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

[chellebert]

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This is a picture of the 3 larger Lifeboats at the front of the ship. You DON'T want one of the 7A obstructed balconies behind these. A couple from our rollcall had one of these cabins and said the lifeboat blocked most of their view.

 

 

Sorry if this is a dumb question but, Do you happen to know what section this is? or even room numbers?? We have a 7A booked and im hoping it's not there.. :)

Love your review!! thanks for posting!

[luv2gocruzin]

Michelle, what cabin number do you have? I can tell you if it's in front of the taller lifeboats or the shorter ones.....

[jenng1976]

I found this great post from Falkcor at the bottom.

 

in my opinion, the best ones are between the lifeboats, and avoid the ones in front of tenders if you can. 5236 is the one we had, and 5238 also has a large balcony but is an accessible cabin. I think 5245 on the other side is also bigger than the rest.

 

You can look at the deck plans to see which ones might have a view between life boats.

 

 

 

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CATEGORY 7A

Each stateroom has a standard balcony that is obstructed by the roof of a lifeboat or tender boat (and davits).

Obstructed by Lifeboat

The roof of the lifeboat is somewhat level with the balcony floor; therefore, while sitting on the balcony, you have an ocean view when looking straight ahead but an obstructed view when looking down.

· Port Side: 5168 5170 5172 5174 5176 5178 5180 5182 5184 5186 5188 5190 5224 5226 5228 5230 5232 5234 5236 5238

· Starboard: 5169 5171 5173 5175 5177 5179 5181 5183 5185 5187 5189 5191 5227 5229 5231 5233 5235 5237 5239 5245

Large Balcony

Obstructed by Tender boat

The roof of the tender boat is somewhat level with the top of the balcony railing; therefore, while sitting on the balcony, the view is obstructed – if standing on the balcony, you have an ocean view when looking straight ahead but an obstructed view when looking down.

· Port Side: 5142 5144 5146 5148 5150 5152 5154 5156 5158 5160 5162 5164 5166

· Starboard: 5143 5145 5147 5149 5151 5153 5155 5157 5159 5161 5163 5165 5167

[luv2gocruzin]

great info Jenn, and yes, I'm still stalking you......haha!

[Almost Packed]

Loving your review so far. I felt sad too for you when you woke up on your last day. I hate that dreaded feeling.

[sparks1093]

Thanks for the review! I see the Pride for myself in 9 short days! Woo-hoo, doin' the single digit dance!:D

[cathyoo]

great review. Wonderful pictures, especially the pictures of the two of you. You make a very nice couple. Jim has a great smile. Sunday, just two days away and I will be on my 3rd Pride cruise.

[bunchesofun]

We'll be traveling on the Pride in 8 weeks and can hardly wait. Ilove reading Pride reviews, especially those with pictures. Thanks again!

[Kim_KS]

Great review - Thanks for sharing!

[jenng1976]

great review. Wonderful pictures, especially the pictures of the two of you. You make a very nice couple. Jim has a great smile. Sunday, just two days away and I will be on my 3rd Pride cruise.

 

Thanks! It's funny - I was always debating at how many pics of the two of us to include, since I was thinking "do people REALLY want to see another pic of us?" lol ... as much as I love them all myself. We took almost 400 this trip! And we didn't even go anywhere that exciting (compared to say, Alaska). :)

 

Have fun on your cruise!! Hope you had as great a time as we did.

 

J

[jenng1976]

Day 7 - Evening

Well, the afternoon passed by quickly and now it's time for our last dinner in the Dining Room. Sigh. Oh well, all good things must come to an end. Plus, I don't think my waistline can take many more nights of Chocolate Melting Cake! Yes, I had one every night, lol. Love me some chocolate! Mmmm. Jim has more varied tastes and had something different every night.

Oh that reminds me, I'm not sure what night it was - but Jim enjoyed the Alligator Fritters app the night it was on the menu. So, if you're adventurous, go for it! He also really loves soups, and liked all the ones he ordered (lunch and dinner).

Anyway, dinner tonite once again was very good. And, though I know "tipping" is a very controversial topic here on CC - feel I should mention that we leave the auto-tips on for each cruise, and usually tip extra on the last day for those that really made our cruise special. We had picked up a few envelopes at Guest Services earlier in the day for this purpose.

This cruise that list included: our wait team, our cabin steward, and the maitre'd. We know we don't have to - but like to reward those that give us great service. Oh, and we also gave the waiters at our Open Bar CC party money as well (at the time) since they worked hard!!

Anyway, dinner done, probably shortly after 7 and our evening plan sprung into action! Since we had been disappointed the previous night on not getting into the comedy show, there was no way it was going to happen again tonight!

So ... we made our way to the Comedy Club for the 7:30 Family Show, and planned to stay the rest of the night! We ended up seeing the 7:30 & 8:30 Family Edition - the 8:30 show was the same guy Percy from the 9:45 show we had missed. And he was FUNNY. Like actual Laugh Out Loud funny. He was mainly talking about comparing kids "back in the day" (ie. when we were young), compared to kids now. Totally relatable material and a lot of fun. Then there was a bit of a gap before the 9:45 show started, but we just stayed put!

