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A review of my first ever Carnival cruise!

acruisingpeach23

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acruisingpeach23

acruisingpeach23

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Thursday July 11th---Road Trip/Hollywood Beach, Florida

 

We left at 3am and after a quick stop for coffee and gas we were on the interstate. I am sure everyone knows how road trips go…Lots of driving, talking about random things, and sleeping. Well for me I did do all of those and even worried all the way down to Miami about the weather. Lucky us though it did not rain once while we were driving.

 

I also learned on this road trip that since moving to NC from NY almost two years ago I now say “dawg” instead of “dog” and I am losing my thick NY accent! LOL

 

We made it to Hollywood Beach, FL at exactly 3:30 pm so it did take us 12 hours to get there.

 

My mother and I decided to book the Marriott Hollywood Beach hotel and we were not disappointed. It is located right on the beach and the beach is sooooooo beautiful. The water was amazing! As soon as we pulled up to the hotel we handed the keys to the valet ($19 per day but you can come and go as many times) checked in and ran straight to the beach!

 

For dinner we ate at the hotel and it was the nastiest $150 dinner we ever ate. So do not eat there. It’s gross and expensive! The rooms are nothing to write home about but the air conditioner worked, it was clean, and we had a balcony that gave us both beach views and city views.

 

That night we walked the promenade and saw all the different hotels and resorts that are along the way and it was really relaxing to just stroll down the beach.

 

I would not hesitate to recommend this hotel to anyone!

 

 

 

Friday July 12th---The Duck, the Cuban Crack, People Can’t Drive, Padrinos.

 

We awoke early Friday morning and decided to drive down A1A (I think that’s the street version of I-95) and into Miami Beach/South Beach. I have never been so scared in my life to be in the front passenger seat of a car. People cannot drive and pedestrians would wait until the traffic lights turned green to run across the street. I had to switch with my mother because I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown!

 

We made it safely into south beach and my mother wanted to take the Duck Tour. We did this tour in Seattle and it was a lot of fun so we agreed to do it. For those not familiar with the duck tour it is a bus tour that goes around the streets and then the bus turns into a boat and goes into the water.

 

We enjoyed it in Seattle but were not thrilled with it at all in South Beach. The tour guide was so passive aggressive and all we got to see were wealthy people’s homes and some architecture on the streets. We floated around Biscayne Bay to see Star Island, Palm Island, etc but the whole time the tour guide was ripping apart the wealthy people that live there.

 

After the tour was over we drove around some more and decided to take my boyfriend to Little Havana. He is Cuban and we thought it would be interesting to visit. We plotted an address into the GPS and we were on our way. After driving around we realized we were not in the best area of Miami. There were bars on the windows and it just did not look safe. I don’t believe we were in Little Havana but I definitely believe we were in a not so safe part of town.

 

But then it happened…I NOTICED THE CUBAN CRACK!!....At this point I am back in the passenger’s seat and I am looking through the windshield and I see a spec on the glass. I tell my boyfriend to spray some water to clean the glass but it doesn’t go away…it starts spreading…NOOOOO my car that I just bought in February has a crack in the windshield!!!

 

To be continued! Work is getting busy now I’ll be back later for more!

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acruisingpeach23

acruisingpeach23

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Friday July 12th cont’d….

 

Nooooo my windshield has a crack in it…I can’t believe it. I started freaking out. How will we drive home to NC? Isn’t it illegal to drive with a crack in the windshield? Why is it cracked? Did the valet do this? Did a pebble hit us? Did a coconut fall and crack my windshield? Why am I noticing this now? These were all the questions racing through my mind.

 

Both my mother and my boyfriend calmed me down and made me realize that it’s not a huge deal. No one will get arrested for driving with a crack in the windshield and that it’s a small crack. I calmed down and noticed an Auto Parts store so of course I HAD to buy that glue that doesn’t actually work and force my boyfriend out of our nice air-conditioned car and into the nasty, humid, 100 degree weather to try to fix it.

 

It worked for an hour and then it just kept spreading. I gave up.

 

Mad and stressed out we decided to leave this part of town and head back to the hotel to go to the beach.

