Carnival Pride Review - 5/16/2010 - lots of pictures!

[broadwaystar32]

Hey that's me getting married!! Congrats to you...I was 3 tables up from you when you got engaged in the Normandie room at dinner!

 

Ahh, congratulations! I thought it was really adorable and a great shot from where I was (though far away) so I snapped a photo!

[broadwaystar32]

All right, so I'm definitely going to finish my view of Wednesday (the Port Canaveral day) today!

 

After we finished the Shuttle Experience Ride, we had about an hour left at Kennedy Space Center. Now, here's my complaint - they told us we had to be at the bus between 2:45-3:00 to be picked up to go back to the Port. The last bus would leave at 3:00. I don't understand why they couldn't give us more time there. The ship doesn't sail until 7:00. They could have at least given us till 4 or 5, considering the $90 we paid for the excursion! There were a lot of things we didn't get to see at KSC or we rushed through, which was unfortunate. I honestly don't understand the reasoning behind having the excursion return so early.

 

Anyway, at that point we decided just to walk through the "Rocket Garden", which was basically what it sounded like. Here's a look:

 

 

 

There was at least one shuttle they had there that made a pretty good photo op, too:

 

 

We finished up the day by taking a stroll through the gift shop and buying some NASA related projects. My dad loves astronomy, so I got him a calendar there, and Jason got a mug with all these rocket science physics equations on them. He says he bought it because he actually understands them all - he studies computer science and mathematics and takes physics courses for fun, so I guess that makes sense!

 

So it was back on the bus and we were back on the Pride by 3:30. So lame, it felt like we really only spent half the day there. But we didn't have a choice, so we were back.

 

We went to another trivia (movies this time), but we lost again. We got 10 right out of 20, and the winning team had 14. Still, I was proud of our 10 because neither of us are big movie watchers, unless the questions are about Disney movies! We went to almost every trivia, in part because I felt obligated to uphold the family name - my family won a plastic stick on a ship for trivia during the last cruise we were on!

 

Dinner was next, and quite a tasty one tonight! We had our favorite waiter, Dejan, again. I had to get two appetizers because they sounded so good. One was the Tom Ka Gai, and I swear this was probably the best thing I had to eat all week. It's basically just a coconut chicken soup, but it's spicy and has a real kick to it. I would guess it's Thai due to its taste. If you like Thai food or you like spicy, you need to try this. The only bad thing was that it had mushrooms (I don't mind the taste of them, but I hate the texture). So I had a bowl of mushrooms left when I was done, but I drank every bit of that soup!

 

 

The other appetizer I got was a Beef Tenderloin with Noodle Salad, marinated in peanut dressing. I love the flavor of peanuts in my food, so this was also great. I'm getting hungry just thinking about these foods again!:

 

 

Jason went with the fried mozzarella, which was really good and he loved it. He said it was even better than the mozzarella sticks at Applebee's ;-)

 

[SammieMC00]

Jason's cheesecake:

 

Anyway, there's our waiter for tonight, dancing. I think his name was Luis but I'm not positive:

 

 

Yup that's Luis. We had him for our cruise I think 2 or 3 nights. He was a good waiter...kinda quiet but funny. He was assigned to an area just in the doors on the second floor of the dining room to the left close to the railing looking down onto the lower level of the dining room.

[broadwaystar32]

Main courses! Jason had the assorted seafood, which I seriously considered getting, and it looked quite good. I ended up with the Lamb Dijonnaise. I don't have lamb very often (we only have it on Easter), and every time I eat it I don't remember how much I really like it until I bite in. Delicious!

 

 

 

For dessert I had the bitter and blanc. Pretty good, still not really my thing though. I should've stuck with the chocolate melting cake ;-) That's what Jason went for this evening.

 

 

Oh, and the waiters danced for us again tonight. I didn't recognize the song, but Dejan made Jason and I stand up and dance with him! So we all looked awkward together.

 

After dinner we took another shot at trivia, but it was "Famous Faces," where you have to identify the celebrity by their picture. We weren't too good at that. They also had a lot of technical difficulties with this one. Most of the pictures were cut off at first, so that you were basically trying to identify them by their chests :-O

 

We also watched a family feud type game, which was cute, and then the nightly show, which was the typical singing and dancing with jazz music.

 

We also stopped back at our room briefly to find: another towel animal! This one was not one of my favorites, though.

 

 

However, the really exciting part is that he left our elephant there as well - we were on our way to starting a whole towel animal menagerie!

