KmomChicago

You just missed Sid!

We’re just glad you averted him! Or her. Or them! Stupid Chris!

I’m so glad that so many people have enjoyed and benefited from the group aspect of this very special voyage! 🥰🥰🚢🎉🥳🎊🎁🍾👯👯‍♀️👯‍♂️🪩🪅🍷🙌🍻🎈🥂🎶🎼🎵🎤🎸🥁🎷🪇🪗🌮🌯🫔🌊🐬🌅🪸🪼🏝️🏖️⛵️🏄🏄‍♀️🏄‍♂️🎡🎠🎢🎟️

As much as I love my family and am grateful for them, I dream of one day doing a solo - totally solo without any of them, and just wandering around places off and onboard for a week or three. Problem is I would prefer to have the cats along and that's not going to work. I am not comfortable in groups either, and I am also a loner at heart. I like quiet spaces much more than loud ones. I can talk - a lot (my inner voice is very fast and active), actually am a fairly accomplished public speaker, but it is all a performance, the role I play on life's stage, the working part of me. It exhausts me and I benefit from long periods alone to recharge. This Tribe cruise certainly has been fun to follow - from the two entirely different points of view - but I just wouldn't be able to handle that much social interaction.

Let’s get on the ship!! Let’s get on the ship!!

That’s definitely the thing to do though, right? Keep returning to a place you don’t like and ordering food you don’t like and being a totally rude jerk directly to the face of the person who labored to provide it for you and think you’re making a comment on them when really all you’re doing is making great big loud comments about yourself. Attitude is everything. Well actually your health is everything and attitude is a very close second.

Got it, still on a ship, I don’t really look forward to breads so much, more the good stuff that might be on them like smoked salmon, Guy’s Burger, RCI Kummelweck roast beef, all the nummy deli sammie fillings, or as was shown here, the bok bok chicken pieces, etc.

Called an Aviation and it looked like a blue sky colored martini.

Love steel drums and love Bob Marley, gone too soon.

Just take it easy, relax, recharge. Two sea days ahead to do as you like, away from the ATL, away from the rugs. I’m going to sleep early tonight as well. Some days are just that way.

Of all the sumptuous cruise food options available: Biscuits are not a top choice!

Saint Greg, for example, has a blog and he shares the link. Maybe Sid will either partner as a guest of some established cruise bloggers or develop his own further than he has so far. Hopefully he plans to stay in contact at The Tribe thread.

It’s always amazing that anyone claims to have a bad time on a cruise, and your pics reinforce that. Just relax and enjoy the view and any reasonable person should be perfectly happy, as you are, @ninjacat123! Thanks to the family for being good sports and willing photo subjects too!

Have a great last port day @sid_9169!

When I was in real estate (as a manager, not an agent) in Florida during the boom before the crash almost 20 years ago, one of our agents spent a cool $1k on the LV bucket list bag she had saved up for. One. Thousand. Dollars. For a purse. Just one purse. In 2005. I was buying the patchwork leather shoulder bags at Kmart (I was kinda like Rain Man with Kmart, R.I.P.) on sale for about twelve bucks at that point. I still have a Joe Boxer nylon purse-tote from the era that has held up fabulously. When I Marie Kondo my stuff it stays because it still gives me joy. I honestly had never even imagined purses existed that cost a thousand dollars. My little pea brain spun around in my skull for a long while trynna come to grips with that. I have a much higher income now, not rich but not poor. And my husband bought me a Michael Kors bag a few years ago so I could finally be decent. I used it for about a year. It sits on my dresser still looking brand new (that amazing durable textured finish) waiting to return to service, which it will at some point. When I use it I often think it’s more valuable than all the contents it carries, and honestly it was a huge bargain by modern purse standards. My current bag is a small black leather hand me down Aigner with the little metal A logo, that my stepmom tried to sell at one of my garage sales for $5. She also brought over a brown leather Stone Mountain that went unsold and is therefore in my closet until it’s resurrected. From the same source I previously had a summery Coach canvas purse until the zipper broke as well as a very, very fake Prada. I checked it out on the internet and literally every detail was the fake version, plate, stitching, lining, and nasty vinyl material which started cracking a few weeks into its final usage period. 🤷‍♀️ I asked her where she got it and she didn’t remember. I still just don’t get it with the bags and my luggage is far worse! I should be embarrassed but I never care if the ground crew apes destroy it and nobody ever even considers it could be worth stealing. What is wrong with me?

