lx200gps

We disembarked off the Discovery Princess at SP in late October, heading to LAX for an 11:55 flight home. We did the early self walk-off, grabbed a taxi and were at LAX in half an hour. Note that the traffic at LAX was so bad that it took us longer to get from the start of the driveway into LAX to our terminal, than it did to get from San Pedro to LAX itself. But as Steve says, a 12:55 flight should be quite do-able, and if you want, you shouldn't have to do an early self walk-off and schlepp your bags off the ship, you should have plenty of time to do a "normal" disembarkation.

Technically, there are three entrances into Take 5. The "main" entrance is off the Piazza and is close to the entrance to the casino. The other entrance is at the back of Take 5 and ends up near the forward elevators. The third, often overlooked, entrance is FROM the casino into Take 5 but is rarely used. If you are hyper sensitive to the smell from the casino, it's theoretically possible to catch a very faint waft from the casino when someone opens that door. We spend a lot of time in Take 5 and can say that the stench of smoke from the casino isn't a problem at all, unlike what we notice in the open Piazza near the casino.

We've frequented Take 5 on the Enchanted, Sky and most recently the Discovery in October. It's usually very empty during the day and is always our go-to quiet place on sea days. Given its location tucked away next to the casino and the absence of through traffic moving from one end of the ship to the other, it's almost as if few passengers even know it's there. Great seating for two right on the ocean. During the day, no bar service, and it is used occasionally for lectures, loud games etc, by the entertainment staff. Bar opens around 4 IIRC. In the evenings it's a great venue for live music. I don't recollect any other music than Jazz, maybe others can chime in on what other types of music they have.

I guess we'll all have to agree to disagree. As Canadians, we're necessarily very attuned to the costs due to our weak dollar, and for us, the ease of driving down to Manhattan or Brooklyn will ALWAYS override the complexity, cost and impracticality of taking public transport, be it rail or air. Have a great trip...

If you're referring to the Renaissance on 17th street near the Eisenhower St entrance to Port Everglades, that's our usual go-to hotel as well, stayed there many times. When asking about hotels it's best to specify the date you are interested in, as hotel prices down there vary a HUGE amount from month to month. Low season, the 17th Street strip is a great option with the best location, but in high season, due to its proximity to the cruise port, prices can be absolutely outrageous.

AFAIK, that's only 200 miles, a very easy drive. Is there a reason why you wouldn't want to simply drive the few hours between Boston and the MCT? I would consider it FAR easier to drive over taking a train, and certainly preferable over enduring the hell of modern air travel.

It's pretty obvious that VT's pricing relative to the Hyatt direct pricing is all over the map. All of the above examples are quite correct, sometimes VT is MORE expensive than going direct to Hyatt, while other times it's far less expensive. I reconfirmed my earlier post and for our mid-October 2024 stay, VT is $129 and the Hyatt site wants $540. Clearly we should check around and not just assume VT will always be cheaper; usually it is, sometimes it isn't

I believe that the general answer would be yes and no. Some airline/credit card perqs, such as your free bags, priority check in and/or boarding, etc probably would still apply, assuming you make the EZ-Air booking and pay with that specific Mastercard. Some other perqs, however, probably would not work. One example that comes to mind is our Air Canada/Aeroplan Buddy Pass, where my wife flies anywhere in North America for $99. That has to be applied at the time of booking on Aeroplan's web site and even has a separate department inside AC that deal with them. I doubt I would be able to apply it if I booked with EZ-Air as the option would not exist, the booking has to be made directly with Aeroplan.

FWIW, we use the big cruise TA that has both on-line and storefront services. We met our personal TA at one of their pre-pandemic cruise seminars and she's been our rep ever since, probably 6 or 7 years. All our bookings are done exclusively through her, sometimes over the phone, sometimes on line, sometimes right in her office. She deals with the cruise lines if and when it is necessary, and I can't remember the last time I had to sit on hold forever trying to reach a cruise line rep.

Agree, but the meet and greets, LGTBQ meets, quiet lectures etc are usually not an issue for us. Often they only use half the Take 5 floor space (as we know, it's sort of a two area design anyway) so we often just sat in the unused area minding our own business and never had a problem. What WAS problematic, at least for us, was when they used it occasionally during the day for games such as bowling. A few times we had to leave for an hour to escape the screaming and yelling, but this is rare. Otherwise it's as quiet as a library, and wonderfully peaceful. The OP was wondering about using it as a pre-dinner venue and even at that time, it's not usually as full as other venues like Crooners.

That's great to hear, thanks very much. We very much love using Take 5 on sea days, sitting at those amazing big comfortable window seats watching the sea flow by, and we missed having daytime bar service in Take 5 on our sailings. I'm glad they offer it on the Discovery.