 

 

The last event of the evening was the deck party and midnight buffet, which had a Mexican theme. They had people dancing, going the cha-cha slide and whatever other dancers, and competing to form the biggest conga line. Jason and I weren't really in the mood to jump into the middle of things (or we hadn't had enough to drink), so we just observed from the upper deck.

 

[broadwaystar32]

Yup that's Luis. We had him for our cruise I think 2 or 3 nights. He was a good waiter...kinda quiet but funny. He was assigned to an area just in the doors on the second floor of the dining room to the left close to the railing looking down onto the lower level of the dining room.

 

Thanks for the confirmation! He was pretty funny - we had a few other run-ins with him later on that made us laugh, I'll explain those when I get to them :)

[broadwaystar32]

We'd been waiting all week for a midnight buffet, having heard the fabled stories, so we were really excited for this one. The good thing was that everyone was so distracted by the dancing and the activities that we were able to head to the buffet and fill up our plates before most people realized the food was even there.

 

The dessert table looked amazing. The desserts were clearly the highlight of the buffet:

 

 

 

 

I wanted to try all of the desserts, they looked so good, but unfortunately I was still a bit full from dinner! I had a slice of strawberry shortcake that was amazing.

 

The rest of the food, however, was not really all that good. It sounded good so I loaded up my plate, but to be honest most of the things I tried I didn't care for. They were either cold or mushy or in some other way not very appealing. Jason didn't really eat much because he hates onions, and they were in almost everything. So that was kind of a bummer, but maybe people that are more into Mexican food would be happier with it!

 

After that it was off to bed - we would be arriving in Nassau the next day!

[richstowe]

We'd been waiting all week for a midnight buffet, having heard the fabled stories, so we were really excited for this one. The good thing was that everyone was so distracted by the dancing and the activities that we were able to head to the buffet and fill up our plates before most people realized the food was even there.

 

The dessert table looked amazing. The desserts were clearly the highlight of the buffet:

 

 

 

 

I wanted to try all of the desserts, they looked so good, but unfortunately I was still a bit full from dinner! I had a slice of strawberry shortcake that was amazing.

 

The rest of the food, however, was not really all that good. It sounded good so I loaded up my plate, but to be honest most of the things I tried I didn't care for. They were either cold or mushy or in some other way not very appealing. Jason didn't really eat much because he hates onions, and they were in almost everything. So that was kind of a bummer, but maybe people that are more into Mexican food would be happier with it!

 

After that it was off to bed - we would be arriving in Nassau the next day!

Midnight buffet looks great! I don't really get it. If you scan the C.C. Carrnival topic boards , they keep saying that the midnight buffets have been discontinued or replaced with a so so Mexican themed Buffet. I guess not so

[SammieMC00]

The midnight buffet used to be held in the dining room and was a giant spread of fancy appitizers, meats, cheeses, desserts, fruit and alot of carved things. It was very pretty to look at but in my opinion it wasn't worth the hassle and the food wasn't the greatest....maybe just too fancy of stuff for me but I dont know. It was held at midnight and people lined up to get in and then seemed to be all pushy to get as much food as they could. They said that they discontinued it because the time and effort it took to put together they were not getting enough of a turnout and there was alot of waste. The "new" midnight buffet is in my opinion better. It's held on the lido deck one night and they have more "basic" foods. Yes it is mexican themed. They still do some carving of the food and the deserts are still amazing!

[richstowe]

Midnight buffet looks great! I don't really get it. If you scan the C.C. Carrnival topic boards , they keep saying that the midnight buffets have been discontinued or replaced with a so so Mexican themed Buffet. I guess not so

Got it. Thanx! Makes sense but you didn't mention the main reason they dicontinued it

--TO SAVE $$$$$$--

LOL

[n2rav4]

Hey!! If I did my math right (been one loooonnngggg day) we will be on the Pride at the same time. I CAN'T WAIT!!!!!!!!!

 

 

We are going on the 6/20 sailing also....no roll call?????

[gator919]

We are going on the 6/20 sailing also....no roll call?????

We have a 6/20 Pride roll call. Come join us! Its not too busy, but we are there.

