Pride July 8-15th review - random ramblings on another beautiful week at sea

[vacruizer]

This will probably be a bit different than most reviews. So I don’t bore everyone to tears with “today we took a nap” which is about how most days went, I’ll try to share some of my observations on the ship, the crew, the new VIFP thing, and a little bit of port stuff. This cruise was all about rest and relaxation and time together for my dh and me. I’d love to say I’m going to have 500 pictures for everyone, but I barely pulled out the camera all week and then usually to take pictures of the scenery. I’ll share the ones I have, though!

 

I was supposed to sail back in May. I figured if I had to turn forty, I was doing it on a cruise ship! I counted down the days, did the last minute shopping, and then……. a week before sailing my stomach started to act up. And kept acting up. And acted up some more. I wasn’t able to eat and felt weak and dizzy. This wasn’t going away and I was feeling worse and worse. The morning we were supposed to leave for Baltimore, I was in the emergency room where they diagnosed a gallbladder issue and recommended surgery. So I did the one thing I NEVER expected, and cancelled the morning of the cruise. I resigned myself to not sailing again until next January and had surgery the day after my birthday when I should have been in Nassau. The recovery took longer than expected while they discovered some other underlying medical issues I won’t get into, but the whole month of May ended up being ridiculously stressful.

 

Sooooooo, what better way to relax and recover than a replacement cruise? :D

 

We headed up to Baltimore in 105 degree heat on Saturday and spent the night at the the BWI Marriott. Great AAA rate, comfy beds, and friendly staff. Got to have a great dinner with two friends and fellow cruisers we hadn’t seen since our cruise together four years ago which was great. Sunday morning we scrapped our plan to go to Ft. McHenry because it was just too darn hot out! So around 11am, we checked out and made the short drive to the port. This was hands down the easiest embarkation ever. There were only a handful of cars in the parking lot when we arrived. We dropped off bags, parked, went through security, straight to VIP checkin, and onto the ship in 10 minutes flat! We were finally “home” for the next week.

[vacruizer]

Well darn, my picture disappeared.

 

A little Chesapeake Bay sunset to start off our cruise.

 

[vacruizer]

Ship – This was our third sailing on the Pride and our fourth on a Spirit class ship. The layout is easier to navigate than Carnival’s Conquest class ships but also lends itself to a quieter, more mellow feel around the ship with the lounges and bars spread out over two decks. For an “old” girl, she’s aged just fine. Well maintained and clean all around like every Carnival ship I’ve sailed.

 

One of the first things we noticed was how much more crowded a summer sailing feels. We usually sail in January, May or in the fall so it was definitely a different crowd. It wasn’t horrible, just a noticeable difference in the number of people and lots more kids onboard in the summer. We really didn’t see too many problems with the kids. We heard some occasional running in the halls and loud conversations, but nothing too out of hand.

 

The Spirit class of ships has always had a bit of a chugging, shimmy, type feeling in the aft to me. But something is up with the Pride right now and there’s a pretty noticeable vibration going on back there. It’s even noticeable while docked and stationary. It didn’t seem to affect sailing speed or anything else on board. But everything vibrated. I vibrated to sleep at night and woke up in the mornings with it. I thought about duct taping the trash can in place in the bathroom so it didn’t rattle all night but was able to move it a bit until it stopped. It wasn’t really bothersome to me, but a few people around the ship mentioned how much they didn’t like it. (One guy said it must be Carnival, that he had sailed Royal Caribbean and THEIR ships didn’t vibrate like that – lol.)

 

 

Yep, just checked, I really didn't take any ship pictures this time.

But here's the beautiful view from a pre-dinner stroll along the aft promenade...

 

 

Our weather was much better this time than it was on our 2009 sailing.

