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Wonderful time on the Carnival Pride Sept 16-23: Review, Pics + Comparisons to HAL

jenng1976

By jenng1976,
in Carnival Cruise Lines

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jenng1976

jenng1976

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Although you do look fab in both dresses I totally understand the "picture thing" because you absolutely do look like a rock star in that black dress...really shows off your curves!

 

Haha ... I knew other women would understand! The moment I tried it on I just knew it was the perfect dress I was looking for.

 

Thanks for the kind words :)

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jenng1976

jenng1976

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I see that one of the pools are indoors or covered..... Is the water warm enough to be swimming in the first few sea days?

 

Hmmm ... well, the pool was uncovered for our entire cruise, but this was in September and it was quite warm outside, and only got warmer as we progressed south.

 

We never actually swam though, so I don't know how warm the water was!

 

I would guess as the weather gets chillier, they would covert it to indoors.

 

Sorry - one thing we didn't do this cruise!

 

J

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jenng1976

jenng1976

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Day 7 - Last Sea Day

Wow, it's finally here. The last sea day. How did the time go by so quickly???

We started off by sleeping in a bit, then our normal breakfast routine in the Dining Room.

Our next scheduled activity was Bingo as 11AM ... once again we got close but no winners. There were always lots of people playing though, must be a big $ earner for Carnival, especially now that they make you buy the break-even tickets as part of the Bingo package.

After that - our 3rd and final CC activity, the Slot Pull!

Laurie also organized this one - it was $15/person to enter, then she put all the money into the Wheel Of Fortune $1 machine ($3 max bet). Once all the money was in - we then took turns with 5 "pulls" at Max Bet, until everyone had their turn. Once everyone was done, then we would split the amount of money on the machine.

It turned out to be a lot of fun - everytime we got Triple 7's - a $10 win - you'd think we won the jackpot with how everyone was cheering! A couple of times we got the Wheel of Fortune and came close to $1000 once, but got $20/$40 those times.

At the end of the day we all walked away with $10 back, so it was a $5 investment, but definitely worth it for the enjoyment factor. There were also some prizes given out, John Heald and the Casino Manager had donated a Ship on a Stick and a Casino Hat. Plus Laurie had a few prizes of her own. All in all a fun 1hr or so!

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bluehenfan

bluehenfan

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I have been in a bit of a "funk" since returning from that cruise and your wonderful report has really cheered me up !! I loved meeting everyone when you stopped by for the cabin crawl and then seeing everyone at the slot pull. I've done several CC meet & greets but the people at this one were so super friendly. We loved itl

I can't wait to show my aunt Cathee the picture of your hubby sitting at a slot machine. That was "her" machine and she would win one night and lose the next at it, but played the same machine all week.

Like you, I enjoy sea days and I really love the Pride (living 40 mins away is a big plus ).

Thank you for your detailed report and wonderful pictures. I will be heading back to Florida next week for a 3 weeks visit with my DD who lives south of Cocoa Beach. I told her I don't want to go where I'll see any cruise ships docked or I'll be trying to sneak on board !! LOL !

Happy Sailing !! Sandee

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spacepotatoes

spacepotatoes

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Hi Jenn, I haven't finished this review yet but I had to post and say thank you for your Zuiderdam honeymoon review from last year! It was very helpful in planning our own trip this past summer. I'm looking forward to reading this one, too. We don't have anything planned for a while but I've been trying to convince my DH that driving to Baltimore would be worth it ;)

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PKap

PKap

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Hi Jenn,

I really enjoyed your review. The Pride sounds great. I was wondering if you know what cabin numbers are obstructed by those big lifeboats in your pictures? We have an obsturcted view booked for April. Thanks, Peter

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boreas154

boreas154

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Look at the deck plan for Pride Deck 5. The 3 lifeboats to the fore are the bigger ones. Adjoining rooms would therefore be the truly obstructed ones. The rest of the balconies on deck 5 have the shorter boats which only block you from looking straight down.

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brlou

brlou

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After Bingo, we just wandered around for a bit killing time until our next CC activity - the Poker Cabin Crawl! Laurie from our Roll Call had been so kind to organize two events for us this week - the Cabin Crawl and a Slot Pull for the last sea day.

 

For the cabin crawl - basically how it worked was we toured 6 different cabins in total - and at each room we drew a card from a deck of cards. At the end of all the rooms, whoever had the best "hand" of Poker won the money (we had all contributed $5/person), and there were also some prizes for worst hand as well. It was a lot of fun, and it was neat to see the different category of rooms.

 

We even got to see our "dream" cabin - the aft wrap Vista Suite on deck 4! Amazing!! I'm not sure if we'll ever have the money to spend on this cabin, but it sure was beautiful. It even included a walk-in closet!

 

Thanks to Laurie for organizing - and the other people for donating their cabin. We also got a few special treats, Chocolate Covered Strawberries from Laurie & Jim, and a Key tag saying Carnival Pride Sept 16, 2012 from bluehenfan (Sandee) which was definitely a lovely touch and much appreciated.

