Carnival Pride 7/9 sailing review, our 5th time sailing on the Pride

We just got back from our 5th time sailing on the Pride (third time out of Baltimore). We had a great time, sailing with our largest group to date (40 cabins and 110 people) a high school graduation group. This cruise went to GT, HMC and Freeport. More with pics to follow.....

What no pictures yet ? waiting patiently :D for your review.

You really must have had a great time with your reunion group. Must have had also a nice group discount.

How did you go about handling shore excursions?

Looking forward for your pics.

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We just got back from our 5th time sailing on the Pride (third time out of Baltimore). We had a great time, sailing with our largest group to date (40 cabins and 110 people) a high school graduation group. This cruise went to GT, HMC and Freeport. More with pics to follow.....

We will be on the Carnival Pride for the 6th time in Early 2018. Hope you had a nice cruise, and can't wait to read your always enjoyable review.

Welcome back Jimbo! Looking forward to your review and pics. :cool:

We love the Pride, I think it is my favorite ship in any fleet and Baltimore is top 3 for departure ports.

Was it recently graduated students or a graduating class having a reunion? Bless you either way. I'd probably need another vacation after managing a group of 110 people for a week, no matter what age.

Welcome back. That sure sounds like a fun and LIVELY cruise group! We sailed Pride 2 years ago, B2B, then did a Journeys cruise last year and are booked on the 1/7/18 Journeys cruise, so I guess technically it will be our 5th and 6th cruise on her! :cool: All Jamman's "fault" because he convinced me to give Pride a try! :evilsmile:;) Looking forward to your review and pictures.

Welcome back. That sure sounds like a fun and LIVELY cruise group! We sailed Pride 2 years ago, B2B, then did a Journeys cruise last year and are booked on the 1/7/18 Journeys cruise, so I guess technically it will be our 5th and 6th cruise on her! :cool: All Jamman's "fault" because he convinced me to give Pride a try! :evilsmile:;) Looking forward to your review and pictures.

Karry, Patti and I are still waiting for you and Jim to join us on the Pride's Bermuda cruise in October 2018!! :D

What no pictures yet ? waiting patiently :D for your review.

LOL, it's coming Bo....

You really must have had a great time with your reunion group. Must have had also a nice group discount.

How did you go about handling shore excursions?

Looking forward for your pics.

 

 

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This group required a little more maintenance than some others, but that said it was still a great cruise. Pics are def on there way.

We will be on the Carnival Pride for the 6th time in Early 2018. Hope you had a nice cruise, and can't wait to read your always enjoyable review.

Thanks, hopefully this one will live up to past reviews.....

Welcome back Jimbo! Looking forward to your review and pics. :cool:

Thanks Jeff, it won't be able to justice to a famous Jamman review, but will give it my best.

We love the Pride, I think it is my favorite ship in any fleet and Baltimore is top 3 for departure ports.

 

Was it recently graduated students or a graduating class having a reunion? Bless you either way. I'd probably need another vacation after managing a group of 110 people for a week, no matter what age.

High school graduates..... more details to follow.

Welcome back. That sure sounds like a fun and LIVELY cruise group! We sailed Pride 2 years ago, B2B, then did a Journeys cruise last year and are booked on the 1/7/18 Journeys cruise, so I guess technically it will be our 5th and 6th cruise on her! :cool: All Jamman's "fault" because he convinced me to give Pride a try! :evilsmile:;) Looking forward to your review and pictures.

Thanks Karen, I blame a lot on Jeff as well. ;) The Pride passed out Liberty and Breeze in terms of our most traveled ships (in terms of number of cruises).

Karry, Patti and I are still waiting for you and Jim to join us on the Pride's Bermuda cruise in October 2018!! :D

Wife and I are both retiring next year, that said we have A Journey cruise on the Breeze for November 3, 2018 so that might be tough unless I hit Mega Millions tonight. But you never know......

