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

[broadwaystar32]

Before dinner this evening, we decided to get our pictures taken by one of the photographers that were set up around the ship. They will do a sitting with you for free, and then you can choose to buy them like any other photos they take if you want to. There were many different backgrounds and of course the one I wanted had the longest line! But we decided to wait. It took awhile, but he took a lot of pictures (about six or seven). They came out very nicely too. I would've wanted most or all of them, but at $22 a photo that certainly wasn't happening! I would love for some day in the future to see them offer a CD of all of your pictures that they take throughout the cruise for a more reasonable price.

 

Anyway, we did buy two of them and if you're curious about the quality and whatnot here they are. Just remember that these are scanned:

 

 

 

Then, it was on to the food! This was the one night that we did have to wait a bit with Your Time Dining. We probably waited just over half an hour to be seated, and they gave us one of those buzzer devices they have at restaurants that light up and flash when your table is ready.

 

The food was really excellent this night, probably my favorite night, though the servers were much slower. Maybe it was because we had a different wait team, or maybe it was because there were clearly a lot more people, but we definitely waited a lot longer for our food... and we waited about 20 minutes from the time that we finished our dinner to having our plates taken away and given dessert menus.

 

For a starter I had the Strawberry Bisque - and this was delicious! I'd never had a chilled soup before and really, it was more like dessert in some ways. Very sweet and smooth. I love fruit so this was great. Jason had the Carpaccio of fresh pear and citrus segments, which he didn't really want but I made him order so I could eat them. They were all right, but I liked the soup better.

 

 

 

And the main course of the evening was lobster tail and jumbo tiger shrimp! All of the shrimp dishes I had were excellent (I love shrimp), and the lobster was delicious! Jason ordered the same thing, but in addition he also got the Supreme of Hudson Valley Duck.

 

 

[broadwaystar32]

Then dessert! Jason had the caramelized apples, which he really liked, though I'm not a big caramel fan. I instead decided to try the Warm Chocolate Melting Cake that Carnival is famous for. If you like chocolate you will love this. It is rich and tasty, though the ice cream it was served with was rock hard, too hard to eat.

 

 

 

In the picture above you can also see the card with our wait team on it. Like I said, much slower tonight. We had them one other night as well and that was probably the other really slow night of service.

 

After dinner we headed back to the room to relax (and digest!) for a little bit, and discovered... a towel animal! I had been quite upset when we didn't get one the previous day, but now I had an adorable little towel puppy!

 

 

We attended the 10:30 show that evening, which was done by the Carnival Pride dancers and singers and was called "Wonderful World." This was probably my favorite of all the shows they did throughout the week. There are only two singers, one male and one female, that do all of the singing in the shows. They did a sort of revue of different songs and dances that represented various countries. I won't say "From" various countries because I don't think everything was completely accurate (and maybe more stereotypical), but it was fun. The highlight of that show was definitely the diversity of costumes. They had a huge amount of gorgeous costumes to represent the different countries - including penguin costumes and a penguin dance for the South Pole!

 

After the show we stuck around for the R-rated comedy show by Darren Sanders, which started at midnight. He was funny, though not as funny as I was hoping. To be honest, I found his earlier show funnier. The "R-rated"-ness of this one was really just for language, and personally I find cursing every other word to be pretty unnecessary... but maybe that's just me!

[twinsmom2001]

 

 

 

How close do you live to Knoebel's? We only live 30 min away. That is too funny.

[lynz421]

 

 

 

How close do you live to Knoebel's? We only live 30 min away. That is too funny.

 

 

Beat me to it when I saw the shirt I had to ask. We are 45 minutes away

[family cruisers]

Knoebels... We LOVE that place. Gorgous Pool.. It seems like a well hidden best kept secret..

[cruise pup]

I'm enjoying your review. I'll be on Miracle this coming Monday and they are sister ships so it give me a good idea of what to expect. Those elegant night photos are really nice.

[broadwaystar32]

Knoebels... We LOVE that place. Gorgous Pool.. It seems like a well hidden best kept secret..

 

Knoebels seems to be a popular place on here! Where we are now we're about two hours away from it, but when we visited we were staying at Jason's family's house in the Poconos and we were a little over an hour away.

