Trip Report from our Honeymoon Cruise on the Pride Last Year

Well I'm new here. I've actually been browsing the forums over the last few months as I have been planning our Second Cruise on the Carnival Glory that sails on October 10th. In preperation for that cruise I thought it would be fun to go back and share the experiance from our First Cruise on the Carnival Pride with you. I also will be doing a recap report when our cruise on the Glory is finished as well. I also like doing these to have a log of our vacations so we have something to look back on. With that said lets move on to the trip report.

I always like to start my vacation trip reports from the beginning. Cause getting to the location or in this case the port is half the fun. Those sailing in this trip report is just myself Jeff and my wife Kiera. We got married on Febuary 22nd, 2008. Me being the procastinator I am I waited tell almost the last minute before booking our Honeymoon. After looking into all options I decided on a 7 day Cruise. Because I waited 2 weeks before the sailing we got some pretty good last minute deals and I booked us a Balcony room on the Carnival Pride that sailed out of Long Beach, California and would cruise the Mexican Rivera and visit the Towns of Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, and Cobo San Lucas.

The trip report starts the Morning of Febuary 23rd, 2008. The day after our wedding. For our first night married we stayed in one of the tower rooms in the Little America Hotel in Downtown Salt Lake City. It was the perfect start to the perfect Honeymoon. The hotel was very nice and had great views of the valley. It was rainny and cold that morning (it was as well for our wedding the day before) so we were happy to leave that all behind and head off to Southern California.

After Checking out of the Hotel we grabbed a quick lunch at a local Taco Time and then headed to the Airport to catch our Southwest Airlines flight to Los Angeles. Once we found our gate we made a few phone calls to Kieras parents so they could come pick up our car (yeah im not paying long term parking fees there) and also to Kieras friend who would be picking us up in California.

The Flight went quickly and after we got our Luggae Kieras friend was there right on time to pick us up. Kieras friend was going to school in Malibu at the time so she was nice enough to pick us up that day and save us the money from having to rent a car or pay for a shuttle. I thought we would have escaped the crappy weather. But it found us. LA was cold and rainy as well. Since it was mid afternoon Kieras friend asked us if we wanted to just tour around the area. We weren't in any rush and once we would be out our hotel we wouldn't be able to do anything anyways so we said why not. She took us down the costal highway from Santa Monica up to Malibu and then thru some mountain pass roads. We stopped and saw her apartment and she also took us out to dinner that night.

On our way to our Hotel in Long Beach she decided there was one more thing we needed to see. That being a place called "Diddy Riese" in Westwood. I highly recommend checking this place out If your ever in Southern California. Its just a small Ice Cream Sandwhich shop. They put ice cream between 2 fresh homemade cookies and the best part is that it only costs $1.50. When we were in Southern California again last December we made a 30 mile detour to go get one. They are that good lol. We also walked around Westwood for a little while. Its next to the UCLA campus so it has a vary vibrant Collage feel to it. We also went down the street and saw the LA LDS Temple as well.

After that she dropped us off at our Holiday inn in Long Beach where we would be staying the night. The hotel was about 5 miles from the port. It was older and is odd as its in a circular building. However it recently had some renovations done and I thought it was great for the price we got it for. The rest of the night we just watched TV and got everything ready to head to the Port in the morning to start our Cruise.

Thats it for now. I have to head to work right now so I will be updating this with Day 2 of our Honeymoon which includes Embarkation for our Cruise on the Carnival Pride. Stay tunned.

This is great! And it will bring back memories of the Pride when she was here in So Cal.......

Can't wait to read more!

Love the photos!!!

Can't wait to read the rest of your review. My fun goup will be on the Pride next August out of Baltimore.

Alright onto Day 2. We woke up the next morning around 9am so that we could be ready to catch the shuttle that our hotel provided to the pier at 11am. I went down and put our name on the shuttle list and then went back up stairs to pack and get ready to check out to head to the ship. As we were leaving the room we got in the elevator with another young couple. They too went out and got in the same shuttle as us. I'm not the type though who typically says anything so needless to say the shuttle ride to the Port was fairly quite.

