David-n-Rita

It is the luck of the draw and sometimes it makes no sense. We had an power strip taken once, all the other cruises it was fine. Lost a fan one (samll) other times it is fine. We take a bigger one now and that is fine???Our last cruise, we lent our suitcase to our daughter and a very small pair of child's safety scissors were left in the carryon. They targeted and took it saying no scissors (we got it back at the end of the cruise). There guidelines say large scissors and these were the safety ones for a 5 year old. Meanwhile when I went through the metal detector, I set it off, I had a pocketknife. I had to take it off and put it with my watch in the bowl. Knowing they just took safety scissors, I was kicking myself for not leaving it in the car. No problem with a large pocket knife. The same guy who took the safety scissors handed me a pocket knife and told me that size was allowed and gave it to me. So blunt safety scissors are a problem, but a decent size pocket knife is fine. Go figure??

My question is where will it end? How many service dogs will be allowed on a ship at one time. My guess is, unlike the airline, the cruise industry will not restrict the amount of dogs on the the ship.

To play devil's advocate here: Are these dogs accounted for in the planning of an emergency at sea? One or two large dogs, is probably no going to throw off the lifeboat count, but what if we start seeing 20-30 service animals on a ship? How will these dogs be mustered and placed on lifeboats, especially if these are not true service dogs? It is a big difference between covering for some of your fake service dogs inadequacies on a big ship, but what about in the confines of those small lifeboats?

My problem isn't about 1 or 2, and it is not about legit service dogs, it is about the ease to get your pets certified and the fact that all this attention I am sure has a bunch of less than honest people scrambling to do this now that it is a matter of going to a website, paying a couple of hundred dollars ( and checking the box where you swear that this is a trained service dog - no validation, just a check mark) You even send a picture so they can provide your with legit ID with your dogs picture. - no problem, I could even certify my dead dog and pay the money.

I just see people taking their pets cruising especially on things like repositioning cruises that tend to be much longer, and there is suddenly 50 dogs on the ship...

It is my understanding that it doesn't require much to have a dog certified. It's relatively easy these days to find a doctor that will sign off on just about anything.

 

 

 

All they can do is ask for the dog's certification, again, as I understand it. Unfortunately that doesn't mean much.

I agree completely. Carnival will address this problem when everyone jumps on the bandwagon and brings their pet, the newly certified service dog on a Carnival ship. We sat at a table with a blind passenger who has a seeing eye dog. He chose not to bring it on the cruise because his wife could help him around the ship, and his seeing eye dog was bitten on a cruise ship by a small dog someone had on the ship for "social anxiety". He complained about his seeing eye dog being targeted by these "quickly certified" pet dogs now appearing on cruise ships. To protect his own service animal, he said that him and another passenger who always brought their seeing eye dogs on cruise ships are now having problems with "service dogs" that are not really trained for such purposes. That is a shame, and in my opinion that is what is wrong with the rules as they exist now. Carnival will address it when they start having 20-30 dogs on a cruise, and it truly becomes a problem for everyone. I just think it is sad that seeing eye dog passengers are cruising without their dogs due to these "service animals" causing problems

i have heard that sometimes it is sooty. Is this true? We dive, so we like to let our gear dry out on the balcony.

We have only heard it reported here on this website. We have had many aft cabins and we have not seen problems with soot (they do clean your balcony when they service the cabins), and one of the port days there is always a notice to take your personal belongings in as they will be doing a thorough balcony cleaning. We have had butts from above land on our balcony in the past, but that happens all over the ship.

A question for all you "aft" people:

 

Is it louder or is there more vibration due to being above the props (azipods)? And, do you feel more movement because you are not in the center of the ship?

 

We have always stayed in the center of the ship where there is less movement, but these pics make us want to book one of these aft rooms...

There is a slight more rocking I think in the aft, but we like it. Some vibration is felt in different parts of the ship, including the aft when you are docking but not when you are cruising out to sea.

I'm thinking of doing a "Premium Vista Balcony" (wraparound) on the Carnival Conquest -- cabin 7440, 7445, 6452, or 6483 (back of ship). Has anyone been in any of these cabins? Is it worth the extra cost? Is there any bad vibration or noise on the Conquest in these back cabins?

