I always fly out for cruises since most have been European or Asian (I've only done 9), but right before the pandemic, I had some time off. I decided to take a solo cruise and skip the flight since I live in Los Angeles and have a port at driving distance. I booked a cruise to Ensenada on the Miracle and I was shocked at how bad of a time I had! The ship seemed like it was falling apart, the food was steps below other ships, the people were rude and aggressive... I didn't let it ruin my trip, but was just shocked as this single experience had tainted my idea that all cruises were amazing. I took another one about a year later on the Radiance and it was the same thing! I learned that booze cruises are not what I'm into.
Now here we are years later and my wife and I decided to introduce some of our family to cruising. We were thinking of taking a small group somewhere like New Orleans, or New York and doing a cruise from there. But as we asked who would be interested we were surprised to see how many signed up...now with 15 people on board, we decided we should keep it simple and just have everyone drive down to Long Beach... you can see where this is going LOL!
So obviously the Panorama is much newer and larger. But I have been hyping up cruises to my family and now that I will be taking 15 of them on one, I'm starting to get nervous. I'm concerned that the issues are more based on itinerary, locals (I'm from LA so I understand how "animated" we can be), or maybe even Carnival (most of my cruises have been RCL). But to be fair the other two ships were short 3-4 day cruises on old smaller ships. Our upcoming one will be 7 day on a newer larger ship. So I'm 95% positive it will be a closer experience to what I'm used to on my 11 day RCL cruises, but wanted to hear from others who have sailed out of long beach on these ships. I just need help going from 95% to 100%! LOL
Either way I'm sure we will make the best of it and enjoy ourselves.