deladane

Thanks for having my back!!

Honestly, no. This was my 6th cruise with Carnival, including an amazing 12-night Mediterranean cruise which was one of my favorite cruises ever, and this will not be my last Carnival cruise. This Panorama cruise was off to a terrible start, but things did get better. Just give me some time to write up the rest of the review. I promise there are good times to come! I just like to tell the story how it happened, and this was the worst embarkation day I have ever experienced so yes, in that moment, things sucked. But I don't hate Carnival, and things did improve.

Thanks for reading! Yea, we also thought it was weird that the seas looked so calm but were causing so much havoc. Someone recently posted on our group page that the high tides meant the ship was tied further from the dock than usual, so where the ramp connected to the ship wasn't stable. I'm not really sure what the problem was, but somehow it related to the tides, or so they said?

There was enough storage for the 3 of us, but it was a tight fit. I imagine we will have more struggles putting all of our stuff away as Ian gets older and his clothes are bigger. I forgot to take a photo of the empty closets before we unpacked, so this is from later in the week… don’t mind all our messy clothes! One of the closets has 4 shelves, 3 drawers, and the safe: There are 2 closets for hanging clothes. One of them has a removable bar in the middle so you can have an upper and lower hanging bar, or just remove the bottom bar, lift up the shelf, and it becomes another closet with just the one upper hanging bar. I bought this hanging shoe rack a few years ago, and it works great as extra shelves on a cruise: I also bought an over the door hanging shoe rack to hang on the inside of the bathroom door. This is one of my favorite things to bring on a cruise to keep all the little odds and ends organized: There was one nightstand with a lamp on each side of the bed. It seemed like a missed opportunity that such a new ship did not have USB ports near the bed. If the nightstands had a lamp, they had a power source nearby, so in a world where people are never more than inches from their phones, there really should have been USB ports in the nightstand. One great feature of these nightstands was that there was a door to access the space inside. This was the perfect laundry basket for the week! Jason put all his dirty laundry in his nightstand, and I shared mine with Ian. This kept our smelly, dirty laundry out of the closet full of clean clothes, and made it very easy to pack at the end of the cruise because all of our laundry was in one spot. Our cabin steward left us a little message on the mirror:

Our sign and sail cards were in a sealed envelope outside our cabin door, so we went in to drop off our carry on bags. The cabin was a standard balcony cabin, much like we have seen on other Carnival ships. The balcony had one standard upright chair and one chair with an adjustable reclining back, plus a small side table. I appreciated that the safety railing was high enough I never worried about Ian accidentally falling over the railing. On the desk area, there were plenty of outlets. There were 2 USB outlets, 2 standard US outlets, and 1 European outlet.

Finally at 11:50am, they announced that boarding would start “soon”… and then they announced a few minutes later that boarding was “delayed”. None of the staff in the terminal knew what was going on, and all of the passengers were growing grumpier by the minute. Finally, they started boarding with the Diamonds, Suites, and Platinums at little after 12, and they called for FTTF at 12:15pm. Whew! We are finally going to board the ship… or not! There were so many people packed onto the ramp that zigzags up to the ship and the line moved very slowly. It was clear something was wrong because this whole embarkation process was not normal, but no one knew any details. It would have been great if they filled us in! We moved very slowly up the ramp to the top level when someone finally came over to explain what happened. There were King Tides all along the west coast this weekend with lots of coastal flooding and massive waves. All day yesterday, my phone kept getting alerts when I used Google Maps that “coastal flooding might impact my route” but I didn’t experience any issues. Even my parents heard about it on the nightly news in Florida, so it made national headlines. Those waves were causing too much movement with the bridge between the ship and the terminal, so they could only allow 15 people on the bridge at one time. That’s why it was so delayed with the prior cruise getting off the ship, and that is why it was taking forever for us to get on the ship. I understand that this was an act of nature and not something within Carnival’s control. The issue was with the lack of information. Knowledge is power, and if they had just made an announcement about what was happening, I think most passengers would have approached things differently. We finally made it to the front of the line, and I took this photo of us crossing the bridge at 1:18pm, exactly 1 hour after they called FTTF to start boarding. I can only assume under normal circumstances, that would be a 10 minute process at most. So far, FTTF had zero benefits for us since we only first stepped on the ship a few minutes before everyone had access to their cabins. We boarded the ship on deck 4, midship, which was right next to the casino. Since that’s where our muster station was, we decided to take care of self-mustering right then instead of trying to get back there later in the day. It was a very quick process… they scanned our boarding passes, and then showed us how to don a life jacket. They put a wristband around Ian’s ankle for his muster station, and said if it fell off, we could get a replacement from our cabin steward. We went up to the cabin at 1:30pm, but our bags weren’t there yet. There were several bags outside the doors of other cabins near us, so it was disappointing that our bags weren’t there yet. Especially considering I handed our bags to the porter at 11am, so it was now 2 and a half hours later!

