To my credit, I wondered only one time (out loud) today how much they would charge me to get off this ship. Of course, we were still docked in Galveston when I said it. But thinking it to myself? Many times. Many, many times. We are definitely not in Kansas any longer.
It didn’t help that it was a rainy day in Galveston. G, after spending Friday afternoon walking around the island and seeing the motorcycle congestion along The Strand, fretted about what traffic would be like today with several cruise ships in port. He was right to worry; it was a mess. As a result, we ordered a Lyft at 9am to take us to the ship. We then stood in line outside the terminal building until 10am, and in a series of stand up and sit down lines until we were finally on the ship just after 11:30am. We actually had to be patted down behind a screen by TSA because we were so late booking this cruise. That was a first for us on a cruise.
Once we got on the ship, we immediately got separated in the throngs of people. That began over an hour of trying to contact each other again with no cell service inside the ship and no internet. There is a chat feature on the app, called the Carnival Hub, but to log into it we needed our folio numbers, which would be on our ship cards…which we wouldn’t be receiving until 1:30pm. (BTW, the chat feature costs $5pp per cruise, the first money we spent onboard).
Also unavailable until we had our folio number: the ship map on the app, and there were no paper copies available (which I understand, but…). Therefore, we spent the first hour on board looking for each other and being swept along in masses of people with no idea where we were going, making me feel not unlike a fish in a school of fish at the whims of currents.
But we both finally had the same idea, to go up on the ship until we reached an outer deck and, standing under overhangs in the pouring rain, could call each other. I was, frankly, relieved to see a familiar face in this mass of humanity.
It was 1:30pm by then, and cabins were available, so we went to ours (like a little broom closet, but cool and ultra quiet, all by itself), and found our ship cards. Or at least we found one ship card, in a sealed envelope, with the name of the lady (Angela) who must have just cancelled this cruise as G was on the phone with iCruise. We were able to open our cabin door and store our carry ons without opening the envelope, and G went to stand in a mile long line at Guest Services (he had to first ask where it was, because, again, no cards, no folio numbers, no app, no ship map, on and on) to turn in her card and get ours. I unpacked what I could and waited for him in the cabin, afraid to risk venturing out and never seeing him again.
Finally we were set with cards and folio numbers and logged into the app and signed up for the chat feature. G was starving, so we walked to the back of the ship (our cabin is at the front) to a BBQ restaurant called the Pig and Anchor, except only the outside part was open then and we got some food and then had to walk through water pouring off the roof to get to a table and as we sat down, G looked at me and said, “ I have drain water in my food” and that’s when I wondered how much they would charge me to get off the ship.
That was probably G’s low point. He thought the food was quite good, and I got some chicken and coleslaw and we sat at the outside table and watched the rain coming down and were at least happy to be away from the throngs of people. And the noise. The decibel level on this ship is off the charts. Everywhere. All the time.
We went back to our cabin to find that our luggage had been delivered. I unpacked minimal things and left even my moderately dressy clothes in my suitcase. Hey, we don’t know these people. I’m not dressing up all week! The room is really tiny, probably tied with the Norwegian Sky as the smallest inside cabin we’ve ever had, but it has good storage and a nice bathroom and a really roomy shower with a door. And it’s nearly new and pristinely clean.
But some things are just silly. The telephone is mounted on a wall under a big shelf so you can’t read the quick dial labels because there’s no light. Ditto the safe. I have to keep my iPhone handy just for the flashlight.
My low point was definitely dinner. We were originally assigned 8:15pm dining but G, on his trip to the front desk, got us a 5:30pm table for two in the Atlantic Dining Room. G looked at me 5 minutes after we had been seated and told me I looked shell shocked. I was.
This dining room is dark, and looks just like a Howard Johnson’s restaurant in 1972. There are no tablecloths (no tablecloths! I still can’t take it in!). The chairs look like what my parents had at their kitchen table, also in 1972. We were seated 3 inches away from another couple, who didn’t say a word to each other or to us the entire meal. I kind of understood. G and I had to yell to hear each other across the table. I used my iPhone to check. The decibel level never dropped below 88 the entire meal.
We had two or three waiters. I lost count. One brought butter, another brought a breadstick, another brought water. Our menus were on the app. I had shrimp cocktail (four tiny shrimp), a Caesar salad and dry salmon from which I scraped Emeril’s BBQ sauce. G had a salad and chicken breast. This is truck stop food and atmosphere. It’s certainly not fancy and it’s not plentiful but I guess you’re supposed to fill yourself up with fried food at one of the other restaurants on board. I thought longingly of Peter and Matthew and our table for two by a window in the Concerto Dining Room.
But the real treat was when I saw lights on the walls of the restaurant start to change colors and someone announced it was show time and people cheered and applauded and they stopped dinner service (please, can I have my entree first?) and the waiters danced around wearing flamenco jackets and the little girl at a table near us was so excited she stood on a chair and danced and people clapped and the lights flashed and changed colors and the couple next to us never stopped eating their salads or even looked up, and, Lord have mercy, this is a different kind of cruise.
We went to one of two comedians performing last night, skipped production show Dear Future Husband (will we get a chance to see it again? I have no idea but my head was about to explode and I was in full retreat by 9pm).
And when we got to our room, that’s when G noticed a placard on the shadowy shelf above the shaded telephone that we are in a Cloud9 Spa Cabin and that entitles us to use the thermal suite in the spa for free. And we had seen it earlier in the day as it is right around the corner from our cabin. It’s like The Enclave on the Regal but the steam rooms, showers and sauna are much better and the locker room lockers actually lock, and there are Sanctuary-type padded loungers in addition to the heated stone loungers. This changes everything.
I remember the agent at iCruise telling us our cabin was a Cloud9 Spa Cabin but that meant nothing to us at the time and we never thought of it again until last night. We just wanted a cabin. Apparently we also get 20% to 40% off all spa treatments on port days, not that I see us using that, but I’m going to live at the thermal suite.
And that was our first day on our first Carnival cruise. We survived, and I’ll see how things feel in the morning. All I know is that it’s a long swim back to Galveston, getting longer by the minute.