Had 6452 on the Liberty which is identical to the Conquest. Follow the link below and find our cruise journal for the Liberty. It had lots of pictures of the cabin itself as well as the balcony. (Our aft wrap on the Liberty came with a DVD player) No bad vibration or noise...loved this cabin

I have my first balcony booked on the Splendor but it is mid ship. I'm looking at all of these aft balcony pictures and I'm starting to think I might need to change my room. I'm on deck 7 and our friends are also on deck 7 so, I would want to stay there. Any thoughts about or pictures of Splendor deck 7 aft balconies? All of the pictures are so beautiful! Thank you all for posting them!!

We are on the Splendor and have a 7th deck wrap. Cabin 7438. Look for our cruise journals below (we always get afts and occasionally wraps) I take alot of pictures of the cabins and balconies and I will definitely have 7th deck wraps up the beginning of Oct. The aft cabins next to the wrap often are a little larger and because of the sloped walls, we have been in "afts next to wraps" and were able to see way around to what was next to the ship by looking "through" their balcony

Thanks, and I am glad you enjoy the videos.

 

I use a Panasonic H60P with 50X zoom and a built-in 60 gig hard drive. For editing, I use Magix Pro 15. However, Magix is a sorta geeky kind of software that is NOT user-friendly. It's sorta hard to use, but the results are great.

I would love to watch your videos but it is not available to me. Sure wish we could get Broadband in upstate New York. They have it in third world countries, but not NY. I would love to be able to watch U tube....AOL dialup is pretty slow, but not as slow as the only broadband company available to us. A monopoly to say the least. Hughes.net is so bad, when I was trying to upload pictures from my cruise to the web. 5 pictures took 4 hours and 15 minutes on hughes.net broadband. I hooked my laptop to AOL dial up and it uploaded the same pictures in 57 minutes. So why did we pay hughes.net $2100.00 last year for service that is slower than dialup?? Because the commercials are so convincing we think it will get better.

Some businessman could make a killing here providing Broadband, and if Hughes.net knew there was another provider, they won't be able to charge us the money they do. Good thing is we cruise and my pictures that upload on Hughes.net Broadband at 16 kb/s, uploaded on the ships broadband at 900 kb/s ...and people complain the ship internet is slow...if they only knew.

I'm so glad you enjoyed my WEBSHOTS. I

 

I'm also PLATINUM, so when I board I race through the ship and try to get as many pics as I can before the "masses" arrive and blurr or block off so much. Sometimes I get a little in a hurry and some of my pics are blurred. :rolleyes:

 

Thanks and I do the same with my Platinum status while my hubby naps on the comfy beds - we slept the best on the cruise ships - love the aft rocking effect.

Maybe we'll bump into each other racing around to get our empty ship pictures.

Happy cruising

I agree the OPEN AFT DESIGN is what makes the SPLENDOR a must do. Reminds me of my favorite class the SPIRIT class. There are also pics of the SPLENDOR in my WEBSHOTS (below).

 

Not sure if they're still onboard, but the rock bank VOODOO was super spectacular. The lead singer doing Janis Joplin's songs was an exact duplicate of her voice and style.:)

 

Greatest embarcation area Carnival has, IMHO. :D

I just saw your signature and realized I am been looking at you pictures on webshots and they are great!! I bookmarked your pages awhile ago and enjoyed your slideshows. Unfortunately Webshots "lost" some of our pictures and they don't have journal style. Even so I tried to upload our new cruise on the Dream and the upload failed each time. I don't have time to play with it so, I uploaded everything to SmugMug instead. They now have our cruise journals and I am not limited to captions, I can actually write as much as I want. Anyway, I am sure we will watch your slideshows again as our cruise gets closer.

Does look a little boring back there....I wonder if they miss the retractable roof feature on these ships. We were on the Victory and Destiny during a bout of nasty weather and that roof over the aft pool and whirlpool was really the only thing that made any of the whirlpools and pools usable. The mid pools and whirlpools were open to the elements and it was windy and pouring rain. Inside the aft covered portion it was nice.

I looked for a thread on the Splendor where people could post their ideas, favorite places, ideas on food and drinks and what they like to do on Splendor. I couldn't find anything so I thought those of you who love Splendor might like a place to post your ideas and suggestions. I won't be on Splendor until 12/10, so I hope those of you who like this ship will help me out. Thanks!

Thanks for starting the thread. We just got off the Dream and now can focus on our next cruise, the Splendor on 9/26/10. Nice to have advice from cruisers who have been on the ship or have info on the Port as we will be arriving 3 days early and staying on Long Beach......keep that info coming;)