groundloop

Yep...... We were on Elation just before the shut down, on the top deck near the front of the ship. Got into tropical storm force winds and 20 foot seas on the last night of the cruise. Our luggage was sliding back and forth across the floor, closet doors were slamming shut, balcony furniture was sliding around. Being the last night of the cruise I'd treated myself to an extra dessert and a couple of drinks before turning in, that didn't go so well (I lasted through a couple hours of the storm before getting sick). Now I keep an eye on forecast seas on windy . com, and also keep some motion sickness medicine on hand just in case.

We've been on both Valor and Glory out of New Orleans and have liked them both. I agree about the Playlist Production shows, and it's been discussed here a few times. I haven't seen a new show in quite a few cruises. It's a lot of work (i.e. $$$$) for Carnival to put together new shows, so we're probably going to keep getting repeats for quite a while. Unless I'm with someone who's new to cruising I'll skip most shows and go the the comedy club. I learned that there's a large "warehouse" in Florida where Carnival has built exact scale mockups of stages of each class of ship. Cast members spend about 2 months practicing there before coming on a ship and then have a 6 month rotation on their ship.

Sometimes folks don't even realize there's a switch for their balcony light. One time our neighbor's balcony light was on all night (which of course made it impossible for us to sit on the balcony at night and enjoy the stars), the next day our cabin steward was kind enough to turn the offending light off when she serviced their cabin and it never came back on for the rest of the cruise.

I'm not platinum until our next cruise at Thanksgiving, but at embarkation I got the impression that around half of the guests on this cruise were platinum or diamond. And as far as getting us into the terminal and onto the ship embarkation seemed pretty smooth, much better than some of the other terminals we've cruised out of. (But dang..... leaving nearly 2 hours late because the ship couldn't get loaded on time !!!!!!!! ).

I'm currently on Miracle headed back to San Francisco from Hawaii. After watching the very inefficient process of loading the ship and getting luggage on (which resulted in us leaving nearly 2 hours late), and the less than smooth process of getting off at our stops, I'm wondering how smoothly debarkation will go. Anyone who's been on Miracle recently have any experiences to share? (Overall I'm happy with the cruise, the food has been very good, entertainment good, etc. but it seems like the powers that be on Miracle could learn a thing or two about getting folks off from other ships. The problem with loading was a result of not having gangways that forklifts could drive across).

I was on Spirit's third cruise out of Jacksonville after she came back into service...... Once we got past the disorganization at the port everything was great. Spirit was in great condition, I had no complaints whatsoever.

We're on Miracle right now heading for Hawaii and I feel a bit like that. There's a lot more wheel chairs and scooters than I've ever seen on a ship before, and yes, I get a little impatient when I want to get from point A to point B. I have to keep reminding myself to be thankful I'm still able to walk and am in reasonably good health. I guess the upside is that there aren't many ill behaved kids onboard right now.

Since I've retired we've been doing a lot of cruising (might as well spend the IRA before the kids get it 😄 ), almost exclusively on Carnival. We did an Alaska cruise this summer on Holland America, and to me there were a few things that I like better about HA and there were a few things I liked better about Carnival. I'm thinking it's time to look at other cruise lines to see what we think of them. We've always book at least a balcony cabin, I like Carnival's shows (except for the fact that there are only a limited number of different shows across the fleet and I seem to have seen them all at least a couple of times now), in general I don't have any complaints about the food on Carnival, and I prefer a somewhat more casual atmosphere. For those of you that have cruised other lines as well as Carnival, what are your thoughts?

I'm not sure that's correct. I've been cruising since 2018 and there have always been 8 performers (except for a few times when Covid forced them to do shows short-handed). Maybe they used to have more than 8, but I doubt it.

I've been sailing a lot since the restart, mostly on Carnival. One of the things I've always told people I like about Carnival are the Playlist Productions shows. One big downside though is that there's not much variety in shows across the fleet. For instance, I'm on Miracle right now for a 15 day trip to Hawaii and all the Playlist shows which are scheduled for this trip I've seen at least twice before even though I've never been on Miracle. I get why they don't change up shows very often on a particular ship, besides the choreography it would be a lot of work to build new sets etc. But what I don't understand is why Carnival can't work in more shows throughout the fleet to keep each ship more or less unique. Maybe someone in the know like @Saint Gregg can chime in with something on this.

