cruisinqt

We just got off of the Mardi Gras a couple weeks ago and those extra charge items were on the new menu. They looked delicious but I didn’t try them. I got my usual concoction: beef & broccoli, Hakka noodles, pork belly, a side of green beans, & a side of broccoli. I mix it all together and it’s amazing! I have the spring rolls for an appetizer and the Crema Catalina for dessert.

ASI did great I would highly recommend him. There were lots of other people there but I never asked if any of them were cruisers. We made reservations online at Vok Baths website. You can prepay and add stuff to your reservation like robes. There are several natural pools all with different temperatures which was nice to try out. They have a swim up bar and a small restaurant too. We really enjoyed it, it was nice to have our own private driver for the day.

Well that would be the posters fault because he/she was making posts on a roll call using an account that had their personal info on it. I don’t join Facebook roll calls for that reason, I only do CC ones. The only details someone can see about me in a roll call post here on CC is my username (which is never my real name.) I never have my address, location or personal details included in my account. I know some people include everything but I don’t, even on TikTok I don’t use my real name or even what state I live in. And on Facebook when I make posts about my travels I make it private to where only family can see it. In this day and age we have to be hyper vigilant. But your point is valid, some roll call posts are dangerous.

Yes I know it was a federally mandated law that made that happen. I’m just saying I hope it happens to the rest of the travel industry too. I’m hoping that the government steps in and makes some more changes in the rest of the travel industry.

But if you immediately pay money before there’s lawsuits or lawyers involved you get that reputation of paying cash quickly which makes you become an even bigger target. My friend said word gets around quickly in the scammers groups and they specifically target corporations that are quick to pay cash, especially the ones that don’t involve lawsuits or lawyers. The scammers don’t like getting lawyers involved because it costs extra money. So if they followed your suggestion and paid quickly before it escalated to lawsuits it would make things worse, not better. It’s sad that there are people out there like that making it worse for honest hardworking people like us. As far as the standard in the travel industry changing, I agree that it’s changing and I’m thrilled about that. The new guidelines for airlines with cash compensation within a certain amount of hours was long overdue. I hope that this is the catalyst that pushes the whole travel industry into the right direction. It’s been needing a major overhaul for quite some time now.

Carnival is following the standard of practice in the travel industry which is to offer a credit but no cash when there are unresolved issues. The airlines always want to offer credits instead of cash, so do hotels, resorts, etc. Even though I’m not a fan of receiving a credit instead of cash I acknowledge it’s all I’ll usually get out of the travel industry when issues arise. I’m sure these large corporations have weighed the pros and cons before implementing this type of policy. It must be the better choice or they’d change their policy. I worked for a large corporation for many years and when issues arose and lawsuits were threatened they never made cash offers regardless of the situation. I was chatting with a guy in the legal department and he said when they stopped offering immediate cash settlements, their lawsuits dropped in half. He said it’s because big corporations get lots of frivolous lawsuits with no merit just because people think they’ll offer a quick cash settlement to make them go away. But once a corporation gets a reputation of never offering money up front or settling quickly, the lawsuits disappear. So yes, initially the cost of the lawsuit along with its bad publicity looks like a bad choice, but if you look at the whole picture and how it effects the amount of lawsuits they get then their choice is understandable. Because they save money over the long run from the hoards of scammers looking for a quick buck.

Yeah she’s definitely trying to hurt Carnivals reputation by putting negative videos up regularly. She just put another video up yesterday saying that “unfortunately Carnival hasn’t fixed the security issue.” But she’s losing traction because her first video had over 900k views and the latest only has 5k.

I never thought about that but I guess that could have happened. But her story has run on several news agencies and was recently featured on Good Morning America and Carnival didn’t dispute the 10k offer that’s been mentioned every time. They made a statement basically saying that “consumer experts advise that it’s never a good idea to post personal info about your travel plans.”

She recorded the conversation with Carnival on her phone then posted it on TikTok. The Carnival rep said they would give her 10k in future credit if she stated that “Carnival resolved the issue.” Those were the exact words. She refused the offer. I imagine she regrets that now.