Originally, our drop off time was estimated to be 10:35am. As we approached the gates to enter the cruise port, traffic came to a stand-still. We thought there was an accident up ahead because we couldn’t figure out why we stopped moving. Gradually, we were able to roll forward little by little, until we could see the cruise terminal in the distance. Finally, at 10:45am, we got to the gate to enter the cruise terminal, but there was still a ton of backed up traffic. We continued to roll along verrrryyy ssslllloooowwwllllyyyy. We reached the parking garage at 10:54am, and it then took another 10 minutes to pull inside and find a spot to park the Uber. Our driver said Uber might charge us for the ride taking nearly double the original time, but I don’t think they did. The ride was originally supposed to take 30 minutes, but my receipt says it started at 9:52am and ended at 11:01am, so it took over an hour! It was complete pandemonium when we got out of the Uber. There were hundreds of people who had just gotten off the previous cruise and were waiting to be picked up, so they were all crammed in on the sidewalk with their luggage. The people coming to pick them up were probably stuck in all of the traffic that we were in too. After we unloaded our luggage, it was really hard to figure out where to put our checked bags. I ended up leaving Jason and Ian with all the bags while I ran around looking for a porter in the sea of disembarking people. Apparently our Uber dropped us off in the wrong place, so I had to double back to get our bags, then drag them to the far side of the sidewalk area (Jason would have done it but I knew where to go and it was just easier to do it myself rather than try to explain to him where to go). Apparently, there was a different entrance that priority passengers are supposed to use so all the priority bags go on the same big cart to be loaded on the ship together. I don’t know how we could have known that because there weren’t any signs or anything as we pulled into the parking lot. Once I found the right place to go, I handed over our checked bags to the porter and gave him a tip, then went back to find Jason and Ian so we could enter the cruise terminal. Disclaimer/Rant: Ian is becoming more and more like opinionated every day, and he recently started giving me a hard time when I take his photo. He basically refuses to smile in photos with me and Jason, and he usually yells and turns his head when I try to take a photo of just him. Sometimes I get lucky and snap the photo before he realizes I’m doing it, but there are going to be a lot of photos in this review where Ian looks angry and miserable. He was in a good mood for most of the cruise, but it doesn’t always look that way in the photos. In vacations pre-Ian, Jason and I always asked other travelers to take our photo and it was never a problem. Now, with Ian bordering on a tantrum all the time, it was a lot harder to get good photos together. We did the best we could, but I don’t have nearly as many photos from this cruise as I did on prior cruises. **end rant** So where were we… oh yes, we walked up to the cruise terminal at 11:10am, smack in the middle of our original assigned arrival window (so all that traffic didn’t matter much, even if it did add a lot of stress). When we got there, they were letting people from any/all appointment times enter the terminal. That was kind of annoying to hear because I had stayed up late and made sure to check in exactly on time, and basically this meant my efforts were irrelevant. Someone was standing at the door to check our boarding passes, and they directed us to the entrance door for Suites, Diamond, Platinum, and FTTF passengers. Once inside the terminal, we saw that they set up a makeshift check in station for priority passengers with a bunch of little tables and one staff member at each table who used a cell phone to scan our documents. There was just one group ahead of us and then we were directed over to the next available table. Jason and I both have passports and have only ever cruised using passports as our official documentation, but we opted to use Ian’s birth certificate instead of getting him a passport. I know, tisk tisk. I didn’t think of it when we originally booked the cruise, and by the time I realized he doesn’t have a passport, it was too late to get one before the cruise, so we just took the risk and cruised with his birth certificate. The check in process was very quick and easy, but the guy scanning our documents said something that was a bit strange and concerning… As part of his speech on the embarkation process, he said cabins would be available at 1:30pm. I said that we have FTTF and have access to our cabins as soon as we board the ship, but he insisted that was not true and that I had to wait until 1:30pm to drop off my bags. This man was specifically checking in people with priority, so everyone who he checked in that day all had immediate cabin access. I decided not to argue with him because his opinion didn’t really matter… he was out in the cruise terminal and he wouldn’t be on the ship to stop me from going to my cabin, so I figured I’d fight that battle after we boarded the ship. Our next stop was the x-ray machines and metal detectors for security. They made us take out our 2 bottles of wine to shake them and look for bubbles. We also had a 12-pack of soda in the same bag, but it was wrapped in a plastic bag in case one of the cans leaked. Interestingly, he didn’t ask us to take out the cans or even to remove the plastic bag to see what exactly the cans were, so for all he knew, we brought on 12 cans of beer! YMMV, but I guess they focus more on the wine bottles than the soda cans. After security, we entered the waiting area. There were thousands of seats, but it looked like they were all occupied. There was a section for FTTF, but it was very crowded so we just found a spot off to the side to stand and wait. By now, it was 11:30am and it was clear they hadn’t started boarding yet, but we assumed boarding would start soon. So we stood, and we stood, and we stood some more. After a while, people started getting antsy about why boarding didn’t start yet.

