Gay couple - would not travel with Carnival Cruises again

Carnival Pride Cruise Review to Caribbean - Bahamas

Cruises: 1 cruise (first)
Review: 1
Helpful Votes: 14

Overall rating:

2 out of 5
Verified Review
Carnival Pride

7 Night Bahamas & Grand Turk (Baltimore Roundtrip)

Sail date: November 20, 2016

Ship: Carnival Pride

Cabin type: Inside

Cabin number: 1139

Traveled as: Couple

Reviewed: 7 years ago

Review summary

My husband and I went on this cruise for our honeymoon. Neither of us have ever been on a cruise before, nor to the Bahamas, and everyone I spoke with said that Carnival was a good cruise line for our first cruise. Of course, everyone who said that to us was heterosexual, but I would assume that cruises would be a fun experience for everyone. The first night of the cruise at the "Welcome Show," the Director asked for a couple from the audience to participate in a game show. My husband and I raised our hands, and the staff member choosing couples from the audience gave us a strange look and kept walking. We had another experience at the "Love and Marriage Show" where, again, they were looking for newlyweds to participate. As we were getting on stage, the cruise director asked the couples to get in two lines "ladies in the front line, guys in the back line." We got in line with everyone else, and were told we had to make out passionately to choose the couple who would compete in the game show. The show was supposed to be 18+, but there were dozens of kids in the audience, and we did not want angry parents yelling at us, so we walked off stage. No acknowledgement from the host. The "Identity Crisis" gameshow became extremely transphobic when Caitlyn Jenner was given as the last name to be guessed by the contestants, and lots of questions about gender and other questions were answered rudely by the audience and echoed by the Cruise Director when he referred to Caitlyn with male pronouns. We were told by our travel agent that because we were on a honeymoon we would receive a special gift delivered to our stateroom, which never came (perhaps because we were registered in the system as two men and it over-rode the coding as a Honeymoon cruise?). There were incredible hostesses in the dining room, waitstaff, our steward Jun, Laurie from the piano bar, and the couple who sang every night on board, who were extremely friendly, personable, knew us by name, and most of them either referred to us as a couple. There are some great staff on the ship, but these other issues that occurred almost every day soiled the experience for us. I would not travel with Carnival again, and they really need a diversity expert to help them figure things out and advise staff on making activities and the cruise experience more inclusive before they can dream of folks like me recommending our fellow partnered and married friends to travel with Carnival. 

Ship experiences

Food and Dining

5 out of 5

Onboard Activities

1 out of 5

Entertainment

3 out of 5

Service and Staff

5 out of 5

Ship Quality

3 out of 5

Cabin / Stateroom

3 out of 5

Ports of call

Baltimore, Maryland

3 out of 5

Port Canaveral, Florida

3 out of 5

Nassau, Bahamas

3 out of 5

Freeport, Grand Bahama Island

2 out of 5
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