Pride September 13, 2015 Photo Diary

[Danacat222]

What time were you do back to Baltimore and what time did you get off the ship?

 

Originally we were due in t 9, but because of "operational purposes" that i will go into later in the diary here, we were told it would be 10am. We were alongside in Baltimore earlier than that though shortly before 10, docked at 9:38am, and we were in the car at 11:20am. I'll be writing about that, too.

[Danacat222]

Danacat - we met you on Half Moon Cay! We were that crazy family next to you in Cabana 11 :). Thanks for the great review!

 

 

That's awesome, Y'all were having a great time! I may have some photos with some of you in them. I hope you had a great cruise. Thanks for following along here.

[MrsPhoenix91]

I really like your pictures, Dana. And your review is very thorough. Thank you for taking the time to do this review!

[cruisin2016]

Thank you for all the information!! We set sail with our two sons who have never cruised before in April!!

[Danacat222]

Having sailed under the Key Bridge...

 

 

 

You can just see the small pier at Fort Armistead Park...I have actually kayaked out from there and around Fort Carrol

 

 

The Green Thunder slide was open most of the cruise, for some time it was closed, some said because of wind, but we did see what appeared to be someone training 5 guys up there, showing them how to operate it.

 

 

With the Lido pool being closed, I was wondering what kind of sail away party there might be. If there really was one, we missed it. Yes the pool did open up eventually.

 

 

 

 

Edited September 25, 2015 by Danacat222

[Danacat222]

So after sailing away and spending a little time on the balcony, it was time to go to dinner. We always choose Your Time Dining and we love it. We have had nights when we needed to wait, but most nights there was no wait at all. We like having a table for two for various reasons, and getting one was never ever a problem at all.

 

Historically, night one in the dining room is a little sketchy. It's a good night to go to the Steakhouse. We have done that a few times. Even though they do this week after week, i guess there are some crew who have left the ship for vacation and new ones trying to find there way.

 

With Your Time dining, you can actually request a specific area or server. We have always found one we stick with most of the week. We did find a great team, but only got to sit in their section 3 of the 7 nights. We had another super nice waiter 2 nights as well. The first night was predictably not great service-wise, it was slow, but the food was very good.

 

 

 

 

Right now, Pride has the "old menus". Pride was scheduled to on-board the new American Table menus on the 9/20 cruise, however that plan has been delayed. One of our servers mentioned it to us when we were discussing our cruising histories. I told him that we had the American Table on Liberty last year and that we really were not crazy about it. We were glad to see the old menus and had very good and hot meals every night except the one night we ordered the up-charge steakhouse selections and one other night we just were not real hungry and we did not really like what we ordered.

 

It's become tradition that we have martinis with dinner every night. Mom got he Blue Moon Martini

 

 

 

I had a Lemon Drop Martini

 

 

Vegetable spring rolls...

 

 

 

Roasted tomato soup (must get, it's so good!)

 

 

Chicken tenders....our waiter was worried I was not ordering enough food, I was saving room for dessert and a trip to the Alchemy Bar.

 

[Danacat222]

The Dessert menu features the signature Warm Chocolate Melting Cake every night, which has always been my least favorite dessert. There is also every night what I would call the featured dessert, tonight was Creme Brulee. While I generally am not a fan of the WCMC I was craving chocolate but wanted to try the Creme Brulee. The WCMC was very good, the Creme Brulee was too eggy for me.

 

[Danacat222]

After dinner we went to walk around a bit before hitting up the Alchemy Bar. We stopped to watch the cruise director Steve Knisely run an activity in the atrium lounge bar.

 

"Guess that song with Steve"

 

 

 

 

 

We made our way to the beautiful Alchemy Bar, where we were greatly disappointed. We heard that Tatiana who was our Alchemy bar tender on Liberty last year was on Pride, but that was not to be. She had left and there were two guys tending bar and we were not impressed with them at all. My first drink was my favorite, The Perfect Storm, minus the rosemary sprig. It somehow wasn't the same. The second drink, I asked if a custom drink could be made with lemon. So the Romanian bartender makes me a drink then says he is going on a break. The drink was aweful, there was no lemon at all, it was pineapple and super spicey. He made a drink for my mom too and hers also was not good. There was a bar assistant and we asked to pay, she was completely surprised, he has not rang up our drinks and we could have walked away and no one would have known. The girl was only rining up 2 drinks total, we told her we each had 2, even though we did not like the second drinks I wanted to pay for them. So we paid and I went to the bathroom and poured mine down the drain. I did not want to just leave it sitting out somewhere.

 

 

 

 

After that let down, we went to the Butterflies lounge to see if we could get into the 10:30 comedy show featuring Tom Foss. It was jam packed, and we stood at the back, but some ladies saw us standing and I think they felt bad seeing my Mom stand there while they has a few seats saved, they waved us over and let us sit with them. That was unexpected and very kind. We loved the comedian, he was very funny without needing to be vulgar the entire time.

