The day finally arrived! It is embarkation day!
With my body still on AZ time, I was up and out of bed at 5:30am. It was so nice that Jason’s brother lent us his house because I could go out into the living room and get ready while Jason slept in. I looked outside and… oh nooooo!!!… it was pouring rain! I had been watching the weather forecast for Long Beach all week and it kept changing the prediction about if it would rain or not. This was definitely not the beautiful southern California sunshine I was hoping for!
Ian must have still been on AZ time too because he was awake by 5:45am. Luckily, he could spend the morning playing with his older cousin’s toys so that kept him entertained while we waited to leave.
I made Ian a special shirt on my Cricut for embarkation day:
Jason woke up around 6:30am, so we finished getting dressed and then packed up our bags to get ready to go.
It was still way too early to go to the cruise port, so we called our parents to say goodbye, and we each ate a granola bar as a light breakfast. Soon enough we would be on the cruise ship for 8 days of overstuffing our bellies, so we kept it low key this morning. Finally, at 9:45am, we requested an Uber, and it arrived to pick us up 7 minutes later. We actually went with an Uber XL to make sure we had enough space for all our bags and whatnot, and it only cost $5 more than an Uber X so that was an easy decision. When I did the online check in process, I got the 11:00 to 11:30am arrival window. We were staying about 30 minutes from the cruise port, but we needed a few minutes to install (and uninstall) Ian’s car seat, and we thought it would take a few minutes to load (and unload) the bags into the Uber, so we requested the car a little early to give us some padding.
It was raining lightly when we went outside to wait for the Uber, but luckily it stopped a few minutes later and I don’t think it rained again for the rest of the day (at least not while we were outside!). We dragged all our bags to the curb, trying to avoid the puddles. Our Uber driver was very helpful with getting our luggage into his trunk while Jason installed the car seat and I kept Ian from running into the street. We are always worried about Uber drivers charging us extra fees for needing time to install and uninstall the car seat, so we try to get it done as quickly as possible. Luckily, thus far, our drivers have always been very understanding and are either fathers or grandfathers of young children and are sympathetic to our logistics.
We were all loaded in the Uber and on the road by 10:05am, and our luck continued as there was no traffic on the highway. We spotted our first sight of the Carnival Panorama at 10:22am.
Ian loved looking at the cranes and shipping containers in the port of Long Beach.
Originally, our drop off time was estimated to be 10:35am. As we approached the gates to enter the cruise port, traffic came to a stand-still. We thought there was an accident up ahead because we couldn’t figure out why we stopped moving. Gradually, we were able to roll forward little by little, until we could see the cruise terminal in the distance.
Finally, at 10:45am, we got to the gate to enter the cruise terminal, but there was still a ton of backed up traffic.
We continued to roll along verrrryyy ssslllloooowwwllllyyyy. We reached the parking garage at 10:54am, and it then took another 10 minutes to pull inside and find a spot to park the Uber. Our driver said Uber might charge us for the ride taking nearly double the original time, but I don’t think they did. The ride was originally supposed to take 30 minutes, but my receipt says it started at 9:52am and ended at 11:01am, so it took over an hour!
It was complete pandemonium when we got out of the Uber. There were hundreds of people who had just gotten off the previous cruise and were waiting to be picked up, so they were all crammed in on the sidewalk with their luggage. The people coming to pick them up were probably stuck in all of the traffic that we were in too. After we unloaded our luggage, it was really hard to figure out where to put our checked bags. I ended up leaving Jason and Ian with all the bags while I ran around looking for a porter in the sea of disembarking people. Apparently our Uber dropped us off in the wrong place, so I had to double back to get our bags, then drag them to the far side of the sidewalk area (Jason would have done it but I knew where to go and it was just easier to do it myself rather than try to explain to him where to go). Apparently, there was a different entrance that priority passengers are supposed to use so all the priority bags go on the same big cart to be loaded on the ship together. I don’t know how we could have known that because there weren’t any signs or anything as we pulled into the parking lot. Once I found the right place to go, I handed over our checked bags to the porter and gave him a tip, then went back to find Jason and Ian so we could enter the cruise terminal.
