the room and he left for a morning walk (over to the Emerald Princess, natch). That gave me time to enjoy a slower, quieter start to the day.  I usually take advantage of the pre-cruise morning to shuffle some items into my roll aboard to speed unpacking in the cabin, but, without a roll aboard, I could skip that today.   I nearly forgot (but thankfully remembered) to get my little medication thermos containing my serum tears from the room refrigerator. That would have been a costly error, for many reasons. Another reason to just fly in the day of a cruise. 

The Crown Plaza perfectly suited our needs for a one night stay. The bed was sooooo comfortable, the shower was in a bathtub but I survived, and we had wash cloths and hand towels and bath towels. Oh my!  Take note, Princess. The TV was very small but we never even turned it on (not even to watch Monday Night Football). We were tired last night!

It started to sprinkle while we were in the shuttle going to the ship, but, at Berth 93, we had a covered area to wait under until we could get into the terminal. This won’t go down in anyone’s memory as a stellar embarkation, and, as we’ve seen in the past, we’ll never know the whole story behind the delays we encountered, We heard that 1) the ship was late arriving; 2) disembarkation didn’t start until 8:30am; 3) USPH was on board for inspections; 3) the CDC was on board for inspections and 4) they were waiting for a saxophonist to complete the band. 😉 I know the ship wasn’t late (I watched it arrive on the ship’s webcam) and I’m inclined to exonerate the saxophonist, so it was most likely one or both of the other reasons. Whatever, we were in the Botticelli Dining Room just after it opened at noon for lunch, armed with a healthy appetite. Half a cheese stick doesn’t have much staying power. 

I was so thrilled at lunch to meet up with Cruise Critic poster “that” (quotation marks mine, because this sentence just looks wrong without them 😉), who recognized me while waiting in line for lunch. It’s fun to put faces and real names with Cruise Critic names. 

Our cabin was ready when we finished lunch, and I unpacked my backpack and waited for my suitcase to be delivered…and waited and waited. I heard frequent activity in the corridor but discovered it was simply my neighbors checking for THEIR luggage to be delivered. G had rolled his suitcase on, so I appreciated knowing others around us were playing the same waiting game I was. Luckily I had showered at the hotel this morning and the clothes I’d worn for two days were not an affront to my fellow guests at dinner, ‘cause that’s what I ended up wearing. 

The sail away party had to be moved to the Piazza due to rain, so we skipped that, and, since we had crapped out getting a table arranged for dinner during the day, at 4:15p we both lined up, him outside the Michelangelo (traditional) Dining Room on Deck 5 and me outside the Anytime Dining Room on Deck 6 to see what we could get. 

After 45 minutes of waiting, he got nothing, and, since I was first in line, I got a nice table for two next to a window (in fact, a table we’ve had many, many times on previous Emerald cruises)…for tonight only. No amount of cajoling would get us assigned to that table for the remainder of the cruise. As for the Michelangelo Dining Room, the high number of in transit passengers had every reservation locked up in there until late dining. So how do we get one of those tables for next cruise?  We’re not sure, but it’s good to have goals. In the meantime, for the next nine nights we will be waiting outside the Da Vinci Dining Room on Deck 6 to get a table. And, yes, we had phoned the Dine Line on land and that 45 minute waste of time yielded nothing.

Happily, our servers Rex and Raol were wonderful, and dinner was delicious. But we are left to wonder about what has led to the degradation of the dining system on Princess. Certainly the introduction of Reserve Dining is part of the reason, but one would think it has been offset by the introduction of the Premier package with its unlimited specialty dining. 

And speaking of Premier Package, we spoke with a couple at lunch who had just upgraded to it when they got on the ship and then immediately had trouble getting reservations for a table in any restaurant on any night at a time they wanted. Is there any joy in dining Mudville?

The Princess Theater shows are scheduled at 7pm and 9pm, which makes for quite a rush at dinner, particularly when one has to wait in line to get in. Tonight’s show was one we saw just a couple of weeks ago, Alfred and Seymour, pretty ridiculous stuff but it did put a smile in our faces, not an easy task on an embarkation day as rough as this one.  But we’ve cruised enough to know that embarkation days are hard. Things will be better tomorrow. They always are. 

