The Long Road to Cabo, a Carnival Panorama Review: Day 1 – Chicago to Los Angelesfeatured
I love the first day of new trips. Don’t get me wrong — they’re stressful and the combination of pre-trip stress and my usual anxiety is borderline intolerable — but there’s just something about that delicious anticipation of great things to come. It’s like blank notebook or a fresh start — completely unwritten and brim with delicious anticipation.
We were hoping to go to Europe for Christmas. Of course, like everyone else, at the beginning of the pandemic we couldn’t have anticipated that this is where we’d be nearly two years later, but we were hopeful that we’d see some return to normalcy. We did for a little while — we went to Paris literally the week after travel restrictions reopened. And I had an incredible impromptu long weekend in Copenhagen. We took an Alaska cruise and even though we were convinced cruising would be further off, we went and it was wonderful. So it felt more normal-ish, but not normal enough to plan on a holiday-time getaway to another continent. I’d been working like mad since September and I needed a solid respite. Not necessarily a lay-on-the-beach-and-do-nothing kind of respite, just an I-need-to-not-be-here-for-awhile-and-be-anywhere-else kind of respite. Something I could count on to tick down the days towards as I wrestled my usual Q4 burnout. And with the ever-evolving state of Covid, I couldn’t count on Europe not banning American travelers again. The week I left for Copenhagen, the EU recommended that its nations ban American travelers because European travelers still weren’t welcome (at that point) to enter the USA and the stress it caused, you guys, of trying to figure out if my trip would happen, or not, or what would happen if I got stuck in Finland on my way to Denmark and…that was some uncertainty I was not willing to deal with over the holidays. This trip was my rainbow at the end of a very long storm.
At first, we were looking at maybe just going to an all-inclusive in Mexico or the DR for a week. Or Hawaii. Mom was really aching to go on a cruise, though. She hadn’t been on a cruise since our Horizon inaugural in 2018 and to say she was missing the open seas would be a drastic understatement. Stephanie found a great deal on a Mexican Riviera cruise out of Long Beach on the Panorama and it just ticked a lot of boxes: we could go to LA for a couple of days, the Panorama is a new, very modern ship and cruising to Mexico felt like more of a safe bet than Europe, anyways.
It also ticked another box: this Christmas marked the ten year anniversary of my grandma’s passing. If you’ve read any of my older cruise journals, we started cruising way back in 2004 on my school breaks and my grandma — she loved cruising with us probably more than anything. In 2006, we went on this incredible vacation where we did a Mexican Riviera cruise on the Carnival Pride and then did a whirlwind post-cruise vacation to Disneyland and Beverly Hills. It was one of her favorites and one of mine, too, and the idea of marking the ten year anniversary of her passing by recreating that trip a bit just felt…right? Aside obscene airfare that probably cost as much as a flight to Europe would have anyways, everything else just fell into place.
Chicago was entering one of its (many) manic weather phases where it was cold and then unseasonably warm and then the winds kicked in and shook all those allergens up around, which meant it was prime time to get away. With Omicron spreading and a fun game of “is this seasonal allergies, a cold or Covid” knocking on my door, stress levels were high up until the day we left. I got tested just about daily because I was so paranoid I’d get it and ruin Mom and Stephanie’s vacation. I needed a day to just breathe so I took an extra day off before we left while Mom and Stephanie worked their normal hours. I slept in, got my free Sausage McMuffin (thanks, Mariah girl!), took the longest shower ever and then went to the spa and got my brows touched up. I packed, I relaxed, I tried not to think about the ways American Airlines (could, and historically has) messed with our trip.
Our flight wasn’t until 7:30 PM, but let me tell you something about my mother: I’m pretty sure she’d go to the airport 12 hours early if we’d let her. She lives 20 minutes away from O’Hare, we all have TSA Pre-Check and Stephanie and I both have status on American (which carries over to Mom since we book her tickets so she can get the free bags and extra legroom seats, too). We could leave two and a half hours before a flight and have plenty of time to meander through Terminal 3 but that’s just not sensible for her. So we left for our evening flight at 2:30 PM, a good five hours early for our domestic, run of the mill flight to the left coast.
And per usual, it took us 20 minutes to get to the airport, and even after we parked the car, checked the luggage and literally walked through security, we were looking at three and a half hours of free time before our flight. I love O’Hare (especially during the holidays when it’s all gussied up and festive), but there’s nothing to do at O’Hare three and a half hours before a flight. We don’t have a Centurion Lounge. We don’t have Priority Pass lounges (outside of the T5 International Terminal, which isn’t even connected to the main airport). We have an airport Chili’s and a lot of tinsel.
