Friday, November 20th - San Diego and Boarding the Celebrity Infinity

Well the day has finally arrived.  As mentioned earlier we had received notice that our initial boarding time was delayed so we took a morning stroll, just to make sure the ship had arrived.  Yup, there she was, unloading its passengers and getting ready for us! We walked back to the hotel and completed our final packing ensuring our stateroom I.D., tickets were on our luggage. 

Length: 964', Beam: 105', Draft: 26', Pax: 2170, Crew: 999, Launched: 2001

Now the big question..... do we walk or ride down to the pier in preparation for boarding (embarkation)?  It all came down to how much luggage we were prepared to haul around the streets of San Diego.  The little wheels on luggage is more made for airports and short trips (it was about a mile to the ship).  Decision made, away we go, we are walking!  We did get a few looks on the way but what the hell, they don't know who we are :).  We made quite the conga line :).

San Diego Conga Line :)

Once arriving at the pier we made our way into the port authority for the boarding process.  I think we arrived just about the same time as everyone else.  We were not at the head of the line but not at the rear either.  I think there must have been 1,500 other passengers there at that time.  Celebrity had bottled water and seats available to anyone that wanted it.

So back and forth like cattle we went (it actually moved quite quickly) and at the end were the ticket verification and identification booths.  They took our pictures and we received our "sea cards".  These cruises are cashless, whereas everything you buy or do on board that costs money is charged through your Sea Card and in turn charged to the credit card you gave them when the cruise was confirmed.  Good system, the Sea Card is also your ID for getting on and off the ship at the different ports.  All in all the whole process took less than an hour to get on board.  Not bad considering the number of people they had to process.

We were not allowed to go to our staterooms until all of the luggage had been delivered.  Actually some of our group did not get their luggage until later than usual or even the next day.  Considering there was almost 2200 people boarding, thats not really too bad.

The rest of the day we investigated the ship which included finding out where the main dining room and the lunch/breakfast restaurants were located, and of course had a couple of drinks (as part of our booking perks, basic alcoholic drinks, water, specialty coffees and all gratuities were included - this was really great).

Of course there was the mandatory Emergency Lifeboat Drill that took place at 4:15PM.  This was a little different from our previous cruises.  On previous cruises we had to attend a briefing at our assigned lifeboats, on the Infinity we just had to go to our "assigned muster station" which was in one of the bars.  Personally I preferred going right to the lifeboats, that way I knew where they were and how to get there in a hurry.  Following the drill it was time to freshen up and go for dinner - yea!!  The start of a 15 day eating spree!

During our after dinner stroll around the ship we found the big screen TV on the aft deck (Deck 11 or 12 I think).  This will become more important to us later on in the cruise :).

Now this is a big screen!

We did not go to the show that night.  Seas were very calm.