Swodog's E. Caribbean Adventure: Carnival Pride 23-30 July 17

BLUF: Swodog94 and Mrs. Swodog sailed to the Eastern Caribbean (Grand Turk/Half Moon Cay/ Freeport) on Carnival Pride out of Baltimore from 23-30 July 17. It was a great cruise! :D

Welcome to my review of our latest cruise. Some of you may have read my last review, when we cruised on Pride back in October 2016. Needless to say, within a couple of months of us returning from that cruise I was looking for another cruise! I apologize in advance if it bores some of you. I also apologize for my pictures; I am not a professional photographer, nor am I an amateur who enjoys taking pictures. I’m just a guy with a digital camera, and some of these shots may be out of focus, too bright, under-lighted, off center, or just plain bad. Sorry.

INTRO

So before we get started with the meat of the review, here’s a little bit about who we are. I am a career Surface Warfare Officer in the US Navy. I have spent my adult life going to sea on guided missile cruisers and destroyers and have experienced some of the best liberty ports the world has to offer (and a bunch of not-so-good ones, too). Sadly, my days of being “haze gray and underway”have come to end, and the only thing I’m driving now is a desk on the Washington Navy Yard in Washington, DC. Mrs. Swodog, aka My Better Half, is the event director for a large non-profit in Baltimore. Together, we’ve been on four cruises in the past, and this would be our fifth. She’s susceptible to motion sickness, so I was pleasantly surprised when she took to cruising like a duck to water (provided she’s got get her trusty scopalomine patch). Overall, we have had great cruising experiences. Being in high stress careers, we like to relax while on vacation,and we also don’t stress about things we can’t control while on the ships. So,many of the things that folks complain about here on Cruise Critic(tablecloths, dress codes, chair hogs, smoking, rum runners, etc.) don’t bother us and we try and make the best of most situations at sea.

Well, with an intro like that, I gotta subscribe... Also, thank you for your service!

Pre-Cruise Planning

Like I said, we had cruised in October and within a couple of months I was already jonesing for another cruise. It didn’t help that my wife asked me to help one of her co-workers plan a cruise for her and her fiancé. After spending a few days putting together some options for them, and then walking then through the process of booking and planning (rookies!) I decided I needed to find us a cruise for 2017. This year would be our 22nd wedding anniversary, which isn’t any sort of milestone, but is still worth celebrating, so I started looking at cruises. My wife found out what I was doing (ok, I told her I was looking) and she asked me to expand the scope of the search to all vacation types.

I’m a planner and spent the majority of my naval career in Operations, so if you ask me to “show me our vacation options” it’s second nature for me to build a Powerpoint presentation. I’m not going to bore you by attaching it here. I included Disney World, Vegas, and cruises on multiple cruise lines from different ports. Suffice it to say that after sitting through my brilliant slide show, my wife decided she preferred a cruise! Lucky for me, that’s what I wanted, too.

So now we had to pick a cruise. Back to the Powerpoint drawing board! We started by opening up the aperture pretty wide. We considered cruises with Carnival, Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, and Norwegian. Most of the cruises were to the Caribbean, but we also looked at Bermuda, as we had really enjoyed a visit there back in 2011. Embarkation ports ranged from New York to Florida to our home port of Baltimore. Ships ranged in size from smaller ones such as Carnival Pride to mega ships like RCCL’s Oasis of the Seas. In the end, it came down to price and convenience. We live between Washington, DC and Baltimore and we decided to sail on Carnival Pride again. The itinerary would be:

Day 1: Embarkation (Baltimore)

Day 2: Sea Day

Day 3: Sea Day

Day 4: Grand Turk

Day 5: Half Moon Cay

Day 6: Freeport

Day 7: Sea Day

Day 8: Return to home port and debark

Now many of you who read my last review will probably be scratching your heads and saying “Swodog, isn’t that the same ship and itinerary you just cruised in October?” And you would be right…sort of. We did book that itinerary on Pride, but a few weeks prior to sailing Freeport was wiped off the face of the earth by Hurricane Matthew. Carnival substituted a sea day for that port visit (which was just fine by me because I love sea days!). We did go to Grand Turk and we had a great time, but as soon as we got underway from that island the Captain came on the announcing system and let us know that we would not be going to Half Moon Cay the next day due to bad winds and seas. Instead we were going to do a half day in Nassau, which is ok, but we’ve been to Nassau and it’s…well…it’s Nassau. We managed to have a good time there anyway, but I was really bummed that we had missed HMC.