Disclaimer/Rant: Ian is becoming more and more like opinionated every day, and he recently started giving me a hard time when I take his photo. He basically refuses to smile in photos with me and Jason, and he usually yells and turns his head when I try to take a photo of just him. Sometimes I get lucky and snap the photo before he realizes I’m doing it, but there are going to be a lot of photos in this review where Ian looks angry and miserable. He was in a good mood for most of the cruise, but it doesn’t always look that way in the photos. In vacations pre-Ian, Jason and I always asked other travelers to take our photo and it was never a problem. Now, with Ian bordering on a tantrum all the time, it was a lot harder to get good photos together. We did the best we could, but I don’t have nearly as many photos from this cruise as I did on prior cruises. **end rant**
So where were we… oh yes, we walked up to the cruise terminal at 11:10am, smack in the middle of our original assigned arrival window (so all that traffic didn’t matter much, even if it did add a lot of stress).
When we got there, they were letting people from any/all appointment times enter the terminal. That was kind of annoying to hear because I had stayed up late and made sure to check in exactly on time, and basically this meant my efforts were irrelevant. Someone was standing at the door to check our boarding passes, and they directed us to the entrance door for Suites, Diamond, Platinum, and FTTF passengers. Once inside the terminal, we saw that they set up a makeshift check in station for priority passengers with a bunch of little tables and one staff member at each table who used a cell phone to scan our documents. There was just one group ahead of us and then we were directed over to the next available table. Jason and I both have passports and have only ever cruised using passports as our official documentation, but we opted to use Ian’s birth certificate instead of getting him a passport. I know, tisk tisk. I didn’t think of it when we originally booked the cruise, and by the time I realized he doesn’t have a passport, it was too late to get one before the cruise, so we just took the risk and cruised with his birth certificate.
The check in process was very quick and easy, but the guy scanning our documents said something that was a bit strange and concerning… As part of his speech on the embarkation process, he said cabins would be available at 1:30pm. I said that we have FTTF and have access to our cabins as soon as we board the ship, but he insisted that was not true and that I had to wait until 1:30pm to drop off my bags. This man was specifically checking in people with priority, so everyone who he checked in that day all had immediate cabin access. I decided not to argue with him because his opinion didn’t really matter… he was out in the cruise terminal and he wouldn’t be on the ship to stop me from going to my cabin, so I figured I’d fight that battle after we boarded the ship.
Our next stop was the x-ray machines and metal detectors for security. They made us take out our 2 bottles of wine to shake them and look for bubbles. We also had a 12-pack of soda in the same bag, but it was wrapped in a plastic bag in case one of the cans leaked. Interestingly, he didn’t ask us to take out the cans or even to remove the plastic bag to see what exactly the cans were, so for all he knew, we brought on 12 cans of beer! YMMV, but I guess they focus more on the wine bottles than the soda cans.
After security, we entered the waiting area. There were thousands of seats, but it looked like they were all occupied. There was a section for FTTF, but it was very crowded so we just found a spot off to the side to stand and wait. By now, it was 11:30am and it was clear they hadn’t started boarding yet, but we assumed boarding would start soon. So we stood, and we stood, and we stood some more. After a while, people started getting antsy about why boarding didn’t start yet.
Finally at 11:50am, they announced that boarding would start “soon”… and then they announced a few minutes later that boarding was “delayed”. None of the staff in the terminal knew what was going on, and all of the passengers were growing grumpier by the minute. Finally, they started boarding with the Diamonds, Suites, and Platinums at little after 12, and they called for FTTF at 12:15pm. Whew! We are finally going to board the ship… or not! There were so many people packed onto the ramp that zigzags up to the ship and the line moved very slowly.
