My review: Carnival Pride March 10-17 2013

Hi everyone, It's Amanda! We've been back for a few days now and I thought I'd start my review. It might take me a few days to get through it all, but it will get done! Not sure what type of review you guys like the best so I'll just kinda narrate our trip and hopefully you guys like it!

Saturday, March 9:

The hubby (Jonathan) and oldest DS (Caden, 4) had had a persistant cough for the past few days, so we decided to head to the doctors before making the drive from Rhode Island to Baltimore.

Fortunately neither of them were contagious, so we picked up some meds and continued on to Baltimore!! On the ride there we received the e-mail about the Pride being delayed because of weather and not to head to the terminal until 2, no big deal as long as this cruise wasn't cancelled! We spent the night at the Best Western in Elkridge, booked through Trinity Reservations it was only $95 for the hotel, shuttle to the port, parking for the week, and a nice hot breakfast buffet. We met up with our traveling companions Sarah and Preston, got the kids to bed (also traveling with DS Brady, 3), and sent Jon and Preston next door to the Stained Glass Pub. The food was good (Irish nachos were GREAT) and prices were reasonable. Then it was off to bed!!

Sunday March 10:

Woke up to beautiful weather! The 2pm shuttle was full so we headed over at 1 and we were so glad we did! Here's our first view of the ship!

We headed over to VIP and our friends headed to regular check in. Security was very thorough, Opening my husband's camera cases, examining all the lenses and bodies, and taking every can of soda out of the cases. After that check in was a breeze and we waited to board the ship! And then everything ground to a halt. The ship's internet went down and they weren't checking anyone else in. After about 20 min they started letting people in VIP board in groups of 20, so an hour later we were onboard! We brought everything to our room, did some exploring, and had a nice quiet lido lunch with the ship pretty much deserted. Fun for us, not so much for the people waiting to board.

Lunch Time!

A deserted Lido gave Caden and Daddy a chance to play chess!

Hi everyone, It's Amanda! We've been back for a few days now and I thought I'd start my review. It might take me a few days to get through it all, but it will get done! Not sure what type of review you guys like the best so I'll just kinda narrate our trip and hopefully you guys like it!

 

Saturday, March 9:

The hubby (Jonathan) and oldest DS (Caden, 4) had had a persistant cough for the past few days, so we decided to head to the doctors before making the drive from Rhode Island to Baltimore.

Fortunately neither of them were contagious, so we picked up some meds and continued on to Baltimore!! On the ride there we received the e-mail about the Pride being delayed because of weather and not to head to the terminal until 2, no big deal as long as this cruise wasn't cancelled! We spent the night at the Best Western in Elkridge, booked through Trinity Reservations it was only $95 for the hotel, shuttle to the port, parking for the week, and a nice hot breakfast buffet. We met up with our traveling companions Sarah and Preston, got the kids to bed (also traveling with DS Brady, 3), and sent Jon and Preston next door to the Stained Glass Pub. The food was good (Irish nachos were GREAT) and prices were reasonable. Then it was off to bed!!

Sunday March 10:

Woke up to beautiful weather! The 2pm shuttle was full so we headed over at 1 and we were so glad we did! Here's our first view of the ship!

We headed over to VIP and our friends headed to regular check in. Security was very thorough, Opening my husband's camera cases, examining all the lenses and bodies, and taking every can of soda out of the cases. After that check in was a breeze and we waited to board the ship! And then everything ground to a halt. The ship's internet went down and they weren't checking anyone else in. After about 20 min they started letting people in VIP board in groups of 20, so an hour later we were onboard! We brought everything to our room, did some exploring, and had a nice quiet lido lunch with the ship pretty much deserted. Fun for us, not so much for the people waiting to board.

Lunch Time!

A deserted Lido gave Caden and Daddy a chance to play chess!

Looks like your pics are not coming through.

I think I've got them fixed this time!

Much better.:)

Looking so forward to reading this review!!!

I was on your roll call with our cancelled hurricane Sandy cruise!!

My turn on her in 18 days!!!!

Thanks for doing a Pride review, I am looking forward to following along. I am on the Pride May 5th and can't wait. I hope you had a great time.

