Lee Cruiser

Typically you can make changes to your current cruise or change cruises before the final payment due date.  According to policy you will be charged a $50 per person to do so.

They have a gathering for just those who are platinum and diamond members, usually on the last sea day.  They do offer drinks.  On the Excel class ships, they just offer one drink if I remember correctly and then add one drink voucher to your sign and sail card.  We rarely go as we don't drink, so it's never been a big deal to us.

On 1/17/2024 at 9:48 PM, cruisinpips said:

Leaving on my 24th Carnival cruise in 23 days, I have never once used this “perk”, as a matter of fact I have never been to brunch now that I think about it. Really pretty useless to most I would say. I doubt if there is a 25% redemtion rate on these, so I am sure thats why Carnival sticks with it….

My wife and I just completed cruise 24 and have only used that perk once or twice. One of those was at Cucina for lunch one sea day when my wife ordered a soda.  We didn't even know until later that the bar staff had given her the soda as her free drink. Another time after that we asked about getting a soda for lunch and was told that we could only get that in the dining room, so I guess it just depends on the ship and who you ask.  We liked the gold perk much better because we could use it at the coffee bar for a milk shake or other specialty drink.  We don't drink alcohol, so the party means nothing to us.  We rarely go to that either.

3 hours ago, slavens_09 said:

How would it be a revenue producer? It's included dining.

I said it wouldn't be a revenue producer

I'm hoping for a Shaq's Big Chicken, but it wouldn't be a revenue producer

We prefer the menus on the app. We can view the whole menu for the week as soon as we board. We love the app for a lot of reasons.  I also prefer the menu on the app because it is much more sanitary than touching things that a lot of others have touched.  It's just an OCD thing for me 😀

It's also worth noting:  If Jubilee is like Mardi Gras and Celebration, Cucina and ChiBang are a part of YTD, so only those with YTD can reserve tables until 7:30 p.m.  After that, they are open to those who have set dining times as well.

John originally said that we would get to choose between the three.  Then that changed to they were going to rotate through the three gifts and then allow you to choose.  I'm guessing that won't ever happen now, but hoping it does.

8 hours ago, GotMINI said:

Beach towels (yellow) will be in cabin.  

I'm guessing you were in a specialty cabin.  Unless something has changed in the last few months, beach towels in most rooms are blue.

Back in the late spring and early summer we were looking at a November cruise out of New Orleans the week after Thanksgiving, which we thought would be less busy.  There were several categories sold out more than six months in advance.  We did book one, but ended up cancelling and doing another trip instead because the cost was going to be much higher than we normally pay.  The price and popularity for cruising has definitely risen of late, so you can probably expect to see this more of these kind of search results.

I got a good Black Friday offer one year, but that was probably 5 or 6 years ago.  It ended up saving us $250 on our next cruise.  Haven't seen that since and don't look to see it this year with the way bookings are going.

Also, someone please correct me if I am wrong, but hasn't Carnival's cash on hand dropped by about $3 billion this year?

Carnival definitely had the best quarter in quite some time.  Turning a profit is always better than a loss, though they do project a loss of 10 cents a share in the fourth quarter due to fuel prices.  Also, it's always good to be paying down debt rather than incurring more.

However, they should be having higher revenue.  The prices of cruises and all the extras have risen considerably over the last year, much more than the rate of inflation.  The price of onboard internet, cheers, soft drinks, milkshakes, and general onboard shopping has risen greatly! Gone are those 2 for $20 t-shirt sales.  They now have prices like 2 for $30 and 2 for $35.  That's at minimum a 50% increase in price, so they are far outpacing any increases they are paying.  Obviously, there have been many topics on here about extraordinary rising prices like those of cabanas and such.  It's great for them to see rising revenue, but that's mostly because of rising costs of the cruises and all of their onboard products and services.

Will there come a point where people are no longer willing, or able to pay the rising price of everything?  For us, we've reached that point on some cruises.  We already cancelled our November cruise on Valor because it was going to be by far the highest cost per day we've ever paid for a cruise and extras.  We decided to take another trip instead for several hundred dollars less for the same amount of time.  While we will probably take our January cruise because it was booked under one of the great rate codes from last year, we are in the process of making a decision about our April Jubilee cruise.  Chances are good we will cancel that one, but not 100% sure yet. Right now we have less cruises booked than we've had in years and for the first time in probably 10 years, don't have a cruise booked past next year.  I suspect there will be more of that in the future, especially if prolonged high interest rates cause an economic downturn.

29 minutes ago, LatinaInTexas said:

I loved Chibang, had dinner there 3 times so I could try most of the menu. This

The menu for ChiBang just doesn’t appeal to us, especially with so many other options. I’m curious. They had started a policy at ChiBang that after the first time you had to pay an $8 fee to go there. Did you have to pay that fee the last two times?

