This morning I woke up and went to the lounge for breakfast – only to find the lounge closed. Luckily one nice person told me the front desk will provide a voucher for breakfast in the restaurant by the lobby.
The buffet in the restaurant by the lobby wasn’t much different than upstairs in the lounge, except no scrambled eggs pre-cooked and they also had an omelet station. Oh and no English muffins downstairs, so I made toast to make a breakfast sandwich with eggs and bacon. The bacon was nice and crispy, definitely the best part of the breakfast.
I went back to the room and repacked all my stuff, making sure to put the wine bottles in the carry on. I ordered the Uber and it wasn’t too pricey, and I was going to arrive a few minutes after my 10:30-11:00 AM appointment, but I wasn’t too worried.
The traffic near the Queen Mary and the cruise terminal was intense, mostly because there was only two gates to take tickets to enter the port area. I wasn’t too worried as I had an early boarding time.
When I arrived at the terminal they were letting all people regardless of their check in time to check in. They did require a face mask inside the cruise terminal building. The check in process was pretty quick, and once through security there was a large area inside the geodesic dome cruise terminal with seating and four arcade games.
Apparently the cruise terminal was originally the hangar for Howard Hughes’ Spruce Goose. It was just a large open area with a lot of benches to allow people to sit and wait to get on the ship. Since they hadn’t started boarding yet I was glad I didn’t arrive right at 10:30 AM.
Soon they called my boarding group, B02 and I was in the queue to walk up the ramp to get on the ship. The ramp was inside the terminal and then there was a quick facial recognition kiosk to board the ship. Really quick and then I walked across the long level gangway to the ship. This bridge was open air and I took some photos of the ship and the Queen Mary from the gangway.
Once onboard they quickly corralled us to our muster station. Once I was there I watched the quick presentation on how to wear the life vest. It was much quicker and easier than pre-COVID where we always had to queue up outside by the lifeboats together. It takes a lot more man hours for this type of demonstration, but it is significantly more guest friendly.
The Carnival App also has a safety demonstration. I recorded a video of it below:
After the safety demonstration I headed directly to Guy’s Burger Joint for a Funderstruck Nacho Burger. It was pretty good and I couldn’t really finish all of it.
I found a nice shady place to sit outside by the pool while I waited for the cabin to be ready at 1:30. It wasn’t that long of a wait and I took a few pictures while I was waiting.
At 1:30 PM I went to my cabin and took some photos and a video. It was actually quite large, so despite not having a balcony it was quite nice.
After dropping off all of my stuff I started to explore the ship as well as take more photos of Long Beach, the cruise terminal and the Queen Mary.
While I was waiting for the sailaway I wandered around the ship and took more photos. The pizzeria was outside on the back of the ship on the Lido deck.
The funnel was in the center of the ship and the display constantly changed.
The Havana Bar was in the back of the ship.
I assumed the ship would turn south fairly quickly, however Long Beach was directly behind the ship. I had thought of mounting the GoPro on the port side, however I mounted it on the rear of the ship. This was certainly the correct decision as the ship sailed straight out of the port.
I enjoyed the sail away from the back of the ship. It was quieter and had the best view. I took a few last photos of land.
I had dinner in the main dining room tonight.
I decided to try the chicken quesadilla despite it not being very good on the Carnival Pride and the braised beef for the main.
The chicken quesadilla was much better this time, I could actually taste chicken. And the braised beef was very tender.
For dessert I had the Carnival chocolate melting cake with some vanilla ice cream. It was very warm and melty, but it was just too rich for my taste, even with the ice cream chaser.
After dinner I went to the Liquid Lounge for the welcome aboard show. The Cruise Director was really good and the performers were really good as well.
After the show I wandered around to the bars. Eventually some people showed up to the disco set up in the comedy club, but my feet were still hurting from yesterday and not wearing comfortable shoes, so I decided to call it a night.
I started to render the time lapse of today’s departure, but I fell asleep before I could check on it.
Today’s timeline:
