notscb

Every cruise on every line is what you make of it. While Carnival advertises the "fun" vibes onboard, I've had some of my most relaxing cruises onboard Carnival ships. Not to mention that most mainstream U.S. cruise lines (Carnival, RCL, Norwegian) offer essentially the same experience with different branding and carpet colors. A transatlantic experience will likely be similar across lines as well- by day 3 everyone is just kind of relaxing anyway. The Mardi Gras itself is Carnival's newest product on offer and will give you a good sense of what Carnival is hoping to offer going into the future. If it's your first time on Carnival, it's a great choice of ship.

Got my refund for the 12/9 sailing today- finally. Hopefully others get theirs!

I might be wrong, but don't specialty restaurants onboard already come with a gratuity added to the bill. I'm wondering if this is part of your conundrum in that you've been adding onto what already exists in the past.

That's not entirely the case. Most airlines in the United States (the majors- Delta, United, American at least) have gone back to offering the lowest level of economy tickets which are non-refundable and non-transferable.

We really enjoyed the Dream and would do any of her sister ships. If you're looking for similarly sized ships to the Mardi Gras and Celebration, you might want to look at other lines offering larger ships (i.e. Royal's Freedom class).

/s right? It's like a 10 minute drive depending on when you get in and whatever else might be going on in the port that day. I certainly hope it's not 45 minutes for you that day!

If that were true, you'd think RCL would be all over telling the guests who were screwed in this situation exactly that. It'd be much more reasonable for a guest to understand why there wasn't a cabin available vs. telling them they just cant be assigned a stateroom. From a PR perspective, it's a no brainer.

Same here. Weird how quickly one refunds but the other doesn't. I'm also having difficulties getting them to honor their offer for air change reimbursement. It's honestly disappointing, but not surprising.

Just an update for y'all: My cruise on the panorama got cancelled so we decided to just go to PV and take the week there. I'm very excited and appreciate all of your positive suggestions 🙂

GAH just got the notification about the 9th. sucks (even if it's out of their control somewhat). Now back to the drawing board to figure out what to do with flights booked already.

Yikes. I'd just delete this post- I wasn't asking if you personally thought mexico was safe.

That MDR reminds me of the classic MDR design on the QM2. It's gorgeous 🙂

At 14kn that's going to take a bit of time 😵‍💫

I think that's what I'm looking forward to experiencing- thank you for pointing this out. I'm excited to see the balance between the beach vibe and the town itself with the shops and food

Sure...and parts of the USA should be on the USA terrorist watch list. Mazatlan (the port)- was briefly discontinued until it got back under control. For the most parts, these ports rely heavily on the tourism dollar and are going to do what is needed to make sure tourists are safe.

Thank you for the recommendation and for that seafood place- we will definitely be adding it to our list. It seems like there's a lot to visit in the romantic zone alone- we're hoping to do the boardwalk and take the day to just take it all in at this point.

@chengkp75 going above and beyond as always. Thanks so much for giving us such detailed info!

Am on the 12/9 sailing and am feeling bad that four weeks of sailings had to be canceled. What a nightmare for those who are already LA bound for what would be this weekends sailing. Fingers crossed she's back in the water and ready for 12/9 for us.

Aw shucks. Was always hopeful we'd get to see a partner (boyfriend or otherwise) behind the camera for that guy.

My husband and I are excited to be going to Puerto Vallarta for the first time on a cruise next month and was wondering if anyone had any tips, experiences, food recs, etc. that they could share from their time there, especially given that PV is known to be a popular gay tourism destination. Has anyone been to PV, or been to PV on a cruise? What's it like? What is a must-see or must-do in the 12 hours we have to explore?

Quick question- how did you get to the Malecon from the ship? I'm assuming walking isn't the best option but wanted to ask!

Le Sigh. They've all had propulsion issues, but Carnival would be bonkers to publicly admit to what the actual cause of the problem is (which is what @chengkp75 was pointing out). We just know all of the ships have had propulsion issues, but nobody on these forums really has the gritty details of the actual problem.

I'm getting nervous as I'm on the Dec 7th sailing on Panorama. Isn't this the second time this issue has happened this year alone?

Couldn't have said it better myself.

This website is so weird. On the same front page of this same forum is a 15 page live trip report where the folks appear to be having a great time on the same ship you mention. Sorry you had a bad experience 😔