It was clear something was wrong because this whole embarkation process was not normal, but no one knew any details. It would have been great if they filled us in! We moved very slowly up the ramp to the top level when someone finally came over to explain what happened. There were King Tides all along the west coast this weekend with lots of coastal flooding and massive waves. All day yesterday, my phone kept getting alerts when I used Google Maps that “coastal flooding might impact my route” but I didn’t experience any issues. Even my parents heard about it on the nightly news in Florida, so it made national headlines. Those waves were causing too much movement with the bridge between the ship and the terminal, so they could only allow 15 people on the bridge at one time. That’s why it was so delayed with the prior cruise getting off the ship, and that is why it was taking forever for us to get on the ship. I understand that this was an act of nature and not something within Carnival’s control. The issue was with the lack of information. Knowledge is power, and if they had just made an announcement about what was happening, I think most passengers would have approached things differently. We finally made it to the front of the line, and I took this photo of us crossing the bridge at 1:18pm, exactly 1 hour after they called FTTF to start boarding. I can only assume under normal circumstances, that would be a 10 minute process at most.
So far, FTTF had zero benefits for us since we only first stepped on the ship a few minutes before everyone had access to their cabins. We boarded the ship on deck 4, midship, which was right next to the casino. Since that’s where our muster station was, we decided to take care of self-mustering right then instead of trying to get back there later in the day. It was a very quick process… they scanned our boarding passes, and then showed us how to don a life jacket. They put a wristband around Ian’s ankle for his muster station, and said if it fell off, we could get a replacement from our cabin steward.
We went up to the cabin at 1:30pm, but our bags weren’t there yet. There were several bags outside the doors of other cabins near us, so it was disappointing that our bags weren’t there yet. Especially considering I handed our bags to the porter at 11am, so it was now 2 and a half hours later!
Our sign and sail cards were in a sealed envelope outside our cabin door, so we went in to drop off our carry on bags. The cabin was a standard balcony cabin, much like we have seen on other Carnival ships.
The balcony had one standard upright chair and one chair with an adjustable reclining back, plus a small side table. I appreciated that the safety railing was high enough I never worried about Ian accidentally falling over the railing.
On the desk area, there were plenty of outlets. There were 2 USB outlets, 2 standard US outlets, and 1 European outlet.
There was enough storage for the 3 of us, but it was a tight fit. I imagine we will have more struggles putting all of our stuff away as Ian gets older and his clothes are bigger. I forgot to take a photo of the empty closets before we unpacked, so this is from later in the week… don’t mind all our messy clothes! One of the closets has 4 shelves, 3 drawers, and the safe:
There are 2 closets for hanging clothes. One of them has a removable bar in the middle so you can have an upper and lower hanging bar, or just remove the bottom bar, lift up the shelf, and it becomes another closet with just the one upper hanging bar. I bought this hanging shoe rack a few years ago, and it works great as extra shelves on a cruise:
I also bought an over the door hanging shoe rack to hang on the inside of the bathroom door. This is one of my favorite things to bring on a cruise to keep all the little odds and ends organized:
There was one nightstand with a lamp on each side of the bed. It seemed like a missed opportunity that such a new ship did not have USB ports near the bed. If the nightstands had a lamp, they had a power source nearby, so in a world where people are never more than inches from their phones, there really should have been USB ports in the nightstand. One great feature of these nightstands was that there was a door to access the space inside. This was the perfect laundry basket for the week! Jason put all his dirty laundry in his nightstand, and I shared mine with Ian. This kept our smelly, dirty laundry out of the closet full of clean clothes, and made it very easy to pack at the end of the cruise because all of our laundry was in one spot.
Our cabin steward left us a little message on the mirror:
We were now left with a dilemma. I had assumed we would be on the ship by noon at the latest, and we would drop our bags in the cabin, go get something to eat for lunch on Lido, do our self-muster, and be able to put Ian down for his usual 1pm nap in time. It was now 1:35pm, so clearly all of those original plans were out the window… err, out the balcony door! I knew it was possible to request a crib for the cabin from our steward, but he was no where to be found. I was concerned that there would be a high demand for cribs given that this was a holiday week cruise with lots of families on board, so we also brought our Pack N Play from home just in case we couldn’t get a crib for Ian. I gave it to the porters to check onto the ship because it was too much for us to carry with all our other carry on bags and Ian’s stroller. Silly me, I assumed that FTTF meant our bags would be at the cabin by 1pm in time for Ian’s nap! So with both of our options for Ian’s nap MIA, we decided to go up to Lido for lunch.