In the past I had always booked our cruises on line, directly through the cruise line’s web site. But for our last cruise with Carnival I decided to use a PVP, just to see if it really did make a difference. I found that it did not, so went back to booking everything on line again. Once I booked our stateroom (an extended balcony – I think it was 7171) I immediately jumped on to the excursions page in hopes of scoring a cabana at HMC. Alas, at 103 days from sailing, no cabanas were available. I did manage to score a cabana at Margaritaville in Grand Turk. We had rented one on our last cruise and really enjoyed the convenience of having somewhere to relax and store our stuff. I also checked to see if Faster to the Fun was available, which sadly, it was not.

Now the hard part – waiting for our cruise to get here! But in the meantime there was lots to do…like stalking the Carnival site every day (multiple times a day!) to see if FTTF or an HMC cabana became available. Lo and behold…about a month after booking I checked Carnival and some FTTF slots were for sale! I immediately bought one and posted here on CC that they were available. That was around 8am; by noon, when I checked again, they were sold out again. But hey, I got mine! Unfortunately, HMC cabanas stubbornly stayed sold out.

Two weeks later, the Upsell Fairy called. Previously, we had always booked Ocean Suites, but this time the cost had been a little bit too much for us, so we went with an Extended Balcony instead. The cost difference between an OS and an Ext Balcony was about $1300. The Upsell Fairy called with an offer that tempted me…upgrade from our Extended Balcony to an OS for $500. That was pretty reasonable so we took the offer and canceled our FTTF. We were set! Now if only an HMC cabana would pop up for sale. Sadly, that was not to be, and when we got about 30 days out I gave up and decided I would just have to wait until I got on board and check at the Excursions Desk. Sometimes they have one or two available that were held back for whatever reason. If not, I’d ask to be put on the stand-by list in case anyone canceled. I had done that during Embarkation Day the previous cruise and was informed the next day that we had scored a cabana (alas, we missed HMC due to weather). So that was my plan again, until someone on CC mentioned that you can email Carnival Excursions and ask to be put on the stand-by list ahead of time. Brilliant! I did just that and within a couple of days received a reply that I was on the list. Ok, now we’re as set as we’re going to get. Sailaway Day cannot get here soon enough!

Great start to your review, looking forward to more!

Embarkation

Finally, the week for our cruise arrived. As I previously mentioned, we live close to the cruise port and normally we just drive to the port the day of our cruise. But this time we were supposed to hang out with some friends at a baseball game the night before, so we decided to start our vacation a day early. We drove up to Baltimore on Saturday 22 July and checked in to the Royal Sonesta Harbor Court. This hotel is right in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, and has a great view of the water. We had stayed at this hotel 22 years prior…on our wedding night! It’s a very nice hotel, but not inexpensive, so I won’t recommend it as a place to stay before a cruise. But if you’re looking for a hotel that’s close to the cruise port (5-7 minute drive) and convenient to the Inner Harbor (shops, restaurants, National Aquarium, etc.) then this is a great option.

We had a great time that night with our friends even though the Orioles lost. However, when we got up the next morning we were greeted with this great view:

Yep,the ship was in! I walked over to a Barnes and Noble that is nearby and bought a couple of books to read on the cruise and then strolled back to the hotel.Our check-in time slot was 1230-1300, so I planned to just relax until 1130 then check out of the hotel and drive to the port. And that plan lasted until I suddenly came to the gut-wrenching realization that I had forgotten to pack a shirt for formal night. We hurriedly packed up, checked out of the hotel and rushed home (about a 30 minute drive) to grab my shirt. We spent a total of ten minutes there and then were on the road again to get to the port. Luckily, we made great time and were driving through the gate of the cruise terminal parking lot around 1155.

We dropped our luggage off with the porters. These guys work pretty hard and I knew our two big bags were heavy, so I tipped the guy $5. Tipping is not required, but it’s appreciated.

We got in line to pay for parking. Parking on site if $15 a day, which for our 7 day cruise comes out to $105. The parking lot accepts both cash and credit cards, but if you pay cash, and have the exact amount ready to go, it makes things go much smoother and faster.