 

I decided to make some kind of light from the situation and named the crack. Since we were on our way to little Havana when I noticed it I went with the Cuban Crack! Just another character to this story!

 

We got back to the beach, chilled out a little, and decided we wanted Cuban food. One of the valet guys suggested going to Padrinos. OMG it was soooooo delicious! I get hungry just thinking about it. The portions were huge, the prices were low, and the coffee was Cuban! I never felt so awake after drinking that coffee. Definitely go there if you’re in the area. I believe it is in Hollandale/Hallandale (sorry not sure of the spelling) but it really is so good. After being in an area of Charlotte where all there is to eat is fast food I really appreciated some really good food!

 

After eating we were so stuffed we rolled ourselves to bed!

 

 

 

Ok my lunch break is over…stay tuned…My next installment will be about my first day on Carnival.

 

Here are some topics to look forward to

 

· Someone is cruising under my name?

· Getting pulled over by security

· Miami police on the ship

· And more!

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acruisingpeach23

acruisingpeach23

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Saturday July 13th---First day of cruise! Part 1

 

We woke up bright and early and went outside to sip coffee and decide on what time we wanted to arrive at the cruise terminal. We decided we wanted to be there by 11:00.

 

When we were finished drinking coffee I headed back to the hotel room to double check that my boarding pass was where it was and I noticed on the boarding pass that I had a VIFP# already assigned to my name! I checked my boyfriend, mother, and sister’s boarding pass and no one else had this number.

 

Of course I freaked out and thought “OMG someone has been cruising Carnival under my name and social security number” (remember I am an anxious person), I am going to arrive at the port they will scan my passport and someone else is going to pop up with my name!!

 

I call Carnival and explain to the representative what I was thinking and she started hysterically laughing at me (who could blame her) and re-assured me that it was assigned to me because I had filled out my online profile early. I asked her one more time “Are you sure I won’t get turned away by the security?” She once again said no and that I would have a wonderful trip! I am almost positive she probably went around her office telling everyone about this crazy person she just had a conversation with LOL

 

We finished packing, got the car, saw the crack has spread some more, and were on our way. We made a quick stop at 7-Elven to redeem $50 my boyfriend won from a scratch off the previous night and headed straight to the port.

 

When we arrived at the port we followed the signs to terminal D and were greeted by luggage handlers. They took our luggage before we parked the car and we tipped them $5.

 

After dropping our luggage with the handlers we headed to terminal D parking. When you enter the terminal you receive a ticket. I would recommend leaving the ticket in the car so you don’t lose it while on board having fun! The cost was $20 per day.

 

After parking the car we headed into the terminal and got on line to be checked in. Of course I am still holding my breath and extremely nervous that someone is using my identity…but alas everything went fine and we were told to head to security. We drop off our bags to go through the scanner and then walk through the body scanner.

 

As our bags come out of the scanner a security guard tells my boyfriend and I too not touch any of our bags and to follow her!!! Now I’m freaking out. What is in my bag? Did my boyfriend put alcohol in the bag and not tell me? Everyone is staring at us as we were led to a table and then told to open one bag at a time.

 

In one bag my mom decided to stick an open bottle of seltzer which flagged the whole entire bag. She told us to either drink it or toss it out. We tossed it out

 

In the other bag we had an unopened bottle of Pepto Bismal which was the flag for this bad. The woman pulled it out and closely inspected it to make sure it wasn’t opened and once she determined we weren’t smuggling anything else on board we were told to “enjoy your cruise”

 

I let out a huge sigh of relief. We headed to the waiting area, got our sign and sail cards, established our cash accounts, and waited less than 15 minutes before we were told we could embark!!

 

Most exciting part of the cruise is embarkation. You just don’t know what to expect. I would like to say we were eating a Guy’s Burger by 12:00pm. We weren’t allowed to go to our rooms until 1:30 but I got nosey and walked to my room which was 9266 and saw that the door was opened and the room was clean. I found the steward Gregmark and handed him $5 and asked him if we could drop our carry-on luggage in the room? He said yes but to leave it in the closet since the door will be open.