First a little background, I have been on here forever (OK, since 96) and this cruise was to be our 34th (I think;)) cruise on a Carnival ship (that we paid for anyways....but that is another story for another day). This was (as previously mentioned) our fifth time on the Pride, we have sailed on all of the Spirit class with the exception of the Miracle (which is a little weird because she was home ported in New York sessionally for a while, which is close to our home in Connecticut). We are Diamond level cruisers and have friends in Carnival management, I bring this up only because it will be discussed some more a little later on.

This group sailing actually started 2+ years ago when we did another high school graduation group aboard the Breeze (older siblings of this group for the most part). It also did not start out to be the Pride, it was originally cast as on the Vista. For several reason (almost all cost driven) it moved to the Pride as no airfare would be involved. That said, the plan was to be on the prior sailing to Bermuda, but the core group had a conflict with a strong friend wedding...... so it was the 7/9 sailing on the Pride.

This group started out at around 8 cabins and we booked space at a pizza, beer and wine party with the core families on a cold winter night in February 2016 in front of a fire in our family room. We almost always travel in groups (although our last cruise on the Vista in April was just the bride and I) and typically for our groups, we reach a satiation point in terms of the number of cabins until the sailing. This group was a little different, it just continued a slow growth and we booked the last cabin about 5 weeks before the cruise.

Everyone was driving down to Baltimore from CT (most a day prior to the cruise) and most of the group wanted to stay in the inner harbor area. We had sailed on the NYE cruise on the Pride in December and purposely picked the same hotel to stay at (Embassy Suites) tat the group wanted.

When the wife and I were on the Vista in April, we came home to many missed calls and emails from the Embassy Suites.......uh oh.

When we called back, we found out they had issues and renovations and after some discussion, we moved to the Lord Baltimore ( same price and features, open bar for 2 hours and free breakfast). With that settled, we took a deep breath and relaxed....well not so much.

The wife and I are both part time travel agents (we both have other full time jobs) and we had a group of 40 we were leading to Ireland that went from 6/24 to 7/1. Coming home from that we had a week before heading out again....

Most of our group had a significant amount of balconies on the starboard side of the 7th floor (some inside across the hall for the kids in some instances). Booking that far out in advance, we were able to score one of the 4th floor Vista Suites (4228) port side. We have stayed in almost every kind of non inside room that Carnival has and this is among our favorites. For those who don't know it, it is an aft wrap (certainly one of the best balconies in the fleet) and is a long entry hall, sitting room with desk, couch TV a hall way to the bedroom (split by a bath (very similar to an Ocean Suite), dressing area, and large walk in closet and the bed faces the aft of the ship with windows through out the space. This room is right above the dining room, if that helps. We love these rooms and rate them a little behind the Captains suites and Havana Cabana rooms.

Roll call and meet and greet

This was, without a doubt, the slowest roll call I have ever participated in. Roll calls have a life of their own....well that is true for most roll calls. This one, well.... despite repeated attempts by me and a couple others died on the vine. I have seen other roll calls dwindle, possibly with the exodus to the FB site, but this one sets the record. Even with a last ditch effort to set up a M&G on embarkation day by me....it was not to be. Oh well.

Thanks for the review.

Thanks for the review.

My pleasure, more coming

So our caravan of cars headed out from CT. We left CT early on Saturday to avoid traffic for the Jersey shore. Other than some construction after the Delaware Memorial bridge we had no issues and more or less all got there around 12:30 on Saturday. Surprisingly enough, our rooms were ready, The Lord Baltimore is an older hotel downtown, but well kept up. After dropping bags off, we split up and went our ways in the inner harbor area.

While the wife and I had been here several times, some others had not. We showed some of the group around some and then went for a late lunch at Dick's Last Resort over on the harbor. Dick's is one interesting place where the staff berates and acts rude...... go figure. Some liked it and some did not. While it certainly was not our choice, in was not boring and the food was OK.

Later we went back to the hotel for our private cocktail party and while I think they def lost money on some of our group, they stayed open for the two hours.....

After the cocktail party, we went up to the roof where they had a bar. This was quite nice. Here are a couple of pics from up there.

Later, after dinner, we went back up there for a nightcap, the weather was perfect and a little breeze and a great way to end the night before our cruise.

We headed off to bed.......

The next morning we got up and went own to the free breakfast, here is a pic of a few from our group.