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Broadcasting from the Tripinsurance.com studios in Jacksonville, Florida.

This is Cruise Radio.

Hey, how's it going?

My name is Doug Parker.

Thanks for checking out this episode of Cruise Radio, a review of Carnival Horizon, where writer Richard Sims from cruiseradio.net is going to interview me about the sailing I just did on horizon because no one wants to hear me talk for 30 minutes straight. So we're going to break it up and Richard's going to ask me some questions. We'll chat it up a little bit and then kind of move on. So with that said,

Richard, welcome to the show. Well, thanks for that. Let's hope they want to hear us talk for 30 minutes.

I'm personally excited about this because this is a big ship, a new ship, and it's exciting. So tell us,

as you were getting ready for this, was there anything different about this cruise as far as your preparation for it? Pretty much the same as any other cruise I've been on. You know, when you're sailing these new ships, all you're really seeing is what the renderings look like of the spaces. You don't know what the spaces really, really look like. You see them come to life in construction photos, but you're really not going to see how they're fully set up until you get there, especially when you're on a ship that, like, I was on the second sailing of Carnival Horizon. So as far as research goes, I was just studying the deck plans. I mean, it's pretty much a carbon copy of Carnival Vista. So, I mean, there's no more Red Frog Pub.

That's replaced with the Guy Fierry, Pig and Anchor, Smokehouse and Brewhouse. And then the library bar and the piano bar switched as well, which we'll talk about later. But other than that, it was pretty much an identical ship, so I knew what I was getting into going on. So you flew over and you flew to Barcelona. I suspect that we're probably not going to spend a lot of time talking about the ports

just because it was such a different itinerary than what the ship will be doing when it actually comes here.

But what was it, was it any different boarding in Barcelona than it is here?

How was your embarkation?

So embarkation was nice.

I took advantage of the Carnival Transfer service and that took me from the airport to the ship. And as soon as I

cleared customs, I checked in with a carnival agent. They took my bag. And the next time I saw my bag was in my

state room. So that's a nice thing about booking the cruise line transfer service. And I got to the pier around 1030,

and they didn't start boarding until 1115. So there was 45 minutes from curb to ship,

only because of the boarding that didn't start until 45 minutes after I got there.

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