Tag: cruise parking

Carnival Vista 2021 – Embarkation Day!!!!

Please be aware, throughout this blog, I will be writing about our experience with the new protocols in place. The protocols were not a problem for us. Now, let’s start today’s blog.

It’s finally here!!!! Today is the day we board the Carnival Vista.

Jim likes to start his day with a relaxing hot/warm bath. It prepares me mentally for his day. Unfortunately, that was not to happen on this day as there was no hot water!!! Oh well, I guess a cold shower will have to make do. I have repacked and rearranged all the packing trying to eliminate the unnecessary. I tend to be an over-packer. So now it is time for breakfast.

We decided to go to the Gumbo Diner for breakfast as it is next to the hotel. They open at 8am so we did have to wait for a bit, but that’s okay. It comes with being early risers. The breakfast selections on the menu were good. We were able to find something we wanted and when it arrived, it was hot and tasted great! The only issue I had was that my sausage was somewhat rare. But other than that one small issue, we were satisfied with the selections and the waitstaff was very attentive. We will definitely come here again for breakfast.

After we finished our breakfast, we packed up the car and checked out of the hotel. Our cruise check-in time is 10:30 to 11:00 and we wanted to make sure we timed things right. On this day, the Carnival Vista was docked at the pier primarily used by Royal Caribbean. No big deal. We dropped off our luggage and made our way to the Port of Galveston parking garage which is directly across the street from the Carnival cruise pier.

The walk to the pier was longer than we expected but we managed and arrived about 5 minutes before our check-in time. We showed our boarding pass, vaccine card, and negative COVID test and were in the terminal in line to board!!! The one thing I noticed is that this pier is hot inside. Luckily I had our handy-dandy necklace fans with me so I was able to keep us from sweating too much!!!

The line moved quickly and we were soon on the Carnival Vista! Our first stop was to our muster station. The E-muster is quick and easy!!! Before long, we were sitting on the Lido deck having our first Guy’s burger and our first drink of the day!!!! We also indulged in a bit of dessert sampling.

We stayed here until we heard the announcements that the staterooms were open! Since we booked a stateroom on the Lido deck, it was a very easy walk for us!. The stateroom was the typical port side balcony. And this is where we watched us sail-away from Galveston and just relaxed until dinner time.

For dinner, we selected Your Time Dining when we booked the cruise. We used the HUB app to check in for dinner and within a few minutes, we were alerted our table was ready. We made our way to the Horizons Restaurant, deck 4 aft. We definitely had a wonderful view from our table. But as is typical on the first night in the MDR, service can be hectic and maybe not as attentive as the remainder of the cruise. The first thing we noticed was a change in the menu. Instead of the bread being served as soon as you got there, the menu now has the breads shown on the menu along with condiments for the bread. Today’s selection of bread was Baguette or Multigrain Cranberry and the condiments were Whipped butter, olive oil & balsamic, and bacon pan drippings. We were served one of each bread selection and Jim selected the olive oil and balsamic while I had the bacon pan drippings. Jim had the Strawberry Bisque, Roasted Beef Brisket, and Tiramisu while I had a Caesar Salad, Broiled Strip Loin Steak, and Carnival Melting Chocolate Cake. For some reason, the steak I had was not that great. I ate but it just seemed off for some reason, but not reason enough to complain. Everything else was fine. Unfortunately I only remembered to take pictures of our bread, appetizers, and my dessert.

After dinner, we returned to our stateroom to find our first towel animal of the cruise!!!

The remainder of the evening/night was spent unpacking and relaxing in our stateroom. We are very boring people!

Next installment will be the first our first sea day. Please come back to read all about it.

Countdown to Carnival Freedom – Issue #2 We are parking somewhere different!

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With 175 days until our cruise, I finally decided to start researching our parking options for this cruise.  Now, this is not our first time to cruise out of Galveston.  This will be our ninth cruise leaving from this port!  So we are aware of all the options that our out there.

For this cruise, I initially was deciding between EZ Cruise Parking and Galveston Park N Cruise.  EZ Cruise Parking has the option of parking with shuttle to the port or park and walk to the port while Galveston Park N Cruise is strictly park in walk.  We have EZ Cruise Parking four times and Galveston Park N Cruise three times and, for the most part, have been happy with Both.  But this time, after posting the weekly countdown to the Facebook group page for this cruise, I decided to look into a couple of different options.  Port Parking and Port of Galveston parking.

