20240404 Sapphire Princess South Pacific Cruise Day 1 - From The Villages to Los Angeles in four easy steps

Sapphire Princess South Pacific Cruise Day 1 - Travel to LA

We were up and at 'em by 7 AM this morning. Why? Our driver, Cedric, from Creative Concierge, was coming at 9 AM to whisk us to Orlando International Airport for our next trip. There are lots of things to do on the day of departure for longer trips.

• Hook the golf carts and SUV to battery tenders
• Unplug TVs (they're sensitive to lightning)
• Turn off the ice maker
• Wash any dirty dishes
• Turn off the tankless water heater
• Unplug the water softener
• Turn off the inside water
• Finish the last-minute packing of toiletries and such

We accomplished all those things as Cedric arrived right on time. We loaded up the bags and headed to the airport. The ride was uneventful. We used Southwest's curbside check-in and headed to TSA. We walked right up and zipped through, getting to our gate with plenty of time to spare.

Southwest Airlines must be doing pretty well as our flight was 100% full - not an empty seat to be had. When I checked in yesterday, I was right on time and scored the B2/B3 boarding positions for this leg and A50/A51 for the next one. Woo!  If you have ever flown Southwest, you know.

Loading up our flight with all the snacks

We launched and arrived right on time. Southwest has upped its free luggage game with excellent tracking in the app. We could see that our bags were loaded, unloaded, loaded on the next flight, and then unloaded. Nice.

We had a little time to kill in Houston Hobby so we grabbed a slice of airport pizza before boarding our second completely full flight of the day. Another on-time departure and arrival got us to Los Angeles where it was in the 50s and drizzling. Lovely.

After collecting our bags, we stepped out of the terminal and were about to text the hotel - Holiday Inn LAX - to get an estimate on when the shuttle would arrive, and...there it was, pulling in. We hopped in and arrived at the hotel a few minutes later. 

We chose this hotel as it was easy to get to from the airport, given the free shuttle, and we could get breakfast included tomorrow, all for under $150. To me, that's pretty amazing in Los Angeles. They also had a restaurant so we could grab dinner.

Margaritas too!

So, what is this trip, you ask? Tomorrow, we will take an Uber to the port in San Pedro where we will board Princess Cruise Lines' Sapphire Princess for a 32-day cruise roundtrip from Los Angeles. Our ports of call are:

• Honolulu, Oahu, Hawaii
• Kahului, Maui, Hawaii
• Apia, Samoa
• Pago Pago, American Samoa
• Suva, Fiji
• Dravuni Island, Fiji
• Tahiti (Papeete), French Polynesia
• Moorea, French Polynesia

That's only eight port days and 24 sea days so we'll be spending a lot of time reading, playing trivia, taking ukulele lessons, and who knows what else. We'll also be doing a bunch of time-traveling as we'll cross the international dateline four times and the equator twice.

Well-traveled, fed, and watered, we headed to the room. It was only 8:30 PM here, but that's 11:30 PM in the timezone we awoke in this morning, so we're a little tired. It's now after 9 PM here, as I wrap up this intro to our trip.  Tomorrow, we sail!