Carnival Pride 9/12 Sailing - first cruise out of Baltimore in 18 months

[WhiteOptima]

15 minutes ago, IntrepidFromDC said:

Steakhouse was the normal offering, I suppose they don't have that "3 special dining restaurants" deal because they only have to fixed price specialty places.  Steakhouse was a disaster.  I'm not big on writing reviews but I'll mention our Steakhouse experience in my brief review after catching up on questions.  I didn't see any soda drink fountains.  Pride was pretty much unchanged.

Thank you!  Will wait until we get on to book and wait and see if Steakhouse gets better.

[IntrepidFromDC]

Here's my brief review.

 

In general, the cruise was much like pre-covid cruises, except there was a minority of people wearing masks in comedy club and casino, walking around, etc.  I put mine on in elevators and any time there was a sign saying to put your mask on.  Masks were just a non-issue.  I don't know the percentage, but the time I really noticed they were not sailing at full capacity was MDR dinners.  Normandie Restaurant was consistently less than half full for late dining.

 

Embarkation: very smooth, nearly no line at all.

 

Food: Some Lido deck food was better than usual and better than the standard MDR room, I thought.  The chicken tacos with fresh pico de gallo and the orange habanero sauce was great.  The  fresh carved turkey with turkey gravy at The Carvery and a few other items were very good.  MDR was typical Carnival.  Steakhouse was a disaster - arrived on time for our 7:30 reservation and we were seated at 8:10.  Food was even worse.  Lobster was rubbery and had an "old oil" smell and taste.  Filet Mignon was flat like a rib-eye, small and overcooked.  Oh, and stringy.  This was my first ever bad experience at the Steakhouse and it was really, really bad.  They refunded our $38 x 3.  At the poker table and elsewhere, everyone seemed to complain about the Steakhouse.

 

Entertainment: Swing and a miss!  All three acts, even the electric violin players, were eh.  The jazz\pop duo would miss notes often although they did tend to sing difficult songs.  The solo guitar player was painful to endure.  We saw two comedy shows and both were worth the price of admission.  We didn't see any other shows.  Dive in movies were happening and there were plenty of lounge chairs available.

 

Off-the-ship: At Freeport and Nassau everyone was wearing masks both indoors and outdoors and our ship cruisers were 100% compliant from what I saw.  Nobody wore masks at Half Moon Cay but they were required on the water shuttle and only a handful of people weren't wearing them there.  Half Moon Cay was heaven.

 

Casino: Pride is one of the smokiest casinos I've ever experienced, but the reduced capacity helped.  I only lost $350 which is a win because I spent 2 to 5 hours every day/night except one.  We had one guy (won the "oldest platinum cruiser" award at the platinum party - 90 years young) hit a Royal Flush for $3,500 one night and a Straight Flush for $2,800 another.  I hit quads twice.  BTW, my daughter is still winning the "youngest platinum cruiser" award and she's 21 now.

 

Oddity: the entire Serenity section was closed off to cruisers for crew use only beginning at 8pm every night.  My daughter was not happy, she said the crew was teasing her when she was stopped at the rope, wagging their fingers and saying "ah ah ahhhhh!".

 

Debarkation: we travel with an overhead-bin-sized roll-on and a backpack each so we opted for the early Platinum/Diamond special debarkation.  The overhead announcement and the letters to cabins said debarkation started at 10:15 but we got a letter saying to meet in Beauties Lounge at 9am for early debarkation.  We were ushered off at 9:20am after waiting in the Lounge for ten minutes.  Line was constantly moving, orderly, and because it was a thin queue there were no bottlenecks.  We were among the first 25 special early debarkation cruisers off the ship, no line at TSA.  Called our uber while walking on the gangway and we were in the uber at 9:35ish, home at 10:20am.

 

We're back in 5 weeks.

