SarahMascara

You may want to check if you can cruise under the age of 21. Carnival requires anyone under 21 to be sailing with someone 21 or older.

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Hey everyone, just a quick vent/check-in to people that understand. We were planning on bringing our photographer along who is a friend and beautiful wedding photographer. The wedding is 3 months away and she is now unable to come. I know everything will be ok and we will find someone else but I'm feeling really bummed. I've always loved her work and don't know that I'll be able to get someone as good for such a great price. I'm also hoping we're not out the $500 deposit, I'm waiting to hear back from my TA now.

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Thank you!

Thought I would should show you guys what our invites look like. We decided to skip save the dates and we send these out about 11 months before the cruise. We were worried if we sent them out sooner people would think it was February 2016 not 2017. Let's see if this photo works!

Todd is in media and designed these based off of someone else's we liked.

That's great! Dramamine is the one thing I haven't been able to find at a dollar tree but Amazon has it.

Hi everyone! So we are about 6 months from our wedding in Cozumel aboard the carnival paradise. We are using magical wedding memories through Nachi Cocom for the ceremony. They wanted a head count at 6 months out so here we are. We have 32 guests sailing including ourselves with 2 more couples saying they are coming but haven't booked yet.

I've been waiting until this point to finalize the budget and determine whether or not we can afford to do OOT bags for everyone and we have decided we will! This has been fun for me going on the hunt for bargains. I'll do a seperate thread to show the finished bags.

Just thought I'd give an update as I haven't been here in a while. It's been such a long engagement and now that we are 6 months away it finally feels real and I'm getting excited!

And the stressors begin... We sent out invites (instead of save the dates) a week ago for our February 2017 wedding and already have been having to deal with issues! Haha for some reason our wedding website only works if you type in address with all lowercase letters (go figure) and apparently our first deposit date is in two weeks! I'm waiting to hear if I can get that extended a bit. I set up a group on fb to try to get everyone's questions answered in one spot, we don't have direct access to updating our website so this is easier.

Yeah I'm nervous about getting people to book, they don't have to make a deposit until 3 months before but nachi cocom wants a head count 6 months in advance. I'm planning to have a Facebook group to keep people updated

We honestly are inviting everyone even if it's weird. We figure most people won't come if they don't feel super close to us and if they did, hey it's a chance to get to know them better. They always say you'll be surprised who comes and who doesn't come. I get stressed out about hurting people's feelings so I'd rather over invite. This may prove to be a super random group but I'm totally ok with that!! Hope that gives you a little insight to what we are thinking :)

Hello everyone! I'm so excited to finally be able to post on this board. We got engaged in March of 2015 and will have our wedding cruise aboard the carnival paradise in February of 2017. We are actually planning the ceremony in Cozumel with Magic Memories weddings in Nachi Cocom. We are not sending save the dates, rather invitations a year in advance with a link to our wedding website where guests can rsvp. We are working with a travel agent that specializes in cruise weddings and she has been super helpful, she has a cruise wedding herself! I just bought my dress and am feeling relieved but a little sad that that part is over and I still have over a year. I have to keep off dress sites now!! Since we have so much time there isn't a lot to do besides send out invites which we just got in the mail. Tracking down addresses was a little insane, we are inviting everyone we would to a regular wedding. No inkling how many people plan on attending. Congrats to all the brides and grooms!

Agh I woke up early today so excited to check the itineraries, haha. Trying to decide on our cruise wedding out of tampa or pc, I can't plan anything yet!! The anticipation is killing me

I know it's early, but does anyone know when carnival posts the schedules up? There are a few for 2017 but I'm looking specifically for port of tampa or port canaveral.

We booked with them end of feb and they never showed up. Our ship was an hour late to port, carnival called them the day before and they said they may be able to still take us. They never showed up and didn't answer either number they gave us. We wound up going with a random group.

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I got it 5 days before sailing at like 11:00 at night! It had been sold out every day before that!

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When we were there in February I didn't notice any waiters around, but we only spent one afternoon there so I guess there could have been. And there is not a bar outside by that pool.

