We booked this trip for our 20th wedding anniversary. This was our 2nd cruise. Our first was on the NCL Star back in 2007 to Alaska. We are in our early 40's. We live in Southern Oregon so we flew in the day before our cruise. Our flight left at 7:00am so got to the airport around 5am. By 5:05am we had our luggage checked and our passes ready. There was no one else in line. We were suppose to board at 6:40am but the plane was not there yet. Luckily at 6:50am our plane landed and since it was empty we got to board immediately. After de-icing the wings we were on our way by 7:10am. We ended up landing in L.A. right on time. Next to collect our luggage then off to catch the shuttle to our hotel in Long Beach. After waiting for a bit my DH called the hotel to discover they do not offer hotel shuttle service. When I made the reservations I asked about getting from LAX to Long Beach and they told me they had a shuttle. So we were stranded at the airport. No biggie. We were just excited to be there. So we jumped into a taxi and headed to Long Beach. Got stuck in some traffic but finally got to the hotel.

Hotel Info pre cruise-We booked a room at the Hyatt Regency Long Beach. The hotel was beautiful. The best part was waking up Sunday morning and looking out the window and see the ship waiting for us. The only minus about the hotel was we had to pay for internet. We paid over $200 a night to stay there and was surprised that if we wanted to use the internet it was an additional $9.95. We checked into the hotel around 10:30am and after having breakfast went to take a much needed nap. After our nap we went out and explored the harbor area. We did find a great spot that offered a bucket of beer(5) for $10. Sunday morning we woke up to beautiful blue sky. After breakfast we made a quick trip to Wal-Mart for last minute supplies and snacks. Back to the hotel to gather our stuff and checked out of the hotel. No service to the cruise terminal either, so we took a cab to the terminal which was about $6.50. As soon as we opened the doors to the cab the luggage porters were waiting. Even thought our luggage was put into the same cart to be loaded onto the ship mine arrived shortly after the rooms were ready and my DH came several hours later. We got in line at 11:30am and were on the ship by noon. There was hundreds of people in line. We booked a category 11 suite which gave us VIP boarding so we got to skip several of the lines.

Stateroom-Since this was our 20th wedding anniversary we splurged and got a category 11 room with a wrap about deck. Cabin #7347. The cabin was beautiful. The bedroom was entirely enclosed. The bathroom was big and spacious with 2 sinks. The only thing bad about the bathroom was they had no outlets to plug anything into too. The hair dryer was located in the desk drawer. There was only one additional outlet available on the desk. The room also had 2 tv's. The wrap around balcony was wonderful. We spent every night out there watching the stars. The only bad thing about the balcony was people from the higher decks would flick their ashes overboard and land on our chairs and balcony. So we had to put towels on the chairs so we could sit and not get ashes on our clothes. Our room servant was very nice and kept the room clean. At night they would turn down the bed and leave a new towel animal every night. Read more