And, speaking of better, my suitcase was delivered while we were out for the evening. Fortunately, I packed with those frequent cabin changes in mind, and unpacking was quick and easy. We certainly know the cabin storage situation in an inside cabin on this ship!  We move clocks ahead an hour overnight, so I suspect we will have a bit of a lie in tomorrow morning.

Leaving home

It was nice this morning to be picked up at 9:30am instead of Deadofnightam as we would have been tomorrow. A much more peaceable way to start a trip. The roads were dry and the day was sunny and, yes, the airport was a zoo, but we expected that during this holiday week. We swung by the USO to make a donation and, as always, left with a couple of snacks for the plane. The volunteers there are the nicest people. We arrived at LGB right on time and took that long 2-minute walk to baggage claim. Our suitcases arrived nearly immediately, and we were at the Crown Plaza by 4pm. 

We would have still been waiting for our luggage if we had flown into LAX. 😉

I should take a minute to talk about our luggage situation for this cruise. We will be changing cabins between each of our cruises, the result of booking them so late, so I was determined to pack as minimally as possible to make our relocations easier. It’s not hard to push a single suitcase from one deck to another while carrying a backpack on my back; add a roll aboard to that and the level of difficulty seems to increase dramatically. So we each brought just our large suitcases with minimal clothing, two extra pairs of shoes and, in my case, a plethora of health- and self-care items and toiletries. Cruising with us and need a foam roller?  I’ve got you covered. Heated eye mask?  Ditto.  A lacrosse ball, red light therapy, 200 individual antibacterial Wet Ones packets, 104 vials of preservative-free eye drops, two packs of makeup remover cloths, eye makeup remover pads, large disposable washcloths (believe it or not, every ship we’ve been on this year has had a washcloth shortage. What’s up with that?)…I could stock a Walgreens with the items in my suitcase. Still, it weighed in at a fairly respectable 39 pounds. 39 pounds, almost eight weeks of cruising.  No shame in that. 

We were able to check in at the Crown Plaza when we arrived, They did have a reservation for us (yay), and we are tucked into a standard king room in excellent condition. We dumped our suitcases in the room and walked around the corner to the Subway we frequent every time we overnight in San Pedro. We managed to get there before sunset, and the walk back after dark was well lit with street lights and the strings of overhead patio lights. We arranged a 9:30am transfer to the ship tomorrow ($10pp, the later shuttles were already full).  It’s nice to fall asleep knowing we are here. 

I’ll leave you with some pics from the plane. The western US is absolutely gorgeous, and we had clear skies all the way to California.  This was the third time we’ve flown this route in the past month, and we never tire of it.

10-night cruise to Mexico on the Emerald Princess

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See that green diamond next to Mazatlan on the map? “Port substitution, port order may vary” means “You’re not going there”. 😆 

The Princess website no longer shows this cruise itinerary, so I snagged this off AI

It wasn’t until two nights before we left that I went in search of the standard map and itinerary that I post for each cruise and realized…we’re not going to Mazatlan!  Who knew?  I’m sure a lot of people did, but I paid no attention to the details of this cruise other than 1) it preceded a cruise we were already booked on; 2) an acceptable cabin was available; and, 3) it was cheap. We booked this on Thanksgiving Day, I think, just before we left for our Royal Princess cruises. I asked G if he wanted to celebrate New Years Eve on a cruise (duh…), booked it, changed air, changed our airport transfer and called it done. The Mazatlan miss really was a surprise to me. No matter.  We’ll return to Loreto and get to La Paz for the first time in a decade. I love the Sea of Cortez. This should be a winner. 