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Great Review....Do you feel that the Cheers program was worth it for you? The cheers program was a toss up for us I feel. It definitely paid for itself but we were really only buying the expensive fancy frozen drinks. I think I drank more than I needed to because I was trying to get the most out of it. It was worth it for T because he can drink more than me and did a few shots. Also, how many days did you purchase the program? I know you were on a 5 day cruise and didn't purchase until the 2nd day. Does that mean you only purchased 4 days? Yes we paid for 4 days. Plus gratuity plus the drink we got on the first day

 

Any info you have would be great. I ask because I like to drink, but my wife, not as much as I do. We are doing the 4 day cruise, which I think would only be 3 days if I purchased Friday morning. I know I would have at least 5 drinks per day, and she would probably have at least 2. I am happy we got it because we could just relax and have whatever without caring about the cost. We wanted to go for it our first cruise so we would know for next time. I think it may depend on what you are drinking. We found we would have 2-3 fruity drinks during the day, a glass of wine with dinner, and maybe a cocktail at the show. Since we knew we could have whatever, we drank a lot. If I knew I was paying per drink I know I would have kept the cost down easily. Part of being on vacation for us is to just order what we want!

 

Any info would be helpful!

Hope that helps! Oh and you may want to check out the pricing of drinks that are posted online, that helped us!

Great review. Wish everyone would take your example and do them all at once. How do you do that?

Right? I like to read everything at once, so I typed everything ahead of time and copy and pasted the img tag where all my pictures were. Took a lot longer than I thought so I'm glad I did it that way. It would have taken two weeks to complete and I would have forgotten everything! Thanks for reading!

Where did you pack or buy your wine and drink since you took a flight?

Since we were staying at my dad's in tampa for two days prior we just went to the grocery store before leaving.

Thanks for the review. We are doing the 5 day in April with our DD, SIL and 7 year old GS. Same itinerary.

 

Did you make it to the Serenity area, Deck 9 aft?

Hi! Thanks for reading! We did spend a little time on serenity, in the evening the hot tubs were perfect! During the day I wanted to be closer to a pool because it was so hot.

We had missed dinner in the MDR the last two nights so we decided we better take advantage of our last night. Great minds think alike and there was quite a line for anytime dining at about 7:30. We got our pager and walked around while we waited. It wasn't a bad wait, and soon we were seated. The service tonight was a little slower but not bad. We did get antsy waiting on our WCMCs because we wanted to catch the farewell show and still had to pack but it finally came and we dashed outta there!

The show was good, another singing dancing one, then down to pack. Packing = no fun. It was hard to know what I wanted to keep out for the next morning but we did it. We put our bags out at 10:40 and breathed a sigh of relief. I don't remember what we did after this so we must have just grabbed a nightcap and gone to bed.

Day 6 - debarkation day, boo! We were NOT ready to leave. We won't do another five day cruise again. It was not enough for us! Seven day cruises only from here on in! We got up and went to breakfast in the MDR. We were seated with a group of people this time, and it was fun to chat with them. I had pancakes, sausage and hashbrowns and Todd had hashbrowns and eggs Benedict (sauce on the side :)).

Then we went to lido to wait until it was time to go to our meeting place. It was chilly! I was glad I had saved a sweater out. Group one was called and it was time to say goodbye to our home. Getting off the ship was so fast, customs was a breeze, and that was it!

Final thoughts: we had a fantastic time and we think carnival did a great job. We will cruise with them again! Thank you so much for reading this novel, I hope it was entertaining and a help to some of you!

Day 5 - fun day at sea! (But sad day too because it was our last day) We got up early and headed up to the pool to soak in every ounce of sun we possibly could.

8 am chair hogging

Here's a tip for smokers and non smokers alike that we figured out too late in the trip: starboard side of open decks are smoking areas. Port side is non smoking. At least on the Paradise.

It was another gorgeous day (every day of the cruise was perfect weather wise by the way) and we sun bathed for hours. The pool was full but never too crowded to jump in and cool off.

Random pic of T inside the Paris restaurant

This is when the commotion started. I started seeing crew and staff running to the area near the bar, apparently someone was having a medical emergency (we presumed a heart attack) and a fellow cruiser was giving an older gentleman CPR. It was very scary, but finally the medical staff came up and they took him away on a stretcher.

We got lunch at the grill and laid out for a few more hours before going in to wander around the ship. The captain came on the loudspeakers and announced the aft deck areas would be closing in a bit and we would be stopping so a helicopter could airlift the passenger to a hospital. The crew stacked and tied down all the aft chairs as they prepared for the helicopter. We went to the top deck to watch.