 

 

May 2009

 

[vacruizer]

Cabin – I admit it. We’re balcony snobs. But a balcony wasn’t in the cards this time so we ended up with an inside on deck 7, 7309. My first reaction was how tiny it felt after a balcony. And it was pretty cramped in there. We had to make an effort to keep things put away and organized just so there was room to walk. I missed waking up and being able to look outside and see the weather, or sit on the balcony late at night, or just have a spot to chill and watch the ocean. But we did fine with it. After what I’d been through in the last few months, I was just thankful to be onboard.

The overall room location was great. First cabin aft of the aft elevators so it was really convenient to pop up to Lido or down to decks 2 or 3 for activities or dinner. The downside was the housekeeping closet next door which I’m pretty sure contains an industrial size ice machine. One of those ones that dumps ice about every five minutes all day and night long. Was it horrible? No. We got used to it after the first night where I think I jumped every time the thing clunked. But I can see where light sleepers could be bothered so plan accordingly if you’re looking at that room.

The room size is about double what you see here. I admit I have a hard time imagining a quad inside and putting four people in a space this size even though I know people do it all the time.

 

Hadn't ever seen this guy before.

 

[vivavegas]

Welcome Back! Glad you were able to take your replacement cruise!:)

[nybumpkin]

I'm so glad you got to cruise this summer! Thanks for posting - we were aboard the week before you.

[vacruizer]

Entertainment – We had a great time enjoying some of the entertainment onboard. While I still miss having a reggae band on Lido, we did find plenty of other acts to enjoy. The DJ playing top 40 and oldies on Lido just doesn’t seem like a cruise to me and I REALLY wish Carnival would rethink this.

 

There was a four man cover band onboard who were excellent along with a couple guitar soloists and the show band. The show band is pretty small these days and relies a lot on recorded backgrounds to beef up their sound.

We also spent several evenings listening to “Justin” in the atrium. Just a guy with a guitar singing but he was excellent. He really seemed to enjoy entertaining and interacting with the crowd. The other singer onboard I swear was there three years ago and he was terrible. 70s lounge lizard terrible. He usually played in the casino so we got a good laugh a few times walking through at the out of tune singing. We never made it to the piano bar but heard that Roger in there was very good.

 

We had seen two of the three production shows before but did attend the Welcome Aboard show and “Jazzin.” It was a fairly standard Carnival production show although not as elaborate as some of their other shows.

 

The comedy club was offered on the first three nights and again on the last two nights. We really enjoyed the adult shows done by Mike Macy and Al Ernst the first few nights. Get there early if you want a seat! By the end of the cruise, we were busy doing other stuff and skipped the other two comedians. There are also drink specials in the comedy club so make sure you ask about those and if you sit up front, prepare to be picked on! :p

 

For daytime activities we attended several trivia games and mostly just spent time reading or walking around the ship.

This pretty much sums up the cruise so far....

[vacruizer]

Crew – I can’t say enough good things about the crew onboard. We were always greeted in the hallways every time we passed someone. We had a bar waiter who had served us once two days earlier walk up to us on Lido, address my husband by name, and strike up a conversation about how our cruise was going. Our room steward, Alfred, was fantastic. We didn’t discover Idelke (I’m probably butchering her name) at the Florentine bar until the second to last night of the cruise. What a great personality and fantastic representative for Carnival. She’s been with them for 8 ½ years and you can tell she loves people and her job. We had avoided that bar due to the location where it kind of stick out into traffic and were sorry we didn’t visit sooner.

Jaime was the CD and we were shocked that she remembered us from two and three years earlier when she was an assistant cruise director. Her ACD, Gumbie, and all the entertainment hosts onboard were lots of fun and kept everyone entertained at trivia and other activities. A CD won’t make or break a cruise, but a good one makes it much more enjoyable – even if you don’t really interact with them. It shows in the overall vibe around the ship when the crew is enjoying themselves and helping the passengers enjoy their cruise as well.

With so many first time cruisers onboard, I heard lots and lots of questions and without fail the crew happily answered or directed the person. It sounds like it should always be this way but if you've ever sailed a ship where the crew wasn't happy, you can tell the difference.

