We disembarked about 9:30 am today and purchased a combo ticket for the Queen Mary and the Aquarium. We boarded the free shuttle for the 5 minute ride to the Aquarium first and spent about an hour wandering around there. It was small, but nice, and you could touch lots of things - sharks, rays, sea anemones, and birds. Touching and feeding the animals is Andrew's favorite part! When we were ready to head back to the Queen Mary we thought it would be nice to walk, as it's a perfect 65F in Long Beach today. The only visible problem with this is that there is water between the two locations and, aside from the freeway, not an apparent way to get across it on foot. We asked a guy staffing one of the booths in the marina who told us that it would take us "at least an hour an a half" to walk back. I found this difficult to believe since the shuttle ride had literally been minutes. We decided to forge on anyway and, after missing the stairs the first time causing a 20 minute delay, we found a foot-path along side of the highway and had a lovely walk back to the QM. If we would have seen the stairs up to the footpath the first time past, the walk would have totaled less than 30 minutes. We should have known better than to ask someone from LA about walking anywhere!
We started our tour of the Queen Mary with the "Ghosts and Legends Tour" which is a campy scripted live tour to some of the areas of the ship that are reported to be haunted. We enjoyed it as we got to see the famous swimming pool (see photos), the boiler room, and a few other areas of the ship that are not available for the general public. We spent another hour wandering around the QM. It is a little creepy, yet amazingly preserved with the original marble and other art deco features. We both agreed that we'd definitely like to do an overnight there in one of the hotel rooms!
The stairs down to the pool area
The pool itself (with one of the original ladders)After finishing on the QM we walked over to the VIP area to re-board the ship. The process was smooth and we had cleared security and were back on board in less than 20 minutes. We had a bite of lunch and are not back in our cabin to start all over again. Andrew is delighted that this is my 10th cruise with Carnival so I have earned "Platinum" status. This means we get a few perks such as free laundry, priority boarding/VIP check-in, priority tendering, and a special "Concierge" line at the Guest Services desk. I'm sure we will get our money's worth in free laundry alone! We also had a bottle of champagne in our cabin - which we think may be because we did a back-to-back, rather than because of my platinum status.
Again on this cruise, we will not see Mazatlan and will have two days in Cabo, starting Tuesday. We were not impressed with the diving in Cabo, and were told that the diving in Puerto Vallarta is also not very good so, sadly, we won't be doing any more dives on this trip. We'll have to figure out other things to do and will keep you posted!
It is both cool and creepy at the same time. Would be fun to stay the night though. Have fun on your second leg, hopefully you guys are feeling better.
ReplyDeleteI forgot to ask - any news on whether they will be opening up Mazatlan to the cruise lines?
ReplyDeleteSounds like a nice start to your second week.
ReplyDeleteMy cousin was a commander in the Navy many years ago. When he retired, he was in the Naval Reserve and, if the U.S. ever went to war, he would be commander of the QM, which, of course, was going nowhere. It was almost too bad there wasn't just a small skirmish going on for a little while.
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