Recently off the Carnival Pride 7/1/2007 sailing - Any questions?

[modnar]

Hello all!

 

We were on the 7/1/2007 sailing of the Pride. I don't have time to write a full review right now, but we had a great time!

 

This was our 5th cruise - the first on a Spirit class ship and the first leaving from the West coast. This was our second cruise with a balcony. We were on the Verandah deck, starboard, and had an extended balcony.

 

This was a great cruise! We had a blast on the ship and at the ports.

 

I'll try to write a full review in the next week or so, but I'd be happy to answer any questions.

[principessa1180]

Hi. I go on the pride on August 5th. I am in room 7181. Are the walls thin in the cabins? Was the food good? Which show was the best? Was it really hot in Mexico?

[modnar]

Hi. I go on the pride on August 5th. I am in room 7181. Are the walls thin in the cabins? Was the food good? Which show was the best? Was it really hot in Mexico?

Our cabin wasn't too far from 7181. I'm not sure how thin the walls are, but we didn't have any noise problems from our neighbors. I do remember seeing security getting involved down the hall. It sounded like someone called security and complained because some kids were being so noisy in the room next to him that he couldn't hear a movie he was watching in his cabin. The good news is that it appeared security was actually trying to do something about it!

 

The food was very good! We ate dinner in the dining room each night, but stuck to the Lido areas for breakfast and lunch.

 

My wife and I thought the Monday night show, "Wonderful World," was not a good show at all. The dancers and singers did a great job, but the show itself was just not entertaining for us.

 

However, we really enjoyed the Friday night show, "Vrooom". It was basically a revue of songs starting from the 60s all the way through the 90s.

 

We thought the comedians and other entertainers were very good, except for Kyle Wayne. We were not entertained by him at all. He seemed too arrogant, and the bit he was doing with his puppet simply was not funny too us at all. Others did seem to enjoy him, though. One comedian, JeROME, was very funny and even did a casual comedy show at 9am on debarkation morning to entertain those waiting to be dragged off the ship. :)

 

This was our fifth cruise, and, even though we didn't care for the first big show, we thought the talent of the dancers and singers was the best we had seen so far.

 

Finally, it was pretty hot in Mexico. At times when the sun was behind the clouds, it wasn't too bad, but the sun sure could heat it up fast.

 

The water for our snorkeling excursion in Cabo was absolutely chilling. One of our guides (who actually never got off the boat), said it was probably 60-65 degress F. Visibility was very poor and people were getting stung by jellyfish, so we got back on the catamaran and enjoyed the chips and salsa and the drinks, all included. Even though we didn't get to do much snorkeling, we still really enjoyed the excursion. Before the excursion started, they gave us some warnings that jellyfish had been seen in the area, that some ocean currents come from Alaska and are cold, and that, although visibility was reported to be 30 feet in one area, it may not be the same everywhere. Before we left the pier, they gave everyone an opportunity to change their mind before the excursion and get their money back, but I don't think anyone took them up on that offer. The jellyfish were pretty bad in Mazatlan and Cabo San Lucas. They were all along the beach in Mazatlan. On our excursion in Cabo, several people got stung by jellyfish, and a few people had them stuck in their hair when they got back on the catamaran. We didn't go to the beach in Puerta Vallarta, so I'm not sure about the jellyfish there.

 

We still had a great time in Cabo and want to go back some time!

 

Enjoy your cruise!

[helloworld1]

Where was the cleanest water? Where was the warmest?

 

Regarding the boat activities, anything you particularly recommend?

[ajaxgalca]

We sail on the Pride on 7/29 - Veranda deck room 7200 with an extended balcony -

 

How large is the balcony? Do you have any photos?

 

Any country music on board in the lounges??

 

Did you keep your balcony door open at night?

 

Thanks for you answers!

[modnar]

We sail on the Pride on 7/29 - Veranda deck room 7200 with an extended balcony -

 

How large is the balcony? Do you have any photos?

 

Any country music on board in the lounges??

 

Did you keep your balcony door open at night?