We weren't the only ones, it seemed like half of the ship was up there watching for the helicopter, and the other half down on lido watching. We finally saw the coast guard and it hovered over the deck. It dropped someone down, and a stretcher and pulled the sick passenger up. Everyone applauded and then it was over. I feel for the family and I hope everything turned out ok.

The chairs weren't the most comfortable but I rented a floatie for $7 and laid that on my chair and it made it perfect. Todd didn't have a floatie but he said he was completely comfortable so there ya go.

There was hardly anyone there but we did meet some people from our ship so that was fun.

We decided we had to pamper ourselves and indulged in a 30 minute beach massage for $40 each (plus a tip). This was wonderful! If you get the opportunity to do this, do it! We felt so relaxed afterwards we were like jello walking down the beach!

When we were ready to leave we swam down the beach to see if our friends wanted to cab it back with us. They agreed and we met by the main bar. One of the people we met - Dave - told us we had to try one of the bartenders inventions: sex in the pool.

Ugh Elizabeth's eyes are closed! Boo!

So we all took a shot and it was deeeee-licious. Ask for it when you go! We tipped the bartender and Carlos and they had a cab waiting for us. This cabbie told us it would be $28 for us. We told him the ride there had been $21 but he was firm on his price. We didn't want to have to wait for another one so we agreed and he took us back to the pier.

We shopped around a bit, I picked up a small bottle of vanilla, and we headed back.

Once aboard we grabbed a drink and headed to our cabin for a nap. Well.... We napped until 8:30! We rallied and caught the end of the gender showdown going on in the normandie and then watched the talent show. Then it was time for the Mexican fiesta going on lido. All the familiar line dances were going on (side note: I was bummed I didn't know any of the dances, before our next cruise I am youtubing the steps!), and we loaded our plates with Mexican food from the buffet. The food was decent, and we hung out there for awhile but apparently hadn't slept enough and went back to bed.

Day 4 - Cozumel!

After a busy tourist day in Grand Cayman we were looking forward to a relaxing day at the beach.

I'm ready to go!

The celebrity silhouette was beautiful

We pulled right up next to the legend. You can see her water slides peeking out

The line to get off the ship was insane but it moved very quickly. The authorities were checking random bags for food items as you can't bring certain things off the ship.

We headed to the end of the pier and met up with our group from yesterday to share a cab to Nachi Cocom. We asked the driver how much it would be for five of us and he said $21. We had read it would be $15 for two of us so we hopped in. After about a ten minute drive he let us out and we headed in to the resort.

Ah it was so beautiful! We split up and agreed to find each other before we left. I thought the service was excellent. Our waiter was Carlos and he was wonderful. We never had an empty drink, and he kept the food coming!

Random snap of me reading a very battered funtimes

Tonight's show was the game of love hosted by Marcello. It was hilarious! We got to the normandie early and got front row seats to this. I would say this was definitely my favorite show of the cruise. After this we headed to check out the piano bar. The musician was great, and we had a great time singing along to "Piano man". After that unfortunately I didn't know any of the songs he was playing so we left and went to bed.

They had water and juice for us to drink, and the ride was pleasant out to the sandbar. The captain Shaun and his photographer Leon were very friendly and funny. There were lots of other tours there but it was ok, there were plenty of rays and water to support everyone.

I was nervous but they made me feel comfortable and I loved learning about the stingrays! They let us take our own pictures and my waterproof phone case came in handy!

It seemed like a perfect amount of time we were there, then back on the boat to snorkel in coral gardens. Todd had snorkelled before so he jumped right in with the mask they gave us but I was a first timer and had no clue what to do! They kind of let us go right away and didn't really explain a whole lot so I felt very unsure. I am sure if I had just asked them for help they would have been more than willing but I felt more comfortable having T show me. It was a very cool feeling, I didn't realize how easy it would be to float!

We never felt rushed to get back to the boat which was nice. Eventually we all did get back on and boated back to be in an even more crowded bus (a couple had to wait for another one because they couldn't fit). The tour started at 10 and we were bussing back at 1:15 so we definitely went over 2.5 hours which was nice, but something to be aware of with a big group. My biggest fear was missing the boat but we had plenty of time.

By this point we were STARVING! We were supposed to be fed on the original tour we booked so I didn't bring any snacks. We went to Margaritaville for some loaded nachos and a drink. Ahh it was like 70 dollars! Grand cayman is EXPENSIVE! We should have just tendered back to the boat to eat but oh well.

We walked around a bit and the headed back to the terminal. Tendering was painless and there was no line at all.