Interesting. I got a TL:DR here on rooms because I like my space more than natural light. How are these square rooms with three or four passengers? We were in what they called a premium interior on MG. There aren’t a ton of them on the ship. The footprint of the room was identical to the balcony rooms minus the balcony, long rectangle-ish with bed next to a sitting area. We confirmed this by participating in a CC cabin crawl. In theory they were thus ‘posed ta be bigger than the regular interiors. We of course couldn’t use the sofa because it was our teen’s bed, leaving just the open space next to it to get to the desk, closets and bathroom. And not much space because the rooms have alternating bump outs to accommodate the king beds and steal that space from the sitting area next door. Mardi Gras Premium Interior. So far we’ve never had a room on any ship with any kind of upper bunk and so we always lose floor and or furniture space if we have the kid in our room. I don’t really plan it this way, it’s just how the room is laid out. The worst for that was Carnival Sensation where the trundle bed took up nearly all of the already minimal floor space leaving about 6 inches of walking path snaking around the beds, the closest I ever came to hating a cruise ship stateroom. Every day I cursed the lack of an upper berth in that room. Carnival Sensation standard interior with loathsome trundle occupying all open space. Meanwhile DH and I, alone on Vista, had one of those forward inside with picture window facing a secret walkway deck. This room was really spacious without a sofa (or even a comfy chair) that would have fit pretty easily. I found all the open space absolutely wonderful but puzzled over why this big room is just a double where smaller rooms are crammed full of people. Seems like really poor planning. Big room on Vista for just two people, no seating in the room except the crappy desk stool though there’s plenty of room for a loveseat or an easy chair.

Probably so they can reuse the same questions and avoid future cheating.

Are they still trying to serve salads up there? On my MG the lettuce and fixings were literally being blown out of the bowls and into the swimmers as soon as people turned around to find a place to sit!

@Kingsmom looks like I had a metal clip with me. Amazing what you think to photograph on a cruise. Carnival Vista from Galveston w CD Kyndall Fire, April 2022.

We don’t have anything booked for any vacation of any sort after the Alaska cruise this summer. I’m actually not at all sure how many more cruises we will be taking after that. Nothing they are doing wrong, just getting tired of travel in general, the hassle and expense of everything including flights, getting older, don’t like leaving my cats, appreciating staycations more lying around the house in total relaxation for free, and several other reasons. My travel bucket list is fulfilled (I have visited Europe several times, China, and Peru) and the last 18 months or so, as soon as I book anything that requires a flight I notice I start dreading it rather than looking forward to it with excitement as I did in my youth. And then I am usually exhausted and slightly sick afterwards instead of refreshed. (I’m 57, not old, but not thirty something either). I will enjoy traveling along with you in the future though, best of all worlds actually! All the visuals, none of the irritation or fatigue. Due to a lucky twist of fate, we were on just the second commercial voyage of Mardi Gras, one of the first cruises after sailing resumed in 2021. That’s a whole story in itself, you know the kind, full of boring details about myself that I find fascinating and everyone else scrolls past, rolling their eyes as they go. It was one of our best cruises ever. Since you like them “big and round,” you will like the size if not the posterior shape of Jubilee (rather square-ish). As with Oasis class, the new Excel class elevates Carnival to a whole different level. It’s not just a bit bigger with larger spaces, it’s a really innovative way of laying out the whole ship with more free dining and entertainment options than you can easily cram into a single week. I will warn you that the staterooms are a little more “efficient” than I prefer (small). However like most cruises you’re in there just for sleeping and getting ready to get back out to enjoy the ship so it’s fine. I would rather have a fabulous ship with a small bedroom than the other way around (which I had on Carnival Legend in a ridiculous Grand Suite just 4 months later, the Christmas cruise I mentioned earlier). Legend was still a great experience with plenty of highlights and we enjoyed it very much but also confirmed our preference for the 150+ ton size and 2010 or newer ships that are gradually taking over. They are just fabulous so I have very high expectations of Ovation which may be my final ocean voyage.

I realize you are asking stylish Megan and not frumpy old me (no really, I usually do not care how bad I look). On one of my more recent cruises we went to one of the shopping / get-ready-for-port shows in the theater, and they gave us what they were calling a "lei" but was really just a cheapo strand of beads that actually was very neutral and low key, matched everything and looked pretty good. It was a gimmick from one of the many port stores, I want to say Karaloa but I can't find that store on any shopping maps so it's obviously called something else or it was hawking some other location. I took off just the plastic snap holder for the plastic sleeve off of one of our many (awful looking) lanyards - we bring a big handful each time, from work conferences, comic cons, prior cruises, etc. - and once I switched to it I was hooked. It still displayed my card on my person, but was really a nicer option than the gaudy bright fabric lanyards and I felt significantly more put together with it.

@luvtoride I have not tried the cubes but I have done well with this method where you lay everything in half in and half out of the suitcase and then fold it all in and amazingly stuff takes up less space. They call it the bundling method.

Well then. I hope you get a good night’s rest. We will just have to enjoy this journey while it lasts.

Lucky for me I’m addicted to the self serve Americano free coffee dispensers on Carnival ships. Lido has one going 24/7 and on deck 8 near the pizza they had it as well when I was on MG. I never have to deal with a server and if there’s a kerfuffle it’s just me and the passenger who dares cross my path.