lx200gps

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Welcome to Cruise Critic. Since you are sailing Carnival, that means you will be sailing out of Long Beach, a very nice area but a good haul from LAX. We've stayed there a few times though we sail from nearby San Pedro on Princess. It has a great selection of hotels, restaurants etc but checking Tripadvisor for your date of 19-20 Jan, it's a pretty pricey time and the usual nice hotels, like the Hyatt and the Renaissance are outrageously expensive, particularly for us Canadians, though there are some decent deals at the top of your price range. Given the price of hotels down there, we've taken to staying Torrance, on a direct line about half way between LAX and both Long Beach and San Pedro. There are a lot of good intermediate type hotels (Marriott Courtyard, Hilton Doubletree etc) as well as the huge Del Amo mall. We travel to the half-way point in Torrance the day before sailing, then Uber down to the ship on embarkation day. In fact, we did it two weeks ago and will be back down there in Feb. As a final crazy idea, look into staying on the Queen Mary. It's a very interesting place to visit, right next to where you will be sailing from, and the hotel recently re-opened. We stayed there a few years ago, it's a very interesting experience

FWIW, we at in the Crown Grill on the Discovery within a few days of the OP's incident, probably Oct 9, and had the offending Lobster Cake as well. To the best of our recollection, it was a lobster cake, surrounded by the tarragon foam, asparagus and a puree which tasted like olives, but no whole olives visible. Neither of us remember having an actual olive on the plate but an olive pit could have hidden in the puree. To the best of our recollection, it was pretty much like this:

No problem. It happens that we just flew home out of LAX last week, and our taxi drove down Century Blvd right past our upcoming hotel, the Hyatt. Century Blvd is heavily built up but there's not much in the way of restaurants. I don't even remember seeing any fast food emporiums let alone decent restaurants.

We're in a somewhat similar situation for our next trip into LAX this coming Feb, though our problem is that we are arriving very late into LAX rather than flying out very early as you are. Still, we chose to stay at one of the close airport hotels on Century Blvd. rather than try to get all the way down to San Pedro that time of night. We selected the Hyatt Regency, both because it was, surprisingly, one of the cheapest options for an airport hotel and because it is physically the closest hotel to the airport proper, and also has a 24/7 shuttle. As to your requirement for restaurants, that may be a problem as Century Blvd is a wasteland for that sort of thing, you may need an Uber from any local hotel to a selection restaurants.

We flew an AC 737 Max 8 from YUL to LAX and back just last week. While yes, it's a narrow body aircraft with a 3 and 3 configuration, the baggage bins were pretty much the largest bins I've ever seen. These bins were so large that carry-on bags are inserted standing on their sides rather than flat, thereby allowing more bags to be placed overhead. Of course that didn't stop MANY pax from bringing three or even four carry on items on board. One gentleman in Business up front carried on board a MASSIVE backpack easily 3' long and far bigger in every dimension than technically allowed, but the staff let him place it over head and it fit easily

Thanks for the feedback. A 10 or 15 minute walk is nothing for us, so it sounds like there are plenty of options. I had also noticed that there is a covered parking garage nearby as well, do you have any experience with that one? Even though we'll be sailing in July, the idea of a covered garage is appealing to us.

Thanks for the feedback and advice folks. Once SWMBO has chosen our cabin, I'll be contacting our hard-working TA and have her book it for us. Interestingly, when I scan the available Deluxe Balconies using the "3 passenger hack", it only shows Category DB as selectable, the other categories (DA, DD etc) do not show. Perhaps the other categories that are the ones Princess keep in their back pocket for upgrades, 3 or more pax, families etc?

My go-to drinks are the Chairman of the Board (3X Vodka, 3X gin, 1X Cointreau) or Ian Flemings's original James Bond martini from Casino Royale, the Vesper (1X Vodka, 3X Gin, 1/2X Kina Lillet) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesper_(cocktail) When I make a COTB here at home with the exact formulation above, it compares pretty well with what I received in a number of bars on the Discovery last week.

