Monday, April 8, 2019. Disembarkation, Los Angeles

Monday, April 8, 2018.  Disembarkation Los Angeles

The skyline of Los Angeles greeted us out our balcony at 6AM. The Griffith Park Observatory was visible at the top of the hill overlooking the cruise ship port.  We had our breakfast in the restaurant, rather than the buffet since we had some time before we had to be out of our stateroom.  Then we brushed our teeth and packed up the toothbrush bag into our carry-on and headed for our disembarkation lounge.  There was a regular disembarkation lounge, which was the Crown Grill restaurant.  While we were sitting there, an announcement was made inviting Platinum and Elite members to use the Elite disembarkation lounge with “Its Benefits”, so we left the Crown Grill and headed to the Club Fusion, only to find the Elite disembarkation lounge more crowded.  They did have pastries, but we had already had breakfast, so that really wasn’t much of an upgrade over the regular lounge.  We did have to wait almost 2 hours for our luggage and airport transfer bus to hit the curbside.  Once we filed off the ship, everything went smoothly except that the airport transfer bus’s air conditioning wasn’t working, making for a very hot and uncomfortable 100 minute trip to LAX from the cruise ship terminal. Ben filed a complaint with Princess customer relations, and got the transfer refunded with an apology from the customer relations representative.  He said they were getting quite a few similar complaints related to that bus transfer, which he said was fortunately a rare occurrence.

Looking back at this trip and itinerary, it was an enjoyable and interesting way to get to Hawaii, but it was too bad we didn’t have any overnight stays in our Hawaiian ports of call.  There were quite a few days at sea getting there, and even more getting back. We certainly were kept busy with trivia games and shows.  There were also plenty of lectures, ballroom dance classes, hula and ukulele lessons, pop choir and other activities that we could have opted to do, but didn’t because we were plenty busy just playing trivia.  There was an egg drop and airplane toss that we also passed on, but in the future, Ben would like to enter the egg drop with a Kamakaze egg just to see a good 3 story SPLAT!!  The audience really want’s to see some spilled yolk.  It was a little like summer camp for grown ups, but in our opinion, there were just a few too many days at sea.  They need to relocate Easter Island a few thousand miles north to halfway between Los Angeles and Hawaii. But the Pacific crossing by cruise ship is certainly more comfortable and relaxing than flying if you’re not in a hurry.

We did come home with a pile of loot from our trivia game wins which were mostly Ruby Princess silicone coasters and Princess wine bottle stoppers, which will likely be gifts for our neighbors come Christmas time.  We’re ready for Princess to come out with some new prizes, and would like to see more useful items like key card holder lanyards, neck wallets and carabiners, or coupons for a drink.

It won’t be long before our next cruise, which will be to Alaska from Seattle on the Star Princess.  She is an older sibling to the Ruby Princess who is scheduled to transfer to P&O Lines after completion of this Alaska season.  Hopefully, she won’t be too old or tired to serve us towards the end of May.