 

Thanks for you answers!

We did have an extended balcony. It seemed a decent amount larger than the regular balcony we had on the Valor last spring. I'll post some pictures this weekend.

 

I believe there was some country music somewhere onboard.

 

Nope, we didn't keep our balcony door open at night. There was a sign next to the door claiming that the A/C shut off when the balcony door was open, but I'm not sure if I believe that. That's not why we didn't leave the door open at night, though. We just wanted it nice and cool (not humid) so we could get some good sleep.

[modnar]

Where was the cleanest water? Where was the warmest?

Hmm, Cabo probably had the cleanest water, even though visibility on our excursion was not very great. We didn't spend much time at the beach in Puerta Vallarta other than along the boardwalk, though. In Mazatlan, we went to Stone Island, and the beach didn't seem exceptionally clear or anything.

 

Likewise, we only got in the water in Cabo and Mazatlan. It was warm in Mazatlan, but frigid in Cabo. However, in Cabo we were snorkeling off a boat, probably 50 yds or so from the beach.

 

Regarding the boat activities, anything you particularly recommend?

We've never done much with the Survivor or Amazing Race type games. We enjoyed the Name that Tune activity on the first sea day in the Piazza Lounge. Of course, the Newlywed, Not so Newlywed Game is always fun. I made it to all of the midnight adults-only comedy shows, but that may or may not be your kind of thing.

[neverpar]

We are going on the Pride in October......can't wait!! It sounds like you had a great time.....I hope all the Jelly Fish are gone when we get there..

Can't wait for pics and a review!! Good answers so far..Thanks!

[Calicruiser101]

Hi, thanks for the info. so far. We sail Sunday 7-15-07 on the Pride. My stupid countdown clock is not working, sad. Ok, here is my question, did you go to the adults only area on the Lido Deck? Did they do a good job of keeping kids out of the hot-tubs and the adult's only pool? You said the weather was cool the first sea day, what about the second, and the last? Were you able to use the pool or was it too cold? Thanks.

[chamberbear]

We sail on the Pride in October. By any chance, did you notice if they serve Patron or Don Julio tequila in any of the bars? We have a regular balcony cabin on the Empress deck. Do you think the extended balconies are better? Thanks for the info.

 

Steph

[neverpar]

We sail on the Pride in October. By any chance, did you notice if they serve Patron or Don Julio tequila in any of the bars? We have a regular balcony cabin on the Empress deck. Do you think the extended balconies are better? Thanks for the info.

 

Steph

 

 

What date in October do you sail? We are going Oct. 21st..

[modnar]

Hi, thanks for the info. so far. We sail Sunday 7-15-07 on the Pride. My stupid countdown clock is not working, sad. Ok, here is my question, did you go to the adults only area on the Lido Deck? Did they do a good job of keeping kids out of the hot-tubs and the adult's only pool? You said the weather was cool the first sea day, what about the second, and the last? Were you able to use the pool or was it too cold? Thanks.

The last full sea day was also overcast and really too cool for us to lounge outside in bathing suits. We ended up spending some time reading in the Sunset Garden (inside, on either side of the Taj Mahal on deck 3) on both the first and last sea day.

 

However, the second sea day (Tuesday) and the time at sea after we left Cabo on Friday were great, hot weather. On both of those days, we found chairs in the aft adults only area. I really don't remember seeing too many kids in that area or in those hot tubs or pools. I didn't watch very closely for them, but I don't remember thinking it was a problem.

 

The only time we got in one of the pools was after getting back from either Puerto Vallarta or Mazatlan (not sure which one). That afternoon/evening, we lounged by one of the mid-ship pools. The water in the pool was warm and comfortable. I guess it could've even been a little cooler to be ideal, though.

[modnar]

We sail on the Pride in October. By any chance, did you notice if they serve Patron or Don Julio tequila in any of the bars? We have a regular balcony cabin on the Empress deck. Do you think the extended balconies are better? Thanks for the info.

Sorry, I didn't notice about the tequila.