The first cruise parking lot that has become our favorite due to its location is Galveston Park N Cruise, galvestonparkncruise.com.  It is located at 2514 Strand Street and is a very easy walk across the street to Cruise Terminal #1.  The street to the cruise terminal is protected with a light so there is no need to dodge cars while crossing!  Galveston Park N Cruise offers two options:  indoor parking or outdoor parking.  For this cruise, the rates are:

Outdoor: $111.90

Indoor: $129.20

There is no shuttle to the port which is fine with us.  We have no problem walking to the cruise terminal.

EZ Cruise parking was the next parking facility we considered, ezcruiseparking.com.  It is located at 2727 Santa Fe Place and is also an easy walk to Terminal #1 but not easy from terminal #2 which we found out last year on our Carnival Dream cruise.  EZ Cruise Parking offers two options:  park and walk or park with shuttle.  Both options are outdoors but the do offer an option of a car cover for an additional $10.  The base rates before taxes and fees for this facility are:

Park and walk:  $92.02 (prepaid booking)

Park and shuttle $97.43 (prepaid booking)

The routinely have a promo code you can use that is typically $5.00.

Since we are aware that this cruise will start at terminal 2, we know the walk will not be easy.  We also know that the shuttle to and from the terminal has been slow.  On one cruise, we were so tired and frustrated waiting on a shuttle that we walked to the port.  This is one reason we tried the park and walk option on our last cruise.  On this cruise, we decided that this would not be an option for us.  At least not for this cruise.

Port Parking was the next to be considered, portparking.com.  Located at 202 37th Street, at the corner of Harborside, we have driven past this parking facility several times, we never really took it into consideration mostly due to the location.  It was highly recommended on our Facebook group cruise page so I decided to look into it a little more deeply.  This facility offers three options:  outdoor parking with shuttle, indoor parking with shuttle, or indoor park and walk.  Personally, I would not use the park and walk option.  I do not think my lungs could handle the walk but I did consider the shuttle options.

The rates for this cruise are:

Outdoor with shuttle:  $108.25

Indoor with shuttle:  $108.25

Indoor park and walk:  $92.02.

I will say that I was surprised that the price for indoor and outdoor were the same.  I did hear great things about this facility and the shuttle service so it was a contender.

Another facility I briefly looked at was Falstaff Cruise Parking located at 3402 Church Street, falstaffcruiseparking.com.  I had seen this one used by frequent cruiser Life With Favor.  Since it is one that she used I decided I would at least look at it.  It is indoor parking, and is just a bit further to the port than Port Parking.  So look I did but quickly decided against it…

Parking:  $85.00

Shuttle to pier:  $15.00

Total price after taxes and fees:  $115.83

I probably would have given it more consideration if they did not have a separate charge for the shuttle.  Definitely not close enough to walk in my opinion.  I will definitely give it consideration on future cruise, but not this one and not with the payment structure.  I would rather see the parking and shuttle be inclusive instead of separate.

The last option I looked at is Port of Galveston parking, portofgalveston.com  We used this on our first cruise out of Galveston.  Sense then, we have broaden our horizons and look at and use others.  Port of Galveston has 2 options, parking lot and parking garage.  I always thought there was only the one lot option so I was excited to see another option.  The parking lot option offers a shuttle while the parking garage is directly across the street and an easy walk to Terminal 1 or 2.  Although there is a walkway leading from the garage to the pier, I fully understand that it is not accessible.  The rates for both seem competitive:

Parking Lot B: $92.00 (after fees and taxes with a $5.00 discount for prepaid online booking).  Located at 224 23rd Street.

Parking Garage:  $122.00 (after fees and taxes with a $5.00 discount for prepaid online booking).  Located at 150 Rosenberg.

Since we like to be adventurous, we decided to try Port of Galveston garage parking!!! I will give a full review of the parking when we return from our cruise in September.

So the cruise is booked, hotel has been booked, and now parking has been reserved and paid for.  What’s next????  Time to start my packing lists!