Carnival Pride - Day 3 - Sea Day (Part 1)

I woke up earlier than Joni this morning so I took advantage of an empty bathroom to grab a shower. I tried watching the morning show on our cabin TV while Joni showered but only that channel had no sound this morning. I may or may not have amused myself by making up my own dialogue. Once we were both up and dressed, we headed to the buffet for a quick breakfast. I never noticed until today how they double the space for bins of food choices by having a second row only accessible by asking the crew to scoop it out for you. Wonder if it was a coincidence that the item choices in that back row were the prized items like bacon? I ended up with a plate of pancakes, French toast, and bacon so I was ready to pour on the syrup. Hmm, a silver pitcher unlabeled, and a silver pitcher labeled as honey. I didn't want to take the chance on pouring something that wasn't maple syrup from the unlabeled pitcher all over my food so I opted for the bottle next to it of sugar free syrup. I told Joni about the pitchers and she said of course that other pitcher was regular syrup. When she went to get her own food, a lady asked her what was in the same pitcher. She told her it was syrup but the lady was so unsure, she told Joni to pour some onto her own plate and show her it really was syrup. Joni refused but politely pointed out the small ceramic cups they had above the syrup for pouring out some to keep separate before walking away. On the plus side, the sugar free syrup tasted just as good as the regular syrup.

The next clue was scheduled to be at the Seaside Theater (a.k.a. where we watched and I slept through our Dive In Movie last night) so we figured we'd multitask and hang out in the area checking out the 2/$20 Tshirt (or 5/$50) sale being held in front of the stage. They offered everyone a raffle ticket just for showing up and the winner of that drawing won two free shirts. When I spotted one shirt I liked, the crew member monitoring the table insisted I pick a second shirt or else they'd be $16.95 each. I thought they used to be more like $12-$15 each or was that only Princess? Joni ended up picking out 3 shirts and insisted on purchasing my two shirts at the same time so it would qualify for the 5/$50 price. I offered to give her cash to pay back for mine but she said to forget it since I paid for the cabana. I liked that these weren't all port specific shirts but I passed on some of the designs because they said Carnival on them. I did pick out one for Half Moon Cay and of course was fine with that one saying Carnival. I went for the largest size offered as souvenir shirts usually run small but one of the ladies of similar build tried on a large sized shirt and it fit just fine. To hold mine up looks like it could be a nightshirt on me but I wore one the other day and it was just roomy enough to look flattering on my figure.

We moved on with our purchases to sit at one of the picnic tables but soon became concerned when the time for the Clue was getting closer and no one had showed up to the stage. I noticed that on the movie screen, they started projecting the morning show with Leigh. On the busy pool deck, you can't hear the low volume of the morning show so as the time for the clue came and went, I moved over to stand by the screen. It turns out what they meant by Seaside Theater was that the clue reveal was going to be displayed on the morning show broadcast. Thankfully they not only said the suspect etc that was to be eliminated but also showed the giant cards with the name so I was able to go back and relay the answer to Joni who'd remained at the table. By then I was just PLUM tired of the noisy deck as we'd missed out on morning trivia waiting on the clue.

We headed back up to the cabin to drop off our purchased shirts and found that Purwanto had gotten an early start finishing our cabin by 10AM. Another morning towel animal greeted us and after we each took pictures, we decided to thwart our steward's attempts to replace the daily animal and hid him on top of my suitcase in the closet.

Seas this day were a little rocky so Bronty started out surfing the waves. 

Joni wanted to see what the "Creativity At Sea" activity was about so back down to our frequent location of the Piazza Café we went. It turned out to be making masquerade style masks complete with tiny bottles of glue that looked like the old puffy paint bottles. Once we figured out how to even open the glue bottles, it was horrendous to try and squeeze any out of the bottle. I went with the more practical approach and upturned the cone shaped nozzle to use as a scooper for the glue. Fun squad member Aisha was hosting this activity so she came around to each table and dumped a handful of each colorful item (sequins, feathers, gems) for everyone to share. When I saw what the craft was, especially since the band to hold the mask on one's head was super short, I told Joni that I'd decorate mine with a little boy in mind so she could give both of them to her sons. You can definitely tell looking at them both together which of us had the weird looking project in art class and who obviously had the creative touch. Who knew my toughest critic would be Joni's youngest who pouted momentarily when his older brother chose Joni's mask first without ever being told whose was whose.

Cool that they had actual craft kits made for Carnival

Here we observe the rare species of super organized crafter in her native habitat with her lined up materials so that she could "be able to see all my choices"

I started out going for a pattern around the eyes but then it morphed into this sort of birdman meets hidden mickey motif

Ahh, the crafter comes up for air to show off her masterpiece!