I grabbed the copy of the Fun Times from our cabin and started to look at it as we walked to the elevators. It said the Maitre’ D would be at the MDR from 12-2pm for questions and dining concerns. This was ridiculous considering no one was on the ship for the first half of that time, and the vast majority of passengers wouldn’t board until after 2pm. Jason has a few dietary concerns, so we definitely needed to speak to the Maitre’D. Lunch would have to wait, and we made our way down to deck 3 forward to find the MDR. There was no one else in line (likely because no one thought that this had to be their very first stop after boarding!), so I approached the desk. Jason mentioned his dietary concerns so it could be noted in their system. They gave him the option to pre-order his dinner each night for the following day, but he prefers to order in the moment depending on what he is in the mood for. It’s really hard to know a day in advance if you will be very hungry for a big heavy dinner, or still be full from a late lunch and prefer a lighter option. He opted to just order each night like everyone else, and if he had questions about what was in a dish, he could ask the head waiter.
I requested a high chair for Ian, and if possible, that we wanted a table just for the 3 of us because… toddlers. She said we were at a table for 6, sharing with 3 strangers. I really didn’t want to do that because Ian is unpredictable and I didn’t want to be stressed about ruining someone else’s dinner every night if he was in a bad mood. Why on earth would they think that was a good table for us?! She said the other people were older adults, so it wasn’t even like they paired us with another young family with their own unpredictable toddler. I asked to change tables so we could have our own space, and she said she would try and we should check in the app to see if the table number changed closer to dinner time.
With our fingers crossed, we left to get lunch on Lido. It was hectic as it always is on embarkation day, but not nearly as bad as it could have been since so many people had yet to board, and those that were on board had access to their cabins by now so everyone was more spread out around the ship. There was no line at all for Guy’s Burgers, so I got that, and Jason went to the Blue Iguana for tacos. By now, it was 1:50pm and all I had eaten all day was a granola bar at 7am. That burger has never tasted so good!!!
We sat at a table near Guy’s, with a beautiful view of the Long Beach Cruise Terminal dome and the Queen Mary docked next door. Those white puffy clouds in the sky looked like something out of a cartoon! They were so bright and fluffy!
We were desperate to put Ian down for a nap because he was getting cranky, so we went back to the cabin. Unfortunately, our luggage was not there yet, and we still couldn’t find the steward to ask for a crib. Continuing on with our embarkation day errands, we went up to Camp Ocean to get Ian registered. On our way, we took our traditional life ring photos that we take on every cruise. We never ended up getting one of the 3 of us, but at least we each got photos with Ian.
The only way to access Camp Ocean is on deck 11 via the mid-ship elevators. Being newbies, we didn’t know that and used the forward elevators since that was closer to our cabin. It took us a bit of running around the perimeter of camp to find the entrance. We found the playground area and tried to enter that way, but an alarm went off when we opened the door. Oops! Eventually we found the front desk (just aft of the midship elevators), where Lin greeted us and explained the rules and procedures. She gave us a phone to use for the whole cruise in case we needed to contact them or if they needed us or Ian was upset or anything at all. Jason and I affectionately called this the Bat Phone, and had to keep making sure we didn’t lose it through the week. It is quite bulky, like the size of the old Nokia phones from the early 2000’s, so of course it didn’t fit in my little wristlet that I usually carry around the ship. Lin said we would be charged $150 if we lost it, so it was precious cargo!
After Ian was registered and given his name tag, we went inside the play area to show Ian all the toys and make sure he felt comfortable there. He has been going to daycare full time for 2 years, so he is very used to us leaving him to play with his friends, and he knows that “Mommies always come back” and we aren’t abandoning him. Since this was an unfamiliar place with new teachers and new kids to play with, we wanted him to know it was safe and to see us playing there with him, since after this afternoon, we wouldn’t be allowed back there with him.
The camp is one large open space with different sections for each age group. The spaces for the older kids had lots of TVs and video games and places to watch movies.
