The Diamond Princess is an absolutely beautiful ship with plenty of room for all those on board.
Now that I've given you the headline, let me start at the beginning. DW and I cruised on the Diamond Princess to the Mexican Riviera in mid April. Coming from the cold Northeast we were looking forward to some warm sunny weather. We arrived in Los Angeles the day before our cruise. We had pre-booked a ride with Super Shuttle to transport us to our hotel stay at the DoubleTree in San Pedro. We thought both were a good value, although pre-booking our shuttle ride was not necessary. The DoubleTree proved to be an excellent choice as the accommodations were good (nice bed) and they did provide us with a free ride to the dock to start our cruise. We would stay there again.
Embarkation: We arrived around 10am and quickly went through the embarkation process... the lines were almost non existent and because we had filled out all of our info on-line before our trip... the process was a breeze... However, after checking in we waited, and waited, and waited to board the ship. Like other posters have stated, before they can begin boarding, they must make sure everyone has disembarked on the prior cruise. Oh well, we finally got on the ship around 1pm.