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Don't worry about it. Everyone, and I mean everyone, has done it and sooner or later will do it again. Just wanted to explain the reaction you got.

Bringing up an unrelated topic in a thread (aka hijacking) is generally considered bad etiquette. Yes, early in the thread someone talked about tea time then also mentioned Sea Day steak in the same post and a few chimed in about it. Not the best behavior but not the same is devoting a post entirely to an unrelated topic. No big deal. Happens a lot. Just a question of manners.

My exact question.

With boyfriends or girlfriends there is a need for precautions. Just as you should always put the boyfriend or girlfriend as the outside person in a group photo so they can be cropped out later if needs be, one should always leave their name blank and let them be TBA until the last minute for a cruise...

Unlikely. He tends to keep his monkey out of sight.😇

My best guess is that your insurance company treated this as a request by you to pay the provider rather than as a reimbursement of an amount you already paid. My first step would be to contact my insurance company and ask why they sent the money to the provider. If you filled out your claim forms indicating you had already paid and were requesting reimbursement and your insurance company made a mistake then I would try to put it all on them to get the incorrect payment back from the provider and get your money to you. If you filled out the claim form as a "I got this bill from my provider please pay" then it is probably on you to stalk the provider for reimbursement. I'm just guessing. Good luck.

The offer you get in your mailbox the last day of the cruise is usually junk. Where the effect of your points will show up is in the casino offers you will receive after the cruise.

Their idea is to look good, not to do good.

I understand what you are saying, but at 70 I have seen this play a few times. I don't think airline price discounts on some routes is indicative of anything other than normal business. Air travel is just approaching pre-covid levels and the problem is not lack of people wanting to fly, it is lack of pilots and air controllers. Minor fluctuations on some routes don't mean much in the larger scheme of things. Ask friends who have traveled recently how many had flights delayed or cancelled because the crew "timed out." Pre-covid that was something you rarely heard. Now we hear it from our friends on a regular basis. Then there is consumer debt. The recent pace of increase is hardly startling compared to the norm over the last 30 years. Finance writers have to come up with something to write about each and every day and often write as if the ripple on the surface of a wave is of great significance. And my last point would be mostly anecdotal. I got my economics degree in 1976 and closely observed the inflation of the late 1970s. There were people then saying prices couldn't stay that high because people couldn't afford it. While the rate of inflation subsequently grew at a slower pace, and for commodities and some isolated items decreased, the prices of very few goods or services went down. What happened is wages went up. The Federal Reserve was created in 1913. It has acted to protect banks (or as they call it "maintain the strength and stability of the financial markets") ever since and the best way to do that is to have inflation. That is because inflation results in higher wages and prices. That makes it easier for people and businesses to pay off loans. So inflation helps banks avoid losses on loans. They have done a great job. Prices don't go down:

This has been asked before but there doesn't seem to be a definitive answer. But note that the OP on that thread below was from Australia also so it might be an Australian thing.

Discussions about tips will never come to a consensus. We simply don't have all the facts. One of the crucial bits of information we don't have is the crew pay package. How do tips play into that? For example: Say that pre-covid stateroom attendants pay for a pay period was $500 plus tips but they were guaranteed at least $700. (I recognize the dollar amounts are not realistic, but the absolute numbers are not the point.) Then say post-covid they did less work for each room (once a day service) but had twice the number of rooms. The tips from those rooms are much more because there are more rooms. But if the pay package for a pay period changed to $200 plus tips but they are guaranteed at least $700 the state room attendants receive all the gratuities paid but their take home pay has not changed much while Carnival has made out like a bandit. Is that the kind of thing that is happening? I have no idea. Carnival keeps its secrets and without that information discussions on tips is useless. The only questions that matter are what is the all in cost of the cruise and are you willing to pay that.

While I understand where you are coming from and have no love for Carnival's "gratuities" game, I would not want them to include gratuities in the base price. The reason is that in a couple of years they would just come back with, "We are now allowing guests to easily express their appreciation for our hard working crews by automatically adding gratuities to your sign and sail account." In other words they would just bring them back later, without reducing the base price.

This is a cruising forum. Everything is a first world problem. If you find first world problems aggravating, rather than put down people who discuss them you would find greater peace by not being here.

Just an FYI... Many phones with security on them will not load from a Carnival QR code because the Carnival Wi-Fi (other than the purchased Wi-Fi plans) are not secure connections. The Hub app has the menu and the unsecure connection doesn't bother it since the app is limited in what it can do to your phone. But we have healthy immune systems so prefer paper menus. The immunocompromised will, of course, prefer their phones which they sterilize hourly.

We agree. Looking at the menu should not be a hassle. Calling up the menu on the phone gets you tiny writing on a tiny screen and after a bit the screen goes dark. Sure, it is a minor inconvenience to expand the writing to see a small bit at a legible size and piece together in your head what the full menu looks like, but we're a bit tired of them constantly throwing minor inconveniences at us for their benefit. Doing things for our benefit would be a nice change.

So, there is lots of bashing on the internet and Carnival gets more than most? The poll results don't look good...🤣

At that point I was getting nervous. Good save.

Thanks. Had a great time following but it was over way too fast. Please do it again (but I guess you've heard that one before). Uh! That didn't come out quite right...

Well, it is only humane to protect the sex workers from those young British men.

Kind of reeks of inferiority complex... The confident it doesn't bother, they banter in kind. Those who fear inferiority are sensitive to criticism (mom, the guys on the other team are calling us names. Make them stop.).

You wouldn't have to explain that to Celebrity cruisers... 😇

Well, sing with the man...

I'm just amused at how the word "elitism" has become one of the most misused words. Not liking something or preferring one thing over another is not elitism.

You did 15 drinks yesterday and a bunch today in Key West. Even without extreme heat and humidity and walking today that calls for lots of rehydration. With the extreme heat and humidity it calls for an I.V. or lots of water and rest. You don't have a bag of saline, tubing and needle so rest up!

Adding the watermelon slices just confuses people...