The space for the penguins was much more simple. It was just a large open space, with a few books and toys on a low shelf that the kids could reach, and some other toys towards the back in big bins.
Lin showed us the bathroom for the kids and suggested that maybe Ian would be potty trained by the end of the week. We just laughed. Like I said, Ian has been in daycare for 2 years. He is used to being around other kids his age, and his classmates right now are nearly all potty trained (Ian’s birthday is close to the cut off, so half of the kids in his class are nearly a year older as they missed the cut off for the 3 year olds room). Now that we are home from the cruise, we will probably start training him soon, but we purposely didn’t start before the cruise so we wouldn’t have to deal with accidents while traveling. Lin must be used to having kids in the camp who are still home with their parents and haven’t been exposed to watching other kids use the bathroom, so the peer pressure motivates them. Not Ian, that’s for sure!
Ian really liked Lin and gave her a big hug when it was time to go. Camp was only open after 10pm tonight for Night Owls, so we told Ian we would bring him back to play tomorrow.
We went back down to the cabin, only to see our luggage STILL wasn’t there. It was now 2:30pm and I was getting nervous. Did they forget to put the bags on the ship?? Someone walked by pushing a dolly full of luggage so I asked if he knew when ours would come, but he didn’t. I did notice that none of the bags on his dolly had priority or FTTF marked on their luggage tags, so again I questioned why I bothered paying for FTTF since it clearly didn’t give us any priority at all. I still didn’t see our steward in the hall, so I called him with the “steward” button on the phone to request a crib for Ian. He answered right away, and said it was no problem and he would bring the crib now. While we waited, I took out the door decorations which were packed in my carry on bag and decorated our cabin door. I have never bothered to do this before, but I wanted Ian to recognize our door in the long hallway of identical doors. I bought a bunch of New Year’s Eve themed decorations and glued tiny magnets to the back so it would stick to the door. I also made a few custom decorations on my Cricut. I was actually quite impressed with the number of people who decorated their cabin doors, and with the elaborate and creative things people did! This was definitely more than I have seen on any of my prior cruises, maybe because it was a holiday cruise?
Our steward’s name was Nino, and he brought the crib around 3pm so Ian finally got to nap. He fell right asleep, poor boy was so tired! Jason also took a nap, and I sat out on the balcony with a view of the gangway bridge. I could see there were still tons of people boarding. There were way more than 15 people on the bridge at once so I guess the waves calmed down with low tide? It looked like the last people boarded around 4pm.
The boys woke up a little after 4pm, and Ian was hungry so we went to the buffet in search of food. It was sooooo crowded! I assume a lot of these people only just got on the ship and were famished because they hadn’t eaten lunch yet. I got a slice of funfetti cheesecake which was just ok, not great.
The lines were way too long everywhere except the general dinner food line so Jason got some pepper steak and sweet potatoes. We didn’t know if Ian would eat it but he did! I was so proud of Ian all week for trying new foods!
As we were finishing eating, we felt the ship vibrating and realized we started to sail away. I ran outside to see a beautiful sunset and views of Long Beach in the distance. The timestamps on these photos are at 4:40pm, so despite all the craziness with the tides and slowing down the embarkation process, we still managed to sail away on time.
We considered going to the sail away party by the Lido Pool but decided against it because the music was very loud and it was too chaotic for Ian. I put my phone into airplane mode and logged into the Carnival Hub app for the first time. I went to check if they changed our dinner table, and I noticed dinner was at 5:30pm, not 6pm. When we booked the cruise, the options were 6pm, 8:15pm, and ATD. When we did online check in 2 weeks ago, it was the same. We originally had ATD because early dining wasn’t available when I booked the cruise over the summer, but I noticed 6pm fixed dining opened up a few days after check in started so maybe people made changes? I grabbed it right away! So when did they change it to 5:30pm?! And why didn’t they tell anyone?! I was so confused. I actually ran down to the MDR to check, and there was a sign outside saying they were closed (not surprisingly) and it listed the dining times as ‘early’ at 5:30pm and ‘late’ at 7:45pm. So weird, but good thing I saw it now!