[USAFdad]

Your reviews were great! Congrats on your graduation. The Family and I are cruising on the Pride in October. I am soooo looking forward to the cruise, "love the at sea days". Once again great review and thanks and good luck in your future endeavors.

[broadwaystar32]

So on to Tuesday, the second Fun Day at Sea! In the morning we woke up and headed off to trivia at 9:30. I absolutely love playing trivia. When I studied abroad at Oxford a big group of us would go to pub quiz every week, and it was the highlight of the week. The theme for this one was slogans, where they would give you a slogan and you had to name the product or company it was for. It was fun, and we did pretty well - we got 11 right out of 20. That was actually the most, but it was a tie, so they did a tie breaker and we lost.

 

We headed up to the Lido deck to grab a quick breakfast from the buffet and then went back down to the Butterflies lounge for the shopping talk. I didn't realize it would be so long (and so boring!), and it was really all just about buying jewelry and diamonds. We did get some vouchers to stop in at various jewelry stores in the Bahamas and get some free stuff, though.

 

Lunch was in the dining room, and it was tasty as always. We then went to the "Love and Marriage" show, which was basically the cruise's version of The Newlywed Game, only there was one newlywed couple, one couple that had been married for a really long time, and one couple in between. It was hilarious and quite fun to watch. They did another Tarzan audition to pick the middle couple, which was again entertaining in itself.

 

 

After that we headed up to the pool area because we just had to try the water slide once, to say we'd been on it. After going down once we hit up the whirlpool again. I'm disappointed that I forgot to get a picture of the water slide, but it's your typical twisty water slide and I'm sure you can find pictures elsewhere! We were pretty far south by this point and you could definitely tell. It was fairly hot out and certainly felt tropical.

 

Dinner was good as always, though it was probably the weakest menu so far. I know some people like to dine at David's one night and don't want to miss out on the truly spectacular dishes, so if was going to do that I'd probably go this night. Unless you like sushi, because there is a sushi appetizer - though there's also a sushi bar on board where you can get sushi certain days from 5:00-8:15. Jason ordered the sushi appetizer and I tried a piece of his, my first taste of sushi. Not bad, but I enjoyed my appetizer of prosciutto ruffles and melon.

 

 

 

For our main courses Jason got the filet of Norwegian Salmon, and I got the Penne Mariscos. Both were good, though as I said before, not my favorite of the week.

 

 

 

And... dessert! I got the warm fig, date, and cinnamon cake, because I was curious and had to try it. As it turns out, not really my thing. Jason got the strawberry cheesecake. Cheesecake is his favorite dessert and while he enjoyed this one, he said he's had better (Cheesecake Factory!)

 

[broadwaystar32]

Jason's cheesecake:

 

 

As it turned out, though, it didn't matter that I didn't like my dessert all that much. Because a little after we were brought our desserts the waiter came over and told us he had a cake for us! The waiter asked what the occasion was and I wasn't sure what was going on, but we discovered that the cake was from Jason's uncle, just as a Bon Voyage gift! Quite nice of him, and it was a very tasty cake - yellow cake with strawberry frosting inside and vanilla icing on the top.

 

 

The waiters also danced for us tonight, as they had been doing other nights. There were some random songs that they sang and danced to! The first time it was "Amore," okay, seems appropriate for a restaurant... this time, it was that "Get Low" song. Haha kinda weird! Anyway, there's our waiter for tonight, dancing. I think his name was Luis but I'm not positive:

 

 

And once again, back in the room that night waiting for us was... another towel animal! I loved the elephant, he was adorable.

 

 

The drink of the day today was the Goombay Smash, which tasted somewhat similar to the YellowBird - I think because the pineapple juice flavor is pretty overpowering. Pineapple juice, rum, apricot brandy, and coconut. Yum! Jason actually decided to order "The Baltimore Harbor" instead, which was a drink created by a guest. They had a Master Mixologist competition the day before to see who could make the best drink, and then it was offered at all of the bars for the week. It was pretty good, though I can't remember for the life of me what specifically it tasted like.

