Day 13 - Monday Jan 09 San Diego, CA - Ride to LA

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position at 7:45 am: N31:55:200 latitude W117:10:20 longitude
(about 50 miles S of San Diego, CA)
temperature: 54F and 100% humidity
distance since FLL: 4767 miles

More bouncy seas over night. It was too windy and cold to walk on deck this morning, so Clay walked on the treadmill on deck 6 for the first time. He got better exercise there but thought it was more pleasant walking on deck 12.

The ship was to dock in San Diego around 8am, but the strong head winds and big swells in the seas have slowed us down. It will be more likely between 10 and 11 before we get to the pilot's station. They hope to bring the immigration and customs officials on at that time and not have to wait the additional 45 minutes to clear the ship. Getting in late will likely interfere with our shopping trip to Ralph's.

The schedule for the world cruisers is to meet with the Captain for brunch in Signatures at 11:30am, and then to catch private cars for the ride to LA around 1 pm. We were planning to skip the cocktails and luncheon to do our shopping, catching our car at 2. But due to the delay in getting to San Diego, we are rethinking this.

They had the coastguard in a highspeed dual-outboard 25 ft boat with a canon mounted on the bow leading us into San Diego harbor. The boat always put itself between us and any other vessel we saw.
Customs & Immigration officials did not come onboard at the pilot station. We docked at 11am in San Diego, so we decided just to go to the buffet luncheon at Signatures for the world cruisers who were going up to LA by car. Just as we sat down with our plates of food, they called us to go to the Constellation Theater to present ourselves to Immigration. There was no one in Signatures giving any guidance. Since we knew no one could leave the ship until everyone was cleared, we left our food half eaten and went down to do the immigration process which was just picking up our passports and showing them to an official.

About 1:15, we were cleared to leave the ship and get into our town cars for the ride to LA. The car we drew had weak air conditioning and a weaker driver. He finally managed to get on the tail of the another towncar in front of him that he recognized. He followed this car for the 2 hour drive up to LA. Once at the Regent Beverly Wilshire, they put us in a line with about 5 people ahead of us. One hour later, there were still 3 people ahead of us. It was appalling, and we thought the two people in front of us were going to have an aneurysm. Debbie went back out to the driveway and after finding 4 Radisson reps standing out there, got one to make eye contact and not run from her. She asked him where we could check in. He asked her if she was alone and she said no her husband was in the other wing standing in line where she had been for an hour. He said she should go get him and bring him out and he would take us both to the check in at the other wing, but that he would not go in there because people were too upset. (By this time, the hotel's staff had been passing around with trays of champagne, like that would help!) When Clay got out in the driveway, the Radisson rep. said this was just appalling and it was not his fault. It was the hotel's fault. Whatever. We just want a room and a toilet before dinner. Over in the front part of the hotel, we found we could just check in. The problem was that they had no rooms. They claimed they had the Indiana Pacers there last night and the hotel had been booked solid and that they had all checked out late, but that was no excuse to make people wait in a line that cannot move. They knew several hundred more people were arriving with the RSSC Voyager's World Cruise and they should have made some kind of accommodation or informed someone so that we would not all be forced to stand around on marble floors for hours. The room we got was small with 2 beds and overlooked a pooldeck construction site on the 3rd floor of the new wing. It still had the last residents' trash in the night table drawers and melted ice in the bucket, etc., so the cleaning of the rooms was only superficial. But, we were not in a position to complain, we took it and were glad to have a place to rest and unpack. There were a lot of upset people. Some people still had no rooms after the reception began.

After we got finally got our room, we made a 10 minute walk over to a Rite-Aid drug store to try to buy some things we had stolen from our IPS-shipped luggage. We also took a quick stroll on Rodeo Drive and Debbie spotted the first celebrity of the day, Jose Eber. (Does anyone know who this is?)

After that, it was time to get ready for the reception and dinner. Mark Conroy greeted each person at the door as you entered. He was given many ear fulls on the registration foul up. About 7pm, they opened up the back half of the ball room set up as a banquet room with the Nelson Riddle Orchestra playing. They also had a male and a female vocalist. This was another meal where they bring you each course and you either eat or you don't. You had a choice of entree, filet mignon (all served medium rare) or salmon, so Debbie was able find something to eat. The food was good and we sat at a table for 10 among whom was a "mystery woman" from LCT whose name was Elaine (husband Stan), but she refused to give us her LCT login. We also got to see some of the past cruisers we had read about on LCT, including the bling-bling boys. There were a surprising number of children sitting at the 2 tables in front of ours. There were at least 8 children there at the dinner for the full world cruisers.

When we got back to the hotel room about 10:30pm, there was an apology letter from the hotel management over the checkin snafu along with a half bottle of champagne and a plate of chocolates. We also had two enormous red and black Antarctic expedition-type parkas with Seven Seas Voyager World Cruise 2006 embroidered on them.

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