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Pride Review July 15th - 22nd - Another FOM Review!


tammi0916

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Hello! We traveled on the Pride Sailing July 15th - 22nd....

 

This was our 5th cruise and 4th on Carnival. Traveling on this cruise was me (Tammi) my hubby (Dave) and our 13 year old daughter (Victoria) and her best friend (Tabby).

We picked this cruise because of our friends Michelle and Dan were going on this cruise. We had met Michelle 2 years ago on the Fascination and have remained friends. As time went on Michelle had several of her friends book this cruise so we began referring to this cruise as Friends of Michelle (FOM) Cruise.

We left Connecticut on Friday, July 13th and drove to Baltimore to spend a couple of days with Michelle before the cruise.

After a couple of days at Michelle’s we were ready to head to the port on Sunday morning. Michelle had her parents drop her off and that was quick and easy. Us on the other hand had driven to the port (got there around 9:50am) and had to wait in a parking line FOREVER! They did not let us in to the parking lot until around 11:30am. It was hot and I had two cranky 13 year olds in the car…Finally they let us in to park and once that happened it was very quick and easy. They unload your bags and you park and go inside.

We went inside and straight to the VIP check-in – no lines and once inside at the VIP check in it was fast and easy. I had all the paperwork to be traveling with my daughter’s best friend and had no issues.

Once we checked in we walked right on to the ship – no waiting and right to the excursion desk to pick my cabana number! I didn’t even have a chance to take any pictures of the port!

We had lunch on lido and hung out until rooms were ready at 1:30pm. We went to our room to unload all our carry on bags and soda.

We were staying in an Ocean Suite; on deck 6. We really like the OS and have stayed in one on all our cruises.

We got to the room and found some gifts from our PVP, cookies and candy for the girls and a cooler and beer for Dave (nothing for me L)

We hung out until it was time for our Cruise Critic Meet and Greet – we had scheduled an open meet and greet and had a great turn out. It was nice to meet so many people that we had been chatting with on the roll call.

We broke up in time for the safety drill and since this was Tabby’s first cruise we told her that she had to wear her life jacket to the drill – she was not happy that she was the only one who had to wear it. We stopped at the cabin to pick up her vest and made her put it on and took some pictures before we finally told her that we were just joking! (she did not see the humor!)

After a really long and hot safety drill (we had a man pass out at our station) we headed to a fellow roll callers aft wrap (thanks Sue and Christina for hosting us) a bunch of us met there and watched sail away from their balcony!

We had reservations at the steak house for 630pm with Dan and Michelle and more folks from roll call joined us so we had 10 for dinner. We all left the sail away and got ready for dinner.

We had a great dinner with old and new friends; it was a nice evening and we had our free bottles of wine.

Dinner lasted a while and after words we were all tired and we decided to head to the cabin to finish unpacking and then walk around the ship exploring.

It had been a long day and we are not late night people so after exploring the ship a bit we headed back to the cabin to relax and sit on the balcony.

Tomorrow is our first sea day and our roll call- cabin crawl!

 

I will add pictures for all of these events later today (can't get to the photo site from work- blocked!)

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Today was the first sea day. I was up early and sat on the balcony for a bit while I waited for other to get up. Once everyone was up and dressed we headed up to the buffet on Lido for breakfast.

I found that it seemed that this cruise was not as crowded as others we have been on. Lines on lido were never too long and we always found a table.

After breakfast we headed out to the forward pool and found seats by the pool – there were of course chair hogs but we still found 4 seats.

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We hung out at the pool and lido until lunch when we left and when to lunch and then back to our cabin to set up for the cabin crawl.

We had organized a cabin crawl with our roll call; we were starting with my cabin first – Ocean Suite on deck 6. I had gifts for everyone; Hawaiian lei’s, candy bags with chocolates that had pictures different locations of the ship as well as our FOM Chair Hogs – aka – blow up animals! We were going to try and line them up on the lido deck early one morning but we never made it.

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Party Tub in our room!

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The Bar is set up!

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Everyone that had “RSVP’d” to the cabin crawl showed up! We had fun hanging out and chatting with everyone and touring out cabin. We were off to Wayne and Jossé’s cabin next. This had been a running joke on our roll call – to see how many people we could fit into an inside cabin. I am happy to announce that we were able to get all 23 of us in there! It was tight and everyone was a trouper. Wayne’s son made blueberry shakes for all of those who wanted one and then it was off to the next cabin!

After that we headed to Sue and Christina’s aft wrap. They had mardi gras beads for everyone and we all enjoyed hanging out on the balcony chatting with everyone.

We had some extra time before tea time started so we a small group of us decided to stop at Dan and Michelle’s balcony; they had the bowling alley balcony!