Another holiday surprise:  Christmas morning I received an email from Southwest with a “unique opportunity” for us.  Apparently our flight on December 30 to Long Beach was overbooked, and they were making move over offers for minuscule ($30pp travel credit) compensation. We’ve never gotten an offer like this before. Is it another example of the new Southwest, or just a way to cheap out of bumping passengers?  Or both? At any rate, I was not interested but made the mistake of mentioning it to G, who clearly doesn’t share my aversion to staying in hotels and remembered too well our exciting trip to the airport in November. Before I knew it, we were leaving a day earlier than planned (though at a more humane hour of the morning) and had a room booked at the Crown Plaza hotel in San Pedro. I pre-reserved an Uber using the Uber gift cards I’d just purchased through Costco.com (full credit to maraena on Cruise Critic for the recommendation), re-arranged some social plans and was thankful we still had three days notice. Change is the only constant in our travel life. 

Still, I was reluctant. The Crown Plaza was pricing out at over $350 for one night in a standard room. That’s crazy. Then I found an aggregator called Vio that claimed to have a room available for $184, all in. I could cancel for about 24 hours, so I booked it immediately, waited a couple of hours and phoned the hotel, asking if they had a reservation in our name. They didn’t, and my scam sensor was on high alert. I did an online chat with Vio where I was assured that it simply took a few hours for the hotel to update their reservations. We left it at that for the day.  It was Christmas and we had places to be. 

Early the next morning, I phoned the hotel. Yes they did have a reservation in my name and gave me their internal reservation number. And when I checked my emails, I had received an email from Vio, containing our original chat conversation, and then updating it to state that our reservation had been confirmed with Pauleen at the hotel and giving me the same internal reservation number. I’m all for good deals, but am highly sensitive to scams. This seemed legit, for a nearly 50% discount.

Christmas night we returned home and instead of sitting by the fire contemplating the birth of our Lord and Savior, I was upstairs in the master bath trying to remove the glitter nail polish strips I’ve had on my feet since just before we left for Southampton. Lily and Fox’s Less Bitter, More Glitter and a Seche Vite top coat combo is the bomb. I did the usual acetone soak with tin foil cover for 30 minutes, all the while listening to Luther Vandross’ Christmas album courtesy of friend Fungirl (thank you, loved it), and then spent nearly an hour scraping off the softened polish with an orange stick, simultaneously saying things like “Lord have mercy this is a PITA”, which is kind of prayer-adjacent and so in keeping with the holiday. It was midnight by the time I applied a new set but, with any luck, they’ll last until we return. One less day to get ready?  No prob!

I squeezed in a haircut and a couple of lunches/brunches with friends, and by football time on Sunday (the day, as predicted, turned very cold with light snow) was in my Christmas jammies doing the final load of laundry and watching the games. Our eight full days at home had been a whirlwind of appointments, banking, prescription pick up and pill organizing, phone calls, yard clean up, beautification projects, socializing and celebrating, but we survived the busy-ness and enjoyed being home for the holiday.  Just one more travel day and a hotel night (grrrrr) stand between us and one of our favorite ships (and certainly our most traveled one- nearly 500 days!).

Emerald Princess, we’re coming home!

Let’s do this!

​Happy Christmas, New Year and all around holiday greetings!

I’m actually starting this post the day after Christmas while waiting at the ophthalmologist's office for serum tears to be made (and, right off the bat, trying to spell ophthalmologist correctly has me ready to give up). G has convinced me that I should at least start to blog, but hold off publishing the posts until I’m confident I want to continue. That way if it grows too onerous, I’ll just stop and you’ll never know there was an aborted attempt to resume blogging. So, if you’re reading this, go me!

First, a quick catch up…

November was, as anticipated, busy with cross country championship travel. McGee was an absolute star, and had a breakout season that I was thrilled to witness. However, I was definitely cruise-d and hotel-ed out in the midst of it. In fact, on the flight home from California the weekend after disembarking the Regal Princess in Galveston, I was texting McGee on his flight home and discovered the NCAA Regionals race two weeks later wasn’t going to start until 11:30am (they usually start at 9am) and was also going to take place at a course very close to the airport. I immediately cancelled my hotel reservation and instead flew out and back the same day. (Living in the middle of the country, though pitiful for cruising, works well for most other domestic travel).  When McGee moved up nine places in the final kilometer of the race to finish third, I knew he’d be going to nationals. And he did, held in Missouri the next week, where we watched him and his team run in what was the final cross country race of his career (though there’s still track season to go).  And after it all I was left feeling a lot like I did when McGuy’s final basketball season ended…now what do we do for fun?