Saturday, December 30, 2023 ~ Long Beach, CA ~ Embarkation Day! The day finally arrived! It is embarkation day! With my body still on AZ time, I was up and out of bed at 5:30am. It was so nice that Jason’s brother lent us his house because I could go out into the living room and get ready while Jason slept in. I looked outside and… oh nooooo!!!... it was pouring rain! I had been watching the weather forecast for Long Beach all week and it kept changing the prediction about if it would rain or not. This was definitely not the beautiful southern California sunshine I was hoping for! Ian must have still been on AZ time too because he was awake by 5:45am. Luckily, he could spend the morning playing with his older cousin’s toys so that kept him entertained while we waited to leave. I made Ian a special shirt on my Cricut for embarkation day: Jason woke up around 6:30am, so we finished getting dressed and then packed up our bags to get ready to go. It was still way too early to go to the cruise port, so we called our parents to say goodbye, and we each ate a granola bar as a light breakfast. Soon enough we would be on the cruise ship for 8 days of overstuffing our bellies, so we kept it low key this morning. Finally, at 9:45am, we requested an Uber, and it arrived to pick us up 7 minutes later. We actually went with an Uber XL to make sure we had enough space for all our bags and whatnot, and it only cost $5 more than an Uber X so that was an easy decision. When I did the online check in process, I got the 11:00 to 11:30am arrival window. We were staying about 30 minutes from the cruise port, but we needed a few minutes to install (and uninstall) Ian’s car seat, and we thought it would take a few minutes to load (and unload) the bags into the Uber, so we requested the car a little early to give us some padding. It was raining lightly when we went outside to wait for the Uber, but luckily it stopped a few minutes later and I don’t think it rained again for the rest of the day (at least not while we were outside!). We dragged all our bags to the curb, trying to avoid the puddles. Our Uber driver was very helpful with getting our luggage into his trunk while Jason installed the car seat and I kept Ian from running into the street. We are always worried about Uber drivers charging us extra fees for needing time to install and uninstall the car seat, so we try to get it done as quickly as possible. Luckily, thus far, our drivers have always been very understanding and are either fathers or grandfathers of young children and are sympathetic to our logistics. We were all loaded in the Uber and on the road by 10:05am, and our luck continued as there was no traffic on the highway. We spotted our first sight of the Carnival Panorama at 10:22am. Ian loved looking at the cranes and shipping containers in the port of Long Beach.

