harryfat1

You can use their beach facilities at the club for a day fee or grab a drink or lunch here

Walking past the theater is the private club beach area where you can pay a fee to use their beach area

So we made it to the “Casino” – now this isn’t the classic Las Vegas type of gambling casino as Catalina is part of California and regular casinos are not allowed (not counting the various Indian casinos). Instead, this was supposed to have been translated from the Italian word which it supposed to mean the gathering place with a dance hall instead. The structure is easily the biggest structure on the island. Nowadays it’s just a regular movie theater

The majority of the folks in town rent the gold carts to get around as parking and cars are sparse

More people visiting their relatives in prison. We typically buy magnets or Christmas ornaments at each new port

I’m not surprised as I figured many people on the forum are not familiar with Avalon/Catalina Island. I haven’t been there in almost 18 years so I tried to do some research on the RCI forum but couldn’t find recent info posted by other cruisers. Most of the RCI cruise reports were for Caribbean sailings followed by Europe and maybe Alaska. Of the few Mexico cruise reports, they are for the longer 7-day cruises that do not stop at Catalina. The only cruises that stop here are the 4-day sailings and not many trip reports talk about short cruises. Although my first ever cruise back in the 90s was with my parents on Carnival on the same itinerary and the following year was my first RCI cruise on the same ports of Catalina and Ensenada. Catalina is the classic case of “so close yet so far” syndrome. People only cruise to Cataline if they live close by if anyone comes out west for a cruise from afar, it’s either Alaska or the longer 7-day Mexican Riviera itinerary. Yeah, if you want to stay here overnight or two, you saw the pictures of hotels along the main walk that you can just drag your luggage to after the ferry drops you off. You will notice a lot of people have luggage waiting at the dock to go back to LA on the ferry. I would suggest people arrive on the days the cruise ships are not in town as the main street isn’t that wide and the infrastructure can be pushed to the limit with 3 thousand plus passengers roaming around. The place is probably more mellow on the non-cruise ship days. For people who prefer to cruise only, you can also see Catalina on a B2B if you package it with the 7-night itinerary on the Navigator on the once or twice-a-month schedule when she switches to classic Mexican Riviera so it’ll be a 7 + 4 days cruise.

View of the ship in the background as well as the casino as we slowly make our way out there

In case you don't know what country you are in, the flags on the top provide a reminder as more opportunities to visit the uncle in prison Entrance area to the pier that we will see on the way back

For those of you who have an extra $1M USD sitting around the house not doing much, maybe you can look into buying a used boat here. A steal at $950K as the display window showed various used boats for sale. Back home they have used cars lots. On Avalon, they have used boat ads.

Oh, yeah, forgot to mention that since this is the US island, your major cell phone carriers should have signal towers here. We have Verizon and had no problems with connections anywhere near the main town area. Obviously, if you venture more inland away from the main town area, your coverage will be spotty. We didn’t do any excursions here but they have the typical zip line/city tour. They have a bison view tour where they take you to see the free roaming bison up in the mountains. If you have never seen bison up close, that might be worthwhile although the price is a bit stiff. We had seen bison during our various road trips to national and state parks in the Western part of the US but if you are not from this area, you can add it to the list as a possible tour while in port. Here are a few pics from our previous road trips to South Dakota years ago: Bison herd freely roam the state park area. All traffic comes to a standstill once the bison are spotted. They have the right away Yeah, kids, you don't see a bison next to your car every day

As this is California, you must have surfboards. People rent storage spaces for surfboards on the island The wife went inside to check on the uncle in prison while the boys and I chilled outside as it was a women's clothing store.

The green color area to the right is the pier. We will drop by there on the way back As it was a nice day out, we decided to visit the uncle in prison to see how he was doing (aka obligatory tourist shopping for souvenirs). The main street of Avalon is full of shops and restaurants