Thanks for the confirmation. When you say the Take 5 bar was open early on sea days, what time was that? On the Sky, it was closed every day until around 4PM, even on sea days. As we'll be back on the Discovery in Feb, it will be nice to have it open longer. Re the tournament, Take 5 was closed the week were aboard to set up for the tournament, to our huge disappointment, then also closed the week after for the tournament itself. IIRC, it re-opened the week after though some equipment, as you say, was still installed. Glad to hear they had been completely removed.

We use the big TA that offers the yearly "3 Day Sale" Their pricing is identical to Princess's but during their sale they offer decent extra OBC, for a 7 day trip in a balcony it's usually $US400 for the two of us.

We use Take 5 as our go to place on sea days for peace and quiet as it is usually deserted, it's almost as if few passengers know it's there. It was physically open all day, but the bar only opens around 4PM IIRC. It's theoretically possible to use "The App" to order drinks to be brought in, but our experience was hit or miss, sometimes the drinks we ordered never arrived. Pre-dinner drinks should be possible even with their opening at 4PM, and it would be lot quieter than the other alternative, Crooner's. Princess is using the Piazza for a lot of VERY loud events, and when we were on the Discovery in October, at times we had to shout at the waiters to be understood. Take 5 is a wonderfully peaceful venue in comparison. When we were in Take 5 on the Sky earlier in the year, the bar featured a rolling "Gin and Tonic" cart, with a variety of very interesting Gins, most of which I had never heard of. Sadly, when we were on the Discovery recently, it was closed for the entire week for a slot machine tournament. AFAIK that was a one time thing and it has since re-opened.

We regularly use the Sanctuary, and have never been charged a penny for the items on the Sanctuary menu when the meal was delivered inside the Sanctuary. Can't speak to ordering items from elsewhere on the ship, like the pool grill, certainly wouldn't want to do it given how good the Sanctuary menu is, but I would expect that a charge might apply in that case.

Princess actually have small "boutiques" on the ships selling a variety of add-on items for carrying/wearing the Medallion. For those who want to wear it on their wrist, there are a number of Princess options, but also others have reported that the wrist straps for Apple Air Tags also work. This is an example of just a few of the accessories available, for those who like to do bling (and yes, the medallion holders we use do have a Canadian flag ;o)

They're small medallions about the size of a Toonie. Passengers receive a lanyard to hold them, or you can simply put them in your pocket as I do. They basically replace the old style cruise cards for on board purchases etc, but add a lot more functionality when combined with the onboard network.

Consider yourself lucky, we had to endure an intolerable TWO minutes when we went to collect our disks last month in San Pedro. The things we paying passengers have to endure ;o)

Excellent, thanks for the confirmation. No worries about the points, we almost always go Marriott due to my status, but in this case, the VT price is so good we're happy to go Hyatt ;o)

We've done that at the HP a few times, but we now tend to use Uber on embarkation morning, faster and easier, no need to visit other terminals before being dropped off. ;o)

Perfect, thanks. Will the booking show up on the Hyatt site when I log in to my account, and so In the unlikely event of us having to cancel, can I do it on the Hyatt site or do I actually have to call the hotel?

We haven't used Valuetrips in a number of years, but I do recollect it was a great deal back then. I just started looking for hotels for our mid-Oct 2024 trip, and hotel prices shown on the 17th Street strip are VERY high during that period. Our usual Renaissance is about $US370 all in, the Hyatt website shows the Hyatt Place as $US500!!!, while VT shows a price of $US119 + extras, a significant savings. Please refresh my memory, do VT require payment in advance upon booking, or is the credit card simply used as a guarantee and is only charged at the time of the stay? Thx...

We're also Elite and make a point of being literally among the very first to board, just to try and snag decent Sanctuary seating. Sadly, the last few times we tried we were shut out. We only wanted sea days and can only take full shade loungers, which are in the minority on the newer big ships. Those constraints, as well as the fact that B2Bers get to board first and so are able to get upstairs before any of us newly arriving passengers, mean that we are finding it increasingly difficult to book our favorite location on the ship. On one of our last sailings, on the Sky last fall, the B2bers on the previous trip were given the option of booking the Sanctuary on the NEXT sailing, which was ours. Since there were literally hundreds of them, the Sanctuary was completely full and sold out before any of us newly arriving passengers even boarded.

True, but the so-called "destination pricing" is quite rare. Certain Alaska days and possibly certain Panama Canal passage days. Other than those few days, pricing is always $20/$30/$40/$220, every ship, every itinerary

Thanks very much, sounds like our arrival around 9AM on a Sunday would also be easy. I'll definitely be contacting them ahead of time. Greenland and Iceland would be right up there as a top bucket list trip for sure, but this trip is a Canada/New England on Princess, as we're limited to short-duration trips for now. This will be our first ever sailing out of Boston, though we've through there many times on our way to the Cape.