So glad you found my review! It's great to have you here! Obviously I missed cruising, but I also missed the fun of writing up my reviews so I'm glad to be back.

OMG! Hiiiii! I remember you from Roatan! I just didn't make the connection to your Cruise Critic name! Thanks for reminding me!

Friday, December 29, 2023 ~ Travel Day Let’s get this vacation started! Driving to the cruise port was definitely a new experience for us. While it was nice knowing we weren’t confined to the 50-pounds-in-one-suitcase maximum restriction from the airlines, meaning we could have more variety in the size and quantity of our bags, we were confined to the cargo capacity of our Prius. Getting everything to fit in the car was quite a challenge, especially with all of Ian’s stuff, but we did most of the jigsaw puzzle last night so we could quickly put in the last minute items this morning and hit the road ASAP. Jason and I woke up around 6:30am, had breakfast, got ready, and finished packing up the car. Just as we finished, Ian woke up around 7:15am, so that was perfect timing to focus on getting him ready to go and secured in his car seat. Our goal was to leave by 8am, but we were ready to go at 7:45am, so we hit the road a few minutes early. I sat in the back seat to help Ian reach his snacks and toys and whatnot. He does fine back there on his own for short trips around town, but prior road trips have taught me that everyone’s life is better if I just sit back there with him for longer rides. We needed to get gas, but decided to wait until we got out to Buckeye to fill up. Arizona friends: there is a new Costco right off the highway at Verrado Way, and they have more gas pumps than I have ever seen at a Costco. Plus, their gas was 20 cents per gallon cheaper than the one near our house, so we drove the 40 minutes out to Buckeye to fill up the tank. It is always a super quick in and out, and we have never had any wait or line at the pumps. Definitely keep it in mind for your future travels through the West Valley and beyond! Five minutes later, we got back on I-10 and drove west to Quartzite for our next stop. We always stop at the same gas station to top off the gas tank before entering California where gas costs a dollar more per gallon. It is a little over 2 hours from our house, so it makes a good place to stretch our legs, let Ian run around for a few minutes to burn some energy, use the bathroom, and pick up Subway sandwiches to eat in the car for when we get hungry for lunch. Sometimes we also make a stop in Palm Springs, 2 hours west of Quartzite, but we were making great time and there hadn’t been any traffic thus far, so we decided to drive straight through all the way to LA. Jason’s brother lives in LA and was nice enough to let us stay at their house on the night before the cruise, even though they were out of town that weekend. We originally planned to stay in a hotel, but luckily the hotel I booked had a flexible cancellation policy, so we jumped at the chance to sleep at their house where Ian could sleep in a separate room, and we would have a bit more space to relax before the cruise. We arrived by 1:30pm, which was the fastest we have ever done the drive, even when accounting for the 1 hour time zone change. Of course, Ian fought his nap the whole drive (despite yawning and rubbing his eyes for the last 2.5 hours in the car!), so we put him down for a nap as soon as we got into the house. That evening, we ate dinner at an Italian restaurant called Spumoni in Hermosa Beach. We have eaten there on prior visits to Jason’s brother, and their whole menu is half price from 5-6pm, so we knew we wanted to eat there again tonight. We ordered a glass of the house pinot grigio for me, the house cabernet for Jason, and we shared the linguini bolognese and farfalle with salmon and vodka sauce. Everything was fantastic! Even Ian loved it! Bellies full and bodies exhausted, we went back to the house after dinner to put Ian to bed. It had been a long day, plus it felt like it was an hour later from waking up on Arizona time. The excitement of boarding the ship tomorrow didn’t stop us from crashing, and we were both asleep by 8:30pm.

Thanks for following along!

Wonderful! I'm so glad you will benefit from my efforts 🙂 Let me know if you have any questions!

Aww, thanks! You are too funny- you aren't late at all... I'm just getting started!!

I have never tracked a ship as closely as I tracked the Panorama for the last 2 months with all of the engine repairs drama!! lol Now that she's fixed, we made great time and got to every port exactly on time!