We paid cash and drove in to find a parking spot. There was plenty of parking available this early and we found a spot that was close to the terminal. We walked over to the terminal and it was about 1215, so we had a few minutes to kill before our check-in time slot. We sat for a bit and waited. Shortly I saw that folks were boarding the ship via the gangway. Good enough for me; we grabbed our gear and headed in. Luckily, as Suite guests, we had Priority, so we rolled through Security no problem. Carnival allows each adult to bring on a 750ml bottle of wine and we had each brought one, as well as a few cans of soda. The bottles and cans were inspected by security and we were the directed into the Priority Check-in line. A very nice lady checked us in, took our pictures, handed us our Sail & Sign cards, and told us we could board!

Well, with an intro like that, I gotta subscribe... Also, thank you for your service!

Welcome aboard! I hope you find it both informative and entertaining.

Great start to your review, looking forward to more!

Thanks! Might be a bit slow...bear with me!

I am looking forward to reading your review. Going on the Pride in January.

How nice it is to be able to go back home for a forgotten item and still be able to make it in good time.:)

GREAT start to your review!!! Looking forward to the rest. :cool:

GREAT start to your review!!! Looking forward to the rest. :cool:

Thanks, Jamman!

Leaving in 4 weeks on this same cruise....thanks for taking the time to review it.

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Embarkation (Cont.)

It was upon receiving our S&S cards that we had the first (pleasant) surprise of the cruise. I previously mentioned that I had purchased FTTF, but then canceled it when we bought up to an Ocean Suite. Well, through some administrative SNAFU, our S&S cards had the FTTF stickers affixed anyway. Because we were in a suite we pretty much had all those perks anyway, but this just made it "legal" to go to our stateroom right away, instead of waiting until 1330. In the interest of full disclosure, we have always cruised in and OS, and have always gone directly to our stateroom...and invariable they were ready for us to drop off our stuff. For all you FTTF purists (you know who you are) flame me all you want, I'm going to ignore you.

S&S cards in hand we headed for the gangway.

A year or so ago Pride came in to the pier too fast and impacted the boarding gangway, rendering it out of commission for months. When we cruised in Oct 16, we boarded via the hatch on A Deck. The gangway was finally repaired earlier this year and we would be boarding that way, via the Atrium on Deck 2, as in years past.

Finally, we were on board and our vacation could begin! The entire process, from arriving at the gate until stepping into the Atrium was about 45 minutes. However, my first order of business was to hustle over to the Excursions Desk and see about an HMC cabana. My hopes were immediately dashed, for they had no cabanas available. I asked about the waiting list and the guy at the desk said he would be happy to add my name but I would not be first one. I pulled out the print out of my email confirming that I would be put on the list ahead of time. He confirmed that I was already on the list and...two people had emailed ahead of me! I was number three on the list. He wished me luck and I walked dejectedly away. :(

great review so far.

Embarkation (Cont.)

As usual, the elevator banks in the Atrium were mobbed. This is our fourth voyage on Pride and we know the ship like the back of our hands, so we headed forward to use the elevators by the Taj Mahal. On the way we passed by the Red Frog Pub. Experienced Carnival cruisers know that the very first customer in the Red Frog Pub gets a free beer and their picture posted for bragging rights. I knew we were not even close to being the first folks on board, but I went in just in case. Lo and behold, I was first! The bartender, Romilo, poured my free pint of Thirsty Frog Red and snapped my picture (it would show up on the big screen TV's in the Pub throughout the cruise).

The Red From Pub is where the former Starry Nights Lounge was located, before the 2.0 upgrade in 2014. It's a nice place to hang out and have some drinks and listen to music, as there is live entertainment in there every night.

The pub is decorated in a tropical motif and has plenty of bar stools and tables.

And if you have one too many Thirsty Frogs, they'll clap you in irons!

Embarkation (Cont.)

The Red Frog Pub is also where you can go and kill some time. There are various games you can play, including corn hole and foosball, plus there's a sand table as well.

There was also a table that looked like it was specifically designed for dominoes, but I never saw anybody playing on it.

Following!

Leaving in 4 weeks on this same cruise....thanks for taking the time to review it.

 

Sent from my XT1585 using Forums mobile app

Thanks for following! I hope it proves useful!

Very interesting review! Nice photos too!

Following along.

great review so far.

Thank you!

I am looking forward to reading your review. Going on the Pride in January.

How nice it is to be able to go back home for a forgotten item and still be able to make it in good time.:)

Thanks! Yeah, it was fortuitous that we could get home and back with time to spare. I would have been up the creek otherwise!

Following!

Thank you! Hope you enjoy it!

Very interesting review! Nice photos too!

Following along.

Thank you!

Loving the start to your review. Thanks for sharing.

Loving the start to your review. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for following!