Well, go on a cruise to start. G and I left the next weekend to join the Royal Princess in San Pedro for first a 7-night cruise and then a 14-night cruise, both to Mexico. While our entire winter cruising season has been a patchwork of trips pieced together one at a time, that 14-night cruise, originally scheduled to be Princess’s 60th anniversary Love Boat cruise, had been in place for over a year. We didn’t care so much about the anniversary aspect (which is good, because that celebration was dropped)…we just liked the idea of a 14-night Mexico cruise with overnights in two ports, and knew the cross country season would be wrapped up by then. And when I actually had firm dates, we added the 7-night cruise preceding it. 

We hadn’t been to the west coast of Mexico in ten years, and I was ready to return. We had no delusions of doing a lot of sightseeing, but I felt pretty certain we could count on warm days and sun, and, really, that is the whole point of our winter cruising. Staying on the ship on port days is fine if we sprinkle in just a smidge of tourist activities. And that is exactly how those three weeks unfolded. 

I’m not going to recount the details of all of our days, but do want to share a few pics and fun things we did. First, I truly did suspect I might blog on the 14-night cruise. After all, that itinerary was a rarity, and a bit more interesting than the standard 7-night Mexico cruises (understanding, of course, that all these itineraries are interesting, exciting, adventurous the first, second and maybe even fourth time you do them, but after that… Just sayin’, you gotta find your purpose, and ours is no longer to do something blog-worthy in every port). However, I set the Patter on the cabin floor the second day of that cruise to take photo scans of each of its four pages and the app was being difficult (it sometimes is) and I actually had a visceral reaction to it all.  So I set it aside and instead went up to the Lido to watch Sunday NFL games on MUTS and, in the most perfect timing, ran into Deb of the Deb Days blog.  Deb didn’t discourage me from blogging but also didn’t make me feel one bit guilty for NOT blogging.  Then the next day, cruise friend Cheryl texted me, and, she, too, didn’t discourage me from blogging but definitely didn’t make me feel one bit guilty for not blogging.  So you got blog bupkus. 😉

But, in hindsight, we had a fantastic 21 nights on the Royal Princess.  First, we flew out the day of the cruise (oh just stop!), because…well, I was hotel-ed out, remember?  But we flew into Long Beach (LGB) on a very early direct flight so I assumed we’d have plenty of time. And it did all work out in the end, but getting there was exciting. We woke to our first snow of the season, the kind that is icy and blinding in the dark of night, severely hampering travel even before it starts to accumulate into the several inch category.  Factor in some engine trouble (we used a car service) with dashboard warning lights and forced vehicle slowing, slowing, slowing as a result and I was pretty certain in that moment that we were going to be missing our first cruise and THIS was the reason we should have arrived a day early. It was a very bad situation turned miracle, as our vehicle limped to an airport hotel that had a shuttle leaving in (literally) two minutes. We got to our gate just before boarding started, were delayed an hour when we had to de-ice, and still arrived at the ship by 11am. See, it’s a good story, and so wasn’t worth stressing about (haha). And we have yet another reason to love LGB as an arrival airport for cruises out of Los Angeles.   

And after that, it was all good. Well, it was mostly excellent with just a couple of negatives. We loved the Royal Princess, the crew that we interacted with was just fantastic (they treated us like family), the food was as decent as it gets these days though the buffet food was not hot at all, the entertainment, though not always to our taste, was good, and we especially loved the mariachi group, the Diamond Trio, who really were the rock stars of the cruise. 

For the first cruise, we paid to upgrade to a specific balcony cabin that became available after re-thinking the inside cabin we had initially booked (fairly last minute, there wasn’t much choice), as it was located more forward than the bridge and was a long way from the Horizon Terrace we enjoy so much. For the second cruise we were in M525 which I had booked over a year ago, thinking it would be perfect.  The cabin itself was perfect (ample storage) but it was located right under the pastry shop area in the buffet, and every night from 10pm to 11pm or so and again from 5am to 6am they were apparently juggling metal food pans. Unfortunately, they weren’t very good at it, and dropped them.  A lot. And then they must have been frustrated by their lack of skill and kicked them across the floor, where they clashed into each other. We are highly tolerant of noise from above, and have long heard carts rolling and chairs being dragged, as we love Marina Deck (and Riviera Deck and Aloha Deck, depending on the ship) cabins, but this was a bit too much. ATWEP (always travel with ear plugs)!

