Detailed Photo Review of Carnival Dream 7 Night Western Caribbean Cruise 3/10/19

[deladane]

12 hours ago, Tenamarie123 said:

Just wanted to tell you that I absolutely loved your review!!  I looked so forward to reading updates each day.  Your attention to detail is amazing and your way of writing is fantastic.  You have actually inspired me to do more traveling in general. All of your detailed moments and the awesome pictures of your excursions and your fun times on the ship have really gotten me super excited for our NYE cruise on the Magic this year.  Thank you so much for all of your time and effort you've put into this review.  I know it's partly the fun of re-living your vacation but it is also a lot of work and effort and it is very much appreciated and definitely not in vain.  I feel like I'm living vicariously through you until our upcoming cruise.  Cheers to you and all of your exciting new adventures to come.  Please bring us along for the ride!

 

Aww, thank you for your kind words!  

[deladane]

After a quick stop at the cabin to drop off the cake, we went up to the Encore! Theatre for the Lip Sync Battle main event.  Apparently they had multiple lip sync competitions that lead up to this event throughout the week, but I have no idea when or where those occurred because I never saw it! Haha  We didn’t spent much time out by the Lido pool, so I have a hunch they did some events out there.  This was the only show in the theatre tonight and it was at 7:30pm, so it’s a good thing we had a speedy wait staff in the MDR or we would have missed it. 

 

The show is modeled after the Lip Sync Battle TV show on Paramount Network.  They had two contestants and each performed two lip sync songs, the second of which included dancers from the production shows.  The contestants get to dress up in crazy costumes and they really got into it.

 

Here is Gary explaining the rules, while one of the guys from the entertainment team displays the winner’s belt.

 

The two contestants were called on stage so Gary could introduce them

 

I forgot to write down which songs they sang, but I have a feeling they are heavily coached by the singers and dancers on board because the songs were all big crowd pleasers that everyone was familiar with.  They had a little intermission after each contestant finished their first song, and they invited up children from the kids club to sing and dance on stage.  I think they had practiced with each age group and this was like their final recital.  After that, the lip sync contestants returned for round two, and this was when they went all out. 

 

The first lady did a good job of getting the crowd pumped up, and she really owned the stage.

 

 

The second contestant “sang” Tina Turner’s Proud Mary.  This guy was incredible!  He’s a recently retried police officer, but wow did he have some great dance moves!  The whole crowd was laughing and cheering him on, and you could tell he was having such a fun time up on stage.

 

And then, this happened:

 

The dancers helped him strip off the black shirt and pants, and they put on that wig, and bam!  Nothing like a macho guy dressed in drag to get the crowd on their feet!

 

[deladane]

There was no question as to who should win this battle, but Gary still gave us a few minutes to think it over while he performed a lip sync routine with the dancers to a medley of 80’s songs.

 

I think the assistant from the entertainment team also did a medley, maybe to 70’s songs?  I don’t remember and I forgot to take a photo to jog my memory.  Anyway, after that, they brought the two main contestants back on stage for the final judging.  By a deafening round of applause, the guy was announced the winner!

 

 

The lady did try hard and she was a good sport about it, but that guy just won everyone over.  They awarded him to winner’s belt…

 

 

[deladane]

The show lasted about 45 minutes, but when it ended, there was a big gap in the activities schedule.  Kudos Strings was performing in the lobby, but they were just about to finish their set, and the only other two options were country music with Machine Company or country music with the BlackJack Duo.  Hey, wait a minute!  I know what we can do now… I need to redeem my past guest coupon for a free cocktail!  Carnival thought I would forget to use it, but I’ll prove them wrong!  The coupon says it is good for a drink up to $9 in value, but I must say that is quite challenging because nearly every cocktail on the ship costs more than that, even if it’s just by a few cents.  I stopped by the piano bar because it was empty since Zack didn’t start his set yet, and that meant the bartenders were sitting around just waiting for someone to order a drink.  I asked the bartender if I could use the coupon towards a drink that costs more than $9 and I would just pay the difference, and he said that was fine.  I looked through the menu and decided to order the Music, Sweet Music, with Bacardi Rum, Malibu Coconut Rum, Disaronno Amaretto, pineapple juice and orange juice.

