Mack and I were joined on our 8th cruise by two of his children, Ashley 16 and Nick soon to be 10. This was their first cruise. Ryan, the 13 year-old had to be cancelled 8 days before the cruise. Not exactly sure how much we will be refunded, the Carnival documents say 50%, of what we still have not figured out.
The weather in Long Beach was cold and misting rain. Before I continue I need to clarify that cold to us is anything below 70. Temps that day were in the mid 60's. We only live 90 minutes from the port so we drove over the morning of the cruise. We arrived at the terminal around 11:00 and unloaded the car. At this point a porter greeted us and took our bags to be checked. Mack parked "Big Red" ($10 per day) and then we were off to do early check-in at the Queen Mary. We were done in less than 10 minutes. I would highly recommend this if you can arrive before noon, also take advantage of the discounted tour of the Queen Mary, only $6 and it includes the ghost tour. We purchased our tickets in the small building between the dome and the Queen Mary. This is also the same building you can have your carry-on luggage held, for free. We toured the Queen Mary until about 1:30. Once finished we picked up our carry on stuff went over to the dome and went through security. At that point we were able to board the ship while those who had not done the early check-in waited in a VERY long line. We were in our cabin before 2:00.
The ship is beautiful and clean. We had booked two category 8A guarantees and received an upgrade to 8F's. Although one of my only complaints regarding the Spirit Class ship is the lack of connecting cabins I was pleased that maintenance came and opened our balcony partition the second day. This was done after a simple request to the purser and a comment to our cabin steward. In essence we now had connecting cabins, it was great and very convenient.