We didn’t always get off the ship in ports, but generally did, if only to walk around a little. Still, we definitely had some cruise highlights, including a pulmonia ride each time we were in Mazatlan.  One time we went to the Golden Zone, where we were invited to sit on a covered wooden deck overlooking the beach while we dined on the best fish tacos I’ve ever had and enjoyed the parasailing and sail boating taking place just offshore  

The Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception 

Sunset in Puerto Vallarta 

I had forgotten how beautiful Loreto on the Sea of Cortez, is. Though we spent our day there simply walking along the waterfront, the real attraction was our sail away at sunset.

For our Cabo San Lucas overnight, we booked a trimaran sunset sail through Viator. It was simply perfect. The scenery, the whales, the chips, salsa and guacamole and there may have been a little liquid joy consumed, too.  We’d love to do a repeat.

The next night we didn’t sail from Cabo until nearly 9pm (we could have done the sunset sail either night), and watched another beautiful sunset from Deck 18 on the Royal Princess.

El Arco taken after dark using the iPhone 15 Pro LiDAR technology with the camera app. 

Snowfall during caroling in the Piazza

 The Diamond Trio leading us in Feliz Navidad

Our weather was not too hot, not too humid and always, always sunny. It really could not have been a more perfect cruise experience. Luckily, we returned home December 20 to amazing weather of our own, record high temps, definitely not a white Christmas, though the snow is supposed to find us (again) just before we leave. Next up: 52 days of cruising on the Emerald Princess. It’s not exactly like the pre-COVID days, but it’s definitely trending that direction. 

Life is good. :-)

Disembarkation from the Regal Princess

We couldn’t rely on those normal telltale signs that our cruise had come to an end, such as the thrusters spinning our ship into place at its berth, to act as our alarm this morning. Instead we set alarms on both phones and my iPad to make sure we didn’t miss our final Sabatini’s breakfast.

We were there when the restaurant opened at 6:30am, using the front elevators to go directly from our cabin (M437, now that we’re off the ship) to Deck 5 (easy peasy at that time), taking all our luggage with us. We always appreciate the calm that pervades Sabatini’s breakfasts but never more so than on disembarkation day. Pure bliss. It was hard to say goodbye to the Indian mafia (their term), Raj, Royal, Francis and Tony and Philippino waiter Roderick. As G told them, regardless of how good any future cruise dining experience is, it will never top this one.

I had one goal for today and that was to avoid any time in a disembarkation lounge (for us, Concerto Dining Room) so we didn’t have a repeat of last year’s germfest. From Sabatini’s, we took a front elevator up to Deck 6 about 8:00am and easily walked off the ship with our luggage. I had apparently already forgotten our St. Thomas immigration lines and didn’t realize until we walked right through the terminal that we didn’t need to do immigration procedures today at all.

We had reserved Galveston Express seats for the transfer to Houston Hobby. I absolutely love that airport. It almost makes up for the 45 mile ride from the cruise port to the airport (which is still easier than going to Bush). However, those winds that hammered Galveston overnight were still at it, and with a 60° temperature it was pretty bitey waiting nearly a hour for our pickup. It made me sorry I had decided not to take a headband or beanie on our cruise, because I would have opened a suitcase right there in the parking lot to get it if I had.

We had just arrived at Hobby when McGee texted me. He was also flying out today and was just packing up for his trip. Did I want any team gear? I already had a team cross country T-shirt I’d brought on our cruise, but asked if he had any beanies. Of course he did. He even sent a pic of two to offer me a choice. Bring on the forecasted wind in California!

I wasn’t checking luggage, but we had to wait until four hours prior to G’s flight to check his (well, actually, his and mine), so we found a charging tower outside security and settled in. Once through security, his gate was located in one direction and mine the other so we said our goodbyes. I’ll be home Saturday night; he won’t have to bach it too long.

