Pre-Cruise: Long Beach, California

We spend a pre-cruise night at Hotel Maya in Long Beach, CA.

Feb 7, 2020 - Since it is the first time we have sailed from Long Beach, CA, we decided to fly in a day early and spend a night in Long Beach before the cruise. Our flight on American Airlines was delayed out of DFW, which has now become pretty typical and yet another good reason to fly into a port city a day or two ahead of the cruise. We landed at LAX about 30 minutes later than our scheduled arrival, so the delay was not as bad as some we have experienced on American.

After collecting our checked luggage, we began looking for the area to grab an Uber to our hotel in Long Beach. Getting Uber, Lyft or even a taxi at LAX is challenging, to say the least. When we exited the airport, we found a long line of other travelers waiting for a shuttle to take them to the Taxi/Ride App pick-up area.

*Line of people waiting for Uber/Lyft shuttle*

It took about 15 minutes for the shuttle to arrive and we were the last ones allowed to board the shuttle before the doors closed for the drive to the pick-up lot. I ordered our Uber ride while we were on the shuttle bus and as soon as the bus dropped us off, we found our Uber “Comfort” ride, a beautiful new Lexus ES 350 Hybrid. The driver even had bottles of water for us! The drive to Long Beach took about an hour, even though it is only 22 miles from LAX. The traffic is horrendous. The Uber ride was $54 + a $10 tip, so a total of $64. The additional expense and hassle of getting from LAX to Long Beach would make us consider flying into Long Beach airport from Dallas Love Field on Southwest next time.

In the spirit of full disclosure, Hotel Maya hosted us for our one-night stay on this trip. We arrived at about 4:20pm and check-in was quite fast and easy. The hotel is situated south of Long Beach on a piece of land that is also home to the cruise terminal and pier where we will embark Carnival Panorama tomorrow. The Queen Mary is also permanently docked here and now serves as a hotel and museum. Our King Deluxe room with a view (3206) was located in Building 3 on the second floor.

For a more complete review of the Hotel Maya and details of our stay, check out our website under Hotel Reviews.

*Queen Mary is visible in between the two palm trees*

Tomorrow at about noon, we will board Carnival Panorama. As it turns out, there is a very nice sidewalk going from our hotel to the cruise port, less than a mile away! We will probably just walk to the ship. In tomorrow’s blog, I will talk about the Long Beach Cruise Terminal and our first day aboard the new Carnival Panorama.