After we got all our luggage unloaded we went and got in the line for check in or embarkation. It seemed like this line took forever. The line was long outside the building. And then it was even longer inside the building. The couple I mentioned from the hotel were right behind us in line and I happened to notice that they guy had a Universtiy of Utah hoodie on. I asked him if they were from Utah and they said there were. Wow what a small world as we were too. As we talked to them more it turned out that they were married the same day at the same time that we were just a different temples. It was nice having them to chat to as the line slowly moved along. Unfortunatly we never ran into them again during the cruise.

We finally got thru the line and all checked in and we were on the ship. The directed us to the Lido deck where the embarkation lunch was going on so we went up there and got some food cause we were starving. Since our room still wasn't ready we decided to walk arouind the deck and check out the ship. The ship is themed to a rennesance theme. Meaning there are alot of old european paintings and statues thruout the ship. It was very beautiful but because many of the paintings and statues portray people nude I don't know if this is a ship I would bring children on. Up on deck on snapped a few pictures of the city of Long Beach as well as the Queen Mary which is right next door.

After exploring the ship we decided to go to our room to see if it was ready for us yet. To our suprise it was. I was very happy with our room. I booked the cruise thru Hotwire.com and got the garrenteed rate on a balcony room. The lady I talked to when booking it told me there was a good chance the view would be ubstructed but ours wasn't whatsoever. It was also high up on the ship. I can't remember what deck it was though exactly. The views were great and it was so nice to have the balcony to out on at relax at night listoning to the crashing waves. We always said that now that we had a blacony room we would be spoiled and always want a balcony room for every cruise we do. However since we are tight on money for our upcoming cruise on the Glory we just booked an inside cabin. So that will be an interesting change for us lol. Many of the following room pictures were taken later at night. However I felt this is the right spot to post them lol.

After we got settled into the cabin the call shortly came for the muster drill. We grabbed our life vests and made our way to our muste station for the drill. That went by quickly and we would soon be on our way.

The ship started moving so we went up top to watch it pull away from the port. We were officially on our way on our first cruise ever. Would it be something we loved and would crave to do again and again. Only time would tell. We walked around the ship some more and just started taking the experiance in. I love this picture below of Kiera and the naked statue. Mainly because she didn't know I was taking the picture tell he was in it as well lol.

When I booked the cruise the lady recommend us having the late dinner. That way we could spend more time when we are in the ports. However after this cruise I recommend paying close attention to the itenearry and chose which dinner would be best form there. We chose the late dinner on this cruise and well we wish we would have done the early cruise because we were back on the ship cause it was leaving the ports (except for puerto valerta) well before 6pm. This left us waiting hungry for dinner to come lol. Needless to say for our next cruise we chose the early dinner based on our itenearry. Dinner was great. Very very good food and the service was excellent. We were off to a great start.

After dinner we did a little more wondering and went and catched whatever show was taking place that evening in the theater (something we did every night of our cruise). This is the last picture from day 2. This was from the see-thru staircase that suspends high above the atrium. I'm scared to death of heights so needless to say it was pretty trippy to me.

After that it was back to our room for some relaxing on the balcony and going to sleep.

Anyways thats it for day 2. Check back later for my Day 3 recap.

There wasn't really anything exciting going on with Day 3. It was our first full day at sea and well I didn't exactly take many pictures. In fact I only pretty much took these 6. I don't remember all that we did that day. I know we went to some of the shows and games that were going on. Probably laid around the pools and hot tubes. And I think we watched a movie in our cabin that night. It was also our first formal night for dinner so we got all dressed up for that. I also belive that was the first dinner we had with the people we shared the table with being there. Anyways heres some of the pictures from that day. Like I said it was pretty uneventful. But it was nice to just sit back and relax.