I walked a short distance into my terminal when I came across a string trio playing classical music and stayed until they finished their concert. Very unexpected! Very nice!

A USO was located right next to my gate, and I settled in there until my boarding time, more than an hour after G’s flight had left. ABC (always be charging)…I had a three hour layover in Las Vegas tonight and needed to have enough juice left to order a Lyft when I arrived in California. I needn’t have worried. My first aircraft had plug ins (and free WiFi!). Southwest, like Princess, has had its share of cutbacks lately, but, also like Princess, there is still a lot to love.

I sent this text to McGee, who was at that moment sitting in a Centurion Lounge at his airport.

USO in Houston Hobby airport 

Basic but decent

Sure wish I was a service academy senior with free Amex card and Centurion Lounge access instead of 27-year Army spouse 😂

G and I were both extremely fortunate that we didn’t face any of the major flight delays that have been popping up across the country. It was also nice, while in the USO, to overhear a Southwest pilot reassure someone there that these winds weren’t going to be an issue. Not that I was worried…but it was nice all the same. They were gusty! In fact, about the time the Regal Princess docked last night, a cargo ship hit a pier in Galveston and that’s now a whole thing, with an oil spill in the harbor that has it partially closed to ship traffic until it is cleaned up. The first Regal Princess cruise out of Galveston this season is impacted. Sound familiar? Guess we were fortunate to safely get into port at all!

I started fading a little during the layover in Las Vegas. I hadn’t been in that airport since 1982, and all I remembered about it were the slot machines. That hasn’t changed a bit but I really don’t think anything else has either. That airport needs a major refurb. I had to walk from a gate at the far end of B terminal to one at the far end of C terminal, but I had plenty of time and it felt good to stretch my legs after so much sitting today. I had planned to have dinner there but, as always, was encouraged at the USO in Houston to leave with enough of a stash to last the rest of the day. Even junk food is filling if you eat enough of it, I guess.😳

At 11pm, I am happily ensconced in my hotel room. McGee and his team are in a different (read: nicer) hotel nearby (this team does not suffer). His parents are arriving tomorrow afternoon, and McGuy tomorrow evening. I haven’t seen both of my guys at the same time since the night before we left for our June cruise. You can see why I was so intent on staying well!

The next three weeks include a weekend at the NCAA Regionals and a weekend at Nationals (where a normally priced $100 hotel room goes for $500 due to the race. This IS just college level cross country, right?). Praying he has no injuries. Then, the weekend after that we’re off on another cruise or two. Busy for the best reasons.

Check back early next year to see if I get inspired to blog again. No promises (though I loved your emailed protestations! Thank you so much for caring enough to let me know). I will take December off and then consider perhaps picking back up again in January. Those cruises are a bit more interesting. Meanwhile, I’ll work on my tap dancing.

Life is good. :-)

Days 21 and 22: At Sea

I’m lumping both of our last two sea days together in one post, as there really isn’t lot to report (a helpful reminder to me of why I’m not planning to blog about our December cruises (at a minimum)).

I finally decided that, unless I wanted to lock myself in our cabin, I needed to wear a mask and attend the shipboard activities I wanted to. It must have worked. For the first time in recent memory, I’m going to be leaving a cruise healthy, something that was a year long goal for me. It’s a miracle!

We enjoyed our final dinner in the Symphony Dining Room with Berenice and Sebastian (because we had specialty dining reservations for the last night). Goodness, they were so incredible to us! Surprisingly, we also loved our lonely table for two by the galley. DRO Enache would check, every time he stopped by, if we were still happy. Perhaps even happier than at a window table, and no one was more surprised by that than we were. It gave us total freedom with our evenings, and there were at least three nights when we stayed up on the Horizon Terrace to enjoy sail aways but didn’t have to feel guilty about a window table sitting unused.

Tonight’s entertainment was one of the cast vocalists from the production shows in his own show. He was obviously pinch hitting because of the Grand Cayman miss, but he did a fine show backed by the always good Regal Princess orchestra.