Sunday, March 10 (continued):

By the time everyone made it on the ship, we were delayed in leaving by a few hours, normally not a big deal but after muster, CC orientation, and a quick dinner, we missed the family welcome aboard party. But it had been a crazy day, the kids hadn't napped, and it was a good time to head back to our room. We were in OS #6156 and it was a fantastic room for the 4 of us. There were 2 small tables, 4 chairs, and a lounger on the balcony so we could have lunch out there every day rather than brave the buffet with our kids getting in people's way. There was also a tub that was a little narrow and shallow, but longer than normal. Great for kidlets that don't shower yet. Plus the room was big enough that the kids could move around, play, and have some "down time" away from the crowd. Our room steward was grumpy and looked like he had to force himself to speak to us, but he did a great job with the room and that's what really matters!

Under the bridge:

Bunk beds for the boys:

In the middle of unpacking:

Cookies before bed:

Monday, March 11:

There's a huge competition in my family over the infamous ship on a stick. My sister won one her first day on her first cruise, my dad won one his first day of his first cruise, So did my mom and cousin. I was dead set on winning since I still haven't won one! Around 10am I was getting the kids ready for breakfast and there was a knock on my door. First trivia of his first cruise and my friend, Preston won a SOAS. *sigh*. Anyway, the kidlets had never done any type of daycare or preschool before so we were really hesitant about Camp Carnival. We went through the schedule and they picked something that sounded like fun, bubble dancing. So off we went dropped them off with no kidlet tears (maybe one or two from mom) wit the promise that we'd be back in 45 min, when dancing was scheduled to end. Went back to our room, unpacked a little, headed back to camp, and the boys refused to leave. They were having the time of their lives, so they stayed for parachute games & superhero drawing! This gave us time to explore the ship. I had every intention of taking a ton of pictures for you guys, but then I discovered Serenity. It was drizzly and cold... but for someone that has been a SAHM for the past 4 1/2 years it was AMAZING. So we signed up for Cheers and prepared for a whole hour and a half of freedom!!

It took me a good 10 min to get into this darn hammock!

The general reaction to my repeatedly falling out of the hammock:

Then we picked kidlets up for room service lunch. Pretty much every day we ordered the same thing, a BLT & garden salad for me, yogurt & grilled cheese for the boys, and a chicken wrap & BLT for Jon. It was all consistently good, always nice and hot, and the servers always had a smile on their faces. This might be because our kids are just discovering how to tip and LOVED giving them money. We usually had to tip twice because they couldn't decide who got to give it to him! We were really surprised that Brady wanted to immediately go back to camp and play, so I brought him back while daddy took Caden swimming. It was absolutely freezing. Even under the domed portion of the pool, which I really didn't expect. One thing I have noticed is that sea day entertainment seems to have dropped off in the past few years. Looking back at my fun times from this cruise it's a lot of spa listings, casino listings, and seminars on acupuncture, puffy eyes, and metabolism. It seemed like I was constantly looking at the fun times to find something to do. So I played (lost) some trivia, picked Brady up, and we all got ready for formal night!

Our family:

Formal night dinner was fantastic, but our waitstaff that night wasn't as great. Service was way too long, well over 2 hours and probably closer to 3. It was so long that Caden almost missed crown and edible jewelry making at camp (he loves princesses and he was excited for it). In fact, it was so*long this happened:

But we finally finished up, made a dash to camp, and got there just in time for Cade to get his crown! They had a great formal night camp*lineup and most kids stayed in their formalwear for the "Bubble Ball". Meanwhile We headed to the Atrium to get a drink and discovered Cowboy Jerry. Jerry is absolutely fantastic and completely adorable.

Next we headed to the 18+ comedy shows. Michael Macy was hysterical, but Al Ernest was a bit of a letdown. We got there about 30min early and got seats right up front and by 10min later the theatre was full and people were starting to sit in front of the seats, in the aisles, on the stage, and they were queueing up the stairs that lead down to Butterflies. Honestly it was a mess and really didn't seem safe. Not only did no one tell the people clogging the aisles to move, but the comedian made a joke about it. I'd also heard here on cc that the comedy clubs were emptied between sets to give new people a chance to get in but that didn't happen. The girl running the show encouraged everyone to stay in their seats for the next comedian. But that was the end of our night! Picked the kidlets up from camp, and everyone headed to bed!

