What a wonderful cruise!! We arrived in LA three days early and stayed with family who happen to live five minutes from World Cruise Center in San Pedro. Since we are from LA and are now transplanted to Minnesota, the weather was a treat to these cold bodies. Temps were in the sixties and the sun really does exist. After a drive and dinner at Knotts, we slept the sleep of the just.

On Saturday we drove down to see the ships in port that day. We saw the Monarch of the Seas, a big ship but looks older. You can drive into the parking lot across from the pier (the Catalina tour) and have free parking for one hour. Its a wonderful place to see the ships in port.

Embarkation -- The next day, Sunday, we arrived at the pier about 11:00am. The gate keepers waved us away (there were three ships in port that morning, (Island Princess, Vision of the Seas and the Star) and would not allow us to enter, even the buses were turned away at 11:00am. We went to the parking lot for Catalina and took some pictures. Forget this we said and went back to the gate and told them we needed to be dropped off now. They told us to wait at a restaurant until 1:00pm. Okay, we entered the area and saw others taking luggage out of cars and decided to do the same. We pulled up to the curb and behold a worker came and helped us unload the luggage and took it onboard the ship. We did have to wait about 10 minutes for the terminal to open but that was fine. They opened the doors and we were in the second group, had chairs to sit and wait. About 15 minutes later we were called for check in. since we were in a penthouse, we were told to wait in an area for an escort. A couple of minutes later were escorted to security, went through that process and were escorted to our cabin, all the escorting by our butler, Roy. The total time from 11:00 am arrival to being in our cabin, maybe 30 minutes. Read more