21 minutes ago, LatinaInTexas said:

I was also on this sailing. It had been a year and a half since I had cruised Carnival, had tried MSC and NCL.

I was really curious if I would still love Carnival because I loved my cruises on the other lines.

This would be the second biggest ship I have been on and from past experience I already knew I like big and new ships so I was excited.

I only have one complaint about this sailing but it's not any of the issues you experienced.

We had no issues with boarding, getting off, elevators, rowdy or rude people, wait times or bad service at food venues,  boring shows or limited comedy or getting back on ship at ports.

Pretty much loved everything about this cruise. I loved Chibang, had dinner there 3 times so I could try most of the menu. This sailing was an improvement over other Carnival sailings where I observed and experienced minor issues.

I just filled out my survey and honestly almost every question got either a 9 or 10.

Now the one issue I did have was a big one to me. My cabin/location was the noisiest EVER! I'm talking a whole hallway full of door slammers with the worse being out neighbors on both sides 24/7. It never stopped. I'm going to guess we heard at least 12-15 door slams per day and we aren't even in our cabin a lot.

Sometimes a door would slam so hard it felt like the room shook. Add to that so much bumping, knocking, thumping noises, running around sounds from above. At night while laying in bed I could hear the toilet flush from both sides lol.

Never, ever have I experienced anything like this, it was insane. Especially since on MSC and NCL I could count on one hand the number of door slams I heard. And our MSC cruise was 9 nights.

 

I’m glad you had a great cruise. I’m sure there were many others who felt the same way as you. As I said before it was certainly not everyone as a whole causing problems. For us it was probably just the wrong place at the wrong time.

4 minutes ago, pc_load_letter said:

 

Therein lies the problem. Their customer base is not those of us on here, or repeat cruisers for that matter.

 

They want blue cards, the more the merrier!

That's exactly right.  It doesn't bother them that we've cancelled our November cruise.  That ship was nearly completely full anyway.  They will not miss us at all.   I know a family that is cruising Carnival right now for the first time.  It appears that they are spending a lot of money on pictures, drinks and who knows what else.

6 minutes ago, drvmywifecrzy said:

This cruise was likely the last hurrah!!! for northerners as school starts there after labor day.

Wow! Schools around here have already been in session four weeks. I didn’t realize that there were still schools that started that late.

4 minutes ago, drvmywifecrzy said:

Also you pack 6,000 people on a ship you much more likely to remember the not so friendly ones versus the ones you want to cruise with again

Definitely true. The majority of people were good and treated others well.

18 minutes ago, pe4all said:

We are veering away from the "larger" ships, Magic being the largest we will be going on from now on.

My wife feels the same way.  I like the food options on the Excel class ships and the comedy options on Mardi Gras (though that may have changed now), but the overall experience just wasn't as good on this one.  We are booked next April on Jubilee.  It was a pre-build special offer that included a good price and quite a bit of onboard credit.  We will have to decide by January if we want to keep that one or not.

4 minutes ago, TravelGirlinDallas said:

I wonder if there was just a bad mix of pax on this cruise or if it is typical for this ship and/or homeport?

Not really sure.  This was the first time on this ship.  We were on Sunrise out of Miami in September 2021 and didn't have any problems.  Of course that was right after cruising started back, so everyone on there was probably just glad to be cruising again.

While we had a decent time, this certainly was not one of our favorite cruises.  In over 20 cruises it would rank in the bottom two or three.  This is definitely the most negative things we’ve written about any of our cruises.  This would also be the first time we could remember coming back from a cruise and not thinking about our next cruise or booking another cruise.

Dislikes:  (While there were a lot of things we didn't like on this cruise, here are the main ones)

1.      There seemed to be a good amount of disorganization on this cruise.  Here are a few examples:

On embarkation day we were in the Captain’s Lounge.  On Celebration, they really don’t go by the zone number listed on your boarding pass.  They give you a zone letter based on what priority group you are in (Diamond, Suite, and then Platinum) and when you arrive.  For us, our boarding pass said A1, but we were given the Priority K boarding placard.  This wasn’t really a big deal because it would seem to make things go smoother instead of having everyone heading to the line at the same time.  The problem is that they didn’t do a good job of explaining it.  Though we pretty much figured it out and understood it, some others didn’t get it.  We were talking to some folks near us while waiting.  They also had Priority K.  However, when they called A, they went on up because their boarding pass was A1.  They essentially went with the diamonds, as diamonds had Priority A and B placards.

