We sailed out of Baltimore on the Carnival Pride on October 31, 2010. My wife and I had been on 28 cruises and were sailing with three other couples who had all sailed on at least six cruises. The ship is beautiful, friendly staff, and lots of activities. Let me hit the two negative points first because they were significant.

Carnival's "Your Time" dining leaves a lot to be desired. Regardless of what they tell you and how they advertise it, it is terrible. Carnival has no reservation system. If you plan to eat between about 6:45 and 8:15, you can count of a waiting time of 45 minutes to an hour. We finally got the maitre d' to assign us a set time at the late seating. Norwegian and Princess both have outstanding reservation systems and it wouldn't take much for Carnival to implement a similar system.

The second negative point was the return to Baltimore. The Pride simply cannot make it back to Baltimore in the day and a half they have allocated from Freeport, Bahamas. Our original schedule identified an arrival time of 9:00 AM. Three months before the cruise they changed it to 10:00 AM. We arrived back at 11:15. We were driving so it did not affect us, but I suspect there were quite a few cruisers who had trouble with their plane reservations. We waited two hours to embark because the previous cruise got in late and, talking to the staff in the terminal, this is a standard occurrence. Peolple were still disembarking at 1:00 PM. Read more