Trip Report: May 16, 2018 5 Night Pacific Coast Cruise – Getting There

Welcome to my trip report!  My family recently sailed on back-to-back cruises, and this report will cover the first cruise, a 5 night California Coast sailing from San Diego to Vancouver on May 16, 2018.  I’ll write about the second cruise, the first 7 night Alaska sailing of the season on May 21, 2018, after I complete this trip report (update: trip report here).  In the meantime, you can get a video and photo summary of our cruise by going to my Instagram page (disneycruisemomblog) and looking at the story highlights.  You can also see the highlight video that I made for this cruise here.

Getting There

Don’t you just love seeing this screen after you’ve been watching it slowly tick down for what seems like forever!?!

On May 15, the day before boarding the ship, we flew out of the airport closest to our home.  First we flew to Charlotte, NC, and then to San Diego.  We left the house about 10:45 am so the morning was not too stressful.  Here is our luggage about to be packed into the car:

Packing for this trip was pretty stressful for me as we would need warm weather clothes for the first few days, and then rain/cold weather gear for the Alaska portion of the trip.  I am typically not a light packer, but was very careful not to overpack this time and ended up leaving a lot of things at home that I usually wouldn’t have.  In the end, we didn’t need any of the stuff I left behind and there were a few clothing items that both me and the girls never wore.  So, I could have packed a little bit lighter but not much.  Each of the girls got all of their stuff (minus coats and waterproof boots) into a carry-on size suitcase and a backpack, so they could carry all of their stuff on the plane. My husband and I each used a large suitcase for our stuff, and we also had 1 large suitcase for all of our cold-weather gear/boots.  Then we had a garment bag with our hanging clothes.  In all, we checked 4 large bags and carried the rest on.  I’ll go into more details about what types of cold weather/rain gear I packed for Alaska (and whether it worked well or not) in the Alaska trip report that I’ll write after this one.  If any of you are sailing to Alaska very soon and can’t wait a few weeks for the trip report, email me at disneycruisemomblog@gmail.com if you have questions and I’ll see if I can help out.

On the way to the airport:

We got to the airport with no issues and our first flight was on time, although we sat on the runway for 40 minutes before takeoff.  Eventually we took off and still managed to land pretty much on time in Charlotte.  We had about 2 hours in Charlotte to get some lunch before our next flight, which was also on time.

I think I took this as our first flight landed:

After landing in San Diego, we quickly found our luggage and headed outside to catch a taxi.  It was much cooler here than back home! I think it was in the low 60s.  Here we are waiting for a taxi:

After a 5 minute taxi ride with a very untalkative taxi driver who frowned (literally, no words, just a giant frown) about taking a credit card and made me pull out cash, we were dropped off at the Embassy Suites near the bay.  I like staying at Embassy suites when possible for 2 reasons.  First, there are 5 of us and since all of the rooms have a living area with a sleeper sofa, I always know that there will be 5 beds.  Second, the complimentary breakfast in the morning with the made-to-order omelets cannot be beat.  However, this was the first Embassy suites we have encountered that had 2 double beds instead of 2 queen beds, but we made it work.  My husband and I are not comfortable sleeping in the same double bed, so we each took a bed, our youngest slept in my bed, and the older 2 shared the sleeper sofa.  They weren’t happy about sharing a bed, but they were getting on a Disney cruise in the morning so they knew better than to complain!

We dropped our stuff off in the room and immediately went in search of food.  It was only about 7:45 pm here, but our bodies were on east coast time so it felt like 10:45 pm.  We walked down to the lobby and ate at the restaurant inside the hotel.  Somehow, the girls were not acting very tired – in fact, I think I felt more tired than they did.  After our meal, we went back to the room, showered, and went to sleep around 9:30-10:00 pm, which to us felt like 12:30-1:00 am.

Up Next: Day 1 – Boarding the Disney Wonder in San Diego

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You can read my other trip reports here.

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