Our first cruise, on Carnivals Tropical was to the Mexican Riviera in 1981. Some things change and some stay the same. Back then I got about 70 pesos for my greenbacks, now only about 12. That's a big change. Mexico was a beautiful country 29 years ago and I am happy to say it is still the same.
We live in Phoenix and took a 6 hour drive over to Long Beach, spent the night at the Holiday Inn. Got the room on Priceline for $65. Nice room, clean and friendly staff. They have a "Park & Cruise" deal, but will not take you to San Pedro. They are about ten miles from the San Pedro Cruise Port. In the morning we stopped by Denny's for their $2 breakfast special that ends up costing $10 for two. Didn't want to eat too much as we were looking forward to lunch aboard the Star. Drove over to the Star and dropped of our heavy luggage. We had made arrangements to park at a friends place just a short distance from the ship.
We walked in and declared two 1.5 liter bottles of wine and they put a stamp on each bottle. Said they would charge our on board account a $15 corkage fee for each. Check in was fast and then we were given a boarding group number and waited about 30 minutes before we were on the Star. Too early for lunch. Decided to check out our cabin, a BA balcony aft overlooking everywhere the ship had been. Cabin was exactly the same as we had on the NCL Spirit and there was a coffee pot, no frig. Met our Steward's (Roberto and Sebastian), nice boys that did a great job for us. They always greeted us by name and they were always willing to do a little extra to please.