Last evening all the cruisers gathered in the theater for a show and to meet the cruise director.

“By show of applause, where is everyone from? East coast?”

CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP …. !!!

“West Coast?”

“Clap …”

I think it was me and three other people.

There were more people from the UK than from California.

I didn’t know it at the time, but unless I wanted to add another day to my trip, I couldn’t get from the West Coast to the cruise ship on the same day as the ship sails.

Get out your calculator and your calendar.

Ship sails at 4:30 pm. Must be on the ship no later than 3. It takes about an hour to get thru the lines. Gotta be in line by 2. Cape Canaveral is one hour away from Orlando. But the shuttle does not sit there and wait for me. I stand around and wait for it. So … aim for noon to be on the shuttle. My shuttle bus driver had to stop and buy gasoline on the way. No kidding. Noon was good. I needed about 45 minutes to gather my bags at the baggage claim in Orlando after landing and get to the shuttle bus pick up. Meaning, I needed to be in Orlando by 11, to catch the noon shuttle to get to the port by two and on the boat by 3.

Head to Expedia and Cheapoair. No direct flights from San Jose or San Francisco to Orlando. Best I could do is about 7.5 hours through Phoenix.

11 am in Orlando minus 7.5 hours equals leave the west coast by 3:30 am! Oh, and there is a 3 hour time difference between east and west coast meaning 12:30 am! No flights. The closest I could find was 7:30 pm the night before that got me in to Orlando in plenty of time to make the connections. Can you say 5:13 am?!

I am smarter now. At least a little.

Point – Taking an east coast cruise from the west coast means adding a day to your itinerary or sleeping on a plane the night before.