 

 

 

When the bartender handed me the bill, it came out to zero dollars.  I am not sure if he did something special to make that happen, or if the coupon really does work on more expensive drinks, but either way, I was happy.  I would have paid the 50 cents (plus tip) difference, but I guess that was not necessary.

 

 

Just something to keep in mind for people sailing on cruises out of New Orleans… Once you re-enter the Mississippi River, they do start charging tax again.  I asked about that at guest services and they told me that I would need to pay tax on this drink if I ordered it after we re-entered US water space, and he estimated that to be around 10pm tonight.  I made sure to get my drink much earlier than that at about 8:30pm, just to be safe, but that means these “free” drink coupons for New Orleans-based cruises are extremely limited on the hours when the drink really will be free!

 

Cocktail in hand, we went over to The Song lounge to listen to BlackJack Duo.  Neither of us really listens to country music, but there was nothing else to do at this time and we wanted to stay close to the Burgundy Lounge for the 9:30pm comedy show, so since this was right next door, it just made sense.  The duo were pretty good, and there were two or three couples dancing on the small dance floor, so it made for an entertaining way to pass the time, even if we didn’t know any of the songs!

 

At 9:15pm, we went next door to get seats for the comedy show.  Tonight’s adult show was with the forth comedian on our sailing, Caroline Picard.  She is from the south, so I think she is a good fit for this cruise ship.  She did a whole set about her experiences traveling the country as a comedian, and she had the whole room laughing.  I especially enjoyed the part about her time in a blizzard in Michigan when all of the locals were unphased and came out to see her show despite the weather. 

 

 

When that ended, we popped back into the piano bar for a few last songs with Zack.  It wasn’t very crowded in there tonight, so maybe people were back in their cabins packing their luggage and going to sleep early?

 

We were both getting hungry again around 11pm, so we went upstairs to the deli for a late night snack.  I ordered the meatball sandwich again, and it was just as good as when I had it for lunch yesterday! 

 

We sat at a table by the windows, and it was so weird to see lights outside!  We must have already entered the Mississippi River so we were seeing lights from the little towns and buildings along the shore, but that was so rare as I was used to seeing nothing but darkness on that last night of the cruise when returning to ports in Florida.  On our way back to the cabin, we noticed that the casino was still open and there were lots of people taking advantage of it being legal to gamble on the Mississippi River.  We got back to the cabin around 11:30pm and called it a night, knowing that the debarkation announcements would start bright an early tomorrow morning and we wanted to get a good night’s sleep before that!

 

Step Tracker Daily Total:  10,110 steps; 4.12 miles; 27 flights of stairs

 

[deladane]

Sunday, March 17, 2019 ~ New Orleans, Louisiana

 

 

And just like that, our Western Caribbean cruise on the Carnival Dream came to an end.  Gary provided an early wake up call for us at 7am when he started making announcements that we had docked but they were not ready to start debarkation yet.  When I peaked out the window, I could see that we were indeed docked back in New Orleans, with a view of the bridge.

 

One last photo of our towel animal gang!

 

We got dressed and finished packing up our belongings, making sure to check every shelf, drawer, and closet for anything left behind.  At 7:30am, Gary made another announcement that Deck 12 was cleared for self-assist debarkation, and he cleared one more deck at a time every 10 minutes or so.  We were on Deck 1, so had we opted to do self-assist debarkation, it would have been a slow process to wait our turn!

 

We had to be out of the cabin by 8:30am, which was the same time they stopped seating people at the MDR for breakfast.  We made sure to leave the cabin by 8:15am to allow a few minutes to wait for an elevator so we wouldn’t have to carry our rolling carry on bags up two flights of stairs.  We always try to eat breakfast in the MDR on the last morning of our cruises because the Lido buffet is such a madhouse with people and luggage everywhere and rarely any tables available.  This cruise may have been different because I think many more people did the self-assist debarkation to get back to their cars in the garage and start their long drives home, but I wasn’t curious enough to go upstairs to find out for sure!  When we arrived at the hostess stand, there was no wait and hardly any one else eating in the dining room.  I’m not sure if people had already finished eating and left before we arrived, or if it just never got crowded to begin with, but either way, the hostess walked us to a booth towards the back of the room, with space to leave our bags nearby.  This was our first time eating a regular breakfast in the MDR during this cruise (brunch has a different menu on sea days).  There were a few options on the menu that looked good, so I was glad we had a chance to try it out.