Tuesday, March 12:

Today the first thing our kids asked was if they could go to camp, so we checked out the schedule and discovered that today had a whole slew of family activities onboard! Since we all overslept we called for lunch, and played with some of the toys we brought with us. Then we hit up the Hairy Chest contest (always good for a laugh) and went to the family fun at camp carnival events, It turns out that all of the cc groups compete against each other... not really fair for the 2-5yo kids competing against the 9-11 kids, but it was fun! There were basically 3 events at family fun, the first event involved wrapping up your parent (or another member of the family) up like a mummy using a roll of toilet paper. Then the mummy had to dance to Gangham Style, and the kids would rip all the paper off the adults and have a toilet paper fight with it. It was cute, my oldest liked it but Brady was scared, so they let him play with trains with his daddy in the 2-5 room. Next was the family name that tune. It was really fun with one exception. I get that they need songs that kids know, but I don't think songs with lyrics like

"everybody getting crunk, crunk

Boys tryna touch my junk, junk

Gonna smack him if he getting too drunk, drunk"

Are appropriate for preschoolers. You could tell one of the councilors was uncomfortable, too because she made up kid friendly lyrics and was attempting to sing them over loud the racy ones. Not a big deal, but I was pretty surprised at the choice of music. The third event was family video game time, but by then Caden was getting a little tired, too so I brought him to play trains with his brother. A few minuets lated a councilor came over with medals for the 4 of us (I think she was making up awards for everyone so everyone was a winner at something, she was a total sweetheart.) and a funship Freddy T-shirt for Brady!

Then we took the boys to dinner and finally scored with an AMAZING waitstaff! Our waiter's name was Andre and if you have anytime dining you should request him. Not only were they friendly and prompt with everything, their tables for 6 (which our group was) were against the back windows and watching the sunset every night was awesome. After the first night they had a big glass of apple juice for Brady and ice water for Caden as soon as they saw us. They were just overall fantastic. That night was the "Owl Jams" Mardi Gras party in camp. The boys wanted to go, so I dropped them off and headed out to the adult Mardi Gras Party with ACD Sassy. It was fun, WAY too cramped in the atrium (would have made way more sense on Lido), we had a few drinks and caught some beads. There was a small group of boys (like 7-10yo) that were just getting nasty, Sassy would throw beads and these boys would climb on tables, fall on people and even scratched a girl trying to pry her beads away from her... we decided we were done with that and headed off

We caught the last 10min of Vroom (what we saw was good) and headed down to see Michael Macy again (as usual he didn't disappoint) and picked up the kids. Since it was a "party night" they each came home with a little backpack with a new toothbrush, flashlight, and a stuffed owl that Caden named "Ooh" They once again had a blast, had their face´s painted, and were stuffed so full of sugar they didn't fall asleep for 2 hours.

Enjoying your review.

Your boys are so cute!

Thanks for your review!

YES! Your KIDLETS are ADORABLE!!

Loving this review and your family is fabulous! We are on the Pride in October and this helps to keep the excitement up.:)

Great reading your review. Just booked today and am anxious to see good reviews. Love your pics and the variety in the review. Adding to the excitement! Your boys are soo adorable!!!! Thanks for sharing!!!!

Thanks everyone!

Port Canaveral; Wednesday, March 13:

Today we figured we'd stay onboard and do some exploring in the sunshine while everyone was off at Disney/Universal. We played a ton of mini-golf (really fun!)

Side note; This looks down into the spa & some people like to use the spa hot tubs au natural... Caden gave them a bit of a surprise by knocking and waving...

They were running drills all day with the life boats and it was pretty cool to watch. Other than that we mostly just swam and played with the kids (exciting review, I know!). We did the cheezy old time pics because we had photo credit, and I think they're adorable!

We'd put the kidlets in camp after dinner, our waiter dancing around the dining room had them in the mood to dance and play!

We were scheduled to leave PC at 6 with an onboard time of 5:30, but around 5ish they started making announcements that our departure would be delayed slightly due to a lifeboat issue, but that we had plenty of time to make it to Nassau and nothing would really be effected. Then they canceled the first show (the tech team was working on the lifeboats), then they cancelled the second, and we finally got moving around midnight. So we went to the sports bar for a while (I can't remember our bartender's name, but she was amazing!) and people were PISSED about the delay. There was a group of women who had tried packing and disembarking when they heard about the life boat problem, but they said Carnival wouldn't let them off until Nassau. They were trying to rally people to go down to guest services with them and complain, but they weren't having a lot of luck. Mostly people just seemed bored and cranky, there was no show, no casino, no shops... But Hubby and I just headed up to the midship lido pool and had a nice swim! At this point we knew there was no way we'd make Nassau on time and I was starting to get worried about our excursion, but there wasn't anything I could do about it, so we picked up the kids, picked up some Pizza Pirate, and crashed!