 

So we dropped off all of our carry-on luggage in the room and headed back to the Lido deck.

 

When they announced it was time we could go to our rooms we went straight there and were really amazed by the size of the room. My boyfriend and I were in 9266 and my mother was in 9264 and we asked the room steward to open our balconies and he did promptly. I have a picture of what the balconies look like opened and I have to say it was really nice!

 

In the room there are 3 closets, drawers, a desk, shelves, a couch, a table and a television. The bathroom had a little welcome basket with chocolate turtles, breathe right strips, and teeth whitening strips. There was also a shower gel and shampoo dispenser in the shower. The shower pressure was awesome and you were able to pick the temperature of the water!

 

We headed to our balcony and waited for the muster drill. At around 3:45 Gregmark came banging on our doors and told us to evacuate the room and I noticed that once we left he stuck an evacuated sign into the card slot.

 

On our way down to Muster station D we noticed 2 Miami police officers rushing to a stateroom on the 7th floor. I never found out what that was about but we found it to be interesting.

 

We hot to the area and were told to line up with our backs against the wall. After about 20 minutes there were 3 other lines of people standing in front of us, really almost stepping on us. It was crowded and kind of stressful in that it was hot and they kept blaring the alarms which if my memory serves me correctly that was the first time for me anyway to experience a muster drill that blared the alarms. Those alarms really freaked me out!

 

Once muster was said and done we started to walk back to our rooms my sister said to me I had this green stuff all over the back of my brand new shirt! I took it off…don’t work I was wearing layers….and saw all this dark green gook all over my shirt! I was told it was either grease or bird poop!

 

I was sooo annoyed. So here is a tip: Check the wall before you lean against it. I washed my shirt like 3 times and it never came out!

 

Ok I’m stopping here I will continue as soon I can! If you have any questions feel free to ask!

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Trish12345

Trish12345

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Your review is great. So 12 hours from Charlotte to Miami?? Is that 12 hrs to your hotel, then how much further to the port?

 

My husband insists we fly to Miami not drive. Although, one does need nerve pills to ride with my husband.

 

I am an original Charlotte native now living 50 miles away.

Sorry about your windshield. If the crack is in the drivers line of sight, your comprehensive insurance will replace it. If not in the line of sight and not a 'bad' crack, the insurance will try to patch it first.

 

Sadly, from our Tampa cruise last fall, I got a new windshield, some nice bondo(sp) & and new paint for my hood.

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bonnys

bonnys

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Friday July 12th cont’d….

After being in an area of Charlotte where all there is to eat is fast food I really appreciated some really good food!

 

Thanks for the review. Reading about other peoples cruise adventures helps pass the time until it is my turn. Which can't come fast enough! :p

 

Just curious what are of Charlotte you are in that only has fast food. I was born here and can't think of anywhere that fits that description.:confused:

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acruisingpeach23

acruisingpeach23

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Just want to apologize for any spelling issues!

 

Saturday July 13th cont’d---First day of cruise

 

After muster was over we went back to our rooms and hung out on the balcony. We stayed there for sail away and actually sailed right through a rainbow which was really cool.

 

Once we were done with that my mom and I decided to walk around the ship and check out our dining room, Golden Olympic, and see where we would be sitting. We were scheduled for 8:15 dining. When we arrived to the dining room we found our table, 639, and realized it was right next to a waiter station. We were a little concerned about the awkwardness of the table but decided we weren’t going to stress out about it.

 

We went back to our rooms and I did some laundry. I absolutely love the location of cabin 9266. It is right by the elevators, the laundry room, and 5 seconds from the pool, bars, and buffet!! I will always ask for this cabin.

 

The laundry room is teeny tiny compared to Princess’ laundry room. Only two washers, 4 dryers, and an iron tucked away in a corner. It is $3.00 to wash and $3.00 to dry. The wash took 28 minutes to complete and the dryer was 60 minutes. Helpful tip: the dryer is powerful. It’s a good thing I went and checked at the 30 minute mark because everything was dry and probably would have shrunk, however it’s good if you have heavy beach towels because the hour is pretty much all you need. They also sold soap for $1 but it’s the powder kind and I had to run the wash twice because the first time around not all the soap came off. Bring some detergent with you in liquid form!