We contemplated, as we sat at breakfast on our final sea day, how much we have enjoyed this cruise. G felt, as he always does, that it has flown by, and, especially considering the fact that he had just completed an 11-night cruise the day before we flew to London, he’s been cruising for over a month. On the other hand, I feel like we’ve been cruising for months and months. I truly don’t know how we ever actually did cruise for months and months (and months). I still enjoy it…just not that much! It took Covid to show me how much I loved being at home.

😖 The cure for my chronically low blood pressure. 😂

We actually did get something for free tonight as a result of the water view we had in our cabin for a couple of days (I never mentioned the ripped silk kimono to guest services because, really, what could they do?). Or maybe it was payback for being most traveled on a recent short cruise without a Captains Circle Party when we were given a specialty dining reward but there were no reservations available. At any rate, we had a reservation tonight in the Crown Grill for 5pm. For free (and we laughed and laughed again).

We ate a light breakfast this morning, and then nothing after that to prepare for this. I had never had one of those warm cheese-stuffed Crown Grill rolls before, and they were addictive, but our waiters (the same team as we had at our breakfasts in Sabatini’s) warned us not to fill up on them. It’s hard not to!

We both ordered the iceberg salad, French onion soup and a filet. Everything was delicious and perfectly prepared. However, we both felt that the experience was just not the same as it was before the introduction of Premier packages, and that surprised us. It was packed, noisy, and our waiters were run off their feet. It no longer seemed to be the special experience it used to be. JMHO, of course, but there was nothing about it that would compel us to book Premier on a future cruise. Frankly, our main dining room experience was actually better.

Tonight’s Princess Theater performance was a farewell variety show. We had anticipated this (hence our dinner reservation in the Crown Grill with no need to rush to a show). Variety shows aren’t our favorites.

Captain Traverso had made an announcement just before dinner about the gale force winds expected in Galveston overnight. As a result, he said the Regal Princess would be arriving earlier than planned to allow the ship to be at its berth before the storm hit. This being Texas, this messed with the alcohol allowed to be served on the ship. That started a couple of announcements by the HGM which were hard to hear (what with the Crown Grill being so loud) but, I think the gist of them was that alcohol purchases would require an additional Texas tax and packages would not be honored after 8pm but package holders would receive a $25 OBC for Texas-compliant alcohol purchases after that time. That’s also what is done on cruises leaving from Galveston.

I’m guessing there was more alcohol consumed on the ship between 5 and 8pm than there had been the prior five sea days. The bars were instantly and totally packed. We had planned to sit in the Wheelhouse after dinner to listen to music, but it was a mad house. Instead we walked out onto the Promenade Deck (raining and big thunder and lightning) and returned to our cabin.

With all of our luggage wheels working perfectly, and being familiar with the nearly level deck 6 gangway in Galveston, we decided to do walk off tomorrow morning and so didn’t have to set our luggage out tonight. That alone would be enough to convince me to pack lighter for future cruises.

We still had to do some thinking when packing up. G is heading home tomorrow but I am flying directly to California for McGee’s last cross country conference championship on Friday. I was originally scheduled to fly home with G and head back to the airport the next morning to fly out, but it eventually occurred to me that made no sense. I wasn’t looking forward to hauling my big suitcase along with me on this little side trip but with only one checked bag now free on Southwest (for their credit card holders) and $45 for a second bag, I didn’t want G to have to pay to take my suitcase with him.

G watched the spectacle of me wrestling my packed suitcase onto my bed tonight and common sense prevailed. In the end, he’s taking both large staircases with him, and I am flying with just a roll aboard. I still tried to convince him I could handle getting my luggage into an Uber and my hotel room, which prompted him to remind me just how much I am spending on flights and hotels for this meet plus two more cross country meets in the next month. Yeah, it’s a lot. I could probably cruise for a month for less. $45 to check a bag pales in comparison.

The Regal Princess was at her berth in Galveston by 10pm. After so many days at sea, it felt strange to be on a stable ship…but I didn’t miss the hanger dance that inevitably happens the last night of a cruise (IYKYK).

I’ll publish a wrap up post tomorrow night. Fingers crossed for an uneventful travel day in light of government shut down related flight disruptions.