 

 

Short Stack Pancakes

 

Broken Egg Sandwich (this was REALLY good!)

 

Vanilla French Toast and a side of Corned Beef Hash for DH

[deladane]

We finished breakfast by a little after 9am.  The FTTF instructions said to meet in the mid-ship MDR by 8:15am (I think?), so we knew we weren’t going to arrive that early since that’s when we were first leaving our cabin to head to breakfast.  We figured we would just go there now, and if they had stopped providing priority debarkation already, so be it.  Of course, it’s no easy feat to get from the aft MDR on Deck 3 to the mid-ship MDR on Deck 3 because the galley sits between them and blocks your path.  There happened to be an empty elevator waiting with the doors open when we left breakfast, so we were lazy and rode it down one deck so we could walk all the way forward on deck 2.  When we got back up to the lobby, there were hundreds of people on a huge line that wound all the way around the spiral staircase, the lobby bar, and back towards guest services.  I left DH on that line with our bags and I made my way over to the MDR to ask about where we should go for FTTF debarkation.  The guy there said that they had already opened up debarkation to the higher luggage tag numbers, so we could just wait in line and get off with everyone else.  Good thing I left DH on line!  The line moved surprisingly fast, and DH was already close to the exit by the time I got back to him. 

 

We did one final scan of our sea pass cards, stepped off the ship onto the bridge walkway, and frowned knowing that we were officially done with our cruise.  It was a slow process to walk down the zig-zagging walkway, back into the port terminal, down the escalator, down another hallway, and finally into the room with all the checked luggage.  We had followed the crowds ahead of us to this point, but then realized that we were led into the section with higher luggage tag numbers, so we asked an employee to point us towards where our zone was.  I wish I took a photo of it, but our big blue suitcase looked so lonely with only two or three other bags around it.  Part of me was relieved because it just occurred to me that someone could have taken our suitcase by mistake, and they’d be long gone by the time we got there to realize it!

 

Luggage in tow, we quickly passed through customs and immigration (the guy barely glanced at our passports and waved us on our way), and out to the sidewalk where we had been dropped off by our Uber driver just one short week earlier.  We were jealous seeing the handful of people lined up and waiting for their turn to board the Dream for the next cruise.  By now, it was around 9:30am, and our flight home didn’t leave until 4:30pm, so we had a few hours to spare.  Before the cruise, I did some research about places we could store our luggage for a few hours.  The Port of New Orleans offers a luggage storage service that will transport your luggage to the airport, and you pick it up whenever you arrive at the airport.  That idea sounded interesting, but they were charging $40 for our 3 bags, so I wanted to find a better option. 

 

The Hilton New Orleans Riverside hotel offers a luggage storage service, charging $2 per bag (any size), and it is even available to non-hotel guests!  That was such a great bargain compared to the $40 that the port was charging!  It wasn’t a big deal to take our own bags to the airport because we’d be using Uber and could easily fit our bags in the trunk, so the luggage transport part of it wasn’t necessary.  The one issue was that we would have to get our bags from the port to the Hilton, which was about a half-mile away.  We considered getting an Uber, but decided against it when we saw the massive amount of cars coming and going.  It would have taken a long time for an Uber to get to the port, find us in the crowds of thousands of people, and then drive us over to the Hilton in all of that traffic, and we knew we could walk faster than that.  Unfortunately, the area back there is not exactly pedestrian-friendly.  There were sections with no sidewalk, and even no shoulder, so cars were driving by very close to us, plus we had 3 rolling suitcases with us so it’s not like we could move out of the way quickly.  Luckily, there was enough traffic that the cars were moving slowly, and about halfway through our walk, we were directed up to another street that did have a sidewalk.  The walk took us about 20 minutes, so it wasn’t too bad.