 

All in all a very fun event - and great seeing all our Roll call people again. I think meeting such wonderful people played a role in why this was such a great cruise for us. :)

 

You are so welcome Jenn! It was great fun. You are so right about our CC group, everyone is just fabulous!!

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luv2gocruzin

luv2gocruzin

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Day 2 - Sea Day

This afternoon I do know what we did - it was our Cruise Critic Open Bar party organized by the lovely Cathy Martin! She did a wonderful job planning in advance on our Roll Call and I'm going to say approximately 30 of us paid in advance for the 1 hour open bar party.

 

And what a great party it was. The servers were great and we felt that we got our money's worth - and it was nice to put faces to names with the people I had been chatting with for several months. Both of us had a really good time, and throughout the week we encountered many of the people we met there.

 

Thanks for the sweet compliment Jenn! The party was a HUGE success and we enjoyed it very much too! We had some awesome people in our roll call group, didn't we? There were 36 of us at the party- great turnout!

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luv2gocruzin

luv2gocruzin

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Once back at the rental store - who did we run into? You guessed it, Cathy & Marty! Though we never saw them at the Space Centre, it seemed like we were always on the same wavelength!

 

We definitely were always on the same wavelength with you two! (or we were stalking you.......)

Edited by luv2gocruzin
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jenng1976

jenng1976

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Hi Jenn, I haven't finished this review yet but I had to post and say thank you for your Zuiderdam honeymoon review from last year! It was very helpful in planning our own trip this past summer. I'm looking forward to reading this one, too. We don't have anything planned for a while but I've been trying to convince my DH that driving to Baltimore would be worth it ;)

 

I'm glad you found my other review helpful - before my trip I learned a lot from other experiences as well so I thought I should pay it forward!

 

Hope you had a wonderful time! :)

 

Jenn

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jenng1976

jenng1976

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Day 7 - Continued - Sea Day

Well, where did I leave off? Oh right - fun times at the casino with our CC Roll call!

After that - it was lunchtime and we headed over for one last lunch in the Dining Room. There wasn't a line when we went in, but this was the busiest day here. The reason? Free Drink Coupons! Seems as if almost everyone waited to the last day to redeem them so there were a lot more people than on the other days.

We had already redeemed ours, but we thought it was a nice touch when our waiter asked if we had coupons. It seems as if Carnival was prepared for this rush - as there were lots of bar waiters walking around either taking orders or coming back with huge trays of drinks. There was a lot of variety of drinks it seemed, from martinis to beers, so it didn't look like they were picky about what you ordered (as long as it was under the $ amount).

By the time we finished lunch though - we were shocked to see a line-up! There looked to be about 20 people in line which was definitely a first for lunch. But, we were done so didn't bother us, lol.

After lunch we spent a bit of time at the casino and cashed out our Player's Bank, in case we didn't have time to go back later. Then we headed back to the room to start packing. Sigh. Is it that time already? The week went by so quickly.

We also hung out on the balcony since this would be one of our last chances to do so. While out there - we saw the neatest thing! It looked like a horse way out in the distance ... a sea horse, haha.

Quickly got out the binoculars and on closer inspection looked like some kind of platform - maybe oil or something, we weren't sure. But, there seemed to be other "stuff" out there too. (Yes, that's the correct technical term!)

299442_10151059915731039_692654608_n.jpg

 

Don't you just love pictures like this? So peaceful. We will miss it.

561521_10151059915936039_1031004146_n.jpg

 

Later on we headed out for one last session of Bingo, and took a look at our Elegant night pictures!

Well, despite the signs everywhere saying 'don't group your pictures', we had grouped all our pictures from the previous elegant night so we could compare against the latest ones. (Yep, we're rebels!). And wait - what was this? There was a new group from the first night that we hadn't seen. Hmmm, these looked good. We also found all the 2nd Elegant night photos (think we did 7 stations in all), and found a couch to sit down at to compare photos.

Now, you should understand that in our hands are about 50 photos from all the sessions! We took an initial pass, eliminating all the definite "no's". Those included any by ourselves, as well as the ones where we looked terrible for one reason or another. This process got rid of about 1/2 of them.

But, we still had a lot. Then we went through and if we had several similar photos, picking the one we liked best of the group. And finally - we ended up with about 5 pictures. Since we only wanted/needed one picture, we had more work to do!

I know - you had no idea picking a picture would be such a long story! Well, then we each picked what our favourite was. Was it the same picture? Of course not, that would be too easy! Turns out the one Jim favoured was from the first night that we had just discovered today, and I liked one from the second night. We both offered to get the one the other wanted, but in the end got the one Jim preferred.

I will try and show you - but first will have to scan it. So, hang tight on that! Anyway - mission accomplished, we had a new picture for our living room - that's our one 'must buy' for every cruise.

Up next - dinner and evening entertainment. Would it go better than the night before? Stay tuned!

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jenng1976

jenng1976

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You are such a tease....haha!!!

 

Haha ... is my "stalker" back? Just kidding ... it was so great meeting you and Marty. :)

 

I'll probably continue tonite - headed out to my Bootcamp class soon to work off all those Chocolate Melting cakes! Mmmmm ...

 

J

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