Another problem with embarkation was that they let FTTF go before the other priority groups were finished even though they stated up front that the order of boarding would be Diamond, Suite Guests, Platinum and then FTTF.  When it was our time to go, we were headed up the escalator towards the gangway.  As we got to the main hallway right outside the gangway, there was a long line of people coming up the hallway.  We didn’t know what was going on so several of us just merged into the line and kept going.  You would have thought we had just slapped people in the face or committed robbery as we were called lots of names.  My wife and I just pulled aside and let the most vocal ones go on by us.  As they passed we saw the FTTF on their boarding passes, so all of these folks were coming from the main waiting area.  FTTF was actually going before many platinum as there were many groups still behind us.  This confusion was completely cause by Carnival.  The wasn’t simply a miscommunication either because as we were headed up we heard them announce on someone’s radio to go ahead and send the next three groups from each side.  While we didn’t know what that meant at the time, we figured it out pretty quick after we realized what was going on.

At some ports getting back on the ship took way too long.  At Roatan we were going back to the ship around noon.  They were sending all of us to the far gangway to go back on.  There was two lines to go on at that gangway, but it was taking a long time with everyone standing out in the sun.  A Carnival employee then sent people from the back of the line up to a third line, which sent them in front of many who had been waiting a while.  As we got inside the ship, we noticed quickly why it was taking so long.  They only had one security agent scanning everyone back on the ship.  All three of these lines were merging together creating a huge bottleneck.

We ate in the YTD room three nights during this cruise. If you checked in and went as soon as the dining room opened, there was a line each night.  You were able to check in 20 minutes before opening time and you received a table ready notification in about 10 minutes even though the dining room was not open yet.  There would be a line waiting each night, but people would still push their way to the front because they had a table ready notification.  On other cruises they would announce this frequently to let folks coming up know what was going on.  But they didn’t do that much on this ship.  When people would get to the front of the line they would tell them, but many of these folks just stayed up front instead of getting in the line.  While it didn’t really bother most people, some did not appreciate it and let them know.  On one night a lady was making her way to the front and she basically pushed the guy behind us out of the way and said our table is already ready.  We thought they were going to fight.  As we were heading in to our table another guy was cussing out the hostess inside at the desk.  He was extremely ugly to her over this issue.

2.      The entertainment on this cruise was not very good.  After being on Mardi Gras we were looking forward to the Center Stage shows and the PG Comedy shows.  On Mardi Gras there were numerous PG comedy shows, with shows every day.  On Celebration, there were two nights with no PG shows and on the days when there were shows, they were the same show repeated throughout the day.  There were only four unique PG shows.  On Mardi Gras there were six comedians and all had PG shows, with some doing more than one unique shows.

The Center Stage shows weren’t that good.  The Magnificent Circus show about put us to sleep in the first 20 minutes.  They should have left that part off and it would have been a little better.  We would not have stayed for the whole show if we were not down on the floor where it would have been distracting to leave, although there were some who didn’t let that stop them.  The best night of entertainment was the Family Feud show in the main theater.  The rock band was not that impressive either.  We only listened to them once.  Other than Family Feud, the best entertainment was provided by the soloists, Owen Stephen and Scott Lucille who were at the Latitudes Bar and Golden Jubilee throughout the week.  We were thankful for them.

3.      The amount of rudeness and rowdiness on this cruise.  While this wasn’t at any stretch the majority of people, there was enough to make us feel uncomfortable and really unsafe at times.  There were people who didn’t mind cursing at others, including older children and teens.  There were those who would basically push others out of the way to get where they wanted to go, without any regard for others.  This happened frequently.  We came close to seeing people fight on a couple of occasions.  While this is not really Carnival’s fault, they could do more to help prevent this.  Though security was more visible on this cruise than some previous cruises, it wasn’t enough.  It’s pretty obvious that Carnival needs more security staff, especially on these larger ships.

4.      Elevators:  (While I would prefer to take the stairs most of the time, my wife cannot physical take the stairs for more than one flight or so.)  The mid-ship elevators aren’t nearly large enough.  They always seemed to be packed.  They had 8 in that area, but it probably would have been better to split these off into two banks as having 8 together caused other problems.  As usual, lots of people had no elevator etiquette.  When we approach elevators, we typically wait on those who were already waiting before us.  However, many people could care less that people had been waiting for some time.  They would walk right up and jump right on elevators in front of others who had been waiting.  Much of the time not even giving people getting off the elevator time to get off before pushing their way in.  Having 8 elevators together really doesn’t help.  If you wait in the middle for elevators to arrive and the one that arrives is on the end, those that just walked up get on those regardless of who was there waiting.  One night my wife and I were already on the elevator when it arrived at this floor and it was already full, I was just about knocked down by a lady who was determined to make room on the elevator.

Likes:

1.      Our Extended Balcony Cabin on the side of the ship.  This was a great balcony with a lounger, two regular chairs and a table.  We spent lots of time, especially the two sea days, out on our balcony enjoying some peace and quiet.