 

After we dropped off our bags with the porter at the Hilton, we doubled back to walk back towards where we started for our next activity: Mardi Gras World!  A few weeks before the cruise, I saw a Groupon for discounted tickets to tour Mardi Gras World and thought it would be the perfect way to spend a few hours before going to the airport.  The Groupon was good for any day in a 4 month window, so had it been very rainy during our days before the cruise, we could have used it then as an indoor activity.  Mardi Gras World is located in a warehouse right next door to the cruise port, so it was very convenient!  Had we checked our luggage at the port, we would have had about a 5 minute walk to Mardi Gras World, but now that we were at the Hilton, we were one mile away.  We walked back along the road that goes in front of the two cruise terminals, so we had to pass all the people still getting of the Dream and the NCL Breakaway, but at least we didn’t have luggage in tow this time!

 

Finally, at 10:25am, we spotted this:

 

 

 

We actually had perfect timing because tours started every 30 minutes, so we were just on time for the 10:30am tour!  I presented our two Groupon vouchers to the sales clerk, and she handed us each a strand of beads and said to wait by the theater entrance.  They have a gift shop where you can browse the souvenirs if you have a wait before your tour starts.  While I was getting us checked in, DH found this stuffed alligator puppet to play with haha

 

 

At 10:30, a guide named Meredith gathered us up and led us into the theater.  There were only 10 people on the tour with us, but the theater had seats for at least 50 people so I guess sometimes they have large crowds or tour groups.  Meredith said that first, we would watch a 15-minute video about the history of Mardi Gras, and how the floats and parades originated.  It was really interesting to learn about it and I really had no idea about most of that information so I learned a lot!

 

 

When the video ended, Meredith explained the tradition behind a King Cake, and then handed out pieces of the cake for us to sample.  Too bad I was still stuffed from my yummy breakfast on the Dream so I only tasted a bite of it and gave the rest to DH.  As Meredith led us back out into the gift shop to start the rest of the tour, the sales clerk made an announcement for the people on the 11am tour to line up near the theater entrance.  There was a huge group of elementary school-aged children lining up for that tour (Meredith said they were visiting New Orleans on a school trip), so we were really happy we made it in time for the 10:30am tour and only had 10 of us in our group and that we did not have to be on a tour with all of those kids!!

 

 

[deladane]

Meredith explained that there are 20 full time employees who work on all aspects of creating the Mardi Gras floats, all year long.  They start working on the theme and creative ideas for next year’s parades right after Mardi Gras ends, and then a team of designers draws renderings of each float.  The bigger features on the float are either made with Styrofoam and then covered in paper mache, or they are made with fiberglass.  Meredith showed us these two examples of how you can identify the material used:  Styrofoam pieces are always mounted on wood palates like the face with the flower crown, whereas fiberglass features are free-standing like the lion.

 

 

This is Meredith explaining how the big features on the floats can be repaired and reconfigured for parades year after year.  They may keep the head and bust, but decorate it with a different hat or shirt depending on the theme.

 

 

Next, we entered a huge warehouse where all the features on the floats are created.  Today was a Sunday, so I was surprised to see people working today.  Apparently there was a big music festival the following weekend which would bring lots of traffic to the area and make it hard for these employees to get to the warehouse.  Instead of dealing with that, they chose to flex their work days and come in today instead when it wasn’t so busy.

 

This lady is applying paper mache to the Styrofoam ape.  When she finishes, a different team of people will paint it.

 

 

This queen was used in a parade that happened while it was raining so her paint washed off.  Someone will need to touch-up that peeled paint before she can be used again in another parade.  Also, note the wood palates underneath this statue- the base material was Styrofoam.

 

This warehouse was huge, and set up like a maze so there are lots of sections for people to work on different pieces.

 

[deladane]

Sorry for the slightly blurry photos… we were not allowed to use flash photography because it might distract the workers.  Just look at the scale of the painter and this giant statue that is twice his height!

 

 

 

This was used on a float the year that Kiss performed in one of the parades

 

As we continued walking, the room opened up to an enormous space where they housed all of the floats.  They were all lined up, one next to the other, being stored in a climate-controlled facility until next years parades.  Meredith explained that the floats are all rented by the different krewes and each krewe has a different theme that they tend to use year after year, like flowers on these floats….

