Normally, I organize these trip logs chronologically, with one web page for each day. For this log, I'm doing things differently. This page will be about the cruise in general, and the other three pages will describe our adventures at each port of call. You can read the pages in any order you choose.
Our cruise was on Carnival Cruise Line. The Carnival cruise terminal is housed in what used to be the home of the Spruce Goose (w), the giant wooden airplane built by the Hughes Aircraft Company. It's a huge dome shaped building, perfect for marshalling huge crowds of people:
Note the model of the Spruce Goose hanging from the ceiling.
While waiting for our turn to board, I noticed a lot of couples and groups wearing matching t-shirts. Carnival, apparently, has a reputation as a "party" cruise line, and we certainly saw plenty of partying.
Our ship was the Carnival Panorama. As we walked out on the loading ramp to board the ship, I took this picture:
The ship is huge. On the dock are several luggage carts loaded with suitcases, and in the lower right corner is the entrance where the luggage is loaded. Several lifeboats hang from the side of the ship. The ship's name is spelled out in large letters near the top. A large funnel, shaped like a whale's tail, and painted red, white and blue, rises above the top deck.
As we got closer, I took this picture of the lifeboats. Believe it or not, each of those boats can hold over 300 passengers!
The lifeboats are painted white and bright orange, and are attached to mechanisms which can lower them into the water.
The ship is 1059 feet long, which is a little over the length of three football fields. Our cabin was near the front of the ship, and I took this picture looking down the corridor, to give an idea of the size:
The corridor is narrow, and appears to stretch out endlessly.
As I've mentioned in previous trip logs, a cruise ship is essentially a floating luxury hotel, with all kinds of amenities. This ship had it all - restaurants, bars, a casino (I lost $100 one night and never went back), a spa (Terry went one day to get her hair done), pools (we brought bathing suits, but never went), gift shops (including a candy store), games, shows, live musicians, an internet cafe, an art gallery, and probably more that I'm not remembering now. If you're bored, it's your own fault!
One of the first things we had to do, after getting settled into our cabin, was to attend a brief safety lecture - in case of an emergency, where to go and what to do. "What to do" turned out to be to grab a life jacket from under the bed, put it on, and go to a designated location and await further instructions.
That done, we went to one of the many bars on board for a drink. Near the center of the ship is an atrium, three decks high. The customer service desk is there, and there's a fancy bar in the middle:
The bar is circular. From the center of the circle, a large column stretches upward to the ceiling, three decks above. The column flares outward near the top, where it's as large around as the bar below. The surface of the column displays a continuously changing series of coloful images. In this picture, the images are of pink and white flowers against a bright blue background.
The cruise started out with a near disaster. The ship operates on a cashless basis. Every passenger has a card, the size of a credit card, which serves as a room key, as well as a charge card to charge all onboard expenses to your room. So I went to the bar to get Terry a drink, and I handed the bartender my card, and he ran the charge and handed me back my card, and I took the drink to Terry, and then went back to our cabin. But when I got there, my card wouldn't open the door. I looked at the card, and saw that it had someone else's name - the bartender had handed me someone else's card!
Fortunately, I happened to remember what the guy who had been standing next to me at the bar looked like. When I got back to the atrium, as I approached the customer service desk, I saw the guy talking to one of the cruise staff - and he was as glad to see me as I was to see him!
The day we left happened to be the last day of Daylight Savings Time, so our iPhones automatically switched back to Standard Time at 2:00 AM. But the next morning, we discovered that the ship was still on Daylight Time! So every time I looked at my phone for the time, I had to add an hour. I eventually just reset the time on my phone to agree with ship's time.
Our cruise director was a British gentlman named Marty. We heard from him every day; he would frequently come on the ship-wide public address system with announcements, and would always sign off by saying "Ciao for now!"
The first day of the cruise was spent at sea; the second, third and fourth days were each spent at a port of call; then there were two more days at sea. On sea days, it's interesting to look out at the expanse of water. There's an old joke: "Wow, look at all that water!" "Yeah, and that's only the top!" Corny, yes, but true - all that water is only just the top, and there's a whole lot more underneath. That, combined with the expanse of sky above, can make a person feel kind of small.
This picture shows a vast expanse of water stretching off to the horizon. Above the water is an equally vast expanse of sky.
The ship had two swimming pools. One was at the very back (or "aft") of the ship:
The pool is rectangular, surrounded by an oval shaped pool deck. On either side of the pool are two hot tubs. Behind the pool, in two semicircles, are a large number of blue lounge chairs and red beach umbrellas. Behind them you can see the ocean stretching out to the horizon, and the wake of the ship.
...and one on the Lido deck. This was a major center of social life on the cruise. Every day those lounge chairs were filled with sunbathers. The big screen was used for showing movies at night, and announcements (featuring Marty) during the day. Also, several of the restaurants and snack bars were located on this deck.
The pool is the same shape as the one described above, and it also has two hot tubs on the side. It's surrounded by four semicircles of lounge chairs, but no umbrellas.
And speaking of restaurants... By my count, there were no less than eighteen eating establishments on board, ranging from pizza and burgers to gourmet meals. Many of the restaurants were free (well, included in the fare, which isn't quite the same thing), but there were also several that were an additional cost. Most nights, we had dinner in the main dining room, the Vista Restaurant:
A large, open plan dining room, two decks high, with additional seating around the outside edges of the upper deck.
This restaurant featured a three course menu every night, and also provided additional entertainment - singing and dancing waiters and waitresses:
Waiters dressed in fancy red, white and blue costumes dancing in the dining room aisles.