Side note: I just unpacked our Sign and Sail cards to put them in the little box where I keep the cards from all of our cruises. I just noticed that it actually says our dining time on the card in teeny tiny letters. I went 8 days on the ship and never once noticed that it was printed on our cards, so maybe it’s on me that I didn’t know dinner was at 5:30pm. I never looked that closely at our cards, especially since we were all different colors (I was gold, Jason was red, and Ian was blue) so I didn’t even need to read our names on the cards to tell them apart. It also never occurred to me that I needed to check the cards to know our dining time. I signed up for 6pm dining and just assumed that is what we had.
I went back to the cabin to change for dinner and our luggage still wasn’t there so we went down to the guest services desk. The line wrapped across the entire lobby, but then I remembered we have access to the dedicated priority line from FTTF. There were only like 10 people in that line. We got in line and waited for a bit, but it looked like there was only one staff member helping people from the priority line. It was getting close to our new 5:30pm dinner time so I left Jason and Ian in line and ran back to the cabin one last time to get Ian’s diaper bag and our bags were finally there! Over 6 hours after we gave it to the porter! Is that seriously what they consider express luggage service?! By the time I could have gone down to deck 3, grabbed the boys from the guest services line, gotten back to the cabin, gotten myself and Ian changed (sorry Jason, you need to get yourself changed!), then gotten back down to deck 3 to the MDR, we would have been very late for dinner, so we just stayed in our daytime clothes for the evening. This is the first time I have ever had to do that.
We had 10 minutes to kill before they opened the doors to the MDR, so we found a couch in the lobby to sit and watch the patterns on the funnel. I loved this feature of the atrium and looked forward to seeing what new designs and themes it had each time we passed through.
At 5:30pm, the doors opened for dinner, and tons of people walked in, so I guess they got the memo about the earlier dinner time. We still had the shared table assigned in the Hub app, so one of the waiters greeting us as we entered the lobby escorted us to the table and we met our assigned table mates. It was an older couple and their middle-aged daughter, and they said they thought they were sitting with the rest of their family. I’m guessing they didn’t know to link their dinner reservations because obviously they were assigned to different tables. I went back to the Maitre’D, and this time there was a different man there. I explained our situation and he looked at his screen for a minute and found us a new table. I’m not sure why no one did that for us earlier in the afternoon to avoid the awkwardness of going to our original table, but oh well. One of the waiters escorted us to our new table, all the way at the back of the dining room, right near the doors to the midship elevators. It was one of the dreaded long banquettes where the tables are all inches apart from each other, and they pushed all the tables closer together to squeeze Ian’s high chair to the side of our tiny table for 2. The table next to us was 2 tables for 2 pushed together, which would be enough space for 4 people, but they had 3 chairs along the outside of the table, making it a table for 5 people. The waiter looked at it and said no, that is the wrong way to set their table, and he pulled one of the 3 chairs to the far side of the table, thus needing to push the other tables down on that side of the banquette even closer together because now both Ian and one of the people from their table had to fit in the space normally used for walking between the tables to sit on the banquette. Honestly, this was ridiculous and there really wasn’t space to do this, but at least it meant we sort of had our own table. I just realized I never got a photo of our set up, so hopefully my description gives you a good enough idea.
Once we were seated, we requested a kid’s dinner menu. I did think it was weird that they didn’t bring it automatically when they brought over the high chair (In fact, we had to ask for it every night as they never automatically gave it to us. By night 3, we realized the kids menu never changes, so we just referred to my photo of it. Ian is still too young to care about coloring or the activities in the menu, but if he enjoyed it, we would have had to ask every single night for him to have a paper copy of the menu.)
Our head waiter, Raf, took Ian’s dinner order and asked his assistant, Eva, to run down to the galley right away and grab Ian’s food. This was the single best act of service that we received for the entire cruise. Every single night, Raf prioritized Ian getting his food ASAP and made sure Ian was happy and well fed. We really appreciated this, because when he gets hungry, he gets HANGRY and everyone else in the MDR would know it! It also meant we could feed him and get him settled before our food came out, so when we did get our food, we could eat it while it was still hot. Unsure of the portion sizes and if Ian would like the food, we ordered Ian both the cheese pizza and the chicken nuggets with fries. It came out on two plates (obviously), so we combined them to save space on our tiny table for 2.