One thing that kinda sucks happend this night though. While walking to the theater to catch the comedian I was walking slightly ahead of Kiera. She said something so I stopped and turned to see her and she walked right into the back of me. She was wearing flip flops and I had shoes on and her little toe collided right into the back of my shoe. It was hurting her the rest of the trip and when we got home we had it looked at. Turns out she did end up breaking it. So thats kind of a joke we have now that I broke her toe on our honeymoon lol.

So yeah thats it for our uneventful first day at sea. Day 4 is another day at sea but this time I took lots of pictures so watch for them tomorrow.

Day 4 was our second day at sea. Once agian there wasn't a whole lot going on again. We hit more shows and games as well as laid by the pool and relaxed in our room and in some of the lounge areas. I think this was the night I first got Kiera to try some sushi. We also watched another movie in our cabin. I know so exciting huh. Anyways on with the pictures.

We awoke in the morning after sleeping in to this great view from our blacony. I still can't belive we didn't book one again for our next cruise. I loved just sitting our there litsoning to the waves as Kiera would get ready for the day.

After breakfast we went and got some ice cream (honestly when didn't we have ice cream lol) and we noticed we were coming up on city. That city would be Cobo San Lucas which we would return to as one of our ports later in the cruise.

Later we went and relaxed in one of the lounge areas and people watched. The cealing was reflective so after messing around with my camera settings for a little while I was able to get this shot.

We also went and did some more ship wondering. This time we found the hallway thing that wraps around the main theater. I can't remember the what its called though. The one on the pride is themed to a garden. We were suprised to find that we were the only ones in there so we kicked back and relaxed for awhile. We seriously didn't see anyone else come thru while we were in there.

Continuing our wondering we found one of the front decks. Once again we were the only ones at the time there. However as we went there each night as our ship would leave the ports more and more people seemed to be finding it.

On the first day of the cruise we also found a deck that wrapped around the dinning room at the back of the ship. We spent alot of time here as well to watch the sunsets as once again there wasn't very many people there. The sunsets were all very beautiful from the ship over looking the nice water. We loved it.

That night after dinner we went back to our room to find our second towel animal. We still had time before the show that night in the main theater so we watched a movie and probably grabbed some more ice cream lol. I recommend taking your favorite ice cream toppings with you. We took a bag of gummy bears and I was in heaven the whole trip being able to put them in my ice cream.

After the show it was time to get some sleep. Tomorrow would be our stop in Puerto Vallarta. I'll be posting that soon. Needless to say there are lots of pictures from our stops at the ports.

thank you for posting all this. I am enjoying reading about your cruise! beautiful pictures too!

Great job so far!!! Thanks for sharing:D

what was your room number. we will be on pride in 13 days. sorry to se your toe was hurt. :mad:

Anyways onto Day 5 and our first port in Puerto Valerta. When we awoke in the morning we were already docked (yeah we liked to sleep in). So we had the beautiful area to look out on. Puerto Valerta is diffenitly the prettiest stop on a Mexican Riviera cruise. The surroundings are very nice and the city is decently clean as well.

After eating breakfast we got off the ship and then asked ourselves "what do we do now?" Being that we just got married we didn't have the money to plan any shore excursions. We just decided to do our own things at each of the ports. So we decided to go wonder around. Once off the ship theres a little welcome center and a shopping complex where the locals have little boths and such set up.

We wondered thru the shops to find me a pair of sunglasses. I was smart enough to not bring a pair with me so that was a must once we got off the ship. One thing I recommend is to not make yourself look dumb when haggling prices lol. I found a pair of Oakley knockoff sunglasses that I liked but found they were $20. I told the salesman that they were too much and I didn't have that much money on me. He then tried talking me into paying $15 for them. Once again I told him I didn't have that much. He asked me how much I had and I told him $10. He said he couldn't sell them that cheap so we said thanks and we started walking away. He then called us back and said he would sell them for $10. I said ok only to find I didn't have a $10 bill on me. I only had 20's. So after telling him I only had $10 I handed him a 20 and he gave me my change and we were on our way. I felt so stupid afterwards though.