Question for those who had endured the hard mattresses on the Discovery: did you have the beds configured "normally" as a queen, or did you, like us, have Stewart split the beds into two singles? Is it possible that those who kept the beds together had a soft topper on the queen configuration, but those of us who had them split into singles did not have a topper as Princess didn't have a soft topper for the singles. Perhaps that's why some of us who felt the beds on the Discovery were too hard (and ours were), while others had no such complaint

We're thinking of booking either a Deluxe or PD Balcony on the Regal. As we know, when searching the Princess site, it's not possible to select your cabin in these two categories as they show as Guarantee only. We're extremely picky about cabin location so won't accept a Guarantee The well known work around is to put 3 passengers in the selection field then the cabin maps show which cabins are available. Q: Is it only Princess reps who can book one of these cabins for us (since we can't do it online), or can our long-time TA do it for us by contacting Princess? IOW if we tell our TA which cabin we want, will she be able to book it for us, or am I required to contact Princess myself? Thanks in advance for any advice and personal experience with this ;o)

I'm not really sure the mattresses we had on the Discovery were worn out, the ship is too new and the mattresses felt too hard to be old and worn out. I think they are just cheap, rock hard mattresses, not the famous Princess mattresses. Perhaps they just couldn't get the correct ones when they outfitted the ship, so they had to use whatever they could get and bought them in bulk from the lumber department at Lowes or Home Depot ;o)

Absolutely have to agree with the OP on this one. We disembarked off the Discovery a week ago. The beds in our Mini were hard as a rock, and nowhere near as comfortable as what we remember from other Princess ships. We'd been on the Sky three times and Enchanted once "post-COVID" and remember the beds as being the great, comfortable Princess beds we've all known for years. No idea why the beds in our cabin on the Discovery were like granite, but they were.

It was also gone off the Discovery a few weeks ago. I also noticed that the IC no longer offers any salads. I used to like the Waldorf.

The OP is almost certainly referring to the Lobster Cake at the Crown Grill. Coincidentally we also ate there on the same sailing as the OP a few weeks ago, though came away with no dental trauma. FWIW the CG menu does say the dish contains olive, though IIRC from what we had, it's not SUPPOSED to be in the cake but in the surrounding accompaniment. I personally like the Lobster Cake and have it any time we eat in the CG Mediterranean-Style Spiny Lobster Cake, Tarragon Foam, cured olives, grilled asparagus

We flew home to YUL a few days ago from SP. Did the early walk-off and found a bunch of taxis waiting for passengers, didn't even need to call an Uber. We were at T6/Air Canada by 8:30 for our 12:30 flight (gotta love the Maple Leaf Lounge ;o). Note that the traffic jam inside LAX took almost as long as the drive up from SP, traffic at LAX is horrible.

We disembarked there a few days ago. The GE line is no longer necessary as they use facial recognition. Walk up to the camera, it scans your face and when the green light goes off, you walk away.

Thanks very much for the update. We're going to be sailing from Boston for the first time next summer, and this seems to be the best option for us as well. Q: how big is this lot and assuming we are early arrivers (say 9AM), will we possibly have any issues finding a spot? This appears to be the site: https://www.parkwithabm.com/c1-parking-lot?utm_source=gmb&utm_medium=5terminalstreet&utm_campaign=google Interestingly, the link on that page says: Cruise ship parking must be purchased online

I only have a single data point, but two weeks ago sailing out of SF southbound to San Diego, we experienced very high winds and heavy seas for most of the day after leaving SF. That being said, our ship, the Discovery Princess, had superb stabilization, and even my normally hyper-seasick-sensitive wife was amazed at how well the ship handled the motion.

I vaguely recollect that a number of other Canadian Travel Insurance companies also offer CFAR coverage as an option, albeit at moderately higher cost. I believe that Manulife was one such company. It wasn't very obvious on their site, but it was available and only covered 75-80%, not the 100% that Princess did. IIRC other companies that offered CFAR also only went as far as 80% as well.

Therein lies a big part of the current problem. Many folks board an airplane with the two "legal" items, a carry-on bag and a so-called personal item, then proceed to put BOTH items in the overhead bin when the rule is that the personal item is supposed to go under the seat in front. I routinely see people shove even three items in the bins rather than face losing the miniscule amount of legroom in regular economy class.

I'd love to know what happens when the airline tries to force a passenger to give up their bag for forced checking. What happens if the passenger refuses? I'm pretty sure the airline does have the power to do it, given the Ts and Cs of the passenger contract on the ticket. That being said, every time we've flown in the last year (maybe 8 times?), the airline has tried to get passengers to give up some bags, but even the very last passengers boarding in Zone 5 are still coming on board with two, even three carry-ons, leading me to think the forced handover is never actually carried out.

In general, the checking of bags at the jetway with return to the jetway after the flight, was/is typically only done for the small aircraft like RJs and Dash 8s, where the baggage bins are far too small in size and number to accommodate all the carry-ons of today. I can't remember ever seeing it happen on the larger aircraft (737 and above), especially when bags are loaded into containers.

As a starting point, try Trinity Reservations: https://www.trinityreservations.com/