 

Our waiters were also great and trying their best. I’ll get to more of that in the dining section of the review.

 

Time for another pre-dinner stroll before dinner....

 

 

 

[vacruizer]

Welcome Back! Glad you were able to take your replacement cruise!:)

 

Thanks - I was very glad, too!

 

I'm so glad you got to cruise this summer! Thanks for posting - we were aboard the week before you.

 

I just started reading your review.... Love all your pictures!

[Jeffy294]

We want more LOL:D

[vacruizer]

We want more LOL:D

 

I'm working on it, Jeff! I'd forgotten to tell you about Royal Caribbean guy.... you know they follow me cruise to cruise! :p

[vacruizer]

Dining and food – Our dining room experience got off to a rough start. We had late seating as always. As we showed our card the first night, I heard someone say, “oh, that’s in the annex.” The Spirit class ships have a separate room off to the left on the lower level but separated from the rest of the dining room which was where our table was. We were seated at an 8 top table in the corner. Our waiters introduced themselves. Then we waited. And waited some more. And waited. All in all, dinner took over two hours and we were scrambling to get to the welcome show just as it started.

 

The second night was much the same and we noticed the head waiter would say hello and then two assistants were doing all the work from taking orders to serving us. This was compounded by our location back in the annex which is very far from the service entry of the dining room if I remember correctly from our Behind the Fun tour a few years ago. Our tablemates were getting aggravated at the service. Being a former waitress I started to watch what was going on. Our wait team had four tables…. Two 8 top tables and two 10 seat tables that were actually one big group of 20. By the third night, I realized what was going on . The party of 20 was a large Indian family ordering from the special Indian menu. Each dish served actually came with four or five separate dishes of food. The headwaiter was running tray after tray after tray just to serve one course. The assistants were running their tails off to do full wait service and run food for our table and the other table of eight along with keeping up water and bread service to the large group.

 

I could see the look of frustration on the headwaiter’s face as he’d head back to the service area. He stopped by our table later that night and I told him it looked like he’d had a rough night. He really opened up to us (it was just us and one other couple at the table that night) and apologized that he felt like we had been shortchanged. The large party was not only ordering special and complex meals, but also had allergy issued AND was sending meals back when they were meals from another region of India than this party was from and wasn’t their favored regional cuisine. Our headwaiter himself was Indian and gave us some really interesting insight into the regions and food of various parts of India as well as how Carnival handles special ethnic cuisines. We assured him we weren’t mad or upset that things had been slow and he seemed greatly relieved. Our assistant that took care of us most of the time was quite a nice guy and will make a good headwaiter once his English gets a bit better. Great smile and always very pleasant. He actually seemed to find his groove mid cruise and things got quicker from there.

 

I personally didn’t really enjoy the annex seating. I like the silly shows and dancing and we missed out on all that plus our waiters were so far behind from the large party we were usually just getting our entrees about that time. The location of the room alone adds service time just to carry the food from the kitchen to the tables. I also think that Carnival might consider that a special needs party like this needs additional attention and adjust the waiters accordingly so that others don’t get shortchanged in their dining experience. We understood and not much upsets us, but the first time cruisers at our table were understandably disappointed to not be receiving the attention and service they’d heard so much about.

 

The food itself on this cruise for some reason was bland. It wasn’t bad, it wasn’t great like we’ve had on other ships. We’ve run into this once or twice before and I think it all has to do with the head chef onboard at the time. We had many of the same dishes on the Liberty in January so knew what to expect from the new menus but most of what we had just seemed to lack flavor and seasoning this cruise.

Some of the good stuff, though, was the flat iron steak, the macaroni and cheese, and the pork steak. For desserts the tiramisu was wonderful as always and my husband never met a warm chocolate melting cake he didn’t like.

[Silent Penguin]

Dining and food – . As we showed our card the first night, I heard someone say, “oh, that’s in the annex.”

Good to know. Our first Carnival cruise will be on the Pride. We might prefer the annex if it means a quieter dining experience.

