Day 14 Hawaiian Cruise

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Day 14 Hawaiian Cruise--- Port of Los Angeles
November 9, 2011
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Today's entry is not from the daily journal I wrote while on ship. There was too much to do and the journal was packed as the made preparations for disembarcation... er getting off the ship and heading home. It was written several weeks after the voyage.

We woke up and got ready as requested by 7:30 am.

For those of you who haven't been cruising for a while, there is a new wave of getting many of the people off the ship that do not need to jamming up the exit.

All those people that can leave without using baggage services, can walk off the ship at its earliest time. Most of the people that live close by or did not bring a bag that they could not handle took advantage of this early off. They were off the ship and on the shore around 8:00.  This reduces the number of people waiting to get off the ship. On the last cruise, to Mexico, this amounted to almost half of the passengers. The cruise was shorter and most of the passengers were Californians.
There were many people from other countries that need to be checked more carefully than we were as they came into the country to travel on the ship and were headed for more USA adventures or a quick connection to flights at LAX to home. Some of these folks came into to Las Vegas on the way to LA. They all had their own lines to stand in to get back to LA.

Our ship, The Golden Princess,  slid into its LA port dock around 6:30. It was interesting to watch the ship recharge its wares and move the passenger luggage in steel cages simultaneously.
Our waiting area was designated by the time and order we were to leave the ship. We were in blue 1. We had no particular need to meet an airline schedule, or make connections with an overnight hotel. Our waiting area was in the plush upscale Italian restaurant on deck 7. This worked out well for us as Sue has a hard time sitting for a period of time and could lounge on the padded seats until our color was called. There were about 35 colors and number categories so that there would not be a bum rush to the gate. Our combination was one of the last.

Our time to leave the ship was announced and we were escorted to the machines that took our cruise card and verified that we were going off the ship.

The Princess port has a two story disembarkation building that our ship utilized. When we left the ship we still had a fairly lengthy wait to get through customs and immigrations and homeland security. We also had to pass the fruit and ag station going into California. Some of the passengers had failed at this spot and a couple of dozen flower leis were on top of the machines. Some ship fruit also was sequested there too.

Some older people that did not need a wheelchair, needed one to wait in the line. Princess employees were right their to get them into the wheel chairs and out of the line. Rightly so, with Sue's power chair, we were not offered this convenience.

When customs forms were filled out and turned in, after all, the ship spent four hours in Mexico, the next job was to find our bags and the extra wheelchair in the barn of the port. The luggage was sorted in the same sequence as the colors and numbers.

Sue had gathered up a porter with a long cart and she had found that most of our bags were near each other. The porter gathered us up and we headed out to the street. He dropped the bags on the curb and we gave him a 20 and I went looking for our expedition. Sue stayed next to our bags with her powerchair.
I found the truck and ran through the parking kiosk with my credit card in hand. $165 for 14 days.
I circled around to the loading area. We opened the back of the truck and threw in the bags. I repositioned the manual wheelchair so that the back of the trunk would go down. when I lowered the lift for the power chair and Sue guided it on.

We were all set to go.

I took the Harbor Blvd freeway to the 110 and since it was about 10:45 we whistled through LA without a slowdown.  It was a beautiful day.

We stopped for a burger at Santa Clarita. A lady stopped me because she saw that were both dressed in the Hilo Hatties matching Hawaiian shirts. Together they make quite a statement.

The expedition purred over the grapevine and up interstate 5. We stopped for gas in Los Banos and we were home before dark..

The kitties were very happy to see us! We were happy to see them!.

What a great experience to cruise to Hawaii and back.