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!