We headed to tea time at 3:30am with a group from our roll call. Dave and Victoria love tea (Tabby and I not so much). I bring my own drink with me and love the treats. We had a nice time and then headed to get ready for dinner as it was formal night.

We all got dressed and headed down to anytime dining with our group and were set in the back at 2 tables. Our wait staff was just ok and we moved to a larger table up front for the rest of the cruise and loved our staff after that! I also got my gift from our PVP at dinner – he had given me drink coupons! Yea – so worth the wait!!!

We had a nice dinner with everyone and after dinner we all went back to the room to change and get comfortable.

We decided to head to the show tonight; the show was Vroom and we had never seen it before! The show was great and we all enjoyed it. We did not have any issues finding seats in the theater.

After the show we all walked around the ship and explored some of the top decks. It was very windy and we were just being silly and walking around.

We all headed back to the room around 11pm and hung out in the room for a bit before going to bed.

Tomorrow another sea day and our paid meet and greet party!

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We all got up fairly early today and headed to the main dining room for breakfast. I enjoy the ease of going to the dining room on sea days.

After breakfast we headed out to lido to find chairs and were not able to find any by the pool but plenty of then one deck up overlooking the pool. The girls walked around a bit and checked out the slide and swan on and off…they were really good and I was happy that we were able to bring Tabby with us.

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Around lunch time we decided to go to lunch in the main dining room. Lunch was great (I found the food on this cruise to be the best we have ever had on any cruise!) We used our free drink coupons from Carnival at lunch (yummy Margarita!) It was at this lunch that we first met Igor (who I adored!) he is part of the bar staff and I ordered my Margarita and Dave picked something called “Cruizer or Cruizing” and when Igor brought the drink; Dave made the comment that it looked kinda girly and Igor responded “just like your shirt”!! LOL Dave was wearing a purple golf shirt….it was so funny and I immediately fell in love with Igor (he would end up being our bar waiter at our new dinner location!)

We did some shopping after lunch and then back to the cabin to pick up the rest of the name tags, and door signs for our paid meet and greet.

We met in the piano bar at 3:30 for our Meet and Greet – we had decided to do a paid M&G since we had enough interest. We did the one hour open bar and dry snacks.

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It was $11.44 for those drinking and $5.75 for non drinkers. Well worth it in my opinion. I called and organized the party with Carnival and everyone either sent me a check or sent the money via paypal prior to the cruise. You need a minimum of 20 people and we had a total of 29.

We had a couple of wait staff and couple of bartenders. Michelle had contacted John Heald and he had Jaime (CD) stop by and brought us 2 bottles of Champagne and 2 ships on a stick.

We decided to raffle off the champagne – so everyone gave a dollar and we put their name in the hat and then picked 2 names for the champagne – Kelly and Wayne won!! We then gave the money as a tip to our staff.

Michelle also had gifts for each group that came to the M&G – coffee mugs. Thanks Michelle!!

We had to be out of the piano bar by 4:30 as there was another event starting but it worked out fine as the new Gold/Platinum/Diamond party was starting at 4:30 and so most of us were in that group and headed over to Butterfly’s for that party (2 hours of open bar – woo hoo for us!)

I loved the new G/P/D past guest party – it was a mardi gras theme and Jamie was great. Drinks and apps were being passed freely. Drinks were also full size drinks and very good. Apps were good and very different from previous parties.

After the towel animal video and clapping for your ships, we met the captain and officers. Then Jamie led the conga line and threw more beads. She then led several dances and the girls had a great time dancing (Victoria has never met a stage she didn’t like!)

Once the party was over we stopped by the cabin to drop off stuff and then headed down to dinner. We had 12 tonight for dinner as one couple when off on there own.

We requested a new table right up front that had a long table for 10 and a table for 2 right next to it. We decided to put the girls at the table for 2 (which only had about a foot between them and us) and all the adults at the larger table. This worked out great.

We had a great dinner. We loved our new wait staff of I Wayan, I Wayan and Edin (who was my personal favorite!)

The magician or mentalist as he liked to be called stopped by the girls table – he was great! He told Victoria to think of a number and then wrote something on a sticky. After talking to her for a couple of minutes he asked her what her number was – she said “37” then he showed her the sticky that he wrote on earlier – very cool!

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Then he moved to Nick at our table and had him hold a deck of cards with out opening it. Then went thru the game of asking him to think of a card and then played with him abit about what it was then finally asking him what his card was - it was the 2 of diamonds – he asked Nick to open the deck and his card would be face up in the middle of the deck and sure enough it was the only card face up in the deck….

Lastly he asked me for a coin – I found a quarter in my bag and he asked me to write my initials on it to make sure he didn’t switch it out and then while holding it and talking to us he rolled it between his fore finger and thumb and this is what it looked like when he gave it back!