Tonight I was also amazed by one of the bar waiters in the club. We had ordered drinks from him all week - generally either pints of the Red Frog beer & Bud Light (the two draft options), or buckets of beer (2 Coors & 2 Becks). And although there were several waiters in there, we would usually wait until he came around before ordering since he was our favourite. Anyway - tonite when we first sat down we ordered a bucket - and reached for my S&S card and he waived me away.

So, I thought he was just going to get the number later when he delivered it or something. But no, when he came back with the drinks - he came with the receipt to sign, which meant he had MEMORIZED our folio #! All I can say to that is WOW! Of all the guests that were in that week, I really have no idea how he knew the number by heart, I barely knew it myself. And most nights we would just order the one bucket, so it's not as if we were ordering multiple times.

Of course tonight, we really did order another bucket, since we were there for about 4 hrs straight, lol. I told him how impressed I was, and he just smiled and laughed. And the next week he would have to do it all over again, with a whole new set of guests to remember their preferences.

So - all in all - it was a great last night, we couldn't have asked for anything more. The comedians were funny, we had a few drinks ... definitely the life.

After the 9:45 show, we headed "home" one more time, although we were tempted to stay for the 10:45, we knew we had an early morning the next day.

We did stop at the casino one last time - though we had cashed out early we couldn't resist playing $20 each one more time - which we turned into $100! Sweet! We also had charged an extra $200 from the S&S that we weren't gambling - but just wanted to cash out at the cashier for spending money the next couple of days. It's our "free" way of getting cash instead of using the ATM.

And back to the cabin we went - to throw a few last minute things in the suitcase before putting them outside in the hallway with our Zone 18 tags - ugh!

We also finished off our last couple of beers on the balcony and toasted another great cruise.

Next up. Last day. Disembark & Inner Harbour

[jenng1976]

Day 8 - Get off the ship! ;)

Today we had ordered a wake-up call for 0630 so we could shower and get ready for breakfast. They wanted us out of the cabins by 0830 that morning.

Sunrise - (we were on the wrong side of the ship for a great picture)

Before long we headed down for breakfast, and I don't know if it was because it was the last day - or because our table was kind of hidden in the corner - but we really didn't have stellar service that morning. They didn't even come around with the pastry basket!! But, no worries - I knew soon enough we would be spending several hours on Lido waiting to leave.

 

I didn't dry my hair before breakfast + was starting to get a cold, so I wasn't looking so stellar myself! haha

Last few photos from our balcony:

 

[jenng1976]

Day 8 - Continued

Once we collected our carry-on bags, we headed up to Lido to await our Zone. We always choose the option for them to take our bags off, as opposed to Self Assist.

I think this is mainly because of a bad experience on the Sensation years ago standing for (what seemed like) hours in a hot and crowded hallway, and dragging my luggage up stairs to get off. Now, I'm sure it's not like that always - but since then it always seems more appealing for them to take the bags off for us. Especially since we're not what you would consider "light" packers.

So - knowing we would be on ship for a while with Zone 18 tags, we found a nice table by the window of the Aft Pool to start off and read. Plus I had my "second" breakfast of the day, with toast & cinnamon rolls, and Danishes for Jim.

The most annoying part of this was that I had seemingly overnight got sick. And I hate being sick. Pretty much I was sneezing and congested, so running to the bathroom/washroom as we call it in Canada or the "restroom" here for toilet paper to be used as kleenex. Why oh why did I have to get sick on our trip? This sucks. :(

Anyway - beside that - before too long it felt kind of cool where we were sitting since we were in the shade. Eventually we moved over to the regular buffet section after all the Self-Assist people left and freed up some tables.

Once they had moved on to the Zones, when they called 12, 13, 14, we collected our stuff and moved down to the casino to wait, figuring it wouldn't be long now until we were called.

This was Jim's favourite machine:

 

And I think it was shortly before 11 that we made our way off the ship. GOODBYE PRIDE - we loved you!

Of course, that wasn't the end of our journey - or even the vacation!

We filed down the gangway, and around our way to the customs building. And I said to Jim, "wouldn't it be nice if there was a non-US line" since I figured most people were Americans. And what do you know - when we got into the building, the lady at the front said "US Citizen?" and we said No - and she pointed us to the non-existent line for International people! Yay! Jim told me to stop smiling so much as we quickly weaved our way around the gates and past the giant line on the other side. I know, that sounds terrible, but it sure was nice!

The customs guy barely looked at us and stamped our Passports, since he didn't really care about us, since we would be going through "real" customs back to Canada later.

From there we quickly found our bags - but then had our biggest snag of the day. We were supposed to call the hotel for the shuttle - but wait, my cell phone wasn't picking up a signal! It just showed "emergency only" no matter how many times we turned it off and on and waved it around.

Oh no ... what were we going to do? We didn't really want to ask someone to borrow their phone, since that seemed a bit shady, so instead asked a Carnival guy if there was a payphone around. His short answer 'no'. Thanks Carnival guy. That was helpful. Not.