 

 

[Danacat222]

After the comedy show we were pretty beat, I wanted to play in the casino but I was tired and it was crazy smokey. Again, I have asthma, playing in the casino is hit or miss for me and usually I am able to play some, but not this trip unfortunately.

 

Time to go get a great night sleep in our cozy beds, I love the Carnival bedding and pillows, our beds were very comfortable.

 

[LynnAnne]

More Please

[Britbrie]

Great Updates so far!! Can't wait to read more!

[Danacat222]

Monday morning we woke up to a beautiful sunrise and we had slept great! We wasted no time getting our day started...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sea Day Brunch is one of our favorite meals on the ship, we love breakfast and the brunch is something we have felt Carnival really got right!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unfortunately, the quality of my beloved Huevos rancheros had declined. It looks great, but it was very grislty. I ended up eating mostly just the eggs.

 

[LUVMYGSDOG]

My Huevos Rancheros that morning were excellent! I was lucky and mine came from the good batch - lol.

 

Loving the review and pics! I am reliving the cruise. Thank you for taking the time to do this.

 

 

Kim

Edited September 26, 2015 by LUVMYGSDOG

[aflyingbuttress]

 

 

 

Not to be picky, but that menu card is awfully dirty.

[Danacat222]

Not to be picky, but that menu card is awfully dirty.

 

I know, i have pics of some other dirty stuff, too.

[Danacat222]

Let me preface this by saying that I made a lot of observations on this cruise. Just because I write out an observation does not mean I am complaining. OK? Ok.

 

After brunch we went up to lido deck to see the pool status, still closed. We went to the forward pool and got 2 loungers in the shade, but we did not stay long, it was extremely crowded, and it was also pretty chaotic. There were children diving head first into the pool, and babies in diapers in the pool. The only Carnival employees around were the few bar waiters and 1 guy mopping and sopping up water as best he could.

 

 

 

 

Next we went to Serenity. Full. Max capacity. Chair hogging galore. Chair hogging, I expect, but OK this is my second time on Pride, I have never seen anything like this in 6 Carnival cruises, but with 1 pool out of service, there was no where else to go if you enjoy hanging out by or near a pool. The first 2 full sea days and the last sea day, being outside at the pools, were the only times/places the ship felt unexpectedly crowded. Everywhere else had good flow.

 

 

 

 

We did manage to score seats at the covered area of serenity.

 

 

 

That is when things got weird. Look at the expression on my Mom's face. A woman was wearing her BRA. Yes. See the couple in the background? They saw her and said they had now seen it all and that in just 2 days they decided they "will never sail on this ship again." They went on and on and on about every single little thing that had gone wrong, and they found the condition of the ship deplorable. Between the woman in her bra and that couple, we had to get outta there.

 

 

Yeah, if you are reading this and you were the woman wearing the bra at the Serenity deck (and did it again the next day!), I was not the only one to notice. People were staring, people were commenting, people were talking pictures.

 

So, there was a lot of mopping and cleaning going on at the forward pool, but none of that on Serenity. It seems to me like they are putting a lot of effort on upkeep in some areas, and none in others. See the Serenity floors. I don't understand this, this is a beautiful area of the ship, but no maintenance, that made me sad.

 

Edited September 26, 2015 by Danacat222

[Danacat222]

After spending the better part of the day outside in the sun, weather being perfect, we went in for a little R&R. Then it was time for dinner.

 

This night was the first elegant night and the Normandie deck 3 Your Time Dining room was hopping. We had to wait for a table, but that worked for me because I was anticipating a beautiful sen set, so the timing was perfect. I think our wait time was about 8 minutes. I had time to catch the sunset, Mom had time to plot her martini choice.

 

 

 

 

 

As soon as the sun went down, we were called back to the dining room, or restaurant as the maître d (Carnival's Sr. Maitre d’ Hotel) Ken Byrne calls it. Ken is amazing by the way. He was primarily stationed on the lower level assigned seating, but he made a few appearances upstairs and he treated us to nightly singing of Frank Sinatra. He made announcements welcoming everyone to the restaurant, announced birthdays and anniversaries, and assisting with a marriage proposal. He was awesome and it was clear he is very well respected by the dining staff.

 

We were seated at a table for 2 by a window, which was awesome. In the photo below, see no glasses. Why? Because the glasses that we had were dirty. Looks like the cascade or whatever they use in the dishwasher never rinsed away. They were very embarrassed. I just hope that everyone who got glasses from that batch noticed and said something.

 

 

And here is our first really good waiter this cruise, Maryano! He was so kind to us and especially so to my Mom. This is something I love about Carnival crew, culturally they really treat the aging population with a lot of respect, sincerely so.