[broadwaystar32]

The midnight buffet used to be held in the dining room and was a giant spread of fancy appitizers, meats, cheeses, desserts, fruit and alot of carved things. It was very pretty to look at but in my opinion it wasn't worth the hassle and the food wasn't the greatest....maybe just too fancy of stuff for me but I dont know. It was held at midnight and people lined up to get in and then seemed to be all pushy to get as much food as they could. They said that they discontinued it because the time and effort it took to put together they were not getting enough of a turnout and there was alot of waste. The "new" midnight buffet is in my opinion better. It's held on the lido deck one night and they have more "basic" foods. Yes it is mexican themed. They still do some carving of the food and the deserts are still amazing!

 

That's correct. They technically don't call it a "midnight buffet", they call it the Mexican buffet, but it starts at 11:30 pm and it's a buffet of food, so it's pretty close to that idea, only more casual. The desserts, like I said, are definitely the highlight! They were beautiful and tasted great - I wasn't too crazy about the Mexican food, though.

 

And just to let everyone know, I just returned from being away for a few days so I will be updating this review tonight or tomorrow!

[ElkridgeTerp]

Wahoo! I just booked another sailing on the Pride for November. Becky, I'm going to re-read your entire review (hurry and finish!!!) to see what I missed last time. Thanks for the great review and pictures.

[broadwaystar32]

All right! I'm back, and ready to tell you all about our day in Nassau. We weren't scheduled to arrive until 11:00 am, so we woke up and headed to Good Morning Trivia. The theme was brain teasers, and well - we dominated. 15 right of 20, making us the winners, and the recipients of the Carnival ship medal! Not as good as a plastic stick on a ship, but still, I was happy.

 

 

We then headed up to the sun deck to watch the ship pull into Nassau. It was really pretty where we were, especially if you looked toward Paradise Island.

 

 

As we pulled in, we noticed there were two other cruise ships there ahead of us. One was our sister ship, the Carnival Miracle. The other was the Norwegian Sky.

 

 

One of the most surprising things was how clear the water was! We could look down right where the Pride had pulled up and see the fishes swimming around.

 

 

We didn't really have any plans for the day, so we were just going to wander around, shop, and look at things. We had been to the shopping talk on the ship, so we had a lot of vouchers for free stuff. I wasn't sure they would really work - I was certain the sellers would pester you and try to get you to buy lots of stuff that you didn't want. Jason wanted to try it, though, so we went in - and easily turned in our vouchers for free jewelry pieces! I was impressed that it actually worked.

 

We went to lunch pretty early on, since it was already 11. I had read in one of the guide books about a place called the Bahamian Kitchen, so we wandered off to find that. It was right next to Trinity church, and pretty easy to get to. Once you stepped off of the first two blocks or so near the cruise ships you were in an area that looked a little more sketchy, so we didn't wander too far outside of that one little area.

 

 

[broadwaystar32]

Once inside the Bahamian Kitchen, we found that it was a small place, not very crowded, but with decently priced meals and authentic Bahamian food. It was brightly decorated on the inside, though when we were outside we thought it was closed! The lights were off, I suppose because of the heat, and they still accidentally had the "closed" sign on the door! Luckily one of the owners was outside as we were standing outside and began talking to us, recommending that we eat there. We asked him if it was even open, he had an "oops" moment, and switched the sign ;-)

 

 

 

Both Jason and I wanted to try something different, that we couldn't have any old day. I heard all about the conch so I went with the cracked conch. It was fried, and the flavor and the texture sort of reminded me of fried calamari. I also got french fries and fried plantains. The plaintains aren't in this picture, because they were on a second plate, but they were delicious! I really enjoyed that side.

 

 

Jason decided to go for the turtle steak. At first they said they didn't have it, he was disappointed, but then they checked and they said they had one left. I tried a bite of it, and it was the weirdest thing I've ever tasted. It was very strong, and I can't really compare it to anything else. I didn't particularly like it, and I don't think Jason was a huge fan either. He said that he was glad he tried it, but he would never order it again.

 

 

One of the owners of the restaurant, the one that we had met earlier outside, came over to our table to talk to us for a bit. He was an older man and said that he had provided some funds and gotten involved in the restaurant after his wife passed away, because he found he didn't really have anything else to do with his life or with his money. He also said he was originally from the Pennsylvania/Ohio region. He was very pleasant and helpful.

 

After lunch we basically just shopped and walked around. We went to a lot of little souvenir stores and I got presents for my family and for myself. We also redeemed more jewelry vouchers. After all we learned during the jewelry talks, Jason thought it would be fun to pretend to buy a diamond, and he haggled one down from $7,000 to $1250 - then politely declined. ;-) We also visited Tortuga Bakery and Rum Shop. They had free samples, and they were GOOD! The rum cakes were pretty expensive, though.