 

Then it was off to the show for the night - a ventriloquist! Before the show Kirk brought out this cute little kid named Mason onto the stage. He entertained us by dancing to Michael Jackson and bringing Gary, this week's celebrity, on stage. The actual ventriloquist show was pretty good - his ventriloquism was quite impressive, though many of the jokes were pretty corny. Jason loves that sort of thing, though, so he really enjoyed this.

 

 

After the show we decided to check out the piano bar. I wish we had come earlier - this was awesome! It was the sing-along time, so it was very crowded, and Roger played the piano while everyone around the bar sang along. He played great songs that everyone knows, such as "Sweet Caroline," "Hey Jude," "Piano Man," and "Brown Eyed Girl." He also took requests. He was funny, too, in between songs. When he played Piano Man he stopped and would play certain lines over and over again to drive the point home - lines such as "they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar" pause "They sit at the bar and put bread in my jar" pause "they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar"... you get the idea. Then lots of people stuck a few dollars in his tips jar, so I guess it worked!

 

 

I could've stayed a lot longer than the hour and a half that we did, but we decided we needed to head to bed early for the next day, when we would be arriving in Port Canaveral at 7 am.

[eas2225]

I'm loving your review and can't wait until it's our turn in Sept.!

Your pictures are great, especially the one with the Knoebel's T-shirt. For many years we had a Pocono home in a little town called Effort, and visited Knoebel's a lot when the kids were small.

 

Can't wait to hear what you did in Port Canaveral.

 

Eileen

[LovesCruising]

Please more.....

[labtech]

We had Phillips, too!!! He did alot of "pointing" to illustrate what he wanted...which gave us plenty to laugh about and rapidly he became our favorite!!! lol After awhile, we decided he was not too bad on the eyes, either!!!! But, seeing your photo of the caramelized apple dessert...he forgot to give me my caramel.....just lost points with me...lol!!!!!

[gator919]

Quick question, did you notice at what times the sushi bar was open? I have heard 2 different storys, one was just lunch and the other was lunch and before dinner.

[broadwaystar32]

Quick question, did you notice at what times the sushi bar was open? I have heard 2 different storys, one was just lunch and the other was lunch and before dinner.

 

I still have my copies of the Fun Times, they list the sushi bar as being open from 5:00 pm to 8:15 pm. We never actually went so I can't verify, but I would assume that info listed in the Fun Times is correct. Hope that helps!

[DebNY13]

Loving your review!

 

We were on the cruise before you...best ever! We did go to David's on the second at sea day (& it was so worth it). Sushi bar is open at the 5:15 time..we stopped by once.

 

Deb

[broadwaystar32]

We woke up early the day of the stop in Port Canaveral, because we had booked excursion tickets for Kennedy Space Center. The excursion left at 7:45 and they ask you to be there about 15 minutes ahead of time, so we were dressed and ready around 7 when we headed up to the Lido deck for a quick breakfast and to watch the ship pull in to Port Canaveral. It was very pretty, especially since we got to watch the sun rise.

 

 

 

At around 7:15 they began letting people off the ship, and we were right off and on the bus by 7:30. Now, we had tried to look into a way to get to Kennedy Space Center on our own, because the $90 per person excursion is a little steep, especially when you consider that a ticket to the space center is only $38. However, with only two of us it would have only saved a very small amount of money to get a shuttle or rent a car, and it wasn't worth the hassle so we did it through Carnival. Honestly, if there were more than two of us I would have done it on my own not only to save money but to spend a little more time there - but I'll get to that later.

 

 

The bus ride to the space center was about 15 minutes, and we had a tour guide giving us info as we drove along. She told us the recommended order of seeing things and what to do and what to skip. The first thing we did when we got there was view an IMAX 3D movie about the Hubble telescope. For this it was nice to be with the Carnival excursion, because we got to have a sort of "private viewing" at 9:00, while the usual IMAX movies didn't start until 10. This was included with the ticket price.

 

After the movie we had to get on another bus, because the space center is actually divided into a few sections that are spread apart. First was the observation deck, which was all right, nothing too exciting, though you did get to see a few launching sites in the distance.