Thanks for reading along! You must be so excited for your cruise next week!! What a wonderful gift that you gave your girls in earning them platinum status as they are just becoming adults. Honestly, with the way they keep restructuring the loyalty program, by the time Ian is in his 20's, I predict he will need 1000 days at sea to be platinum lol

Thanks! I hope my review helps with your planning and getting excited for your cruise!

Thanks! It's been a fun tradition from our last few cruises. I guess I'll need to find a matching jar for Ian before our next cruise!

Hmm, if you were on my sailing, you would have been cutting it very close. We docked at around 7am, but the ship still had to clear immigration so I don't think they started letting anyone get off until around 9am. Getting off the ship/through the terminal/getting a porter for our luggage/passport checks all took about 30 minutes from start to finish, so that wasn't the problem. The problem was that there was a lot of traffic for vehicles trying to enter the cruise port, and since it happened on both embarkation and debarkation day, I don't really know what caused the traffic. This was my first time cruising from Long Beach, so maybe someone else can chime in about if this is normal, but it certainly didn't feel normal. I guess there are just a lot of things that need to go "right" for you to make a 12:45 flight. Might be wiser to switch to the later flight, even if it means getting home later that night... that would be better than missing your flight, the 3pm flight is full, and you have to spend the night in California!!

Thanks! That's a good idea to do a side-by-side cruise to extend your trip, especially if you are coming from NJ!

Hahahahahaha that's how I roll!

Oh good!!! I'm so glad you found it helpful (although I imagine a lot had changed between my pre-pandemic cruise and your cruise after the shutdown!)

Eight weeks before our cruise, the Carnival Panorama struggled with engine problems which required the ship be taken out of service and sent to dry dock for immediate repairs. The cruise scheduled that week had a drastically modified itinerary (the ship was moving so slowly that they only had 1 port day in Cabo and the rest of the week was sea days!), and they canceled the next 4 weeks of cruises. The plan was for the ship to go to Oregon for an emergency dry dock, and regular cruises would resume the week of December 9. I felt so horribly for the people booked on those 4 weeks of cruises as they must have been so upset to have their cruises canceled at the last minute (especially those who planned to spend their Thanksgiving holiday on board!), but I was very thankful that our New Year’s Eve cruise would not be affected and we could still enjoy our vacation as planned… or would it?? A week later, John Heald announced that they needed to remove the whale tail from the ship in order to pass under several fixed bridges to reach the dry dock location in Portland, Oregon. This meant they had to cancel 2 more weeks of cruises, and the first cruise back would be the week of December 23, one week before our cruise. It actually turned out that the ship had to travel up to Victoria, Canada to have the whale tail removed, then back down to Oregon for the engine repairs, then return to Canada to have the whale tail re-installed, before coming back down the west coast to Long Beach to resume its normal cruise schedule. This was pushing it too close for comfort, but there was really nothing we could do but keep our fingers crossed and wait it out to see what happened. It was such a stressful few weeks with very limited information available about if the repairs were on schedule. Luckily, we had a very active group on a certain web page (I don’t think I’m allowed to type the actual name here, so you’ll have to fill in the blanks), and people who lived in the Pacific Northwest posted a few photos of the progress visible from the outside. I did not take these photos, and I honestly don’t even know who did take them so I am technically posting them here without permission, but hopefully they don’t mind since they took the photos as a source of information… After the whale tail was removed: When the ship made it safely to the dry dock in Portland, Oregon: A view of the azipods being repaired while the ship was in dry dock: Our best source was information came from one of the people on our cruise page who had a connection to a crew member who was on the ship. He kept her identity private until the very end (after the repairs were finished), but she gave us frequent updates based on whatever information she could find out. Interestingly, Carnival didn’t really update the crew with much information either, so we were all thankful for whatever she could find out for us. The planner in me was going crazy since I did not want to start packing until I knew for sure that the cruise was happening. I didn’t want to jinx anything by packing too soon, so I refused to pull out anything from my closets until the week before we were leaving. Once the ship was sailing south down the west coast with her whale tail reattached, I breathed a huge sigh of relief and finally felt confident that we would be spending New Year’s week aboard the Carnival Panorama! On the Wednesday before the cruise, I got a phone call from the 305 area code. I usually ignore spam calls, but something told me I should answer that call. It was Carnival! They were calling to offer me an “upgrade” from our regular balcony cabin on deck 9 to an Ocean Suite on deck 7 for a $600 upgrade fee. As he was rambling off all the benefits of a suite, I was quickly searching on the Carnival website for more information. The suite was much further aft than our current cabin, almost at the aft elevators, so that wasn’t ideal. I was really hoping this type of suite had a floor plan which would give Ian a separate space to sleep in, or even a walk-in closet or some place big enough to put his crib so he wouldn’t wake us up every night. I wasn’t thrilled about the $600 fee, but if it meant Ian had his own “room” to sleep in, I might have gone for it. Sadly, that is not how the Ocean Suite is layed out, so I couldn’t justify the extra $600 cost and I declined his offer. That was the first time the upgrade fairy ever called me, so it was nice to know I had the possibility of a good deal. Other people from the web page group got much better deals, like $300 to go from a regular interior to a Havana balcony! Now THAT was a good upgrade deal! The rest of that week was a blur, filled with last minute errands and all the packing that I usually do over the course of several weeks. I took Ian for a haircut, and I did my nails for the cruise. Recently, I have been playing around with the nail polish stickers with fun patterns that I could never create for myself, so I thought these were a fun design for New Year’s and the week of the cruise: Before we knew it, our countdown candy jars were empty and it was time to leave for the cruise!

