Turn Around Day - The Royal Princess in Los Angeles!

Officers on Board

We docked early and we are along side at the pier.  Not at the regular terminal Princess uses but the one right next door.  Sorry can’t recall the number but the one right beside the USS Iowa.  The terminal is a large enclosed structure – like something that would cover a tennis court.  

It works but it is certainly not as nice as the other pier.  Note the Royal is too big for that pier.

Disembarkation was slower than normal because this is the first stop for the Royal in the US since it left Fort Lauderdale February 2.  Heightened inspection and security was in place.  All the crew had to go through Immigration and for some they waited up to three hours to go through.  Plus they still had to do their regular job.

For us we had to change cabins.  Not a difficult procedure but we had to move all our own stuff since we moved from a crew cabin to a passenger cabin. It was easy as we used the crew elevator and up to deck 12.

Although our cabin was not ready yet, we were allowed to put our bags in the closet and left our steward to clean whenever he could (note he too had to go thru immigration). 

At 11:45 we met in Club 6 along with a handful of in transit guest.  I don’t remember the last time there were so few in transit.  In total we were around 38 – and some were guest entertainers and some workers.

We were directed off the ship into the terminal where we had to queue up for immigration.  Sadly the officer stamped our passport.  Normally they do not as we are technically NOT entering the US, we are in transit.  But they did and again another stamp on a blank page is taken up.  Oh well who am I to argue.

We then are directed outside and to the entrance and queue up all again to go thru security.  No liquids!  Then we are directed to a large waiting area where we are among a few thousand.  Of course many people are here waiting to board, even though they were directed to come late as the process would be delayed. 

In all we were off the ship for maybe an hour.  It is a pain that LA is the only port that makes all in transit go thru security again.   I prefer the process in Fort Lauderdale.