Pride 12/5 - 12/11 : Great, Good, and meh. Beautiful ship.

[Doggielover68]

52 minutes ago, let's go cruising said:

Can anyone tell me where the Pizza Pirate and Coffee Bar are on the Pride? We've never been on this class of ship. 

 

Thanks!

Just off the Pride this morning. Pizza is in the Lido Buffet near the serenity deck. There's a coffee bar right next to it, as well as the usual coffee shop on deck 2 near the casino.

[sunonfire]

1 hour ago, Doggielover68 said:

Just off the Pride this morning. Pizza is in the Lido Buffet near the serenity deck. There's a coffee bar right next to it, as well as the usual coffee shop on deck 2 near the casino.

 

When you arrived at the terminal did you check in on the second level as in the past? Is that where they checked your Covid cards? 
 

Were you able to get your sign and sail cards when boarding or did you have to wait until 1:30?  Thanks!
 

Do you know the passenger count?  Were there any Covid cases. I’m sailing next Sunday. Thanks.

[Don Kehote]

59 minutes ago, sunonfire said:

When you arrived at the terminal did you check in on the second level as in the past? Is that where they checked your Covid cards? 
 

Were you able to get your sign and sail cards when boarding or did you have to wait until 1:30?  Thanks!

There were several checks, starting at the escalators to get upstairs.  Then at the top, we were checked again, which seemed a little redundant, but whatever.  Then, we were queued to enter the building, where there was another line.  That line led to podiums set up in the entry area to check vaccine and test results, after which we were shepherded over to get pictures and stuff.

 

Our case was odd, as boarding was delayed a couple of hours, but our cards were in the mail slot when we got to our cabin, at around 1:30.

[groundloop]

6 hours ago, let's go cruising said:

Can anyone tell me where the Pizza Pirate and Coffee Bar are on the Pride? We've never been on this class of ship. 

 

Thanks!

 

Pizza is in the aft-most corner of the Lido buffet, starboard side.

 

If I remember correctly the coffee bar is on deck 2 a bit forward of the casino.

 

Also, I'll add that I agree with Don Kehote's assessment of the steakhouse.  We went on the final evening of our Panama Canal cruise (December 2021) and were very disappointed.  Everything was exceedingly slow and my steak wasn't all that great..... not nearly as good of an experience as I've had on other ships.

Edited January 24, 2022 by groundloop

[LikeAllCruiseLines]

Groundloop. You stated you were on the Pride for the Panama Canal cruise in December. When were the elegant Nights for dining?

[sunonfire]

Also Groundloop:   do you know what the passenger count was? Did you hear of any Covid cases? Thanks.

[Doggielover68]

18 hours ago, sunonfire said:

 

When you arrived at the terminal did you check in on the second level as in the past? Is that where they checked your Covid cards? 
 

Were you able to get your sign and sail cards when boarding or did you have to wait until 1:30?  Thanks!
 

Do you know the passenger count?  Were there any Covid cases. I’m sailing next Sunday. Thanks.

I believe our cards were first checked outside and then again inside. All rooms were ready at 1:30 regardless of status. We got on board by 11:30. The terminal was a bit crowded. I'd recommend wearing an N95 mask in that area. Cards were in the mailbox by 1. I snagged mine early so I could get connected to the wifi and dropped off my luggage. They were done cleaning by then but they were still distributing the bags from the porters at that time. 

 

We had around 1300 on board, putting us near 50%. It never felt crowded, never waited in any lines, mostly avoided Lido buffet except grabbing food to take back to the room. Don't know of any cases (they didn't say anything about it) but I know there was a quarantine section on deck 1. The stairs were roped off in that section. Crew wore kn95 masks the whole time and there were complimentary masks in the room. Crew was cleaning constantly. On more than one occasion, we saw our room steward sanitizing the hallway walls top to bottom and wiping all of the handrails. 

 

The weather was quite chilly the first and last day. When we returned to Tampa, it was 46 degrees! 

Edited January 24, 2022 by Doggielover68

[sunonfire]

Doggielover68: Thank you for the information. Your response makes me feel better about our upcoming cruise. We live in Florida and it was in the 20s last night. Our first Carnival cruise was from Tampa in early January years ago. It was even cold in Cozumel. People were buying sweatshirts like crazy. I hope we don’t have cold weather.

[groundloop]

10 hours ago, LikeAllCruiseLines said:

Groundloop. You stated you were on the Pride for the Panama Canal cruise in December. When were the elegant Nights for dining?

 

Oh geeze, that's asking a lot out of my feeble little brain.  Sorry, I don't recall exactly which nights they were.

 

10 hours ago, sunonfire said:

Also Groundloop:   do you know what the passenger count was? Did you hear of any Covid cases? Thanks.

 

I don't recall the exact number, but I'm pretty sure we were at around 75% capacity or thereabouts.  And I didn't actually hear of anyone with Covid, but did notice that one of the Showlist performers was absent for the last show and am fairly certain that we had a substitute steward for the latter part of the cruise.  Carnival, of course, wasn't going to advertise the fact if indeed there were any cases. 

 

I've made it a point to do a home test after my cruises just to be certain I don't inadvertently spread the virus to anyone and so far I've been negative for all 3 post-restart cruises I've been on. 

[Momma1980]

We were on the Pride New Years Eve cruise and the steakhouse was excellent with great service!

[sunonfire]

Did the terminal employees enforce the assigned check in times or was it first come first serve? When we checked in at terminal 6 for the Constellation there were two lines. One for the current time passengers  and the second line was for people who arrived early. They checked the paperwork several times to make sure you were in the correct line.

[groundloop]

1 hour ago, sunonfire said:

Did the terminal employees enforce the assigned check in times or was it first come first serve? When we checked in at terminal 6 for the Constellation there were two lines. One for the current time passengers  and the second line was for people who arrived early. They checked the paperwork several times to make sure you were in the correct line.

At Tampa they never checked your arrival time.  We had one of the earliest arrival times and there were people in line over 2 hours before their assigned time.  They of course couldn't get on the ship until their boarding group was called, but by being there so early and taking up seats in the waiting area they just made it more difficult for everyone (plus boarding was approximately 45 minutes late getting started).

Edited January 25, 2022 by groundloop

[htkodiak]

16 hours ago, groundloop said:

At Tampa they never checked your arrival time.  We had one of the earliest arrival times and there were people in line over 2 hours before their assigned time.  They of course couldn't get on the ship until their boarding group was called, but by being there so early and taking up seats in the waiting area they just made it more difficult for everyone (plus boarding was approximately 45 minutes late getting started).

This happened a couple of weeks ago in port Canaveral while boarding Mardi Gras , total cluster $%#@. Everyone jammed into area to board waiting for their group to be called.We will be on the Pride in March , hopefully we won't have a repeat.

 

[groundloop]

1 hour ago, htkodiak said:

This happened a couple of weeks ago in port Canaveral while boarding Mardi Gras , total cluster $%#@. Everyone jammed into area to board waiting for their group to be called.We will be on the Pride in March , hopefully we won't have a repeat.

 

 

I swear the trick is to go for a later check-in time.  On our most recent cruise (which was on Pride) I watched the lines coming onto the ship and by 1 PM they were nonexistent.  People were walking right onto the ship with no delays and could get into their cabins within just a few minutes of boarding.

 

 

Edited January 25, 2022 by groundloop