Pre-Cruise – Cruising Dog Mama

Carnival Mardi Gras October 2022 Pre-Cruise Orlando International Drive

This was going to be our second time on the Carnival Mardi Gras, we drove to Orlando to stay at Avanti Resort. Nice room, gym, cafe, large pool and spa, and pool bar.

We went to Cafe TuTu Tango, my favorite restaurant in Orlando. It is set up as a Spanish artist loft and they have artists working on painting while you eat and he entire restaurant is covered with art. It is tapas and we had pizza, jalapeño macaroni and cheese, Cajun chicken egg rolls, Nashville chicken, and nutella flan. Later we went to Howl at the Moon dueling piano bar. They have a lot of fun shots and drinks. Loved the strawberry shortcake shot with whipped cream. A good start to our vacation.

Carnival Magic First Solo Cruise Pre-Cruise Tampa to Orlando

For the first time, I was going on a cruise alone. My husband was staying home with the dogs and he had originally taken the time off work so he was having a staycation.

The dogs, as usual have an attitude when they see the luggage.

In real life I do Keto, but when I am on vacation, I make up for it and eat all of the carbs. I stopped halfway and had lunch at Red Lobster, a manicure and pedicure at the mall and a cookie afterwards.

Stayed at Avanti Resort, they have a huge pool and hot tub, however, as soon as I made it there it rained. I decided to go out for Happy Hour at Joes Crab Shack, then dinner at Cafe TuTu Tango. I then went to Howl at the Moon piano bar. When I got back to the hotel, I got into the jacuzzi in the room. What a great day.

September 2019 Alaska on Ruby Princess-Pre-Game and Day 0 Tampa to Seattle

So my husband’s favorite place to go is Alaska and mine is the Mediterranean. We were in the Mediterranean in 2018, but Carnival announced a refurbished ship sailing in May 2020. My husband has always been ready to go and just asks what clothes he should pack. I told him we would go to the Mediterranean in 2020, but go to Alaska in September 2019. This was all before COVID, so unbeknownst to us it would be the last cruise for a little while.

Room

We have sailed in all types of rooms from Inside to Suite. Certain itineraries seem better suited for a balcony and Alaska is one of them, especially with a day viewing glaciers. We had sailed Princess in a club class mini-suite and enjoyed the experience. I looked at the club class room around Labor Day, however, I found a full suite was cheaper a few weeks later. We took the suite later in September.

Princess Medallion

We missed the roll out of the Medallion by a few weeks on the Regal and missed on the Ruby by a little while as well. One day we will get to try it.

Fly2Fun

I didn’t want to spend the money to get a hotel in Seattle at the beginning of the cruise and a room in Vancouver at the end. I booked fly2fun to arrive the morning of the cruise and leave the day we departed, even though I don’t think it is a good idea to fly cross country on the day the cruise begins. Well they kept changing the arrival time making it later and later so I changed the flight to come in the day before, unfortunately the only flight back left near midnight so we had a lot of time at Vancouver airport at the end of the trip.

Day 0 Tampa to Seattle

So we’re off.

Lunch at the Hard Rock at Tampa Airport

Flight to Charlotte unfortunately we had storms and were delayed in Charlotte for a few hours, we landed around 10 and had some difficulty getting to the nearby hotel. We made it and settled in for dinner around 1:30 am our time.

And a few pictures of the Marriott near the Seattle airport.