We kind of stood around, then saw our hotel shuttle come around the corner! I walked over and asked the driver if he had room for us since we hadn't called, and he said sure, bring your stuff. So, problem solved. Before too long we were on our way back to the Best Western. (About 1/2 way the cell signal kicked in - thanks for nothing!).

Once back to the Best Western - we tipped the shuttle guy - and headed back to our car. Time for part II of our vacation!

But, before I finish off with the cruise I'll do one last segment with our final thoughts. Then, for those that are interested, I'll also post about our day in Inner Harbour & the next day in Washington DC before we headed home for Toronto.

[jenng1976]

Elegant Night Photo ...

 

[Room Service!]

Does your "sweetie" always have that big smile, or does it just come naturally when the camera's around, or maybe it's cruising that does it? Anyway, no matter what the reason, looks good on him.

Have really enjoyed your review and am looking forward to your final thoughts, and comments on the Inner Harbor.

Been fun! :)

[jenng1976]

Does your "sweetie" always have that big smile, or does it just come naturally when the camera's around, or maybe it's cruising that does it? Anyway, no matter what the reason, looks good on him.

Have really enjoyed your review and am looking forward to your final thoughts, and comments on the Inner Harbor.

Been fun! :)

 

Thanks Gran3! Actually it's funny you should say that, since Jim's Mom always comments after our vacations how much he smiles ... apparently he didn't let them take many pictures of him growing up. He calls it his "escaped mental patient look", but I agree he has a beautiful smile!

 

Guess it must be love! :)

 

I think we just really enjoy each other and our life, and know how lucky we are to be able to go on vacations such as this, and it comes across in the photos. I couldn't imagine life without my sweetie!

 

Appreciate you following along. I promise to finish up tomorrow! Tonight we're headed out to meet friends, too bad there aren't any bucket of beers where we're going, lol.

 

J

[Room Service!]

That's nice!

Bring your own bucket and toss 'em in there. Keep the dream alive.

Have a good time! ;)

[Crusin Karen]

Does your "sweetie" always have that big smile, or does it just come naturally when the camera's around, or maybe it's cruising that does it? Anyway, no matter what the reason, looks good on him.

Have really enjoyed your review and am looking forward to your final thoughts, and comments on the Inner Harbor.

Been fun! :)

I was going to say the same thing about Jim's smile. I swear, if I cruised with you guys, I think it would be contagious! What a wonderful review and so sorry your cruise is over. Hope you have another one planned!

[idiebabe]

Jenn...really enjoyed reading your review! I want to keep reading more...lol!

 

It was great meeting you & Jim and it was such a GREAT cruise! Love the Pride!!! :D

[Room Service!]

I have a question. Some of us were wondering if the nipplenapper's work has been repaired?

If you don't know what I'm talking about ... someone had very carefully cut the nipples out of most of the artwork in the elevators on the Pride. This was last Oct.

Did you notice?

Thanks. ;)

[Charxu]

So, are you really saying that you didn't have to get up at 5am to go down and clear customs on the ship for non-US citizens. Both times this year in Florida we had to do that, once on the Legend and then on the Fascination. Please tell me it isn't so and I will be one happy cruiser.

[jenng1976]

So, are you really saying that you didn't have to get up at 5am to go down and clear customs on the ship for non-US citizens. Both times this year in Florida we had to do that, once on the Legend and then on the Fascination. Please tell me it isn't so and I will be one happy cruiser.

 

Good news - yes I am saying that!! There was customs done on the ship, that part happened after we got off. Plus non-US had the fast line so no waiting. :)

 

I know what you're talking about though, we had to do it twice on the Sensation and it sure was annoying to get up so early for that!

 

Have a great cruise.

 

Jenn

[jenng1976]

I have a question. Some of us were wondering if the nipplenapper's work has been repaired?

If you don't know what I'm talking about ... someone had very carefully cut the nipples out of most of the artwork in the elevators on the Pride. This was last Oct.

Did you notice?

Thanks. ;)

 

Hey Gran ... haha, that's kind of funny, I hadn't heard of nipplegate :eek: lol!

 

But unfortunately I can't confirm if it's been repaired, since we only were in the elevators once that week.

 

I can say the artwork in the ship didn't bother us at all. Honestly if I didn't already know that it was an issue for some people, we wouldn't have really even noticed.

 

Jenn :)

[jenng1976]

Hey everyone ... sorry there was no installment today, but the day got away from me today.

I do have a question - is anyone interested in seeing the Funtimes? If so, I have them and can scan them in, but if there isn't any interest I won't bother.

And to those sailing tomorrow, happy cruising!!

Jenn :)

[SMSACE6]

About the decor, that reminds me of how many times I have read that the Freedom,s decor was horrible!. When I boarded that ship I looked around and up at the atrium and said, " Well this is not bad! A few times things looked a little odd to me, but by first day at sea, I did not notice a single odd thing about the decor! It was a fine cruise too. I have never been bothered out of 7 cruises by any decor, even when the ships have a reputation for a bad one.:)

 

Thanks again for this very nice review.:)

Edited October 6, 2012 by SMSACE6
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