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9/3/2019 Welcome to Cruise Journey!Welcome to our newest page on Park Journey, the aptly named Cruise Journey!! If you're new to our site it should be pretty clear from the list of other pages on the site that we mostly talk about Theme Parks and everything to do with them. This includes new rides, Halloween events and more. But more than all of that, our mission for the past almost 6 years has been to have fun, and we've had a LOT of it. And it was in that spirit of fun that led my wife and I on our first Cruise aboard the Carnival Splendor and to the amazing Mexican Riviera (Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlan, Puerto Vallarta). Needless to say we loved it, so much so we decided to create a new page on the site, and we've already started looking for our next cruise. So while this page may not be updated as much as some of our other pages will be, we hope that quality over quantity will be sufficient enough. On this page we'll also share Cruise news (we already share Disney Cruise info on our Industry News page, we'll do that here now) as much as we can. So if you're new here, enjoy. Check out some of the other pages. If you're one of our long-time followers, we hope you enjoy this new page of the site just as much as the others!! Enjoy our first update below, the first of a few updates from our cruise last week. We'll also have a video walk-through of the ship later this week. - Gregg Mexican Riviera on the Carnival Splendor - Part One Written by Gregg Condon Pics by Gregg and Kristi Condon  We'd been talking about going on a Cruise for years, in fact, in our 23 years of marriage this was the first vacation we've ever taken without kids that was anything more than a long weekend (coaster trips to the east coast, Vegas, Bay Area, etc). Something about getting married and having kids at 20 and 21 puts a cramp in all that (but no "regerts" as we've had a truly blessed life). A few months back we decided to finally just do it. We talked to our good friend Kurt (The Coaster Guy) who has his own Cruise Travel Agency (seriously, look them up if you are looking to book) and plopped down the money. Our countdown began and finally, last week, it was here!! The good thing about having kids young, when you're in your early-mid 40's they can drop you off at the airport or cruise terminal and you don't have to pay to park (just a tank of gas). Seeing that we were boarding in Long Beach, we had to get some Dark Harbor construction pics Heading into the terminal
We're in and ready to go!! Love that they have a "too early" line. We were on the ship by about 11:45.   The first of too many good meals!! 
After a nice quiet meal and exploring the Lido deck a bit, our room was ready about 1:30. And our luggage was waiting for us which was nice!!
We had originally booked a portal room but had an upgrade offer not long after we paid off our cruise. So glad we upgraded.  The books I planned on finishing during our week at sea, I didn't. Although both are fantastic.  We spent most of the first day just hanging out, doing the safety drill of course (totally new experience for us), sitting by the pool and just adapting to our new home for the next week.
We had originally made steakhouse reservations for our night in Cabo but we then heard that if you book the steakhouse on night 1 you get a free bottle of wine. Doesn't take much to convince us!! And in hindsight, the absolute best way to start off our first night on our first cruise!  It's funny, when we were planning what we were going to do on the ship it mostly consisted of sitting on the balcony or the pool and reading. And we did a LOT of that. But we also found ourselves increasingly joining in on the cruise fun due to the amazing Fun Squad! More on them in future updates. The amazing Leigh, our Cruise Director.  We also decided to attend the night one show which gave some more information about the cruise and what we should expect!! I then got picked to go up on stage and make an ass out of myself. But it was SO fun. And we won Entertainment VIP for the week which consisted of reserved seats for all of the shows. Which was amazing!! I will neither confirm or deny if there is video of this, and if that video will be posted in a future update. =)  After a full day we turned in rather early and had night 1 of the best 7 nights of sleep we've had in our lives. Rock-A-Bye-Gregg and Kristi! Day two we were up rather early, but instead of rushing off we took the option to have coffee delivered to our room. We sat on our balcony and enjoyed our coffee most mornings. It was magical.
We also saw that very first morning that there was breakfast in one of the restaurants every day, the Gold Pearl. Apparently it was kind of a hidden secret as there wasn't a line here until Thursday morning. We ate at the buffet exactly once all week. And we had some of our best meals of the week during breakfast. And apparently we were so hungry we didn't take pics that first morning. Sorry. That first sea day was spent mostly by the pool, reading, having a couple of drinks and honestly, thoroughly enjoying being "disconnected" from the world. Even though D23 was going on, I didn't find myself wondering what was being announced at all. It was sublime.
 This was also the first of our formal nights, it's nice to get dolled up and we were very glad to see most of our fellow guests followed suit (pun intended).
I had lobster 2 nights in a row. That was a new one for me. We turned in pretty early that night as we were to arrive in Cabo the next morning. We were looking forward to our first day in Mexico. But that will have to wait until the next update. Stay tuned!! We usually share related videos and updates whenever we have a new post, but since this is our first blog post on Cruise Journey we got nothin'. We did post a couple of water ride videos, that counts right? =) So for those of you who are new, some of our recent updates from elsewhere on the site. Be sure to like our social media channels and subscribe on YouTube!! Related Videos:
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