Nassau; Thursday, March 14:

March 14 is usually a tough day for us since it's the anniversary of the day I lost my best friend (People! Don't drink and drive, it's not just your life on the line!) So the hubby and I booked a great excursion for that day! We were planning on doing the beach day on Blue Lagoon Island followed by the Dolphin Encounter, but with our arrival delayed by several hours we were REALLY worried about missing our entire excursion. So we took a few pics while docking, then flew off the ship (2 fat people have never run that fast carrying 2 preschoolers!), hopped into a van to drive us to the Paradise Island Ferry Terminal, and pulled into the parking lot with 2 minuets until departure time. All that rushing around took quite a bit out of us, so the 30 minuet ferry ride to Blue Lagoon Island was really nice. In the end we completely missed our beach day, but made it to the dolphin part. The people at Dolphin Encounters were amazing. They put our group of 4 in a group with another family with 2 little boys and had us all go first so the trainer could spend a little more time with them. She did an amazing job and really took her time making sure everyone had a great time and that the kids were comfortable in the water and around the dolphin. Unfortunately, we had to hop right back on the ferry after purchasing our photos, but they dropped us off at the ship, which was nice. The ship was planning on spending an extra hour in Nassau to make up for being late, but we just headed back on the ship and got the kids ready for dinner/camp. Apologies in advance for the million pics I'm about to post!

Our favorite towel animal!

Thank you for the phots and the boys are great. We will be on the same ship in three weeks, so I can't wait. Thanks again for the review.

Thursday, continued:

After we dropped the kids off, we decided to see what was going on around the ship. There seemed to be a lot going on in the Taj Mahal, so we headed there around 7:45 and found a good seat to spend the next few hours. We lost fabulously at a few games or trivia, and hubby made a few runs down to Butterflies to get us Zany Zombies. Of course the problem with this is that by the time they were asking for volunteers to get onstage and line dance, the bestie (Sarah) and I were more than happy to jump up and join in. That's us right up front, I lasted a good half an hour until I danced in the wrong direction and almost squished our cutiepants instructor, but he was a good sport about it!

Next they had Game Show Mania so I volunteered for that, too (damn Zombie drinks!) Honestly it was a bit of a train wreck. The girl running it was a sweetheart and kept trying to keep the scores even by putting the other competitors in "time out" and letting me catch up. But after 15 minuets, I lost and was still SOAS-less. You can see how the questions got really easy when it was just me... like doing the YMCA.

So for the next round Sarah volunteered. She had no idea what was going on, and insisted the mexican hat dance was called a snuggie, then she snuggied for the whole audience... her round was a bit less of a massacre, but we still had no SOAS.

Unfortunately, the marriage game was next. Now, I LOVE the marriage game, and it WAS our 10 year anniversary... So hubby had the idea that we should get onstage and play. There were about 8 other couples that wanted to play so Kirk (cd) had us all do our best Tarzan and Jane impressions. When it was our turn hubby did the Tarzan yell, scooped me up, and spun me in a circle. I don't know if people cheered because they liked us or because they were impressed with his feat of strength. We all got onstage and it was hysterical! All the couples were great sports and everything was great until the end... Once again totally our fault. One of the questions had the contestants rate their first kiss from 1-10 and no one matched. So at the end Kirk asked us all to show the audience was a 10 looked like. I don't know if hubby had too much to drink or if I'm just a little too chubby, but Jon decided to dip me onstage. And he dropped me.

Kirk made a big deal, making sure I wasn't hurt and asking Jon to call into the morning show on Saturday so he'd remember to send us "a little something" meanwhile, I'd felt something go all painful and funny in my hand and thumb when I fell. I picked up the kids and we went to bed while Jon celebrated our win at the piano bar :)

Fun review! It is encouraging me to let loose and participate a little on my cruise with my son next week. Looking forward to reading more.

Great review. Love all the pics. We leave on the Pride on 4/28 and I cannot wait. Anxiously waiting for your next installment to make sure you didn't hurt your hand too badly.

Nice job thanks ..

Come back!!!! Hope your hand is OK....LOVING your review, and your kids are adorable!!!!!:D

Amanda thank you for the great review of the Pride. We will be boarding in 4 Sundays and can't wait. Meeting up with old friends who moved away from NJ over 10 yrs ago. What a fun reunion it will be.

Just wondering if you did the Blue Lagoon on your own or booked with Carnival? Details would be great.

Thanks for the review