 

After laundry and relaxing it was time for dinner. I called downstairs and asked if jeans were ok and they said yes. So I threw on my nicest pair of jeans and a pretty top and we were on our way.

 

We got downstairs to the dining room and had to wait in line. Now before I go on with this part of the story I must tell you all a little something about me and 2 other people in my party.

 

My mother, boyfriend, and I use to be smokers. I quit cold turkey and they both use e-cigs. They only use them where regular smoking is allowed.

 

Ok now that you know that part…Imagine our surprise when we are waiting on line to enter the dining room and someone in front of us is just huffing and puffing away on his e-cig. Now we didn’t care we were just shocked that he had the nerve to do it in this area of the ship! If these boards have taught me anything it’s that smoking, regular or electronic, is a very sensitive topic either way! We don’t vape (yes sometimes I will have a puff or two) just anywhere to be respectful of others. Don’t worry he got tons of dirty looks and I just laughed quietly to myself.

 

Any who we finally entered the dining room and sat down. My sister realized her chair was broken and requested it to be removed. After placing our orders, we started realizing how awful this table location was. We got bumped into all night long. The waiters have no choice but to bump into us to get to the other tables. My boyfriend had to keep ducking as waiters would lean over him to drop things off at the station.

 

It annoyed us but we thought maybe it was a first night issue, so be patient.

 

Then we got our food. OMG sooooo delicious! Everything we ate we loved that night! I will admit though bar service was slow. I think my boyfriend was almost done with his dinner course before his beer showed up. The melting cake….HEAVEN! Ok I need to stop talking about food. I am at work and haven’t had coffee yet and my belly is starting to rumble LOL I will go more into the food at the end of the review when I do a summarization under each category!

 

After dinner we headed to the welcome show. The cruise director was Karl with a K and he was hilarious. The comedians were funny and hooked us to go to their shows the following night! It was a good time and they forced us to interact with strangers by telling us to introduce us to someone we didn’t know. It was embarrassing and fun at the same time!

 

After the show was over we went to go get ice cream. Not that we were hungry or anything but because we could! LOL….it was delicious. I believe the flavors were vanilla, chocolate, vanilla/chocolate swirl, strawberry, and strawberry/chocolate swirl. Don’t hold me to it though that there wasn’t a vanilla/strawberry swirl though because I don’t eat strawberry ice cream but the BF does and I got him some strawberry/chocolate ice cream.

 

We went back to our cabins and it was freezing!! I hate it, BF loves it! You can set the temperature to however warm or cold you want it but I will say the ship was freezing cold everywhere, so AC issues were definitely not an issue on this cruise!

 

 

 

Ok I’ll be back for more in a little bit!

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acruisingpeach23

acruisingpeach23

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Your review is great. So 12 hours from Charlotte to Miami?? Is that 12 hrs to your hotel, then how much further to the port?

 

My husband insists we fly to Miami not drive. Although, one does need nerve pills to ride with my husband.

 

I am an original Charlotte native now living 50 miles away.

Sorry about your windshield. If the crack is in the drivers line of sight, your comprehensive insurance will replace it. If not in the line of sight and not a 'bad' crack, the insurance will try to patch it first.

 

Sadly, from our Tampa cruise last fall, I got a new windshield, some nice bondo(sp) & and new paint for my hood.

 

12 hrs to the hotel and then i would say maybe 25 minutes to the port! It wasnt a bad ride at all.

 

Im sorry to hear about your car! What happened?

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acruisingpeach23

acruisingpeach23

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Thanks for the review. Reading about other peoples cruise adventures helps pass the time until it is my turn. Which can't come fast enough! :p

 

Just curious what are of Charlotte you are in that only has fast food. I was born here and can't think of anywhere that fits that description.:confused:

 

I live by northlake mall. One place after the other is fast food. Can you suggest any restaurants in Charlotte? I would appreciate it! :D

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acruisingpeach23

acruisingpeach23

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Sunday July 14th---Sea Day

 

Ohhhh it so nice waking up on a cruise ship! Every morning I would wake up and open the curtains to peak outside and see what the weather was like. Then I would open the door and cross the balcony to get my mom for coffee.