After we were done crafting, Joni wanted to attend the Diamond and Gemstone Seminar in hopes of winning something else. We went to the Butterflies lounge for the scheduled 11:30AM time but the newly engaged shopping experts who were hosting the talk stopped us at the door to explain that they'd postponed the start of the talk until 12:15PM because as they phrased it "The captain wants to make an announcement at 12PM about your cruise." Hmm, yes the captain always came on at noon to give an update of where we currently were etc. Why is this one so special? We headed back out into the Piazza Café to wait. The captain came on the intercom right around noon to announce that due to yesterday's medical emergency, we have to alter our route and skip Grand Turk in favor of the closer port of Nassau. As a result since Nassau was so much closer to our next port of Half Moon Cay, instead of having to leave Grand Turk at 2PM, we could stay in Nassau until 5:30PM. During the cruise and after returning home, I heard through reports from fellow cruisers that the medical emergency call we'd heard yesterday was dire enough for the captain to start changing course in order to try and meet up with the Coast Guard for a transfer. Unfortunately, that transfer never happened because the passenger passed away. By then, we had gone too far off course to make it to Grand Turk in time so we detoured to the nearest port of Nassau. Hence our Caribbean/Bahamas cruise has now turned into an all Bahamas cruise.

We returned to the Butterflies lounge for the gemstone seminar and took our chances putting in raffle tickets to win the tanzanite jewelry pieces on display. The talk was surprisingly well attended but honestly, I was bored out of my mind as this was something I'd not normally have chosen to attend. Joni was even regretting deciding to come after a while because the rough seas and being in this lounge was doing a number on her stomach. The shopping expert Salvatore talked on and on about gemstones and alternated between his passion for them and his passion for his new fiancé and fellow shopping expert Trina. Every other comment seemed to reference how beautiful Trina would look in each gemstone piece he was describing. They'd altered the seminar to also feature a quick introduction to port shopping now in Nassau and Salvatore talked so long about gemstones that he sped up like the Energizer Bunny to fit a whole lecture about Nassau shops in the last 15 minutes of his allotted hour. That may rank up there with the longest most boring hour I've ever spent on a cruise ship. While we didn't get picked to win any of the jewelry, we collected our cards to redeem in Nassau for free tanzanite earrings and filled out the forms for each of us to win a $2,500 Carnival gift certificate toward a future cruise. The contest runs until December so here's hoping one of us is sitting here at Christmas time planning how to best use that money.

Due to the long winded Salvatore and the later start time, we missed getting to play Trivial Pursuit and seeing the Dr. Seuss Parade Joni had wanted to check out. We instead returned to the cabin only to be stopped by our steward Purwanto who warned Joni that she needed to return her rented blanket from last night or risk getting charged. Joni told Purwanto that she did in fact return the blanket before we ever left the pool deck last night and saw the crew member cross off a cabin number from the list as she did so. Purwanto said he'd make a call and ask them to check again. 

We headed next up to the pool deck to grab Guy's fries and Blue Iguana tacos for lunch. Joni figured out while getting her tacos that they had guacamole in a squeeze bottle behind the counter and you have to ask them to add it. Pretty much anything else you could want for a topping is self serve at the toppings bar.

It's Taco Tuesday!

Joni headed over to the pool deck towel counter to double check on the blanket rental and spoke to a manager who promised to look into it. We kept an eye on Joni's account summary throughout the cruise and a blanket charge never showed up. No further word about it from Purwanto either. It soon started to sprinkle rain and it was funny listening to the DJ start playing songs like "I've got sunshine on a cloudy day." We watched from our covered picnic table seats as the sky opened up into more of a downpour and the mass exodus of pool loungers began. We soon spotted another group of candidates for the drink package when a 20 something young woman was trying to follow the crowd and fell on her bum on the wet deck. She was feeling no pain by then and went right to laughing said bum off. Her friends with drinks in hand came up shortly and started laughing at her so hard they nearly fell over themselves. Thankfully she hopped right back up and kept on laughing as she walked away. 

Back down to the Piazza Café where the rain had sent a larger crowd than usual to join us for Slogans themed trivia. We decided to stay put for the Gotcha! game and Actor's Trash trivia where you were given 3 items unique to 3 projects the actor had done and had to name the actor. It threw me at first because I thought the 3 projects all had to be movies which made some of the clues not fit the celebrity like they should. If I'd have known we could also include TV shows, we would have gotten a lot more correct and not lost once again by only one point!

With time to kill between trivia sessions and wanting to make sure we still had seats for each one, I used the Carnival Hub app to look up possible excursions for our new Nassau port. I'd been to Nassau a few times before so Dad and I have crossed over into the "don't bother to get off" group. Joni's one visit to Nassau before turned into that not by choice because none of her family wanted to get off choosing kids club activities and a movie instead. Joni had mentioned wanting to check out the aquarium at Atlantis so I showed her some of the excursion choices that included Atlantis. She didn't like any of the choices so I switched gears to looking at whether any of the choices were unique or different than the generic city tours or beach breaks. I showed Joni the Nassau Native Quest excursion and she was just as interested to try this scavenger hunt challenge themed city tour. I avoided the long line at Shore Excursions desk by booking it directly from the app for both of us. Upon seeing the booking confirmation on the app and the charge to my account summary, I saw the notice that said our tickets would be delivered to our cabin.

After hanging out to watch several teams play Speak Out, the game where you put a piece of plastic in your mouth and your team tries to guess what nonsense phrase you're now mumbling, we headed back to our cabin to get changed for dinner. We discovered that our tickets were already there waiting in our mailbox.