Edited September 19, 2021 by IntrepidFromDC

[WhiteOptima]

Well Serenity being closed at night just changed our card playing drinking plans😡

[IntrepidFromDC]

1 hour ago, WhiteOptima said:

Well Serenity being closed at night just changed our card playing drinking plans😡

Hopefully by your 10/31 Pride cruise (and our 10/24 Pride cruise) Serenity will be back to normal.  We asked several crew how long they were in quarantine on the ship and the answers varied from 2 weeks to 5 weeks.  I'm guessing that since this was not only their first cruise in a long time but also their release from quarantine, Carnival wanted to do something special for them.  I thought "every night" was a little too much but I only use Serenity sparingly anyway so not as big a deal for me as it was for my daughter and others.  What bothered me is that my daughter felt teased by them - not nice to find out that the amazing attitudes and smiles of crew disappear when some think they have a temporary one-up on cruisers.  

[drafterdw]

On 9/12/2021 at 3:44 PM, kleibo said:

Do you have any idea how many people are cruising and how did muster go?

I was on this cruise, we sailed at a little over 50% capacity 

[nina_930]

On 9/12/2021 at 1:59 PM, IntrepidFromDC said:

Stepped out of uber, walked 15 feet to first checkin where we were asked if we're vaccinated and tested.  Answered YES and permitted to walk inside. Line to next checkpoint was 4 people long, the pic of the man and podium.  He checked passport,  vaccination card and test results  and we were on our way to security, security line was 2 people ahead of us (see pic), then on to guest services, no line.  Seemed like same old process except to confirm vaccination card and look at the covid test digital certificate on our phones.  Hard copies not required. 

I saw on another review that they were super strict about boarding times with parking passengers.  Did they bother looking at your check in time when you walked in?  I have the 12:30 check in, but curious because we may have to get there a bit earlier and wondering if we don't park there if we will have less trouble  Thanks for the review too!

 

What time did you guys depart the ship?

[IntrepidFromDC]

34 minutes ago, nina_930 said:

I saw on another review that they were super strict about boarding times with parking passengers.  Did they bother looking at your check in time when you walked in?  I have the 12:30 check in, but curious because we may have to get there a bit earlier and wondering if we don't park there if we will have less trouble  Thanks for the review too!

 

What time did you guys depart the ship?

See above for details on what time we debarked.  When we embarked they had a process set up for a long line but there was none.  One person said "please have your boarding pass and covid test ready" (for the checkpoint before being allowed into the terminal).  But the time between that person and the next person who was to check covid test and boarding pass time was just seconds, so next person just looked at our covid tests quickly and waved us in.  Once inside there was no wait again for passport/vaccine card check and security check.  See pics earlier in this thread.

Edited September 20, 2021 by IntrepidFromDC

[Anung Un Rama]

I understand them wanting to be strict about boarding to keep things less crowded but I hope the fact that my wife and I have 1pm but my parents (who are in our group) have 1:30 won't be an issue for us showing up around 1.

[IntrepidFromDC]

3 hours ago, Anung Un Rama said:

I understand them wanting to be strict about boarding to keep things less crowded but I hope the fact that my wife and I have 1pm but my parents (who are in our group) have 1:30 won't be an issue for us showing up around 1.

When your car pulls up (assuming around 12:40pm) show the guard the 1pm boarding pass but not the 1:30 and I think they will let you right in.

[IntrepidFromDC]

One thing I forgot to mention - the platinum/diamond party: it was similar to the others with the video and musical entertainment plus free-flowing drinks but there were NO hors d'oeuvre!  No sushi, no snacks at all.  First time I experienced that.

[Anung Un Rama]

3 minutes ago, IntrepidFromDC said:

When your car pulls up (assuming around 12:40pm) show the guard the 1pm boarding pass but not the 1:30 and I think they will let you right in.

LOL, this is exactly what I was planning on doing 😆

[drafterdw]

19 hours ago, nina_930 said:

I saw on another review that they were super strict about boarding times with parking passengers.  Did they bother looking at your check in time when you walked in?  I have the 12:30 check in, but curious because we may have to get there a bit earlier and wondering if we don't park there if we will have less trouble  Thanks for the review too!

 

What time did you guys depart the ship?

We drove to Port and they actually ask us at entrance to parking our assigned boarding time. I did see them turning some away.

[IntrepidFromDC]

If you see this man, hit him up for a loan.  While my daughter was recognized at the Platinum Party as youngest Platinum cruiser on the ship, this man was recognized as the oldest at 90.  A retired doctor from Iran, he hit this Royal Flush plus a Straight Flush another night...