 

 

 

 

[Danacat222]

So, we had dinner and completely forgot to take pics of the food. We like food porn and always make an effort to take photos of everything we eat. We forgot a few times sadly.

 

I had the ribs, which I love. The ribs are on the new American Table/American Feast menus, but a little different than the older menus in that the sides are different. They serve corn on the cob and fries with the old menus, if I remember correctly on Liberty last year they were served with baked beans and cornbread [pudding]. <-- because they call it cornbread, but it was in a small side dish and was more like what us southerners call cornbread pudding.

 

Mom had the lobster and shrimp, and also ordered prime rib. She loved the shrimp that came with the lobster, but she said the lobster was not great. I don't eat any seafoood at all. She did not like the prime rib, she barely touched it. For dessert I believe I had lime sherbet. I think Mom had the chocolate melting cake.

 

After dinner we ended up going to the Red Frog pub, it was the place to be, with a live band called the Ooh la las performing and showing everyone a great time. They were very entertaining.

 

[YOUTUBE]

[/YOUTUBE]

 

 

Search OohLaLaMusic on facebook

 

 

 

After that we wanted to check out the comedy club again. We caught most of J.R. McCollom by standing in the back, he was pretty great, very funny.

 

After J.R. finished, as people were leaving, we were easily able to find a seat for the 11pm show with Tom Foss. We had a bit of a wait, but it was worth it.

 

 

Mmmm Chocolate Martini...

 

 

 

 

 

Tom Foss was awesome, of all my cruises I liked him the most.

 

 

 

[chocolate melting cake]

Danacat222, I'm enjoying your review (we were on the Pride in Aug.)--but I am awed by the quality of your pictures! Might I ask what type of camera you used, and have you "touched up" the shots with a graphics program? I'm using a 5 year old Kodak, and had been happy with the results till seeing these! If you ever have some spare time and want to see amateurish shots of our cruise, here is a link. You probably already know, but to view them full sized just click on any and progress from there.

August 2015 Pride cruise

Edited September 27, 2015 by chocolate melting cake

[LeeloLovesStitch]

Following! Great review so far - I definitely want to go on Pride some day.

[aflyingbuttress]

I know, i have pics of some other dirty stuff, too.

 

Oof. I can be pretty picky about cleanliness on a vacation. Hopefully it's not too bad.

[LUVMYGSDOG]

Wow - hate we missed the woman in the bra! We only went on Serenity once and never returned - because it was so crowded! Normally that's the place we hang out on a ship but not this time.

 

 

Kim

[retiredgram]

enjoying the review. would have loved to have seen the BRA women. She couldn't have been as bad as the guy we saw every day in the Serenity with what appeared to be a speedo with the elastic in the legs gone. :eek: Even the comedian made comments about him. This happened several years ago. Sorry to hijack your thread.

 

Anyway, I will have to read the rest of your review when I get back off my cruise. We leave tomorrow on the Pride. :D I look forward to reading the rest of the review when we return. Oh, yes, I love your photos.

[Danacat222]

Danacat222, I'm enjoying your review (we were on the Pride in Aug.)--but I am awed by the quality of your pictures! Might I ask what type of camera you used, and have you "touched up" the shots with a graphics program? I'm using a 5 year old Kodak, and had been happy with the results till seeing these! If you ever have some spare time and want to see amateurish shots of our cruise, here is a link. You probably already know, but to view them full sized just click on any and progress from there.

August 2015 Pride cruise

 

 

Thank you! I use 2 cameras, one is a not so fancy/expensive Sony Cybershot DSC-WX50 that has some fancy treatment filters built into it, it is a FUN camera, I love it. The second one is a more pricey Canon Rebel DSLR that is straight up raw photography and no filters or treatment. I don't do any touch ups to those aside from a little cropping. If a photo does not come out right with that, i either live with it or don't use it. I consider myself an Amateur with a lot to learn. My tip is to take many shots of the same subject in various camera settings, time permitting, and at least a few will turn out great. On the evening of the second sea day I was outside with 2 cameras and 3 lenses trying to get the perfect sunset. I also brought my tripod with me this trip but never used it because it was windy and the ship was a bit too shaky.

[Danacat222]

enjoying the review. would have loved to have seen the BRA women. She couldn't have been as bad as the guy we saw every day in the Serenity with what appeared to be a speedo with the elastic in the legs gone. :eek: Even the comedian made comments about him. This happened several years ago. Sorry to hijack your thread.

 

Anyway, I will have to read the rest of your review when I get back off my cruise. We leave tomorrow on the Pride. :D I look forward to reading the rest of the review when we return. Oh, yes, I love your photos.

 

Have a great cruise! If you have your time dining, please give a hug to Diane, she is one of the hostesses in the main dining room, and the waiter team of Sumpena and I Putu are fabulous! Ask for them and tell them Dana and Patricia send love!