 

 

 

 

 

[deladane]

This float has a theme of musical instruments…

 

 

A pirate float

 

 

 

 

Next, we went outside to look at something in a different building.  This photo is looking back towards the warehouse that we just walked through.  It was really huge!  You can see the bridge in the background, which is the same bridge next to where the Dream was docked on the other side.

 

[Border Granny]

I’m so glad you posted pics and narrative about the floats....I’ve been to NOLA several times and wanted to tour it but never did, looks like fun!

[BigEasyCC]

Thank you for the Mardi Gras World tour. I live here and haven't been since my son was in grade school.Your review makes me want to go again!

[AndrewD65]

I'm still reading!!! But my emotions are in an upset stage now that your cruise is over!! Tell your DH you need another vacation ASAP so us CruiseCritic people can have another wonderful review to read...

[deladane]

20 hours ago, Border Granny said:

I’m so glad you posted pics and narrative about the floats....I’ve been to NOLA several times and wanted to tour it but never did, looks like fun!

 

It was definitely worth a visit, especially after a cruise because it is right next to the cruise terminals!

[deladane]

19 hours ago, BigEasyCC said:

Thank you for the Mardi Gras World tour. I live here and haven't been since my son was in grade school.Your review makes me want to go again!

 

You should go again!  It's probably different every year because the floats and themes always change, so if you haven't been in a long time, you would see totally new things this time around 🙂

[deladane]

13 hours ago, AndrewD65 said:

I'm still reading!!! But my emotions are in an upset stage now that your cruise is over!! Tell your DH you need another vacation ASAP so us CruiseCritic people can have another wonderful review to read...

 

Thanks Andrew!  DH wants to know if you are paying for it 😉 hehe

[deladane]

Meredith took us into another building which was designed to be used for formal events, and I think it was also used as a casino, but then the city of New Orleans made it illegal to gamble on land, so the building stopped being used when they had to move the gambling out to boats on the river.  Everything in these photos is manmade, even the trees and the stones in the walkway, and is located inside of a warehouse… it was all very impressive!  They keep the lights dim so it feels like nighttime, so again I apologize for the quality of these photos as I could not use a flash.

 

 

 

 

The tour lasted about 2 hours, and at the end, we were allowed to stay in the warehouse as long as we wanted to walk around and look at all the floats.  There were hundreds of statues and floats, so it was a lot to take in.  We greatly enjoyed our time at Mardi Gras World, and thought it was the perfect activity for after the cruise and before a late flight home.  Here are a few last photos as we walked back towards the exit after the tour.

 

 

 

 

 

[deladane]

When we got back outside, there were tons of cars and delivery trucks trying to get to the 2 cruise ships.  This photo was taken at 12:45pm, so definitely plan to arrive early if you want to beat the traffic before your cruise from New Orleans!

 

 

Going no where fast!

 

I really wished I was getting back on the Dream right now instead of heading to the airport

 

We still had an hour or two before we needed to go to the airport, so we walked back to the Riverwalk Marketplace.  Earlier this morning when we were walking to the Hilton, I really wanted to walk through the Marketplace with our luggage because it would have been easier than walking on the sidewalk.  Unfortunately, I could not find an elevator (or even an escalator), and there was no chance we were going to climb all these stairs with 3 heavy suitcases!  Now that we were empty-handed, we had no trouble walking up these stairs to access the Marketplace.

 

 

This walkway provided a great view of the Dream and all the activity loading supplies and luggage on the ship.

 

 

We thought they were going to put this giant crate through the hole in the ship to offload new supplies.  The crane kept moving the crate up and down and couldn’t get it to line up to the hole.  We finally figured out that they don’t need to fit the crate through the hole (which was good because it was barely too big to fit!), and the crew on the ship just unloaded the crate while it dangled in the air, and then the crane lowered the empty crate back to the ground.

 

 

One last photo of the Dream before we officially said goodbye…

 

 

[deladane]

As we kept walking, we got a great view of the NCL Breakaway docked behind the Dream.

