The Long Road to Cabo, a Carnival Panorama Review: Day 11 – Debarkationfeatured
My mom gets really excited when she travels with us. It’s just about the only time she has both of us in one spot for more than a couple of days and has both of our full, undivided attention. Mom is a morning person, the earliest of early risers. I did not inherit that gene from her. I’m the brightest eyed of night owls and the bleariest of risers.
I never set an alarm on debarkation day. I never need to, especially when Mom is around, because as soon as she’s up, she’s excited and she is ready. On our debarkation morning, when our debarkation documents had a clear meeting time of 8:25 AM in the Vista Dining Room, Mom let herself into our room, plopped herself down on our couch and started talking to us about the flight home and the snowstorm forecasted…at 6:00 in the morning. The kicker — our room wasn’t even her first stop! She went and had coffee first and then decided it was time for Stephanie and I to get moving. I negotiated another ten minutes, fifteen more minutes please. But there were places to go, things to do and no point lingering because we’d be back on a cruise ship in a few months anyways for a trip twice as long as this one and as soon as I got home, I could really start planning it.
Stephanie and I had meticulously laid out our outfits, packed up our bags and got everything into place before we went to bed. This is how we squeeze the extra sleep in — by minimizing the time we need to do anything else — so by 6:30, we said goodbye to our home for the past week, closed the door behind us and never looked back.
The Lido Marketplace was conspicuously quiet for a debarkation morning. It’s usually a hub of frenetic energy and activity, so busy that it takes patience to find a table. But there was no one there. Maybe because it was early or maybe the dining room was the preferred dining venue, but we enjoyed the peace, the quiet and the lack of lines with our coffee and breakfast. And because I didn’t want to trap myself in the lasts of anything, I forewent my farewell arepas with the hopes that I’d have two weeks of arepas in May (spoiler alert: can confirm that I had arepas just about every morning on our two week Pride cruise).
After breakfast, we took a stroll around the aft pool, enjoying the stillness and quiet of the early morning. There was a beautiful sunrise over Long Beach and I started thinking of all the people joining the ship today, how today was the end of my vacation and the beginning of theirs, how excited they must be and how much I couldn’t wait to feel that same excitement again.
We headed down to Vista Dining Room, where they had a special waiting area for Diamond and Platinum guests. It was comfortable, uncrowded and they had coffee and pastries, which I thought was a nice little perk. Stephanie and I tried to figure out the logistics of getting me (and alllllll my luggage) back to my apartment with the impending snowstorm and Mom tried to figure out if we had enough time to stop home to change clothes after our flight and still make our New Years dinner reservations. American had oversold our flight and was offering vouchers up to $1050 to switch to another flight and if it wasn’t New Years, I totally would have jumped on it.
Before we knew it (and earlier than I had expected), they were calling off self assist debarks, early flights (with proof of an early departure) and Diamond and Platinum guests at 8:15 AM. We had a quick walk to the exit on Deck 4 where our S&S were scanned out, a much longer walk down to the terminal at Long Beach and then we were in a maze of luggage. Mom flagged down a porter because she didn’t want to deal with the luggage. My luggage was (predictably) in another area and absolutely unlocked but thankfully nothing missing, and we quickly made our way through customs (who glimpsed at our passports but didn’t ask for any declarations). Our porter told us that the ship had around 4200 onboard this week, but the next cruise had about half that, so it sounds like many folks cancelled with the uncertainty of the ports of call that we had faced.
The porter took us right to our Carnival transfer, where they loaded up our luggage and whisked us away to my least favorite airport in the US, LAX. There was no traffic this morning so we were there in about 45 minutes. The driver told us the Carnival transfers usually only make one stop (at terminals 1/2), but he would be making additional stops, one at Terminal 4 and another at terminal 7.
We checked in at LAX with no lines and no wait. Stephanie’s upgrade had cleared the day before. Mom and I were still on standby for first and as soon as our luggage was weighed and tagged, we made our way to an equally empty TSA Pre-Check line. It was all fine until we realized our gate was not in the terminal American had checked us in at, but in the next one. And as we kept following the signs to our gate, we found ourselves outside of security, at arrivals, under the ticketing hall where we checked in. We walked a 45 minute circle only to have to go outside, walk to another terminal and go through security all over again. LAX is the worst.
Thankfully, our gate was right at the front of terminal 5, which has to be, like, the armpit of LAX. There’s next to no shopping, no real great food options and it’s just kind of dark and depressing. Mom hunkered down at the gate and Stephanie and I went off in search of some food. Okay so here’s the thing — I work in tech so I make a comfortable living. Airport pricing will assuredly not put me out. But I refuse on principal to spend $17 on an airport breakfast sandwich that’s wrapped in plastic. Not a chance. Stephanie is on the opposite end of the spectrum — she wants what she wants and doesn’t care what the cost is if she needs it or it makes her happy. We found a Japanese restaurant that fit both. I got a breakfast plate that was not absurdly overpriced, she got some delicious chicken bites and we constantly refreshed the American app to see if Mom and I would clear our upgrades.
On the way back, we picked up a sandwich and some pastries for Mom and The Coffee Bean ($40 for three water bottles, a sandwich and two pastries — this should be criminal). I made a TikTok and then chatted with the gate agent. They had one upgrade left, I was first on the list and Mom was in a middle seat in coach (her preference when we all fly together). The gate agent was really great and moved Mom to an aisle in the exit row and let her board with us, and I got the empty first class seat next to Stephanie.
2021 was a great travel year for us — no cancelled flights and very few delays — and an on-time flight home that was scheduled to land nearly 40 minutes early was the perfect way to close out the year. We had a great flight attendant named Scott who made sure we were comfortable and never had an empty glass and we poured over vacation pictures over Diet Cokes and cheese sandwiches for the three and a half hour journey home.
Before we knew it, we were making the familiar descent over a dark and bleary Chicago, just starting to light up with the festivities to bring in the new year. Someone somewhere once said that how you bring in a new year sets the tone for how you’ll spend the rest of the year, so coming in on an airplane was certainly apropos of how we were hoping things would go!
We quickly gathered our luggage, shuttled over to the parking garage and made the quick drive to Mom’s house. We unceremoniously dumped the luggage in the garage, made a very quick change into something more festive and headed off to our favorite restaurant (and my favorite meal anywhere!) for New Year’s dinner.
…and then we started planning the next one 🙂