That's the only reason that makes any sense as far as which side of the ship to book. There's no guarantee a ship will dock in a certain direction, it can change due to weather, or just the preference of different captains. As far as facing the sunset..... unless it's a one-way cruise you'll have pretty much an equal opportunity to see sunsets on either side of the ship, just on different days.

To be honest I think this is a good move by Carnival. For starters, if I really really really want to stay in my cabin and avoid going to Lido I'll be willing to pay a few dollars for the privilege. I've also read that Carnival is trying to cut down on food waste, and this seems like an excellent start to that. I've seen far too much wasted food sitting on room service trays in the hallway. I don't blame them a bit for trying to put a dent in this problem.

The last I knew Miracle's thrusters are non-functional and she has to have tug boats help her in and out of port. I witnessed this in June when Miracle was docked right behind us in Alaska.

OK, y'all are bringing my blood pressure down a little bit. Yes, I had a luau booked on Waikiki Beach, now that the date got changed for our stop that's totally out the window. That was supposed to be a surprise for my wife. And I was really looking forward to seeing Kauai as I'd always heard great things. Unfortunately, they do not need to offer an explanation. The last thing they need is a bunch of cruisers deciding if the explanation is the right one. The people's court isn't always that productive. In my professional life, whenever I couldn't make a commitment I wouldn't even think about not offering at least a basic explanation (even if it was the fact that I screwed up). Carnival has never done a very good job of communicating with customers, I wish that would change. I have a hunch that this has something to do with Miracle's non-functioning thrusters. We'll see.

To add insult to injury the replacement stop is Kona which I just found out is a tender port.

I just got an email from Carnival that the itinerary has been changed for our Sept. 15th Hawaii cruise on Miracle (they deleted Kauai, added Kona, and changed the date of our stop at Honolulu). I know that "stuff" happens, but am pretty frustrated because I've had dinner reservations at Honolulu for quite some time and with such short notice I'm just going to be out of luck. They didn't offer any explanation, and as far as I know there's not any significant weather expected.

There have been reports lately of rather significant cancellation fees when one person cancels, whereas by all accounts if you just show up and shrug your shoulders when asked about the missing cabin mate they won't charge that.

Yes, you can purchase it one day at a time. My son is super cheap and only purchases wifi on sea days since he'll use his phone service while in port. You make the purchase from the Carnival Hub App. And the wifi generally sucks. Carnival claims you can use streaming services with "premium" but service is rarely good enough to stream anything without getting so frustrated you'll want to throw your laptop overboard.

If desired you can also use the Hub app to message others in your group, there's a $5 sign up fee for that.

Do you realize that Pride is also sailing from Tampa? I don't see Carnival retiring the Spirit class for quite a few more years so long as they're filling the ships to a reasonable capacity and making money.

This isn't consistent from port to port. At most of the ports I've sailed from nobody even checks your scheduled arrival time and folks barge in an hour or two early and muck things up for everyone else (even though they won't be able to get on the ship until their boarding group is called).

Prices are higher because Carnival doesn't need to offer discounts to fill ships. There are still a few deals out there, but you've got to do some digging. I just stumbled on a great price for a cruise at the end of next October, the prices for the weeks before and after were a good bit more so apparently demand was down for that one particular week.

Yep, I always keep paper copies of everything as a backup. I've been on 5 cruises since the restart and only once, in Seattle, did I feel like Verifly made things go quicker. This time I'm probably not going to bother with it at all.

Since Carnival only recently started sailing out of San Francisco I'd like to hear from anyone with recent experience as far as how smooth (or not smooth) the boarding process went. I was a little bit surprised last night when I did online check-in right at midnight and only managed to get an 11 AM arrival appointment and boarding group C03. (On recent cruises I've gone for the latest arrival appointments to avoid the crowds and be able to go directly to the cabin but I let my wife talk me into trying for an early one this time because she's super excited to be cruising to Hawaii).

Our last cruise was in March on Spirit and I managed to watch a couple of good Dive-In movies including the latest James Bond. If you don't like James Bond you must be un-American 😁 . This is the first I've heard that any of ships were cutting back on movies, that's disappointing. We'll be on Magic for Christmas and I'm hoping they'll have movies under the stars. However, I can totally see the Carnival bean counters moving toward more parties in order to drive alcohol sales and it's sad if this is the reason they're cutting back on movies.