 

We also passed the Nassau public library, a quaint little pink building that was really tiny inside - of particular interest to me since I'm going into library science. The sign said they had a museum, but it wasn't open or something, so when we went inside we really only took a quick look before ducking out again.

 

 

We passed a few other important looking buildings that I couldn't really identify, but snapped a quick picture in the hopes that I could figure out what they are later!

 

[vavasmom]

The pink building with the statue of a young Queen Victoria is the senate building.

 

I am loving your review. We will be on the pride 2 weeks from today

[SammieMC00]

If I remember correctly any building that is painted pink is part of the government. But i dont know much about any of the buildings themselves

[broadwaystar32]

The pink building with the statue of a young Queen Victoria is the senate building.

 

I am loving your review. We will be on the pride 2 weeks from today

 

Thank you! I figured someone would know. :)

 

And have fun on the Pride, you will have a fantastic time!

[broadwaystar32]

For the rest of our evening in Nassau we decided to take a water taxi over to Paradise Island and look around there. The water taxi ride only took about fifteen minutes, but they wouldn't leave until the boat was full (they wanted the most for their money, I guess) and we sat in the boat waiting for almost an hour before it left the dock! I understand that they want to get more people on, but they were trickling in and it would've been nice to know that it would take so long.

 

Once we took off on the ferry, we passed by a nice view of the Carnival Pride in all her glory. Next to her there is her sister ship, the Carnival Miracle.

 

 

There was a "tour guide" on the ferry giving us some basic information about Nassau and Paradise Island. Lots of famous people have houses on Paradise Island, and that is really the rich part of town. Everything is more colorful, clean, and aesthetically pleasing over there.

 

 

Once we got off at Paradise Island, we headed to Atlantis, which is really most of the island. It was a little confusing to figure out where we were going at first, but there was a big map not too far from where we arrived which helped out a lot. We walked past lots of shops there as well. I did notice that they had many of the same things for sale as in Nassau, but they were more expensive in Paradise Island! If I stayed at Atlantis I would probably do my souvenir shopping in Nassau.

 

 

The Atlantis resort is really iconic, and it definitely stands out. We could see it even when we were arriving that morning. I would love to come back to Nassau some day and stay at the resort.

 

 

Our plan was to try and see the Dig, which I knew from Mark's thread had free admission in the evening. The problem was, I couldn't remember if it was at 5 pm or 6 pm. We arrived on Paradise Island around 4:30 and walked through the Atlantis resort. There were some cool decor items inside. Here was one of the lobbies:

 

 

And I knew to look out for this guy from Mark's Pride review:

 

[broadwaystar32]

We arrived at the Dig right around 5. By the way, the Dig is supposed to be a really neat aquarium at Atlantis. There was a security guard outside, so I figured things wouldn't be good, but we pretended to be ignorant tourists and tried to wander in. Sure enough, we were stopped and asked for our resort passes. We apologized and left, and I figured we wouldn't be able to get in until 6. There were some tanks on the outside of the dig, so we took a look at those for a little while.

 

 

 

 

We sat around for a little bit, but at around 5:20 we decided we didn't want to just sit around until six, so we explored and walked around the resort a bit more. It was really very pretty everywhere.

 

 

 

We ended up wandering back to the shops area. At around 5:40 I really thought about it, and the idea of walking all the way back to the Dig, and then through the Dig, and then back to the ferry port, made my feet scream with pain. They were already hurting. The last water taxi left at 6, so we decided to take the water taxi back, head to the ship, and go to dinner. We figured that would be our excuse to come back to Atlantis someday! At least we'll have something to look forward to. ;-)

 

We waved goodbye to Atlantis and Paradise Island and headed back onto the Carnival Pride.

 

[richstowe]

Hey Becky

What happened? Great review-keep going!

[beachgalMA]

Great review! Please keep it coming....

[broadwaystar32]

Sorry for the disappearance! Life got in the way...

 

So anyway, back on board the Carnival Pride! We made it back and since we had signed up for the Your Time Dining, we could go to dinner as soon as we had returned, freshened up, and felt ready to go.

 

Another great wait team, and of course more delicious food. For an appetizer Jason got the mozzarella with Beefsteak tomatoes. He wasn't sure if he would like it, but I convinced him to get it and he really enjoyed it. I tried it and liked it too, quite a delicious combination of flavors. For my appetizer I had the chicken breast marinated with Thai spices, also really good. I love Thai flavorings and they do them well here.

