Dan Passaro: My First Cruise - Carnival Imagination

Well I live in Miami, FL ..... why not take a cruise from there right lol?

Mom actually invited me to go with her ... sure, why not :D. This will be a 3 night cruise.

Thanksgiving weekend. We left on Friday Nov 28, 2008 and arrived at the port at noon. Went thru your typical security except without the TSA being involved WOOHOO! Anyway we proceed upstairs and get in line. The check in area is similar to checking in at the airport.

I get my Carnival card. This card is your room key, "charge" card for all shipboard items, and also your ID for entering and leaving the ship. The way they do it is when you first get on the ship they take your picture while scanning your card. The picture is not printed on the card, it just stays in the system. Skynet has you now lol !

Now it's 1pm and lunch is being served on the Lido deck. Hey ~~free~~ paid for food, off we go. The cabin is already available so we leave our backpacks there.

Lunch is a simple affair, though there are many choices such as your typical cheeseburger, fries, hot dog, grilled ham and cheese and of course several kinds of pizza.

We finish lunch and I decide to take off, do a quick tour the ship and get some pics.

I then began going thru the interior of the ship. There are a lot of letters in the stairwells .... these are only good for emergency evacuation though, to get you to your muster station. Seeing as how most people will spend most of their time NOT going to their muster station, LOL, you just had to figure out where you wanted to go by trial and error. I suppose making the safety part obvious will avoid confusion if it ever became "for real".

The muster practice was basically a non-event. Get your lifejacket from your cabin, follow your letter to your station and await instructions. That's it!.

Well back to the cabin and drop off the lifejacket. Continue the tour.

Finally underway! This is Government Cut.

Dinner with the Joneses:

Onward to the Pride Dining Room, Table 168 at 8:15pm. We had great tablemates, 10/10. I'd give the dinner presentation an 8.5/10 and the food itself a 7/10. The waitstaff was very nice and personable.

Then on to the comedian in the Dynasty Lounge (as shown above). Relatively funny.

Pretty tired at this point and went to bed. I'd be snorkeling tomorrow all afternoon (see below for the full report).

After the snorkeling trip I missed Saturday dinner by visiting Atlantis instead. Being a nighttime situation visuals were a bit limited but here is some of what I have. We also went to the late show and it was good. Very much a musical and well done.

Sunday was the Fun Day at Sea thing. The water was getting rough and the skies were overcast and even with the stabilizers you could feel some movement at some times. I decided to spend a lot of time on the Serenity Deck .... in the hot tub :D.

There were several events on the pool deck throughout the day such as the hairy chest contest. Pretty amusing day overall.

Now its 8:15pm and back to Table 168. Another great night with our tablemates. Food was better tonight.

Another late show, musical style. I got on stage this time along with 5 other cruisemates from the audience LOL.

My first cruise and not my last!