 

We would go to the buffet and get some coffee and then I would walk over to the omelets station and get the BF and I some breakfast and walk back to our room. Yep so if you saw the same girl every day walking through the pool area with plates of food that was me!....and no I wasn’t eating all that food by myself LOL Sometimes I even made more than one trip LOL Very nice to “live” right by the buffet area!

 

After breakfast was over I turned on the T.V. and found out that George Zimmerman was not guilty. I really felt like the week I was on the cruise was a huge week for news! I was grateful that we were provided with news stations.

 

After telling my mother the verdict and talking about it my sister told us she wanted to go play trivia. We headed downstairs to the atrium lobby on the 3rd floor and waited for trivia to begin. This was my first time playing trivia on ship but my mother and sister have previously played trivia on Princess and they told me that we were left to ourselves and not on team. I’m not anti-social or shy; I get awkward around people I don’t know so I try to avoid awkward situations.

 

Welllllll on Carnival you get put onto teams! Sooo hello to my fellow Craniums, (that was our team name) and sorry if I didn’t talk too much the first time around. Trivia was fun and I learned I know nothing. I also learned that Carnival needs to update their trivia questions. A lot of the questions were based on things from a long time ago. I thought I would kill it in the entertainment category but the questions were based on things from the 30’s, 40’s 50’s. I am not trying to insult anyone but I figured they would ask more things on today’s entertainment, that’s all. All my knowledge on the Real Housewives series, true blood, and celebrity news from Perez Hilton could not be shared! LOL

 

The first round of trivia we came in 2nd place! Not so bad! Trivia is 3 rounds by the way and on three different days.

 

We also tried the Mocha Chocolate Getaway drink and it was good. It tasted like a mud slide.

 

After trivia we went to eat lunch. I can’t remember if we ordered room service or went to Guy’s or did both! Some days BF wanted room service and I didn’t so we would do both.

 

No I am lying I got dragged to the gym by BF after trivia and then we ate lunch. Then I fell asleep and was awoken by lots of noise outside our cabin. Ah it was the line down the hall from the laundry room. I decided I should get in line also. I thought it was funny that I was the only woman on line to iron for elegant night. I will admit though my BF was with me because I don’t know how iron LOL I was there purely for company. The line was long and slow so if you need to iron anything make sure you allow ample time.

 

Went back to the room to get ready and I was not in the mood to dress up and the BF was not in the mood to wear slacks but we did because we wanted to enjoy the food. Well imagine how annoyed I was that people were in jeans in the dining room. I didn’t care they were in jeans but I was annoyed that I wasn’t!

 

This was the night we finally realized we needed to switch tables. The broken chair was back, our order was never bought to us complete meaning the waiter would forget to bring my salad or something, the bar service order never came, and neither did my coffee for dessert. We also got bumped into again all night long. We had enough.

 

After dinner we rushed back upstairs to change and then went to the Victoria Lounge (for those more experienced with Carnival is this correct? The theater also started with a V and I got confused all week! It was the lounge all the way aft on the 5th floor next to the cigar lounge and piano bar) to watch the comedians! I believe the show times we went to for the adult’s only show were at 11 and 11:45pm. They were both hysterical. Lots of cursing and lots of naughty jokes so be prepared for that. Also if you like Guinness beer you can get it there in the lounge. BF didn’t find out until Friday night there was Guinness anywhere on the ship so it was one of those “I wish I knew Saturday what I know now” kind of moments.

 

It was after midnight when the last comedian was done so we went back to our cabins and sat on the balcony for a little bit and then went to bed. We had an early morning in Cozumel the next day.

 

Up Next: Cozumel, Mexico. The storm, not my favorite, and an allergic reaction!

 

Just so you guys know I’m writing these installments like I am a 007 agent. LOL so forgive me for the lengths of time in between postings. When I get home I get pulled in a million directions so I haven’t had the time to sit down and really write everything out! I do have pictures to post and I will as soon as I can. As of now I am at work looking busy but typing this HEHEHEHE LOL

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