Be forewarned this is a little lengthy, but I wanted to cover the tours as well as the ship itself.

Flights & Hotels:

We flew from Dulles to LAX non-stop the evening before the cruise. Because I was trying to do the best pricing, we had a really late flight arriving LAX at 1:00AM. I was amazed by the lack of cabs, but fortunately, was able to call the Marriott and the shuttle showed up really quickly, so we were at the hotel less than 30 minutes after retrieving our luggage. I like Marriott and still have a little juice with them, so it's to our advantage to use them when we travel. I made my own arrangements for a shared shuttle from the hotel to the cruise terminal at San Pedro for $50.00 for the two of us. While we were standing outside waiting for the shuttle, which was almost an hour late after repeated calls to the shuttle company, the hotel bell captain told me that they could have arranged a car service for the same price. I won't make that mistake again. Fortunately, the trip to the cruise terminal was less than 30 minutes, so no harm no foul; just annoyance. On our return, we booked a flight for mid-afternoon (2:20PM) on the recommendation of our travel agent because of possible delays getting to the airport as well as getting through U.S. customs. As it turned out, customs was a breeze. I have heard horror stories about U.S. customs in Toronto taking several hours to clear, but we were through Vancouver in less than 10 minutes from start to finish. Just like a U.S. airport except you need to turn in a customs form and get your passport stamped for re-entry to the U.S. Embarkation/Debarkation: Read more