Mikel1733

Question, we are on a 13 day sailing with the $50 credit per room per port. We have booked NCL excursion in 10 ports so we will have $500 credit by end of cruise. If this is a non-refundable credit, can you go to the casino and get cash to play and then not play as a way to get the money? We've already paid everything in full including the tips.

13 day cruise. I ended up canceling the bid and just paid to upgrade. Another $370pp but we got $50 excursion credit per port (10 ports), 5 meals pp at the pay venue restaurants, and 250 internet minutes. That plus the unlimited beverage plan.

That was nice. With price drops a guaranty balcony is only $120 more than we paid for the inside room.

We are booked in an inside room code IF. I've made a bid which is in the mid fair zone. My question is.....if you are bidding to move from an inside room to a balcony, is it likely you will get one of the obstructed balcony rooms with a bid?

We've done the full transit, but have an upcoming partial transit early December. From what I've read our ship begins the transit at 5:00am and sails to Gatun Lake where tours depart from the ship. From what I read it looks like all tours meet the ship in Colon. If so, those on tours would not get to pass thru the locks a second time on the ship. As our ships transit begins at 5:00am it will be dark as sunrise is slated at 6:17am. So I'm not certain we will book excursions there.

Bottom line there is no free lunch. But I have compared cruises with similar itinerary's and NCL still provides a good value with the included promo's even though you have to pay tips. I'm not married to any cruise line, so you just need to compare trips with the options you want.

We have been researching for our next cruise the past several weeks and I came to realize I haven't heard from Carnival for 3 years. I get almost daily emails and snail mail mailing from NCL, Holland America, Princess, and to a lesser degree Royal Caribbean. And occasional emails from several others we haven't sailed with. But absolutely no emails, phone calls, or mailings from Carnival. I would think if you have sailed with Carnival 15 times in previous years you might be on some list? Evidently business is really good.