 

We walked around the mall for a few minutes, with one destination in mind: Café du Monde!  There is a smaller location of the famous café located inside the Riverside Marketplace, and it tends to have shorter lines as compared to the original location in the French Quarter.  I still wasn’t hungry (wow, that breakfast in the MDR was very filling!), but I couldn’t resist the chance to eat just one beignet.

 

There were a lot of people on line when we arrived, but it moved quickly and took exactly 20 minutes from the time we got on line to the time we received and paid for our food.

 

They have a small seating area, but the turnover is fast enough that there was always at least one table available while we were waiting in line.

 

There are big windows into the kitchen area so you can watch them prepare the beignets while you wait in line

 

Look at all those little beignets bobbing in the pool of oil!

 

 

[deladane]

They have a full menu with lots of drink options in addition to the beignets

 

 

 

We got one order of beignets to share (they only sell them in sets of 3), and DH got a coffee.

 

Just look at all of that sugary powdery goodness!!

 

We found an empty table and tried our best not to get any powdered sugar on our clothes.  I wish I took a photo of the floor… it was coated in a thin layer of sugar, and even though there were a few employees walking around and trying to clean up the tables as people left, they were fighting a losing battle against that messy sugar haha  The last time I had a beignet was when I visited New Orleans for a conference for work in 2010, and they were just as delicious as I remembered! 

 

[deladane]

By the time we finished eating, it was 1:45pm and we were kind of ready to wrap things up and head to the airport.  We originally planned to walk around the French Quarter a little longer, but we were tired and decided to skip it.  We walked through the food court in the mall looking for something we could buy to bring to the airport to eat for a late lunch, but none of the options looked like they would travel well.  I used Google Maps to search the area for a better option, and saw that there was a Subway sandwich shop located across the street from the convention center just a few blocks away.  Thanks to the construction on Convention Center Boulevard, it was a little tricky to get there, but we eventually found a place we could cross the street and get our sandwiches.  It was very crowded when we arrived, and when we tried to order our sandwich, they said they only had the plain Italian bread available.  I’ve never been to a Subway before when they only had one kind of bread!  No biggie, we ordered our sandwiches to-go, and walked back to the Hilton to retrieve our luggage from the porters.

 

Another huge advantage to checking our bags here instead of at the cruise port was that it was really easy for an Uber to pick us up.  Had the Uber needed to pick us up near the port, it would have taken forever to get through all the traffic of people being dropped off for their cruise, so it was much easier to direct the Uber to the front entrance of the Hilton where there was space for him to pull over and load our luggage in the circular driveway.

 

The Uber driver picked us up within minutes of submitting the request, and it took about 30 minutes to drive to the airport.  There was virtually no line to check our bag, and luckily it weighed in at 48 pounds so no need to shift things around in the airport.  There was a small line at security, but it moved fast and we had plenty of time to spare anyway so it wouldn’t be a big deal if we did have a long wait.  We found seats near our gate and waited for an hour until it was time to board the plane.  At the last minute, they changed us to a different gate on the other side of the terminal, so everyone marched down the hallway like a parade to reach the new gate. 

 

The first thing I did when I got to my seat on the plane was to look at the airplane safety information pamphlet.  I think this is the first time I have ever looked at it, but I just wanted to make sure that we were not on a 737-Max plane!  Of course, by now, President Trump had announced he was grounding all 737-Maxs so it was highly unlikely that this was that style of plane, but I needed to double check for my own sanity.

 

 

While I was looking through the pamphlets in the seat back in front of me, I took a look at the drinks menu.  Today was our lucky day… literally!  It was St. Patrick’s Day and Southwest was offering free drinks on all flights today!  They do this for random holidays throughout the year, but it was surprising that they picked this holiday as it fell on a Sunday which is a popular travel day.  In the past, I have seen them pick Valentine’s Day and Halloween because they fell on random days mid-week when there were fewer people flying, so we were excited that they happened to pick today for the free drinks. 

 

 

The flight attendants made no announcements or mentions of the free drinks, so I think they were hoping people wouldn’t notice as that would make way more work for them haha  Luckily, DH and I have a radar to detect free drinks in any situation so they couldn’t hide this from us!  In fact, we were able to order a second round later in the flight and that was free too!!  Southwest really knows how to lessen the sadness of the last day of vacation.