So we made it to the city of Avalon, the primary town on the island. The island is about 25 miles long, but other than the main town of Avalon, the rest is barely inhabited. As far as I know of the major North American cruise itineraries, this is the only cruise stop that involves a US island. I will assume most people on CC don’t know much about the island as it’s not as well known as the other ports on the west coast like Cabo or Puerto Vallarta. The major cruise lines only come here on the 4-night itinerary when packaged with Ensenada. During the 3-day sailings, they bypass Catalina and just go to Ensenada directly. For 2023, only the Navigator and Carnival’s Radiance each will come here once a week. Carnival comes on Tuesdays and Navigator comes on Wednesdays during the weeks she is not out at the 7-night sailings as RCI only has one ship homeport in the west coast. Next year, Carnival is adding another ship, Carnival Firenze, that will also sail the 4-night itinerary so they will be at Catalina on Mondays as well as Tuesdays. Since only the short cruises come to Catalina, most distance visitors won’t see Catalina as chances are they would be in town for the 7-night Mexico cruise that sails much further South. So Catalina Island is less known to the non-locals. People come here without cruise ships from various ferry terminals throughout Southern California. The round trip fare is $84/pp so if you factor in the cost of that versus what you are paying for a basic cruise, the cruise is a very good deal unless you really want to stay overnight at Catalina that you can’t do while on a cruise sailing. The ferry takes only 1 hour to get here so you know it’s not that far but as we are on a cruise and they had to schedule a sea day in there somewhere on the cruise, yesterday we were just out in the open ocean doing small donuts until we made it to port today. The red arrow was where we left on Day 1 and the purple arrow is where we are today. Less than 30 miles away took us about 1.5 days so you know we didn't go fast/far.

Yes, I agree. If we could do more at home, that's one less thing on the checklist on boarding day. Especially since Royal forces you to use an App that not everyone is a big fan of it.

Avalon Harbor as the tender approaches the pier The Casino building. More on that later. Those tiered buildings on the right remind me of Cabo As our two tenders dock at Avalon, two other tenders made it to the Navigator to pick up more passengers so there are a total of 4 tenders in operation to serve 3,700+ passengers (and maybe crew members on their break). The city of Avalon welcomes you as the tender docks

In case anyone doesn't know what country we are in - the Red, White, and Blue flag is proudly on display as part of the tender. So let's be patriot and include the US flag as part of the trip report

From the time we boarded the tender to when we finally set foot on the island, it was over 30 minutes so if you have a private excursion booked, don’t cut it too close to getting off the ship as it’s not a quick process. Since we had no tours booked, we were in no hurry. These people were excited about something but I didn't know what Is it just me being paranoid but always a little odd to see a big hole in the ship area where the gangway/tender is located as we are out in the open sea 20230809_100924.mp4

I had been to Europe twice eons ago before the boys were born but never seen it from the perspective of a cruise ship. Some people have said the view of Avalon (the primary town of the island) has a European flair to it. Remember the Catalina Express ferry from day 1 when we were docked at San Pedro? They come here regularly as that’s the primary transportation for folks to come to the island. I believe the island has a private small airport but no commercial airline flies here on a regular basis. For the wealthy, you can arrange for a helicopter to fly you here from LA as well. What do they store in there underneath the red tarps? Anyway, the tender is full and we are ready to cast off

So we made it onto the tender as they loaded more people onto it. We had a choice of a top deck out in the open or lower deck where it was covered. Since we wanted scenic pictures of the ship, we opted to go onto the top. Before getting on the tender, while I was in line, I checked if I had my wallet with me. Back on the Alaska cruise last year I left my wallet in the cabin safe on my first port so I had no money to pay for anything. Good thing my wife and boys had money. As the ship is a cashless society (for the most part unless you tip extra cash at the bar) I typically put away my wallet in the safe on day 1 and just use the sea pass (medallion for Princess) for anything we need to buy. Not a good feeling when you reach for the wallet in the back pocket and feel nothing there... So, this time I made sure I had the wallet with me before getting in line for the tender. That brings up the first music video of the day: They said there are 4 tenders working in total for the day. At any given time there should be 2 tenders at the ship and 2 at the pier and then they swap positions That's Avalon - where we will be shortly Looking straight up - hard on the neck The other tender on the Aft part of the ship I like the big white ball cushions so the tenders don't bang into the cruise ship as the ocean waves kept pushing the tender into the ship

We can also use the same comparison to account for the new generation of teens that won’t even look up from their phones to talk to anyone: Introvert Teenager: Gives you 1 Thumbs up on the text reply instead of typing actual word responses Extrovert Teenager: Gives you 2 Thumbs up on the text reply AND a smiley face emoji

Thanks for all the tips. Sounds like RCI is set up to help people with the phone App as they are forcing them to book via the App instead of the traditional way of making reservations online from home weeks in advance. This makes sense as they are forcing people to book after boarding but with various types of phones/operating systems, not everything will go smoothly as planned. Unless they want an angry crowd of people lining up at Guest Services when they can’t get the phone Apps to work, RCI needs to have teams of Internet Helper Staff to assist passengers upon boarding

As we are still in the US, the Verizon cell service is still functional. Turned on the phone and it showed that we are offshore when viewed via Google Maps.