Cruise ships were leaving Mexico with reckless abandon over the past couple of years, thanks mainly to growing criminal issues in the country, and now Carnival is going back.
Well, sort of.
Next month, the freshly-refurbished Carnival Imagination will begin sailing 3-and-4-day cruises from Long Beach to Ensenada, Mexico. This does not mean a return to the 
once-popular Mexican Riviera (Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, Cabo San Lucas), and stopping in Ensenada is what some might call a necessary evil, because of The Jones Act.
To be fair, Carnival's trumpeting the move as an expansion of the West Coast program and not as an expansion of the Mexico program.
The Imagination will be the third Carnival ship with Long Beach (Los Angeles) as its home port. The Inspiration also runs 3-and-4-day cruises to Ensenada, and the Splendor sails 7-day cruises to the Mexican Riviera (about nine per year) and 15-day cruises to Hawaii. Its tenure ends in February, but Carnival will despatch the Miracle to replace it next fall, until April 2014, at least.
Add it all up and you have more than half a million people boarding Carnival ships in Long Beach, giving the cruise line the right to declare it is "Southern California's largest cruise operator."
The two ships (Splendor and Inspiration) have a combined capacity of 5,640 passengers. With the Imagination's presence, that jumps to 8,274. When the Splendor is swapped for the Miracle, the three-ship capacity drops to 7,392, so what it really amounts to is adding 1,750 beds per departure, depending of course on the total number of departures.
The three-day cruises go to Ensenada and back. The 4-day cruises also include Catalina Island.
As for the Mexican Riviera…the time for any kind of significant return has not yet arrived.
Holland America Amsterdam
7 nights
June 7, 2013
Vancouver (return): Glacier Bay, Skagway, Juneau, Ketchikan, Inside Passage
Inside: $609
Cost per day: $87
www.hollandamerica.com