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The girls were ecstatic and I have to say I was pretty impressed too!

After a another great dinner and lots of laughing with our group our grouped headed back to the cabin to change and get comfy…One note the dining room was FREEZING especially the section we were sitting is so bring a sweater!

We decided to hit the show again tonight with the girls it was called “Around the World” before the show they were playing bingo so I decided to play and of course lost – that was quick 20 bucks! The show was another show we had not seen before. It was fantastic!

Tomorrow is our first port day – Grand Turk and Margaritaville!

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Grand Turk – we docked at 8am and had to be back on the ship by 1:30pm so it was a short day. I had packed a beach bag the night before and we were up early and up on Lido for breakfast by a little after 7am.

We had breakfast and then off the ship as soon as we docked. We headed to the pool and our group of FOM’s met us there right after we found chairs.

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Our plan was to hang out at the pool in the morning and then head over to Jack’s Shack for lunch and drinks and then head back to the ship.

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We sat across from the flow rider and it was fun watching all the people taking their turn. Some of them were quite funny!

We had our first margarita around 9am (it’s 5:00 somewhere!)

Well we made it to the pool! We were so comfortable and too tired to walk to Jack’s – especially with the black clouds that were forming!

We stayed until around lunch time and then did some shopping with the girls and headed back to the ship for lunch.

We decided to order room service and get cleaned up. After lunch we hung out in the cabin and some of us napped and others just relaxed.

Then the girls and I headed out to find the arcade. It is really hard to find tucked in the front of the theater on deck 4. We hung out there for a bit and then the girls wanted to go exploring so I headed back to the cabin to see if Dave was up.

Once the girls came back we all got ready for dinner.

Headed to dinner and met our group – we had the same table and again 2 folks went on their own so we had the tables for 10 and 2 again.

After dinner we changed and walked around the upper decks and enjoyed the evening.

We headed back to the cabin to pack a bag for Half Moon Cay and then just hung out until bed….

Tomorrow is my favorite port – Half Moon Cay

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Half Moon Cay-

This is by far my favorite port – this was our 3rd time here and we just love it. We had a cabana #13 and friends from roll call had #12 so we told all the FOM’s to come hang out by our cabana’s!

We slept a bit later today as we did not start tenders until 9am. So we headed to lido for breakfast and then down to the Taj Mahal to get a tender. Since we had a cabana we were to go on the first tender – make sure you tell them that you have a cabana and are suppose to be on the first tender as they tried to give us tender tickets (#5) but we just waited and they called the folks with cabanas first so off we went a little before 9am.

Tender process was easy and we headed to HMC! We took the truck ride to our cabana and they were still setting up the goodies in the cabana.

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We all got the mats and headed out to the water – which was wonderful! I could float in that water all day.

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I had brought drinks from our cabin so once all of our FOM’s showed up we all had a drink (Strawberry Marg, Rum Runners, Bahama Mama’s and Wayne brought the champagne he won at the M&G)

We had no excursions scheduled – just a relaxing day in the cabana and water.

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When we got to the beach - there were not a lot of people and the fish right at the beach were going crazy! We grabbed our cherrios and started feeding the fish - they were crazy and so many! Very cool!

 

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Lunch is always good and plentiful. We walked over around 1 and lines went fast. Between lunch and all the snacks in the cabana we had more than enough to snack on all day!

This was such a great day hanging out with friends and the weather was wonderful.

We decided to leave around 2:45pm as the girls were really wiped out and so we packed up and left our friends in our cabana. We headed out to walk back to the tender location and on the way a truck was picking up people and taking them to the tender location. That was a nice bonus as it was really hot and we were all tired.

The tender line was pretty long but it did move very quickly – we probably waited about 15 minutes in line.

We were able to get on the bottom of the tender so we had some shade! Once back on board we headed to the room to get cleaned up and relax.

It had been a long day and especially the girls were wiped out. They decided to they wanted to order room service and then just walk around the ship a bit. So I ordered RS for them and waited until it showed up and then Dave and I went to dinner with our group in the main dining room.

The girls did not participate in any Circle C activities – they preferred to just walk around and explore the ship together.

They stopped by dinner a couple of times to check in and let us know where they were going and seemed to be having a good time.

We had told them to meet us in the cabin around 8pm so we could do something together that evening. We all decided to go to the show; I don’t remember the name but it was as good as the others.

After the show I decided to go to the casino and Dave and the girls walked around the ship and then met them back to the cabin. I was able to make a withdrawal from the casino so it’s wasn’t a bad night at all!

We all called it a night as we had another early port tomorrow in Freeport. We were going snorkeling and the ship docked at 7am.

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