 

I'm not sure if the extended balconies are "better", but they are a little wider.

[chamberbear]

What date in October do you sail? We are going Oct. 21st..

 

 

We sail Oct 7. Will let you know how it goes.

[chamberbear]

Sorry, I didn't notice about the tequila.

 

I'm not sure if the extended balconies are "better", but they are a little wider.

 

 

Thanks for the info. Can't wait to hear more about your cruise. I really appreciate all of the information.

[blkbrnfam]

Hi, thanks for the info. so far. We sail Sunday 7-15-07 on the Pride. My stupid countdown clock is not working, sad. Ok, here is my question, did you go to the adults only area on the Lido Deck? Did they do a good job of keeping kids out of the hot-tubs and the adult's only pool? You said the weather was cool the first sea day, what about the second, and the last? Were you able to use the pool or was it too cold? Thanks.

 

When I was on the Pride, there were rules posted about the adults only pool being an adults only pool. One day, I noticed a family swimming with 2 kids swimming. I wasn't in the pool that day but I sat there for about an hour and nobody made them get out of the pool. As far as the weather, it was cold on the first sea day as well as the last. We did use the hot tub that day because nobody else was in it. They also had the adults only pool covered on the last day. I'm not sure if we were suppose to be in the hot tub that day. When I got home, I noticed my bathing suit I wore that day was bleached out. The hot tub must have had a lot of Chlorine in it. I wondered later if they were getting it ready for the next cruisers. The crew were doing a lot of clean-up work that day in prepping for the next cruise.

[principessa1180]

did you eat at dave's super club? was there a lot of people on the cruise?in puerto, we are doing a tour of the city and a tour of the rain forest. in maz we are doing the shopping and the beach. in cabo we are doing the by land and sea on. swimming in the ocean scares me. i saw jaws. do they have good shops on the ship? did you see any funny drunk people?

[modnar]

did you eat at dave's super club? was there a lot of people on the cruise?in puerto, we are doing a tour of the city and a tour of the rain forest. in maz we are doing the shopping and the beach. in cabo we are doing the by land and sea on. swimming in the ocean scares me. i saw jaws. do they have good shops on the ship? did you see any funny drunk people?

Nope, we didn't eat at Dave's.

 

In Puerto Vallarta, we did the canopy tour with Carnival's excursion (goes through Vallarta Adventures). There is also an "Outdoor Adventure" that the tour guides referred to as an extreme canopy tour that is led by the same tour company.

 

In Mazatlan, we went to Stone Island and ate (and drank a bit) at Vincent's (great food) then went and shopped a bit in the "Golden Zone." The shopping wasn't all that great, but we weren't looking for specific jewelry or anything. Stone Island was neat because it was more "raw" Mexico than a lot of the ports. The water taxi to Stone Island was only $1.50 round trip per person, and there weren't many tourists on that small taxi at all. Stone Island seemed to mostly have locals as well. We enjoyed this, but if you're more comfortable around fellow tourists, you might get a little uneasy. There were lots of people coming up to us trying to sell all kinds of clothes, jewelry, and other trinkets. We just got real good at saying, "No, gracious" quickly and they would usually move on.

 

In Cabo, we did the Santa Maria snorkel tour. Due to rough seas, they let us (try to) snorkel at Chileno Bay instead of Santa Maria bay. As I said earlier, the water temperature, visibility, and jelly fish meant that most people on the tour were done snorkeling in less than 10 minutes, but we still really enjoyed the tour and boat ride.

 

The shops on the ship are okay... pretty much like the shops on the Conquest class ships we've been on. In Cabo, we found a good open market/flea market area that had some good items we could negotiate for.