 

 

 

Jason and I had been trying to get different entrees and appetizers so we could taste each other's, but tonight there was no question that we were getting the same thing. Why pass up the filet mignon? It came with another cut of beef as well, that I can't quite remember. Both were good but the filet mignon was really excellent.

 

 

For dessert I was all set to order the chocolate, raspberry, and vanilla creme cake, when it turns out... we had ANOTHER cake from Jason's Uncle! This one was chocolate with chocolate icing. It was so good. Turns out his uncle couldn't decide which flavor cake to get us, so he got one of each and had them delivered on different nights. It was really nice of him, but we could hardly eat so much cake! And in fact, I also ended up ordering the chocolate raspberry cake. I love the chocolate raspberry combination and couldn't pass it up, but to be honest it wasn't nearly as good as I was hoping. The chocolate cake was amazing though - if you're a chocolate lover this cake is heavenly.

 

 

[broadwaystar32]

As we were leaving the dining room we saw our waiter from two nights ago, Luis, who had brought us the first cake from Jason's uncle. As he saw us leaving with another cake in our hands, his eyes bugged out and he said, "Another one??" and we all laughed about it. His reaction was just very funny.

 

As we stepped out of the dining room and glanced out the window, we saw a beautiful sunset. I ran outside to get a picture, but there was some stuff in the way and it wasn't a great shot. We raced up to the tenth deck to get a better view, but by the time we made it up there the sun was gone. The sky was still a stunning orange though. There were also some really awesome looking pink clouds. The view of the sunset over the water in the Bahamas was just picture perfect. I have one of these pictures as my desktop background right now.

 

 

 

 

After dinner we decided to go swimming, since a lot of people were still out on shore (it was around 8:30 and you didn't have to be back on until 9:30), so it wasn't very crowded. However, even in the hot and sunny Bahamas the pool water wasn't that warm. It wasn't that sunny that day, very cloudy, so I guess the water didn't really get a chance to heat up. Anyway, we only took a quick swim and then opted for the hot tub instead.

 

Back to the stateroom for a short nap, and we find... a towel monkey! Yay, it was the one I had been waiting for! He was very cute, hanging up in our room.

 

 

We got up again for the 10:30 show, which was a comedian named Kim. She was pretty funny, though she didn't have a huge variety of subjects for her jokes. Most of them were about her being overweight or being from the south. Jason preferred the first comedian. At the comedy show we sat next to another family that we had literally been seeing everywhere we went for the past two days. They were on the KSC excursion and seemed to go everywhere we went, to all the same events on the cruise ship, and there they were again at the show with two empty seats next to them. We talked for awhile and met their kids, one of which was named Jason and who liked exchanging a "Hi Jason" every time he and my Jason saw each other.

 

The last thing that evening was "The Quest." Jason and I didn't plan to participate, but we thought it would be fun to watch. The Quest is basically an adult scavenger hunt. It starts off really easy, when they ask for things like a copy of the Fun Times or to bring up 3 different sail and sign cards. Everyone involved is really gung-ho about it, and it's timed so they're racing around trying to get the items. It ten gets really funny and crazy when they ask for things like a woman wearing men's shoes, a man wearing women's shoes, and my personal favorite: two men holding hands and skipping around the room. That was a sight to see. The grand finale is pretty epic, but I won't spoil it for you ;)

 

I couldn't get many good pictures since it was kind of dark and we were sitting in the back, but you can see how people were completely swamping and attacking the host, trying to be the first ones to bring up the desired item.

 

 

There was something that really bugged me though. While we were sitting watching the Quest, a bartender came up to me and picked up my Fun Times. He said, "We need to take this." I had one hand on it and he the other hand on it, and I told him, "Please, I'd like to keep it." This was after the quest for the Fun Times so I know they didn't need it for that. He said, "No, I have to take it," and he literally took it out of my hands. I was really upset about this because I had been keeping all of my Fun Times. After the Quest we tried to find him and get it back, but he was gone. We wandered all around the ship until we found another one lying around. It's hard to find because they do keep it quite clean, so if someone leaves their Fun Times out they get cleaned up pretty quickly, but we managed to grab one. It just really angered me that he was so rude, and wouldn't tell me what was going on. It was really quite strange.

[sometimesclaire]

Keep it coming ! We LOVE the pride and look forward to the next one (Oct. 2010) .

 

 

When in October? We will be on the Pride on 10/3/10. This will be our first cruise so we're very excited!