 

The flight was nearly 5 hours long, but the time passed quickly as I spent the whole time sorting through photos on my iPad.  We also had some beautiful views as we flew over the Rockies.

 

 

Our plane landed on time at around 7pm California time, so it was just in time for a beautiful sunset over the Bay.

 

 

 

Of course, our long day of travel wasn’t over just yet.  After collecting our checked bag, we called the shuttle to bring us back to the off-site parking lot to get my car, and then had a one hour drive to get home.  By the time we walked in the door, it was 11pm New Orleans time and we were exhausted after waking up at 7am to Gary’s announcements.  We dropped our suitcases in the living room, unpacked just the essentials, and got ready for bed as we both had to wake up early on Monday to return to work.

 

Step Tracker Daily Total:  15,769 steps; 6.37 miles; 4 flights of stairs

 

Well, that’s all folks!  We had a wonderful vacation, so I hope you enjoyed sharing the memories with me.  As always, please let me know if you have any questions.  We don’t currently have any future cruises planned, but we are going to Paris and London over the summer.  I would love to write up a similar review of that trip to post on this site, maybe in the Europe ports of call section?  We won’t be going on a cruise during the vacation (unless you can count the 1-hour sightseeing “cruises” of the Seine and Thames Rivers?? LOL).  Would you be interested in reading it?  If there is enough interest, I will write it up and post a link to it on this thread so you can follow along.

 

[pd7277]

I would love to read and "see" your europe vacation.  I'll look for this thread to pop up again over the summer.  😎

 

I have a question.  We sailed on Carnival many years ago and swore it would never happen again because the food was so awful, but I would also like to take a late spring cruise out of Tampa and Carnival is the only option.  So, has the food improved that much over the years?  And how would you compare it to Celebrity?  

[grandmarnnurse]

1 hour ago, deladane said:

They have a full menu with lots of drink options in addition to the beignets

 

 

 

We got one order of beignets to share (they only sell them in sets of 3), and DH got a coffee.

 

Just look at all of that sugary powdery goodness!!

 

We found an empty table and tried our best not to get any powdered sugar on our clothes.  I wish I took a photo of the floor… it was coated in a thin layer of sugar, and even though there were a few employees walking around and trying to clean up the tables as people left, they were fighting a losing battle against that messy sugar haha  The last time I had a beignet was when I visited New Orleans for a conference for work in 2010, and they were just as delicious as I remembered! 

 

I cannot wait to be in New Orleans and have a beingnet! Our hotel is on Iberville St in the French Quarter, so I hope there is a Cafe du Monde near us. They actually look a bit like the fried dough we get at our local pizza parlor. 

[kmshea]

Awesome review, thank you for sharing! What do you use to get your photos from your camera to your iPad so quickly?

[SenatorsFan]

Thanks for another great review,  Dana. I've been quietly following along and enjoying your enthusiasm and humour, and of course, all of the wonderful pictures. That Mardi Gras warehouse tour looks very interesting. I'll keep it in mind (and the beignets) if I ever make it to New Orleans. Oh, and I would follow your European trip, also. 

Heather

Edited May 4, 2019 by SenatorsFan

[pghsteelerfan]

Dana, thank you again for taking the time to share another of your wonderful trips with us, and as always, I also enjoyed the beautiful pictures you got.  I'm so glad that the weather was sunny and beautiful for you.  I think I mentioned before that I also really enjoyed your pre-cruise stay in New Orleans, especially since we were just there last May.  We didn't get to Mardi Gras World last year but did go when we were in NOLA in 1996, but it was across the river then, so we had to take the ferry over to it.  The same building we went through in 1996 was still there last year, and still had Mardi Gras World on it, but the one you got to go through was MUCH larger and nicer.  What we saw was more of a warehouse where floats or parts of floats were stored.  It didn't appear that anyone was working on them either.  After reading about your tour, I think that is something that will be a must next time we get to NOLA.  And the Beignets...yum!   And yes, I'd be happy to read about your trip to Europe this summer.  I can't believe it, but it was six years ago today that we flew down to San Juan one night before our cruise on Valor.  It really doesn't seem like 6 years ago!