 

My wife knows a little bit of Spanish from taking four years of it in high school. This was our fourth cruise that stopped in Mexico, and she probably attempted to speak Spanish more on this cruise than those previous four combined. It was really fun, and it made the ports even more enjoyable to try and speak some of their language, even if we weren't completely successful at it. :)

 

Hmmm, funny drunk people. Yeah, we saw a few. In fact, as we were boarding the ship at one port, some guy said something along the lines of, referring to my wife and I, "Let the pretty woman go first <pause> and the pretty man, too." He stumbled his words a bit as if he didn't want me to feel bad that he didn't call me pretty. It was funny. :)

[modnar]

I've attached a picture of Lands End (Lover's Beach, Los Archos, etc.) in Cabo as we are getting ready to sail away (or may have already started sailing at that point).

[JGB]

Great shot I really get the idea of "lands end"

did you go into the casino? what type of slots do they have e.g. Cleopatra Jades Monkey etc.

JGB

[alberta41]

principessa1180,

We ate at David's supper club when we sailed the Pride in June. I've attached some pictures. Hope this helps give you an idea of how great everything is....It is absolutely wonderful!!!

[piggs]

I was on this cruise also and thought I would answer, two perspectives for the price of 1!!!!! We were a family group of 17 traveling together.

 

Originally Posted by Calicruiser101

Hi, thanks for the info. so far. We sail Sunday 7-15-07 on the Pride. My stupid countdown clock is not working, sad. Ok, here is my question, did you go to the adults only area on the Lido Deck? Did they do a good job of keeping kids out of the hot-tubs and the adult's only pool? You said the weather was cool the first sea day, what about the second, and the last? Were you able to use the pool or was it too cold? Thanks.

 

We hung out mainly at the aft (adult) pool and we rarely saw any kids. One day there was a teen in the pool but that was as young as I ever saw. I have to add something about the cool sea days. I am from the UP of Michigan, way up on Lake Superior. Every review I read that said it was cool, I assumed it was Californians complaining about cool weather, but it was cool and I would recommend bringing a sweater/sweatshirt of some type as we had none.

 

Originally Posted by helloworld1

Where was the cleanest water? Where was the warmest?

 

I have to agree completely with modnar. We only swam in Maz and Cabo. We did the zipline tour through Los Veranos in PV and beach day in Maz, (at a hotel in the "Golden Zone")swimming, parasailing and boogie boarding. Two of the 5 kids were stung by jellyfish here. They got henna tatoos to commemorate the experience! Again, we swim in Lake Superior and the water in Cabo was cold. We did the Snuba, through Carnival, and even had on wet suits but the kids were shivering the entire time. We were only 30 yards or so off-shore too. The visibilty was not great but my underwater camera pictures turned out way better than I thought they would. You can see the color on the fish and tell who the other people in the pictures are.

 

 

Originally Posted by principessa1180

Hi. I go on the pride on August 5th. I am in room 7181. Are the walls thin in the cabins? Was the food good? Which show was the best? Was it really hot in Mexico?

 

I did not think the walls were paper thin. We had all seven of the kids in our family hanging out in the room next to ours and I never once had to go over and tell them to "knock it off!" LOL

Modnar you didn't mention "Pepper" ,this was the worst show we have ever had to sit through. We did not go to any of the production shows and we also were not that thrilled with the puppet guy. JeRome was good though.

 

There is another thread on here going right now about people being left in port. After Maz ( I think) they kept calling for Kevin Gringle, They even did a room to room search for him. Never did hear if he joined up with the ship again, did you?

 

 

 

We found it was easier to bargain in PV and Maz than in Cabo. We did play all the trivia, family game stuff. We won the Amazing Race and it was very fun. I lost Survivor:( . I can explain it more if anyone wants. I really enjoyed Becca and Anna the social hosts but "little Ricky" ,the other who ran some of the games, not so much.

 

My SIL won $1000 at the video poker game in the sports bar, she was very happy but nobody else hit big all week.

 

The only really new thing I learned this cruise was eating in the dinning room for breakfast. The French Toast there is GREAT!!!!! We went there every day after we discovered it. Service was generally good and we could finish in under 30 minutes. I also learned that the omelet station, on the Lido deck, will make eggs for you any way you want. I thought you could only get scrambled or omelets there. Silly me!

[Falcon164016]

That last picture is the same dessert I had when we sailed in June...I thought it looked more like some sort of contraption than food.