There was a mall about a half mile away so we decided after looking at all the shops at the port we would walk down there. We had to walk along one of the main roads there and I couldn't belive how crazy some of the drivers are in Mexico. This was something I saw in all the ports. They drive so crazy lol. We finally made it to the mall. Which there really wasn't much to see. However it was right next to the beach and this sign just made me laugh.

After finishing up at the little mall we decided to walk over to the beach. It was pretty but the water was very cold. We had halled our swimsuits and towels and such in my backpack but the water was too cold to enjoy it so we just went on a nice walk down the beach.

As we walked along the beach my stomach really started to bother me. I wasn't feeling very good at all. This going along with Kiera having to limp most places we walked because of her toe that I broke a couple nights before. We were also getting hungry and I hoped maybe that would make my stomach feel a little better so we made our way back to the ship.

I really regret saying it but once we were back on the ship we never got back off. Puerto Vallarta is a very pretty city and I hope to go back again someday when I'm not sick and actually be able to tour the area instead of the beach next to the port.

Once back on the ship we went and got some lunch and I noticed this from the lido deck. There are Wal Marts in Mexico. I wondered how different it would be from the US ones and i'm sure many tourists make there way there each and every day.

After lunch we went and changed into our swinwear to go relax by the pool. Since most the ship was empty we were able to get some decent spots.

After changing back into our normal clothes we went for a walk to grab some ice cream and also caught one of the shows taking place on the ship about mexican culture.

This was one of the other ships docked with us

The day started to get dark so we relaxed some more up on deck. We also snapped some more pictures to kill some time before dinner.

This was the night at dinner where they allowed whatever in the dinning room. It was nice not having to get all dressed up cause we were tired and hurting and I still wasn't feeling to great. They had the Mariachi band that was in the show earlier in the day walking thru the dinning room playing music which was really neat.

After dinner we went back to our room and found our newest towel animal.

After resting some we realized it was almost time for us to pull out of the port and be on our way to our next distination. I wanted to watch so we went back up to the deck to watch us leave. We went to that front deck to watch us pull away and I tried snapping a few unique pictures with my camera. Heres just a couple. The second being probably my favorite picture from the whole trip.

After we were out of Puerto Vallarta we grabbed some ice cream and went back to our cabin to relax on the balcony again and catch another movie. Then it was off to bed to be ready for Mazatlan the following day. I just hoped I would be feeling better and Kiera would be able to get around easier as Puerto Vallarta ended up being somewhat of a bust for us.

I probably won't have an update up tomorrow. So watch for it Wednesday afternoon.

what was your room number. we will be on pride in 13 days. sorry to se your toe was hurt. :mad:

Since this was over a year ago I wasn't couldn't remember for sure what our room number was. However I pulled up the deck plan for the pride and it helped me remember lol. I'm pretty positive we were in room #8138 on the Panorama deck. Hope that helps. and have fun on the Pride. We sure did.

Thanks for the great review & pics so far! We did this same cruise about 2 months before you guys and we had such a good time.

Well I wasn't expecting to update this as soon as I am. But a meeting didn't take as long as I thought it was and now I have time to update this a day earlier then I was planning. This will probably be my longest update yet. So bear with me and as always comments or questions are welcomed.

Day 6 brought us to Mazatlan, Mexico. This was our least favorite stop. Mainly because Mazatlan is mostly all city. Yeah there are some resort areas but they arn't anything like Puerto Vallarta or Cobo. However in Mazatlan I felt this was where we truly saw the Mexican culture as well as how people truely live in Mexico.

When we woke up we were once again already docked. As Kiera got ready I went out to the Balcony and took some pictures of this port.

As you can see the port is located in the industrial area of Mazatlan. When we saw this we really had no Idea what we were going to do for the day. We saw they had shuttles taking us from the ship to probably the exit of the industrial area. But even still it was obvious that we were nowhere near the town let alone the shopping area that they recommend the tourists go to called the "Golden Zone".