 

 

We also passed by the world's largest one story building. To give you an idea of how big this thing is, they told us that the stars on the American flag were six feet point to point, and the statue of liberty could fit through those doors.

 

 

To be honest, if I went back and did it again I would skip the observation deck stop. Just stay on the bus and let it take you to the next stop right away, because there was little to see there and because so many people were getting off, only staying for about ten minutes and then looking for the next bus, it took forever to get to the next stop. I think we waited in line for the next bus for at least half an hour, and with not much time to spend at the space center this made a pretty big dent in the day. Just skip the whole thing and you'll save yourself an hour. Unless I had an unlimited amount of time I don't think it's worth it.

 

The next stop was the Apollo/Saturn V center. As we drove there we passed some sort of swamp or lake, in which we saw both an alligator and a manatee. This stop was much cooler than the last one.

 

[marygal]

Great review so far can't wait to hear the rest, I am also going in Sept can't wait!! ANd also live pretty close to Knoebles :) small world!

[broadwaystar32]

When you first enter the Apollo/Saturn Center, you watch a short film. Then you head into another room and watch another film. Finally, they let you out into the actual place and you can walk around at your leisure. There are huge rockets hanging from the ceiling, lots of interesting artifacts in various places, and even a piece of moon rock that you can touch. It's a lot of interesting stuff set up in a way that's very similar to a museum. You can take as much time as you like looking at every little thing and reading all the descriptions, or you can go through quickly. We spent about an hour there, including grabbing a quick lunch, but I would have liked to have spent more time. However, after wasting an hour in the morning at the observation gantry there were other things we wanted to do in the time that we had.

 

Touching the moon rock. It doesn't look like what I expected a moon rock to look like:

 

 

One of the spacesuits worn by an astronaut during the legendary Apollo 13 mission:

 

 

A moon buggy:

 

 

The Moon Rock Cafe, located in the Apollo/Saturn Center and where we had lunch. They serve your typical fast food style meals: burgers, chicken fingers, hot dogs, french fries. They also have some salads and sandwiches.

 

 

After you were done with the Apollo/Saturn Center you could choose to get on another bus to the International Space Station Center, or go back to the visitor complex. Our tour guide had told us that the International Space Station takes about an hour or two to see and there really isn't anything all that interesting there, so she recommended we skip it. We did, and headed back to the visitor complex.

 

Once there we went to the "Shuttle Launch Experience" ride. It's basically just a motion simulator of a shuttle launch. It was pretty cool, though I think Mission: Space in Disney is more intense. Also I would guess Disney's is more realistic (I have no idea, obviously, but it felt that way). However, this one at KSC had a film of astronauts raving about it and saying it was the most realistic they'd ever been on, so who knows!

 

Across from the ride is an actual space shuttle that you could walk through. We didn't do that because we were already running low on time, but it looked cool:

 

[richstowe]

Great review. Although I enjoyed Mark's (Falkcor) ridiculously long review , yours is a lot of fun and short and sweet. I thought that cruise lines insisted on a minimum age of 25 for one of the people in a cabin?Maybe not.

 

Our cruise is only in Jan/11 but you've given a nice idea of what to expect

thanx

[broadwaystar32]

Great review. Although I enjoyed Mark's (Falkcor) ridiculously long review , yours is a lot of fun and short and sweet. I thought that cruise lines insisted on a minimum age of 25 for one of the people in a cabin?Maybe not.

 

Our cruise is only in Jan/11 but you've given a nice idea of what to expect

thanx

 

I think other cruise lines might, but I know that Carnival's policy is you have to be at least 21 unless you're traveling with a parent or guardian. That's why we waited to take our cruise until a few days after my fiance's 21st birthday! They also make exceptions for couples under 21 that are married.

[Mantoinette]

Thats my friend DyNaesty that got married on the ship in the picture you posted ! lol

 

Congrats on your engagment !

[LovesCruising]

Becky - don't you have more??? Please....:)

[TheMisses516]

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!

[richstowe]

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!

Oh my goodness! that is so cute. One couple getting married and the other couple getting engaged and the " meeting" on C.C. Very neat