We traveled on the Diamond Princess to the Mexican Riviera on March 31 to April 7, 2007. We are a married couple in our mid-forties. This was our third cruise. The first was a 7-day Western Caribbean on Carnival, and the second was a 7-day Alaskan Inside Passage on Holland America . I work for the school board and we typically travel during school holidays, thus, our reason for being on the Diamond during spring break. Although we felt there were too many kids on our Carnival cruise, we are willing to travel with Carnival again. There were not many kids on Holland America, and although we had been told we were too young for HAL, the passengers were not as old as we had been led to believe. We loved everything about Holland America! I told the Princess rep this on the phone, and informed her that we would be using our Mexican Riviera cruise with Princess to determine if we were HAL or Princess people. I was assured that we would love Princess. I said it would have to be spectacular to beat HAL, and it wasn't even close!

We flew into Long Beach the day before the cruise and took a cab to the Doubletree Hotel in San Pedro. We had a marina view room. This is a very nice hotel that I would definitely recommend. We took the hotel's free shuttle to the port the next morning, and were at the terminal around 11:20. A porter greeted us as soon as we got off the shuttle, and our luggage was on its way. We walked straight into the terminal, walked right up to the front of the Non-US Residents line, and checked in. As Canadians, and after reading about Princess charging a 3% surcharge to change your shipboard account to the currency of the country of your credit card, I had checked off the box that I did NOT want my charges converted. After all, my Canadian bank will do it for me at no extra charge. We spoke to both reps, and the fact that we were Canadian was mentioned more than once. Not once was this little, and I mean little, box mentioned by them, and I did not feel the need to point out that I had checked it. We were checked in and given a card with the number 3, and told to go wait in the waiting area, as boarding would begin at noon. Due to Customs and Immigration, boarding began at around 12:20 and we were soon called and on the ship shortly before 1 pm.

We were going to be celebrating our 27th anniversary while onboard, so we ordered a Deluxe Anniversary Package. I tried to do everything I could online before our cruise, but found I was unable to book the spa treatments that went with our package. I e-mailed my Princess contact and was told that I could not order these treatments until we were onboard because we had not paid for our package yet. This was a surprise to me since our TA said she had ordered it for us and we paid for it with our final payment a few days after Christmas! Our TA had to speak to three different Princess reps before one of them agreed that our package was paid for! Our TA asked that a breakdown of our invoice be faxed to her immediately. I was filled with anxiety for a month before we stepped foot on the ship about this issue. I carried a copy of that invoice with me to be certain it wasn't on my shipboard account. Once onboard we went to the Purser's desk and explained the situation and asked if it was showing as paid or unpaid. I told him I had been very concerned about this for the past month. The young man who was helping us did not help matters when he looked at the computer screen very seriously and very intensely before laughing and telling me it was already paid. Very funny! Read more