Being a former waitress I started to watch what was going on. Our wait team had four tables…. Two 8 top tables and two 10 seat tables that were actually one big group of 20.

Whoe! No wonder the service was so slow. I was a waitress, too. It wasn't at a fine dining establishment, just medium priced restaurant, so we didn't work in teams except when the party was of 10 or more. A party of 20 would require at least 3 servers and possibly a drink runner. And two 8 tops to boot? Crazy!

I also think that Carnival might consider that a special needs party like this needs additional attention and adjust the waiters accordingly so that others don’t get shortchanged in their dining experience.

Great idea. Are you thinking of writing to management at Carnival about it?

[nybumpkin]

Our wait team had four tables…. Two 8 top tables and two 10 seat tables that were actually one big group of 20. By the third night, I realized what was going on . The party of 20 was a large Indian family ordering from the special Indian menu. Each dish served actually came with four or five separate dishes of food. The headwaiter was running tray after tray after tray just to serve one course. The assistants were running their tails off to do full wait service and run food for our table and the other table of eight along with keeping up water and bread service to the large group.

 

I could see the look of frustration on the headwaiter’s face as he’d head back to the service area. He stopped by our table later that night and I told him it looked like he’d had a rough night. He really opened up to us (it was just us and one other couple at the table that night) and apologized that he felt like we had been shortchanged. The large party was not only ordering special and complex meals, but also had allergy issued AND was sending meals back when they were meals from another region of India than this party was from and wasn’t their favored regional cuisine. Our headwaiter himself was Indian and gave us some really interesting insight into the regions and food of various parts of India as well as how Carnival handles special ethnic cuisines. We assured him we weren’t mad or upset that things had been slow and he seemed greatly relieved. Our assistant that took care of us most of the time was quite a nice guy and will make a good headwaiter once his English gets a bit better. Great smile and always very pleasant. He actually seemed to find his groove mid cruise and things got quicker from there.

Wow - It's nice that Carnival can handle regional cuisines, but you're right - they need someone to oversee groups of this size in the dining room. When we had the overflow room on Glory last year, it was for anytime dining. Still slow, but manageable.

[vacruizer]

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Good to know. Our first Carnival cruise will be on the Pride. We might prefer the annex if it means a quieter dining experience.

 

 

 

 

Whoe! No wonder the service was so slow. I was a waitress, too. It wasn't at a fine dining establishment, just medium priced restaurant, so we didn't work in teams except when the party was of 10 or more. A party of 20 would require at least 3 servers and possibly a drink runner. And two 8 tops to boot? Crazy!

 

 

 

Great idea. Are you thinking of writing to management at Carnival about it?

 

The three man team thing Carnival has done here recently has worked fairly well. Headwaiter takes orders and schmoozes the guests. Assistant #1 runs the food and helps serve. Assistant #2 usually works on keeping water and bread filled, clearing plates, and running for any special requests. But 36 people is a LOT for one team to handle. I did both the casual and the fine dining thing years ago and it's tough even with ideal customers. Add the special needs group and it was a mess. They are restricted to carrying 12 plates per tray for safety reasons - each one of those special meals required 3 plates just for the main course according to our waiter. Do the math on how many trips to the kitchen just to serve entrees and it's no wonder they barely had time for two other tables.

 

It's definitely one of the things I plan to mention when I email Carnival. I want to let them know about some of the great things as well as a couple suggestions like this one and another small issue we had.

[vacruizer]

Think I'm going to have to finish this up tomorrow night. I still have tons more to cover but am worn out from this having to actually earn a living thing this week! :p Passengers, ports, the "new" VIFP stuff, the spa, and... heaven help me, the infamous smoking issue :eek::o:p still to come.

[Room Service!]

Looking forward to more.