Ian loved both entrees, and he couldn’t decide what to eat first!
Parenting disclaimer: We designated one of Jason’s old android phones to be Ian’s phone. It doesn’t have cell service anymore, but we load videos on the microSD card and only take it out in restaurants to keep Ian calm. We understand that we have certain things we like to do, but those things aren’t always the most exciting for toddlers. Ian has joined us at restaurants since he was 2 months old, and he is usually well-behaved, but after a while, he gets bored of watching all the people nearby, being contained in a high chair, and playing with whatever toys I packed in his diaper bag, and he needs some extra stimulation. That’s when we take out the phone. We allowed Ian to watch movies during dinner every night of the cruise because we know MDR dinners are long, and we didn’t want to be forced to eat in the buffet every night of the cruise when we usually enjoy the MDR experience. Ian does not have nearly this much screen time at home, but it’s his vacation too and we wanted him to be happy. I know screen time can be a controversial parenting topic, but this is how we chose to handle the situation. **end disclaimer**
Each day, the MDR menus are posted in the Hub app. Actually, you can scroll through and see the menus for the entire cruise starting on day 1, but for simplicity, I will just post them day by day. They do have a limited number of paper menus, which is especially helpful for people who cannot read the small print on a phone, but you need to ask the waiter to get it for you. It is not given out automatically like it used to be. These menus are fairly new for Carnival. They just rolled them out last year, and while they added a bunch of new options, they also kept some of the original options from our prior cruises. I felt this was a good balance of the old and the new, and I was able to find something to order every night. I will admit there were multiple times that I only liked the sound of one appetizer or one entree, whereas I am used to having trouble narrowing down my choices because so many things looked good to me. The new menu has many more spicy dishes, and I have zero tolerance for spicy food so that eliminated a lot of options for me.
For my appetizer, I ordered the roasted duck rolls. These were one of the new options and I really liked them. It caught me off guard that they were served cold, but I enjoyed it.
Meanwhile, the people at the table for 5 sitting next to us (inches away) were having some crazy family drama. Grandma stormed off after eating her appetizer, and the teenaged daughter was literally sobbing and crying for half the meal. It felt like a crazy reality show or something, and while it was definitely entertaining, it was so awkward for us! At least Ian was a champ, and for once, he wasn’t drawing all the attention.
For my entree, I ordered the pappardelle with braised lamb. It was very tasty and served as hot as it should be, but it was comical that there were literally only 3 small shreds of lamb in the entire dish. I was glad the duck appetizer was filled with protein because this entree was definitely not!
I ordered the cheesecake with strawberry sauce for dessert. It was good, and much better than the funfetti cheesecake I had for a snack earlier in the day.
We finished dinner at 7pm and I went back to unpack in the cabin. It was so annoying to first be starting that process so late in the day, but it is what it is. I told Jason to take Ian for a walk around the ship so I could have the space to open up the big suitcases and get everything stashed away without Ian being under foot. I also wanted to set up the space for Ian to sleep. I bought some small magnetic hooks and 4 panels of 8 foot long black out curtains. Each night and for afternoon naps, we hung up the curtains from the ceiling using the magnetic hooks to create a separate room for Ian. We made sure to keep the curtains away from the air vent and the sprinkler on the ceiling. The curtains were a little too long, so if I were to do it again, I would get 7 foot curtains instead. We made it work though, and it did work very well. It was very dark inside “Ian’s room” (as he called it), and we could turn on the lamps on our bedside table, or the bathroom light, and Ian wasn’t disturbed. We just had to remember not to turn on the overhead lights because one of the lights was inside Ian’s room.
It’s not the best photo because it was too dark, but this will give you an idea of our set up:
We skipped all of the evening activities on the ship that night, and just got ready for bed, put Ian to bed, and then we went to bed early after a long day.
Up next: Sea Day #1
Dana's Destination Diary 