Day Eight - Get on the Fun Ship!

Mat on our balcony

We are halfway through the honeymoon and on to the cruise! We woke up Sunday morning and I just did not want to get out of bed. Grr... I really wanted to sleep in that nice, dark hotel room. But I knew I had to get up and get to the ship. So I put on my bride tanktop (hoping we might get a room upgrade or something!) and we headed back to the airport to return our car. So we hopped on the shuttle back to LAX and while we were on the shuttle, we saw a couple that had Carnival Pride luggage tags on their suitcases, so we decided to follow them to find out where the shuttle was leaving from. Our original idea was to take a cab, but we were worried that it might be a ton of money.

So we found the shuttle and they said they might be able to fit us on, but we had to wait. So as we were waiting, a different couple came up and asked us if we had bought our tickets for the shuttle yet or did we want to take a cab with them? So we decided to split a cab and it was quite pricey, but wasn't too bad since we split it. So we drop off our luggage and go to stand in the longest line in the whole world. Luckily, the couple from the cab didn't have luggage, so they had saved us a place in line and we didn't have to wait as long as we probably would have. After what felt like hours, we finally got our room keys and got on the ship!!

We did our life boat drill and this was the lovely picture we took while we were there! Our room worked out to be great. We decided to go with the "guaranteed balcony", which meant that we might get an obstructed view and we didn't get to pick the location of our room. But we ended up with a great location near the back and we thought it was nice and quiet the whole time. AND it was totally like three floors below the food or three floors above the food, depending on where we ate! Mat and I decided (maybe it was really me deciding) that we were going to take the stairs everywhere in the ship. We actually stuck to this pretty well, except a couple times here and there. So even if we were on the 2nd floor, we still would walk up 8 flights to get to the 10th floor. We figured that might even out all the eating we did. Maybe.

We finally pulled out of the port around 4:30 pm or so, we were off! We would sail for the entire evening and then the next two days before we pulled into our first port. So after we set sail, our cabin stewardess came by our room to introduce herself and see if we needed ice. She was very sweet and always did a great job turning down and making up our room. I think the next few hours we spent just walking around the boat trying to get a feel for where everything was. Our dinner seating was at 8:15, so we headed down a few minutes early and waited with a jillion other people who had the same idea.

Our waiter was awesome! His name was Manuel and he was just the nicest guy. His helper on the ship was polite, but not very friendly. He wasn't mean or anything, but just didn't smile hardly ever and I think wanted to throw Mat off the side of the ship when he would ask for more bread! We did have a table just for two. It was good because we could eat and leave and didn't have to worry about waiting for other people to order and that sort of thing. But it was not so good because we didn't really get to meet anyone since we sat alone. That night I was so excited because they had creme brulee and then it came out and it was not so good. So that was disappointing. After dinner, we headed to get a seat for the first show on the cruise and settled in to see some fabulous entertainment.

The show that night was not too bad, they just had two singers and a handful of dancers that did a few song and dance numbers. Then, they brought out a comedian, Lowell Sanders, who was actually pretty funny. He did an all ages show that night and performed the next day for an R rated crowd. That was just about it for our first day and night on the boat!