[suzinva]

Can't wait to read the rest, 38 days and I'll be sailing her :D

[vacruizer]

Ok, another day closer to the weekend. Back to the review now. :)

 

New VIFP stuff – A pleasant surprise after we returned from dinner the first night was that we got backpacks AND binoculars for platinum gifts. The backpack came in handy toting our e-readers, sunblock, sunglasses etc. around the ship with us and even had a handy water bottle holder on the front. The binoculars are much smaller than I expected – they are a good travel size. The new ship pins were in our room on arrival. They are much bigger than the old funnel pins but have “VIFP Club Inaugural Year” on them along with the ship name and 2012 so if you sail a ship multiple years you’ll now get new pins with the year each time.

Also in our room the first day were the new “welcome back” past guest drink coupons. Watch for these – they are piled up with all the advertisements and are easy to miss. These are good ONLY in the main dining room for breakfast or lunch so unless you want to drink at breakfast, you need to have lunch in the main dining room at least one day of the sea days when it’s open. We saw several people try to use them in the evenings at other bars and they were always politely turned down. They were good for a drink up to $9 value I believe. We wrote in a tip for the waiter on the zeroed out ticket he had us sign and he seemed very thankful. I don’t think the bar waiters are too happy with these things. Seems like they did a lot of running for nothing. They also checked both of our sail & sign cards to be sure the names matched the names on the ticket so no giving them away to others if you don’t use yours.

The “new and improved” past guest party - I was really surprised at how small this was now that it’s only gold level and above. The party was held late Tuesday afternoon in the Butterflies lounge where the comedy club is held. We were greeted personally by the entertainment staff and officers as we entered the lounge and given Fun Ship specials to drink. Food was ok – little pizzas, mashed potatoes with a bit of beef on the top that came in a little bowl, and some type of fried dough ball that we couldn’t identify (the bland food thing again.) The crew was dressed up in Mardi Gras beads and masks and the show band played. They showed a modified version of the old video with all the ships and then, handed out Mardi Gras beads and tried to get a parade going around the lounge.

After that they brought up the Captain for an informal but short Q & A session and found the person with the most cruises to come up and have their picture done with the Captain and officers. Halfway through the party they transitioned from the “old” theme of Mardi Gras to the new Funship 2.0 upgrades. Jamie talked about the upgrades and they served one of the new rum drinks from the Red Frog Rum Bar on the ships that have it. After that there was some line dancing lessons and that was pretty much it. We enjoyed it as always but didn’t see a huge difference other than the different drinks (no choices on the tray – they just come by and set them in front of you) and that it was much smaller. I would say there were less than 100 people in attendance on this sailing.

[booder111]

i was wondering if you could help with room selection for my upcoming cruise. i was looking at the carnival destiny room 7310 inside room. Now that I have read your review it makes me nervous about the ice machine. Carnival by phone said this area is "storage area" for the cabin stewards but failed to tell me if there is a loud ice machine there too. Any ideas? Thanks so much:)

[vacruizer]

i was wondering if you could help with room selection for my upcoming cruise. i was looking at the carnival destiny room 7310 inside room. Now that I have read your review it makes me nervous about the ice machine. Carnival by phone said this area is "storage area" for the cabin stewards but failed to tell me if there is a loud ice machine there too. Any ideas? Thanks so much:)

 

The Destiny has a completely different layout than the Pride does. It's hard to tell. I've had another room next to a housekeeping closet that had an ice machine and we barely heard it. Just a faint noise occasionally I could only hear in the bathroom. This one on the other hand was pretty loud and constant - about every five minutes. There was also some late afternoon banging when the stewards got their carts ready in there. I really only noticed that since DH tended to nap at that time of day and several days I decided to sit there and read instead. If you have the choice, I'd avoid a location next to a housekeeping closet. It could be fine, but it's hard to tell until you get there unless you can find someone who has actually had that particular room.

[vacruizer]

Ports – We’ve done the Cape Canaveral, Nassau, Freeport itinerary before and unlike most people, we actually enjoy it. With the ports not so exciting and 3 full sea days it gives us time to relax and not worry about tours or long days in port. A bonus is enjoying a very quiet ship when we stay onboard.