A waitress singing.
We were entertained by singers three times. One was the young woman seen in the above picture - I don't remember what she sang, but she was good. Another gentleman sang Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline," which was fine, except that every time he came to the words "Sweet Caroline," everyone in the dining room belted out "BA BA BAAAAA" in a variety of keys.
The third singer was the best - a woman who sang an excellent rendition of "River Deep, Mountain High." The only trouble was that on that night, we were sitting in a section of the dining room where we couldn't see her.
Also, one night we were treated to a live public marriage proposal - she said yes, of course.
Of course, we weren't able to sample every eating establishment on the ship, but we did manage to hit several of them - the free ones, mostly. We had sandwiches from the Carnival Deli, burgers from Guy's Burger Joint (one of three restaurants on board by celebrity chef Guy Fieri), coffee and pastries from JavaBlue Cafe, and pizza from Pizzeria del Capitano. Most days, we had breakfast in the Lido Marketplace, a buffet restaurant. And one night, Terry and I and Guillermo splurged on an additional cost meal at Bonsai Sushi.
And as if that isn't enough, they also have room service, special meals for kids, and cooking demonstrations (we never went to any).
Opportunities for entertainment are all over the place. There are games:
An open air area on an upper deck, with pool tables, a small miniature golf course, and a large floor mat with tic-tac-toe grids.
A basketball court, surrounded by netting to keep the balls from going overboard.
For the more energetic types, there were a variety of exercise machines, and a walking/jogging track - five times around the track was one mile.
There was a sky ride, in which you sit in a sort of open sided gondola suspended from an overhead track, and pedal your way around the track:
Two riders, one in a blue gondola and one in a red one.
There were two water slides:
The two slides, one red and one blue, tower over the upper deck.
You go down the blue slide lying on your back, and you go down the red slide in an inner tube. One afternoon, I tried both slides. When I went down the blue one, I got water up my nose when I hit the bottom. When I hit the bottom on the red one, I fell out of the tube and banged my head on the side of the tube. I decided that I'm getting too old for such things.
For the REALLY adventurous, there's a ropes course:
Notice how the person in the picture is walking on a pair of ropes strung between two aerial platforms. He's also holding on to other ropes above him, and if you look closely, you can see that he's strapped into a harness that slides along the railing above him. So he's in no real danger of falling; if his foot slips off the ropes, he'll hang suspended from the railing, and he can get his footing back.
Now, I've mentioned in other trip logs that I'm scared of heights. Still, I think it's a good idea to challenge yourself from time to time. On various occasions in the past, I've successfully overcome my fears. I've done ziplining, and I've walked across shaky rope bridges in the rain forest canopy of Costa Rica, so I could do this - or so I thought.
As you can see in the picture, the course consists of several segments. In some of them you're walking on ropes, but not all of them. In the first segment I came to, I had to walk across a very narrow wooden rail, no wider than the width of my foot. I crossed that with my heart in my mouth, holding tight to a metal rail on the side. And then I came to the next segment, where I had to walk on ropes - and I froze. No matter how much I told myself that I couldn't fall, my feet didn't believe me, and they wouldn't move. I had to turn around and go back.
Other forms of onboard entertainment included trivia games (I participated in a few), and of all things, an art history lecture (which I attended). There was also plenty of live music, including a very good trio of violinists, who called themselves Sky Breeze (I bought their album).
And then there were the nightly shows. There was a troupe of singers and dancers who put on a show almost every night of the cruise. These shows didn't have much in the way of plot; they were more in the nature of song and dance revues. For example, one night, the show was called "Rock Revolution 69," and it was medley of rock hits supposedly from 1969, although some of the songs were actually from other years:
The performers are all dressed in sixties style clothing. Most of them are sitting on stools, while one man dances energetically at the front of the stage. A guitarist, a bassist and a drummer are playing at the back of the stage. Behind them, an image of the ocean is projected on a rear screen. The whole stage is bathed in pink and purple light.
One night, the show was different. Instead of the song and dance, there were a couple of "game shows." First, there was a live version of the TV game show Deal Or No Deal (w). Then, there was a Love And Marriage game. They got three couples from the audience up on the stage. One couple were newlyweds on their honeymoon, one couple had been married over 60 years, and the other couple was somewhere in between. The husbands were sent out of the room, and the host (Marty) asked the wives several questions. Then the husbands came back in, and the host asked the husbands how they thought their wives would have answered the questions. And then, of course, the process was repeated with the wives leaving the room.
As you can imagine, the questions and answers ranged from the risque to the ridiculous. The wife of the older couple appeared to not understand what was going on. The wife of the honeymoon couple, when asked "What was the most unusual place you and your spouse made whoopee?" brought the house down by answering "In the bathroom of our cabin on this ship!" As for some of the other answers... let's just say I expect those couples had some interesting conversations later that evening.
Something that seems to be customary on cruises - I've seen it on more than one cruise, on different cruise lines - is "towel animals;" that is, folding towels into the shape of animals - like this:
Two towels are folded into the shape of what appears to be some kind of dog, with large floppy ears. Two small circles of black felt are the animal's "eyes."
On the last day of the cruise, the staff seems to have gotten carried away with the concept:
On the Lido Deck, every one of the lounge chairs is occupied by a towel animal.
...and I also ran into this life size towel animal:
A staff member is dressed in a costume looking like a towel animal - an elephant.
And that's it for general information about the cruise. The links below will take you the pages where I talk about each of the three ports of call: Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlán and Puerto Vallarta. Ciao for now.