[modnar]

I have to agree completely with modnar. We only swam in Maz and Cabo. We did the zipline tour through Los Veranos in PV and beach day in Maz, (at a hotel in the "Golden Zone")swimming, parasailing and boogie boarding. Two of the 5 kids were stung by jellyfish here.

We walked along some of those beaches behind the hotels in the "Golden Zone", so we might have even seen your family. :) I've attached a couple pictures we took on the beach near the "Golden Zone", including one showing one of the many piles of jellyfish and another that's just a general beach picture.

 

Modnar you didn't mention "Pepper" ,this was the worst show we have ever had to sit through. We did not go to any of the production shows and we also were not that thrilled with the puppet guy. JeRome was good though.

We didn't mind Pepper as much, but he was only rather mildly entertaining. I would've much preferred another (good) comedian.

 

There is another thread on here going right now about people being left in port. After Maz ( I think) they kept calling for Kevin Gringle, They even did a room to room search for him. Never did hear if he joined up with the ship again, did you?

My wife and I were worried about him. We didn't know they did a room to room search for him, though. I thought it was odd they only started calling for him after we had sailed. I wonder if he got mistakenly checked on to the boat or something. Regardless, we'd be curious to know how that turned out.

 

I really enjoyed Becca and Anna the social hosts but "little Ricky" ,the other who ran some of the games, not so much.

Wow, completely agree! Becca was really good; I hope she becomes a cruise directory soon. Anna was also pretty good, but I didn't see too much of her. But, we really agree about Ricky. He was at our muster station and from then until the end of the cruise, we found him rather annoying. I'm sure he's a good guy and a good worker, but we just were not entertained by him at all.

 

I also learned that the omelet station, on the Lido deck, will make eggs for you any way you want. I thought you could only get scrambled or omelets there. Silly me!

My wife discovered that a couple cruises ago, and likes to get some freshly cooked fried eggs, over-easy, sometimes.

[piggs]

Thanks so much for the jellyfish pictures! :D We never saw any on the beach and the kids got stung while they were out tubing on one of those 'banana boat' things. I saved it to show the rest of the family if you don't mind.

 

We were not in our room at the time but the kids and another family were in their rooms and they were shown a picture and asked if they had seen him. Now I do not know if it was him they were looking for but who else could it have been?

 

Becca called us the "trivia family" every time she saw us. And someone even said we could not win because she couldn't let her own family win. We are such a big invovled family we were hard to miss. We love to play all the games, because it is so easy to get all 17 of us involved and even grandma can sit with us and participate even if she can't answer any of the questions! We came away with 5 ships on a stick and a medal!!! Three trivia wins, the Amazing Race and my husband came in second in the ping pong tournament.

 

I know critisism is harshly dealt with on these boards so please read no further if you don't want to see it. I would give this cruise a GREAT review even though our dining room service left much to be desired. We were spoiled on our last cruise so we know how great the service CAN be and this one just wasn't there. We never had water refilled, no extra bread when we ran out, missing items (salads, baked potatoes, etc) that were never served. The food was good but there was so much tension between our head waiter and his assistant it was just uncomfortable to even be in the dining room. One night she even left the dining room after being yelled at by him and didn't return for over 30 minutes. We had the Maitre'D stop by our table every night after that and the woman who is in charge of special food requests stopped by every night too. We started calling dinner "As the Ship Rocks" wondering what would happen in the dining room next. We told the special request woman that our waiter seemed overworked when the assistant was gone and we were told "she is just down waiting for your food" so we wondered why the head waiter had to bring it and we never saw her come back with it. Most nights we were in the dining room for two full hours. I have no idea how they got ready for the next seating. The last night it took over 30 minutes to get dessert so some family members just left without it. We DID NOT let this ruin anything for us and we had more fun with it than anything else, but people should get to hear the good and the bad.

 

I thought this cruise had more fun games to play than any other we have been on. I really enjoyed win, lose or draw. We just broke into the red and blue teams and played against each other.