We didn’t leave the ship in Cape Canaveral. We used the day to read, catch up on some emails and internet since we had cell service again, lounged on the serenity deck for a bit, and went to a few trivia games.

Our highlight of the port was sailaway. We went to the front of the deck 3 promenade and watched a group of 5 or 6 dolphins frolic and play for a while. As we sailed we walked back towards the aft only to hear someone above us on a balcony yell, “MANATEE!!!” and look down to see a beautiful manatee come up for air and go back under. A few minutes later, “STINGRAYS” and there was a whole group of 10 or 12 rays below. The pelicans were swooping in for fish and the temperature a pleasant 78 degrees or so – life just doesn’t get better than this. :)

 

My photography skills and camera came nowhere near capturing any good dolphin shots, but I did catch a glimps of them.

 

 

 

My husband was quite pleased that he had a tugboat named after him - the Michael S. :p

 

[dvond]

Did you happen to take your own water on board via carry on?

 

I ask because we always do as my wife and kids only drink bottled water and it was never an issue in Baltimore but in some threads they are saying at x-ray the security is tearing apart the entire case and you have to repack which is a huge hassel but not sure if this is happening in Baltimore as it did not last year

 

Thanks!

[vacruizer]

Nassau – After a morning trip to the spa for a port day special, our mission for the day was to shop for some single malt Scotches for DH. I’ve never been a huge fan of Nassau. It’s crowded, loud, and the people aren’t the warmest folks I’ve met. Others may disagree with me. We've never been interested in the Atlantis thing and aren't big beach fans so we usually stay onboard.

We were in port with the Carnival Magic and an NCL ship. It was neat to see the biggest and almost the newest of Carnival's ships and the new features like the ropes course and waterpark. But that is one HUGE ship. Way more people than I care to sail with. After seeing the Magic, I can't even imagine one of the RCI behemoths like Oasis.

It looks a lot like a Conquest class ship here, but it's noticeably larger in person.

We set out a few hours after the ship docked at 11am and some light rainshowers kept the temperatures down. The shopping trip turned out to be a big bust. The liquor store we’d been to in the past had burned in the large fire Nassau had a while back. The few stores we found pretty much had no selection. So we gave it up after about a 45 minute walk and headed back to the ship to enjoy the peace and quiet. I can’t for the life of me tell you what we did with the rest of the day. I’m guessing the usual eat, read, and nap routine. We did decide to skip dinner in the dining room that night, just hit the buffet, relax, and enjoy some of the entertainment around the ship as well as the sailaway.

 

We sailed at 8pm after two latecomers barely made the ship. It’s a beautiful time of night to sail right at sunset.

[vacruizer]

Did you happen to take your own water on board via carry on?

 

I ask because we always do as my wife and kids only drink bottled water and it was never an issue in Baltimore but in some threads they are saying at x-ray the security is tearing apart the entire case and you have to repack which is a huge hassel but not sure if this is happening in Baltimore as it did not last year

 

Thanks!

 

We've never taken water since I've always thought the ship water tastes fine. I do take my own wide mouth refillable bottles, get a few cups of water from the buffet, and fill my bottle up from the cups. (There are now signs asking people not to refill personal bottles at the dispensers but I still saw some folks doing it and one lady washing a baby bottle in the water dispenser with her hands all over the nozzle and mechanism - ick!)

 

We do bring a 12 pack of Diet Mtn. Dew for my husband on each cruise. It's been completely random when and where it was checked. They didn't even stop us in Baltimore this time, but when we sailed from Miami in January they made us open the box so they could inspect the cans to be sure there wasn't beer in there. We've also had it opened and checked in Norfolk and Cape Canaveral when boarding a cruise that left from there.

 

So it could happen - they are especially suspicious of water bottles since they can so easily be refilled with clear liquor. I will say they've always been quite polite and even taped the box back up for us when it's been checked.