groundloop

Good to hear, we'll be boarding Freedom in a couple more weeks for Thanksgiving. AND I must say that I've been very pleased with the food on Carnival lately. We most recently did a 15 day cruise to Hawaii on Miracle and the food was very good.

Nothing is sold at the cruise port.

Maybe if enough of us call John Heald names and threaten to never sail Carnival again unless we can get ice cream for breakfast .......

It most definitely said that in the email I received. You can still get a 2nd entre for no additional charge but a 3rd will be $5. It's extremely rare that I ever order 2 entrees (it only happens if my wife and I want to try something new and we'll share), but I really can't even imagine getting a third entre.

Omelets for breakfast Guy's burgers Any of the grilled seafood options in MDR And one that has apparently gone by the wayside - French Onion Soup.

Here's a new one...... Carnival's website screwed up and has given me nearly free excursions. I booked three excursions for my wife and myself, total price was $505. At checkout I used $200 of OBC, so the remaining to be paid was $305, for which I entered 4 gift card numbers. On the payment page it showed all the gift card information correctly etc. Once I hit "Finalize Payment" I got an error message telling me that the amount I'd paid didn't equal the total price, but it wouldn't let me go back. On the cruise planner page of my account it shows those excursions as being paid for, yet when I checked the balance on those gift cards it only shows that a total of $105 was used from them. ALSO, on the booking summary PDF it shows those excursions as paid for, plus it still shows me having $200 of OBC...... So it appears that I got $505 worth of excursions for $105. I called Carnival to try and straighten this out but the person I spoke to at the excursion "help" line just told me to keep an eye on things because he couldn't make any changes etc. and that since the excursions were showing up in my planner I was "probably" ok. I'm guessing that nobody else has ever run into a similar problem.

Carnival has deck parties as well as occasional parties in the atrium, usually hosted by the cruise director. I'm an old fart (65) and don't find these parties bothersome in the least. They're easy to avoid if that's your choice, but if nothing else I think they're fun to watch. Someone who doesn't know any better might see one of these parties on an online video and get the impression that's all that happens on a Carnival cruise, but that's absolutely wrong. You won't even notice the party unless you happen to wander into it. There are A LOT of other things to do onboard, on my recent cruise to Hawaii one of my favorites was a daily talk by a naturalist about the history of the islands, their geology, how the Polynesians navigated to Hawaii, etc. I doubt if there are many online videos about that. As far as food quality, I think that was an occasional problem early on after the restart, but in my last 5 cruises on Carnival the food has been great.

If you want to avoid crowds AND be able to have access to your cabin as soon as you get on the ship chose a late check-in time, after 1 PM. Other than eating there's not really much to do when you first get on the ship anyway, and if you board early you have to lug around your carry-on items until you can get in your cabin at 1:30.

The thrusters have been non-functional for quite a while, necessitating the use of tugboats getting in and out of port. I'm not sure what it costs to hire tugboats but it can't be cheap. I'd read quite a while ago that repair of the thrusters was the reason that Miracle's scheduled drydock got moved up.

I've been to ports that required you to show proof of vaccination as you exit the ship, it wasn't really a big deal. There were a number of government employees checking everyone who debarked, it only took a few seconds. I have no clue how Grand Turk will handle this but am interested to find out since we'll be stopping there on our cruise in a few weeks.

So in addition to chair hogs around the pools we have slot-machine hogs. 🤣

That's my take on this as well. I really don't believe Carnival would have stopped this for any other reason, they were definitely making money on this. I'm reasonably certain it'll never happen, but it sure would be nice if Carnival would offer a mini drink package, something in the order of a 5 drink per day maximum. Or else combine Cheers with other perks into a "Have It All" package the way Holland America does.

In my experience you might actually like a late check-in time. You'll likely be able to get into the terminal without waiting in a long line, get on the ship in just a few minutes, and you should be able to have immediate access to your cabin.

Yes, we've been on quite a few cruises since the restart. It's normally just the two of us with YTD. MOST of the time it's been around an hour or a bit less, but there have been those handful of occurrences where it's been an hour and a half.

I'll take St. Maarten and St. Kitts & Nevis over Amber Cove any day of the week.

I just saw on facebook where someone had complained to John Heald about dinner in the Main Dining Room taking an hour and a half, so John did one of his polls and it appears that most folks (or at least the ones that bothered to respond) don't have an issue with that. This has been our biggest gripe about cruises recently and several times had to miss shows because dinner took so long. I'm wondering what everyone here thinks about dinner that takes that long. Is there something wrong with me for being annoyed by it?

And I swear that Carnival's computers know not to show you a lower price based on your VIFP number.

I've never seen printed menus offered up without being requested, but yes, if you request a printed menu your server will bring you one. Apparently there are still some bugs in the Hub App and sometimes the menu isn't available, at least that was the case on my wife's iphone (further proof that Androids are better 😁 ). This has happened to us on our last three cruises, most recently on Miracle last month.

Your best bet would be the Sports Bar, but it depends on who's televising the games. It's been mentioned that Carnival has a contract with ESPN, so if it's one of the ESPN networks you might be in luck.

Normally if an excursion sells out it still shows up but with a notation "SOLD OUT". If an excursion isn't listed then it's likely not available for your cruise, hasn't been listed yet, or something like that. Keep checking because I've seen them add excursions from time to time.

To be honest I wouldn't worry about using Verifly anymore. Just show your documents at the port and you're good to go.

From what folks have been saying on here the only time you'll be denied shareholder OBC is if you're sailing on a casino rate. I've had many of the promotional rates (resident, over 55, and many very good VIFP deals) and have never been denied my OBC.

The original post was asking about Spirit, which doesn't have any on-demand content available.

Well, sort of. There are two free movie channels so you might get lucky and find one that you like which is starting at a time that's convenient for you. There aren't any on-demand movies though.

So most likely the earliest arrival appointment is at 12:00.