On the plus, T3 has a Frontera Grill (which is a Rick Bayless spot and makes some A+ tortas!) so we grabbed some sammies, found the emptiest gate and sat and waited. And waited. And waited. We took turns strolling around. I basked in that holiday buzz that fills the airport with such an incredible energy. Stephanie bought an obscene amount of Garrett’s Popcorn (another Chicago speciality you can find in the airport!). And we waited.
45 minutes before boarding, we moved to our actual gate so I could watch the upgrade list. See, Stephanie cleared her upgrade the night before and I have higher upgrade priority than she does, but I booked Mom’s ticket, so my priority was dragged down since she didn’t have status of her own (a process American has since changed!). I was first on the list, but first class checked in full, so Stephanie spent a nearly five hour flight in a lay flat pod and I spent it in coach. With my mother. Explaining why one button made the leg rest pop out and another one made a footrest pop out while she complained about how many contraptions were in the seat. Really, though, it was fine — we were on a Dreamliner so we were technically in Premium Economy, which is basically a domestic first class seat with a leg rest. Plenty comfortable for a jaunt to Los Angeles.
We boarded right on time and before I could even think of the holiday miracle an on-time flight would be, we went under a ground delay. They couldn’t figure out how to detach the jet bridge from the plane. I cannot make this stuff up. Add that one to the “list of reasons why American Airlines has delayed my flight” Bingo card.
Thankfully, we made up a decent amount of time in air and we landed just a few minutes late. In less great news, the WiFi on the plane didn’t work and our IFE’s were out for more than half the flight, but I travel with an iPad brimming with old episodes one of the greatest series of our time (read: ER), so we made do.
Once we landed at LAX, we sent Stephanie off to the rental car center thinking that since Mom’s walking a little slower these days, Stephanie could get a head start on the car, Mom could take her time walking to baggage claim and by the time we got our bags, Stephanie would be here and we’d drive off to the hotel. This works great for us in most airports. LAX is the exception.
See, the Dreamliner we took in was getting repositioned for a subsequent International flight, so we landed at LAX in this weird hybrid terminal that wasn’t the TBIT, but also wasn’t the domestic terminal. And that would have been fine if there were any signs in the airport that pointed to baggage claim or the exit or really anything except for more gates. I had to ask six airport employees where baggage claim was and they all gave me different answers that culminated in directions that included go down to the first floor, walk to the furthest door, exit and walk over to the next terminal, enter the doors there and find the baggage carousel. It took almost an hour.
That wasn’t even the best part. So we got our luggage quickly because we had priority tags and I guess American decided to honor those this time, so our bags were already there. Maybe it was the priority tags or the fact that we had to walk to like Tijuana or something to find our bags. So we get our luggage, all five full-size pieces of it because of course we pack like the world is ending every time we go on a cruise, and we head outside to a very crowded and busy passenger pickup spot. And we wait. And wait. And wait. Because that Los Angeles traffic that everyone gripes about? LAX epitomizes it, even at 9:30 on a Tuesday night. It took Stephanie almost two hours to get from the rental car center to arrivals. That’s a 2.3 mile drive.
By the time she got there, we were all frustrated, exhausted and running on fumes. So we packed up all the luggage in the trunk and did what any other overtired traveler would do after such a long day: we went to In-n-Out, because midnight Double Doubles just make everything better. Trust me on that one.
When we were planning our trip, we had gone back and forth on where to stay for our pre-cruise stay and we settled on the Kimpton Shorebreak in Huntington Beach. I love Kimptons, it had a self-park garage (Stephanie hates valet parking) and the location was really low key with plenty to do and see. But it was a pretty decent drive away so that was another (almost) hour. We didn’t get in until nearly 1:00 AM. Thankfully, the wonderful staff at the Kimpton was ready and waiting for us. We checked in and quickly made our way up to our suite (which was super well-appointed with the necessities and even some fun quirks like a record player!).
As tired as we were, Stephanie and I rallied through to do our proctored Covid test for embarkation before we went to bed while Mom just crashed. We’re super familiar with the proctored antigen tests and after hearing about long wait times, we figured doing them in the middle of the night would speed things along. And it did — we connected immediately and I did mine in the living room from my iPad while Stephanie did hers in the bathroom from her phone. We did a pre-test test because we’re fun anxious like that so it was no surprise that we were negative.
The test results were in our inboxes in minutes and we were knocked out just about as soon as they landed. We had an early wake up call, which meant vacation day 2 was going to need a rally. A rally and a lot of caffeine.