2.      Muster Drill.  Obviously still much better than pre-covid.

3.      Premium Internet was very good.  We were able to stream Braves games on the Bally sports app throughout the cruise.

4.      Debarkation (See more below)

Dining:

Pig and Anchor:

We ate at Pig and Anchor two nights.  This was better food than our previous experience on Mardi Gras.  The first night the service and food was really good.  However, when we went again on Friday night, the service was horrible.  We were there nearly two hours.  There were several people getting up and going to get their own water refills.

Cucina Del Capitano:

We went there for dinner on the first elegant night and then again for lunch one day.  The service and food for dinner was really good.  Though the food was good at lunch, the service was not very good.  We had to wait about 15 minutes before anyone ever came to our table and it was hard to get water refills.

ChiBang:

We did not go to ChiBang on this cruise as we are really not big fans.

Main Dining Room:

We ate in the main dining room three nights.  Service was good each night.  We were able to be in and out in around an hour, except for the second elegant night.  We didn’t order dessert as we have never really been wild about the main dining room dessert options.  We never had a wait for a table as we went as soon as the dining room opened each night.  The only waiting we did was for the dining room to open.  Just a side note:  the dining room opened 30 minutes early (5:00) on the elegant nights.  Food was normal Carnival food, though it was really that great.  One thing we didn’t like about the dining room was that, like many other ships, tables for two were sitting right beside each other.  They really weren’t tables for two at all, more like tables for four and six.

Debarkation:

Debarkation went pretty smooth for us, though we did not bother with elevators. We did checked luggage and had zone 3 priority tags delivered to our room with the letter.  The priority letter had self-assist meeting time at 7:30 and the priority checked luggage meeting time at 8.  Because of prior experience, we went on down to the waiting area shortly after 7. They dismissed priority self-assist at 7:20 and called zones 1-4 checked luggage at 7:30.  After collecting our luggage and going through facial recognition, we were outside waiting on our pre-scheduled Lyft to arrive at 8, although he arrived five minutes or so early.  Our flight was 11 am out of FLL.  We were through security at the airport and waiting at our departure gate at 8:45.

Again, we had a decent time and were able to relax.  However, this made us rethink our future cruising.  We’ve been on over 20 Carnival cruises, but we will probably look at trying other lines.  We had already been considering cancelling our November cruise because it would be the most expensive five day cruise that we’ve ever done.  This cruise made that decision for us. We cancelled that cruise earlier this week before the final payment date.  We will take another trip instead of a cruise.

We typically get the premium because there is very little difference in price from value to premium ($1.70 per day on our next cruise.)  We were just on Celebration and even with premium checking our security videos was slow at times.  Not really sure why because we were able to stream Braves games on the Bally sports app each day without any problems. We could also Facetime with our daughters and grands without any problems. We would recommend going with premium because the price difference really isn't that much and the quality is much better.

16 hours ago, Jamman54 said:

The beginning of the show is about the cast interacting with the people sitting in the floor seats amongst the set pieces. That's where we choose to sit, so we enjoyed the beginning of the show. I can fully understand that the show seems to have a slow start if you are sitting in the back or upstairs. We make sure to sit on the floor for Most Magnificent Circus and Celestial Strings. 

We weren't on the chairs in the center because we really didn't want to sit there, but we were close. We were sitting on the second row on the side in the long floor bench seats, so we were close to everything on that side.  We still didn't enjoy that part.

We just got off Celebration and to be honest, a lot of the shows weren't that great.  We had high expectations after watching the Center Stage shows on Mardi Gras.  After waiting over an hour for good seats at the Most Magnificent Circus show, we were about put to sleep for the first 20 minutes of the show. It got a little better, but not a whole lot.  I guess the first 20 minutes just tainted it.  They could have left the first part off and it would have been a better show.

On 9/8/2023 at 8:08 PM, Hogladyrider said:

@MeganGC1983so sorry you had to experience this.

Unfortunately I am afraid it is more the norm in today's society.  Kids run the home not the parents.

The rowdiness and loose canons is one of the reasons we have moved on from Carnival.

Even back in the 90s when Carnival allowed under 21 to drink it was not as bad as it is today.  Saw my fair share of high schoolers lose it while sitting at the bar.  Lean over and let loose on the deck but no verbal abuse or running wild like today.

Hang in there you do a great job with your own kids.

Unfortunately it was not just the kids on this cruise.  There were some adults that were acting out as well.  It wasn't a lot, but enough to make things bad for others. We just about got knocked down several times by folks cramming into elevators in front of many who had been waiting.  There were some that had a complete lack of respect for others.  That may be where these children got it.