Our 2007 spring Carnival Pride cruise was the third for our family in as many years; the two previous to the Pride were on two of Pride's sister ships; the Miracle in 2006 and the Spirit in 2005. Our 13 year old daughter has only known these Spirit class vessels while Dad and Mom have cruised a couple of times prior on different lines (Norwegian and Holland America); those cruises were probably in a wholly different era compared to today's cruise experiences.

The cruise itinerary was to depart from Long Beach, CA and visit Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan and Cabo San Lucas with 3 sea days spread throughout. Our family of three traveled from the Pacific Northwest (Seattle) with the sole purpose of exposure to large quantities of sun, water, sleep, eats and drink; not all at the same time necessarily. As such, there was not much of an attempt to absorb the local cultures as reflected in this review.

We flew into Long Beach the day before the cruise to mitigate any problems from air travel that might happen trying to do the trip on the same day, we made our own flight arrangements. As it turns out, Alaska Airlines provided us with enough atypical delays that we felt this was a good choice. The choice of the Long Beach airport was made to keep Los Angeles car travel to a minimum; not a bad choice. The airport is small, without a lot of comforts but it was as efficient as any others we have been in lately. Read more