So you’re booked on Rocky’s Birthday Sailabration Cruise? You’ve come to the right place!

We’re excited to be sailing with you and want you to have the BEST CRUISE EVER! To help make that possible, we’re providing you with a variety of options and logistical information to aid in your planning. Check out the suggestions below and bookmark this page as we’ll be posting updates and announcements as we get closer to the sailing date.

Before we get to the fun, this is a quick pulse check: do you have a valid passport for this cruise? If not, there are other options available to allow you to sail, it’s just a little more complicated.

Flight Information

We recommend that you fly in at least one day prior to sail away to ensure that there aren’t any delays in getting to the ship on-time. You can fly into Long Beach (LGB) with Southwest Airlines or Delta Airlines. Alternatively, you can fly into Los Angeles (LAX) with most any other airline. We’ll be flying in on Friday, June 30th and will post our flight details soon (likely a direct from PHX to LGB on Southwest).

Our booking – Southwest Airlines (Round Trip: $222.97 per person)

At the end of the cruise, it’s up to you whether you’d like to stay in Long Beach/Los Angeles, or fly home. If you choose to fly home the day the cruise ends, don’t book anything earlier than 2pm on Saturday, July 8th.

Hotel Accommodation

There are many options for hotel stays in Long Beach prior to boarding the ship.

Hilton Long Beach (701 W Ocean Blvd., Long Beach, CA 90831)
Book it (prices start at $250 per night) – An Uber/Lift/Taxi will be necessary to get to the cruise port.

Residence Inn by Marriott Downtown Long Beach (600 Queensway Dr., Long Beach, CA 90802)
Book it (prices start at $290 per night) – We walk to the port from this hotel. Note: It’s just under a mile walk, so this may not be for everyone!

Boarding the Ship

The cruise ship terminal is located at 231 Windsor Way, Long Beach, CA 90802.

With our Carnival VIFP status, we are able to get an early check-in time (either 10am or 10:30am). Boarding usually begins by 11am. You can choose your boarding time/group 14 days prior the sailing (beginning at 9pm PST on Friday, June 13). If you receive a later boarding time and want to get on the ship with us, please send one of us an email with your boarding pass at least 7 days before we set sail. Photoshop is a magical thing…

Once on board, we’ll drop our bags at the room and head up to grab some amazing food (we’ve got some amazing Embarkation Day secret spots that won’t be too busy!) and then we’ll explore the ship while everyone else gets on and hits the buffet.

The plan

We will link our reservations so that we can all enjoy dinner together in the Main Dining Room (if folks desire). If you wish to go dine in one of the other establishments throughout the cruise, that’s ok – in fact, we encourage it! Just let one of us know so that we can exclude you from the check-in process for dinner that evening.

Check to see if your account is linked to our booking for dinner: Log into your Carnival profile, navigate to the Carnival Panorama booking. Once in, click on “Booking & Order Details” and scroll down past your room information. You’ll arrive to a section called “Your Cruise Companions” which is where you will see you and your cabin-mate’s names. Below that, you should be seeing Mark and my name. If you don’t see our names listed, please enter my personal email address (goliathfreak@gmail.com) in the box on your cruise manager to get our accounts linked!

Monday, July 3rd (Rocky’s Birthday) – Rocky plans to celebrate his special day with dinner at specialty upcharge restaurant JiJi Asian Kitchen. Currently, it’s $18/person for the dining experience. The food is delicious and the atmosphere is very nice. If you wish to join for dinner, please let either of us know before May 1st so we can book a reservation for the group. If you’d like to learn more about the restaurant, check out our review of the dining experience!

Tuesday, July 4th (Puerto Vallarta) – We will hire a taxi to visit Mr. Tequila in the south of Puerto Vallarta. There’s a delicious tasting and gift store there. After, we’ll make our way down to the nearby beach where historically we’ve gotten massages for $20 on the beach for 60 minutes. We’ll likely end with a stop along the beautiful waterfront known as the Malecon. There’s no guarantee on the size of vehicle that will be available, and caravans are not guaranteed either. If you wish to visit the same sites, we’ve provided the addresses below:

• Mister Tequila: 5 de Mayo 115, Int. B, Mismaloya, 48294 Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico
• Playa Mismaloya: beach, restaurant, and hopefully some wonderful massages
• Malecon: Los Muertos Beach Pier, Francisca Rodriguez 121, Zona Romantica, Emiliano Zapata, 48380 Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico

Wednesday, July 5th (Mazatlan) – There are two great options we recommend. First, you can walk along the famous “Blue Line” and visit the waterfront and historical tourist spots and restaurants. It’s literally a blue line embedded into the roadway for tourists to follow safely (you’ll see plenty of police officers and volunteers along the way). Another option is to hire a Pulmonia (open air taxi that looks like a golf cart) to take you on a custom tour of the area.

Thursday, July 6th (Cabo San Lucas) – Due to how this port is designed, the ship will not dock at a typical pier. Instead, we’ll drop anchor and take Water Shuttles to the shore. We will be doing a lot of walking around the port area in Cabo and will be making stops at The Smallest Bar in the World, Club Oxxo, The Giggling Marlin, and Monkey’s Cave Bar (if we can find it!). There are a lot of bars, restaurants, and gift shops in the area that you can check out along the way.

Of course, Carnival provides an entire list of Shore Excursions and experiences that provide everything from all-inclusive resorts, to off-road buggies on dirt roads for the adventurers of the group. Carnival Shore Excursions typically start from $40/person and go up from there depending on what you choose.

Regardless of what you choose to do in ports of call, we recommend bringing a good pair of walking shoes as these ports are all very tourist friendly with sidewalks and walking paths.