Wow - the new year is upon us, and I still haven't gotten around to reviewing our New Year's Cruise on Carnival Mardi Gras! Rather than skip the review entirely, I figured I'd challenge myself to review our experience on the Carnival Mardi Gras before we embark on our Christmas Cruise this year (spoiler: I didn't meet my goal)! And in a heartfelt attempt to actually meet that goal, I'm going to change up my style of review a little from a day-by-day trip report to more of an overall summary with anecdotes. Also, if you'd like to hear about this cruise, I sat down with Doug Parker to talk about our time on the Carnival Mardi Gras on the Cruise Radio Podcast.

To decide which cruise and itinerary to sail to ring in 2025, we created a spreadsheet comparing ships, itineraries, and prices. When comparing price/value, Carnival was the clear winner - either the Celebration out of Miami or Mardi Gras out of Port Canaveral. Ultimately, we went with the Mardi Gras out of Port Canaveral because the dates/itineraries worked slightly better.

The last time I sailed Carnival was in 2014 on the Carnival Breeze. It was a promotional free cruise offer that I had received, and I remembered having a really great time. Landon had also recently sailed on Carnival out of Galveston for a Bachelor Party Cruise and raved about how great it was (of course, I'm sure the company and celebratory occasion probably had a lot to do with that). My parents and Rachel had last sailed Carnival in 2010 on the Dream, and this was Aaron's first time cruising with Carnival.

On our third day at Disney, we packed up our bags to transfer to the Yacht Club Resort and headed to Epcot to rope drop Remy's Ratatouille Adventure. I secured a virtual queue for Guardians of the Galaxy which wouldn't be until later in the afternoon..... or so Stove thought!

Our biggest worry in pulling off this Disney Cruise surprise for Stove was "transferring hotels." We were worried that he was going to call bell services and have them send our bags over to the Yacht Club, when actually, we'd be headed to Port Canaveral. We needed an excuse not to send the bags down... so we used Landon. He had just gotten in last night and "had to work" (typical Landon vacation activities), so he'd be staying in the room. Stove and Judy could move their bags over to our room, and either we would come back to the room to freshen up, or Landon would call bell services. Stove didn't seem suspicious.

On our second day at Walt Disney World, we had park reservations at Magic Kingdom. Judy had requested breakfast at Crystal Palace.

We took the bus from the Boardwalk to Magic Kingdom. I was on the bus when it turned 7 AM, and unfortunately I was not able to get a virtual queue boarding group for Tiana's Bayou Adventure. The rest of the family didn't seem to care, but I was frustrated because I was assisting with the construction of the attraction at Disneyland, and the team kept asking me if I was going to ride it when I went to Florida. Oh well, I could try again at 1PM.

For my dad (a.k.a. Stove)'s 70th birthday, we surprised him with a trip to Walt Disney World! My WDW portion of the trip report will be relatively brief, since we had another surprise coming, but I do want to take some time to share our land-based Disney fun.

Since Aaron and I had the farthest to travel, we took a redeye flight from LAX to MCO. I've taken the LAX > MCO redeye many times (it's my preferred flight because I arrive in the morning and get a full day at Disney), but this was Aaron's first time joining me. While I can sleep anywhere (truly - I have a sleep disorder), and the adrenaline of being at Walt Disney World is enough to power me through the day, it turns out that Aaron is not as well-suited for redeye flights. He didn't get much sleep on the plane and was definitely dragging that morning.

After arriving at MCO, we went to The Club at MCO, a lounge that we accessed using Priority Pass through our Capital One Venture X cards.

It's not a super fancy lounge, but they have shower rooms which are handy to get ready in after a redeye flight. Unfortunately, one of their two shower rooms was unavailable, so Aaron and I had to take turns. We also attempted to order breakfast, but our order never arrived, and we got tired of waiting. They also have self-serve items like cereal and oatmeal.