Cruising to Greenland on a Carnival Cruise?

If you are planning a cruise to Greenland and Canada on Carnival, be prepared for a lot of sea days!

We recently took a 14 day Canada and Greenland cruise out of Baltimore on the Carnival Pride. Here’s what happened.

Things started great.

I like the Carnival Pride. Sure, the décor is absolutely awful, but it’s a quirky and fun ship. Plus, it has three pools. How can you go wrong there?

Our last trip on the Carnival Pride was to the Panama Canal. Check out that story here.

We were one of the first cruise ships to be able to sail out of Baltimore after the bridge was demolished. (It was the very end of May, 2024.) We had beautiful warm weather for a few days…

And then it turned cold and foggy.

We were prepared for the fog. We have taken a Transatlantic around that same time of year in early June and it was super foggy then too. It is kind of hard to be on a cruise ship for days on end in the cold and the fog, but the ship itself does make such a difference. And again this is where the Carnival Pride is a great ship for an itinerary like this one. It has tons of indoor seating, plus it has a retractable roof so the main pool can stay open. They actually even headed the pool on the serenity deck. We were out there a couple of days with our beanies on swimming around the very hot pool!

There were tons of activities on board. There were talks, there were dance classes, the casino was open 24/7 because we had 5 sea days in a row.

Sure, the weather wasn’t great, but we didn’t expect it to be great. We were mentally prepared for fog and cold. It was early June in Greenland. We didn’t sign up for a Caribbean cruise, after all.

The day before our first Greenland port, the captain came on to make an announcement mid-afternoon and we knew it wasn’t good.

They canceled our ports in Greenland.

The captain came on and gave the speech. Then the cruise director came on and made almost the exact same speech. There were too many icebergs and too much ice and we would not be able to land in Greenland. To make up for it, they were giving us $400 of on-board credit per room on our sign-and-sail cards and they were planning a trip up a fjord so we could at least see some of Greenland.

$400 is very generous. That would knock out most of our on-board expenses. Plus, Carnival gave a full refund of the money for the excursions that were canceled.

It was disappointing, but not surprising

A couple of weeks before we sailed, I had read somewhere that you should never book a Greenland cruise in June because there was always still too much ice. We watched a couple of YouTube videos in preparation for our cruise, but saw that there were several of others where people complained of Greenland being canceled. There were even people on our cruise that had been on another Carnival cruise last September who had their Greenland ports canceled. Carnival does not seem to have good luck actually going to the Greenland ports.

Carnival has to use their own lifeboats as tenders in Greenland ports. Because we would not be docking, but instead would have to be sent out on small boats. This is especially dangerous due to the amount of icebergs. These days, it is unlikely for icebergs to sink a whole cruise ship, but they would be much more dangerous for small lifeboats that have to make their way back to the ship.

We spent our evening digesting the information and trying to make the most of our extra $400.

What is it like to sail up a fjord in Greenland on a Carnival cruise ship?

I love Carnival, but they are not the best about information when it comes to sailing through things. We were already sailing through the fjord by the time we woke up. Our cruise director gave commentary on the fjord, but it was just things he had googled about it so it wasn’t all that informative or interesting. The scenery was honestly not that epic.

It was fun to see icebergs and some of them felt relatively close. We watched the sailing from our balcony and then from the Serenity deck for a while. There were a few settlements along the way to look at. They were close enough that you could see details with a good pair of binoculars. The cruise director said in his commentary that we were approaching a glacier, but could not get close to it because of a military base and an iceberg that was in the way. He made it sound like you could see this glacier, but I never saw it. We turned around and headed back out the fjord around 1pm.

Eventually, the weather started to get colder and we went back to our room to grab all the cold weather gear we had brought for Greenland. It started to snow. The fog and clouds came in and we could no longer see the fjord. It snowed for a while. We lost interest in outside because it was hard to see anything. And with the freezing temperatures it was hard to want to go outside. Even the covered lido area was freezing.

I would absolutely not book a cruise to see a fjord in Greenland. Since we were there, it was interesting enough. Maybe if the weather had stayed nice and we were able to see both on the way in and the way out. It would have also really helped if they had told us what time we would be entering the fjord. It’s hard to know you need to be up early in the morning if nobody tells you what time the event starts.

Then we settled into a couple more sea days before our first Canada port, St. Anthony.

St. Anthony, Canada sounds like a charming place.

It looked like one when I first woke up. We could see houses on the hillside as we made our way to a very early breakfast. We booked an excursion for St. Anthony and the excursion had an 8:00 meeting time in the Butterfly lounge. This is the comedy club and I’m sure it was chosen for it’s close proximity to the exit The lounge is not large enough to hold all the people waiting for excursions.

We arrived in the lounge a little late and every seat was already full. It was broiling in the lounge with our two jackets, hats, and all of our gear for a 5 hour excursion. We, and many others, waited patiently.

Then we got an announcement that things were a little behind, but eventually they called the first group of excursions. The lounge cleared out some and we were able to get a seat. But then we started hearing rumors that the first group hadn’t actually left yet. And then we got another announcement that there was fog and the captain was trying to decide if it was safe. Things got worse when the people who had left in the first group came back into the lounge. Everyone was grumpy. It was approaching 10:00. We had been there for two whole hours and we were all hot and uncomfortable.

And then there was fog

I went upstairs finally to look out a window and I realized there was no way. On my way back down, the captain came on. St. Anthony was also canceled.

The fog was so bad that our lifeboats were actually having trouble coming back to the ship. Someone had been taken off for a medical emergency and some of the crew had gone to shore to try to get things set up. Those crew members were having trouble seeing the cruise ship at all and thus were having trouble coming back.

We were annoyed while we waited in that lounge, and it was annoying we got up at 6 to go nowhere. Once we saw the deep fog that had rolled it, it was clear we could not go to shore. Honestly, even if we had gone ashore we probably wouldn’t have had a great time as we couldn’t actually see anything!

We went back to our balcony and watched the lifeboats come in. The fog was so bad, we could hardly see the bridge from our room!

Nine sea days in a row

I enjoy a good sea day. I do. But nine sea days in a row was a lot. By the time we made it to our first port, Corner Brook, Canada, all we wanted to do was go to a pharmacy and just feel the solid earth under our feet. We also went to Sydney, Canada, but neither of these ports were what we booked the cruise for.

Was it worth booking a Canada and Greenland cruise on Carnival?

Probably not. We missed all the ports we were looking forward to and we did not enjoy the cold, foggy weather for days on end. I had a good time on the cruise, but I don’t think it was worth the amount we paid for it. The sea days got very repetitive by the end. While the crew did a good job of trying to add activities to keep us entertained, it was clear that they were very tired too. When there are no port days, they get no extra time off. There is no dedicated time they know your cabin will be empty for them to clean in peace. No lunches where most people are off the ship. Less down time for them. That being said, they did a great job of trying to keep the energy up through all the endless sea days.

I have decided after this cruise, I’m not doing anything cold again for a while. It’s all Caribbean cruises for me!