We ate breakfast and then headed down to get off the ship to see where we would be after the shuttle ride. Where we ended up was the largest cruise terminal center of any of the ports we went to. Inside they had a bunch of small booths of tour companys and other places to see in Mazatlan. Kind of like a little travel convention. We looked at the tours and found that that would probably be our best way to view or tour the city. The one we went on we choose because it was only $25 a person and they offered free beer or soda for those who took the tour. The tour lasted I belive 4 or 5 hours. So we had plenty of time. We figured the buisnesses offering the tours must be reputable if they are allowed to be in the cruise terminals.

After enough people signed up for the tour we loaded into the van and we were on our way. The first place we went to was on top of hill. It was just above the industrial area and had a small resturaunt at the top. We had to go thru some residential areas to get there. It was sad to see the way some people lived there. Especially considering the high class people (which the tour guide keep refering to them as) such as the doctors and lawyers still lived in small beat up homes. The views from the top of the hill were pretty decent though.

After being done at that hill we loaded back into the van and were on our way to the next destination. We drove along the shoreline road and went thru the old tourism area. It has since become run down as the tourist area was further moved away form the city. We stopped at some cliffs along the road though where the "Cliff Jumping" takes place. I've done my fare share of cliff jumping at Lake Powell but it was nothing like what these guys are doing. They run and jump off the rock out about 15-20 feet and dive into the water that is only about 5 feet deep the tour guide told us. They have to time it just right for when the current comes in so the don't hit the bottom. Also all the rocks are very jagged and if one thing goes wrong they would be dead. Infact someone had died there only a couple days earlier because he timed it wrong. I must say this was the coolest thing in Mazatlan. These guys are amazing at what they do and it is a huge tourist draw. And they don't get paid to do it ether. They did have tip jars set up so i gave them some money for putting on an excellent show.

After we watched the Cliff Jumpers we were loaded back into the van and were on our way into the old town. This is where things got really interesting as you saw the daily life of the Mexican Citizens. I also couldn't belive how small there streets were. Even with there crazy drivers. I'm glad I wasn't driving because I would have gotten very lost very quickly lol.

While driving thru the old city we made and unsuspected stop at a jewelry store. This was where we could get our free beer or soda. The tour company must have an agreeance with the jewelry store. Because I swear we were the only ones there. And i'm sorry to say it but everything there was ugly. Just a quickstop to try to make a buck off the tourists I guess. It was really funny though when I went to get a drink as the guy at the counter ran off about 9 different beers they had and no soda. I told him I didn't want beer I wanted a pepsi. He couldn't understand why I didn't want a beer. I told him I don't drink alcohol but he still couldn't understand that. Finally I got my Pepsi though and we were on our way.

Our next stop was at the cathedral of the immaculate conception. I'm not Catholic but i'm a respecter of all faiths and frankly you can't help but acknowladge beautiful buildings and work of art. The Cathedral is one of the most beautiful things i've ever seen. The work is so fine on it. If your ever in Mazatlan its a must see no matter if your Catholic or not. They have like a town square park as well in front of it with many beautiful flowers and local trees as well.

After the Cathedral we thought we were done but the tour guide wanted to show us the local Market that was a couple blocks away. So we started walking that way. We passed the first of what would be many Senior Frog stores on the way. Seriously these things are on every other corner down there. Kinda funny considering there was only 1 actual Senior Frogs restaraunt there.

We then arrived to the market. Nothing makes you really appreciate what we have here in the US then by seeing there market. Its basically huge building where different people rent out space to sell there goods. Some will be selling clothes, some boxed food, some canned food, others produce, different meats, and finally a bunch of smaller ready to eat shops. It was quite the experiance. Especially seeing the meat section where most everything was almost at room temperature and not wrapped up or sanatized or anything. It smelt in there and it was very dirty. You feel so sad for these people after seeing the circumstances they live in.

After the market we went back to the van to head out of the old city and to the tourism area known as the Golden Zone. In these area was where the best deals and shops were at as well as the new high rise resorts and nicest beaches in the area.