So many ports, so many options of things to do!: So now that we know our ship and our cabin, it’s time to figure out what to do in each port. Pre-child, I prioritized itinerary over ship amenities when choosing a cruise. I loved waking up in a new port every day and having something different and exciting to experience. I really hoped that I could continue that same philosophy when cruising with a toddler, but I knew I’d have to adjust my expectations on what exactly we could do each day. Jason and I used to love going on full day excursions in a small boat to go snorkeling, and we even went scuba diving for the first time on our last cruise in 2019! Unfortunately, that just doesn’t work when cruising with a toddler. Also, my philosophy has always been to avoid booking excursions through the cruise ship. In my experience and based on the comments of other cruisers, they tend to cost more money to see fewer attractions with more people on the tour, and in a shorter time frame than private excursions. With one exception (see the Panama section of my Celebrity Equinox review!), I have had nothing but wonderful experiences working with private tour companies and/or planning a DIY excursion on all of my cruises. Would that still be possible when cruising with a toddler? Toddlers are unpredictable by nature, so I needed to take that into account when planning what we would do each day. At home, Ian is a trooper when we take him along for whatever we have planned on the weekends, so I kept my fingers crossed that he would be so excited in interesting and unfamiliar settings that he would be happy and entertained through whatever we were doing. Here is Ian having a wonderful time at his first professional sporting event, a Phoenix Mercury WNBA game last summer… And here is Ian LOVING a rugged Pink Jeep Tour in Sedona, Arizona: Expectations adjusted, I started looking into our options. I will go into more details on what we did each day as I get to that day of the cruise, but here is a summary of our plans: Cabo: Aquabulle Underwater View Boat to the Arch La Paz: Explore downtown DIY Mazatlan: All-Inclusive Day Pass at Playa Mazatlan Hotel Puerto Vallarta: Vallarta Zoo, then walk along the Malecon Seeing as how I am an obsessive planner, I created a calendar listing our activity for each day of the cruise. We hung this in our cruise cabin, which made it easier to remember what was on the agenda each day. I have made countdown candy jars for all of our previous cruises. The idea is that we eat one piece of candy each night and gradually watch the jar become empty as we get closer to the start of the cruise. Ian is still a little young for this tradition, so I only made it for Jason and myself. It's fun to have a daily reminder of such an exciting vacation coming up!

Thank you! Crazy how fast time flies, right?! Part of me feel like our Dream cruise was forever ago and soooo much has happened since then, but part of me remembers every detail of that trip like it happened yesterday!