She was bragging on Facebook about her Excel Presidential Suite with a wraparound balcony (it’s huge) and someone didn’t like it and canceled the cruise out of spite. The money is gone because it was cancel 2 days prior to her cruise so there’s no refund money to go to anyone. And with Carnival the system probably gave someone a cheap upgrade because the cabin was snagged just hours after hers was canceled. Just days prior to a Carnival cruise I’ve been upgraded from an ocean view to a balcony and from a lower end suite to a huge suite for peanuts. You can get some really good last minute upgrades or upsells as some like to call it. I think that’s what happened here. As for going into your planner and canceling the cruise, yeah it can be done on Carnival and that needs to be fixed. The system is setup so that you can add family and friends on the same cruise as you (but in a different cabin and under a different reservation) to your booking. That way you can be assigned to the same table at dinner, purchase restaurant reservations together, share excursions, etc. It’s not an easy process to go in and cancel someone in the cruise planner where your reservations are linked and you have to know what you’re doing but it can be done. But you’ve got to have all the right info in order to do it like the persons name, confirmation number, email, etc. And she shared all of that info on Facebook which made it easy for the scammer to cancel the cruise.

That’s the story that this post is about.

We’ve been on the Celebration twice, the Mardi Gras twice, and the Jubilee once. And I can say for absolute certain that Cucina Del Capitano is NOT open for lunch on embarkation day on the Excel class. If it was open it would be my first choice for lunch. The reason it’s not open is because it’s being used for muster drills on that first day. So is Chibang, it’s closed for the same reason. Cucina has the free lunches all week long too, just not on embarkation day.

I forgot to mention that we liked our transatlantic cruise so much that we booked another one too. We are on the Mardi Gras Barcelona cruise in 2025 as well.

No it’s not repetitive at all. We've done quite a few long journeys cruises including transatlantic ones and they do a lot of different stuff to keep you entertained. Personally I love the Q&A sessions with different staff members the most. One day it was with housekeeping staff, another time it was with the playlist production staff, and they even had one with all of the officers. I loved learning all of the behind the scenes info. And they will bring a local expert on board to do lectures (usually with Q&A’s) that’s pretty fun too. On our Hawaiian cruise they explained all about Hawaii’s culture, where to shop, where to eat, and where to go. On our Alaskan cruise there was a local expert we really liked too. And they also do themed days, when they do the 80’s throwback day that’s my favorite. They decorated the ship, the staff dressed up, there were photo booths and props, and even the food was from the 80’s. They go out of their way to make it interesting so there’s no repetition in the entertainment. That being said, I will say that you need to be prepared for all of those sea days. I saw a number of people working on puzzles together. There were people playing dominos and card games. There were a number of knitting and crocheting groups around the ship. Personally, I downloaded a ton of books on my kindle and really enjoyed catching up on some uninterrupted reading. My husband is a movie buff so he downloaded over a dozen movies to watch in our cabin. He found this little compact projector and projected the movie onto the wall across from our bed. So we had late night movies every evening before bed. If you come prepared you’ll really enjoy yourself. I saw some unfortunate souls who didn’t come prepared and they were bored sometimes. But we loved it.

Yes it’s open on embarkation day and it’s our favorite place to go to on embarkation day when we are on an Excel class ship. It’s not crowded at all and it’s on deck 8 all the way aft in the Summers Landing area where all the fun stuff is. There’s a nice big bar, foosball, soft serve ice cream, a drink area with the self serve soda machines, and a sports lounge with TV’s and tons of sofas to relax on. It gets really popular and crowded later on in the cruise but on embarkation day it’s pretty empty and quiet.

I agree. She’s stated that most lawyers want cases where’s there’s a physical injury. So she contacted the Attorney General and that’s where I think she got the idea of a class action lawsuit which is an uphill battle.

I just did the check in for our upcoming cruise and I read through the contract. I couldn’t believe there was a clause about class action lawsuits. I guess I need to read it more thoroughly from now on. Here’s what it says: 15. CLASS ACTION WAIVER: THIS CONTRACT PROVIDES FOR THE EXCLUSIVE RESOLUTION OF DISPUTES THROUGH INDIVIDUAL LEGAL ACTION AND SUPERSEDES ANY LAW ENTITLING GUEST TO PARTICIPATE IN A CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT. EVEN IF APPLICABLE LAW PROVIDES OTHERWISE, GUEST AGREES THAT ANY ARBITRATION OR LAWSUIT AGAINST CARRIER WHATSOEVER SHALL BE LITIGATED BY GUEST INDIVIDUALLY AND NOT AS A MEMBER OF ANY CLASS OR AS PART OF A CLASS ACTION. GUEST EXPRESSLY AGREES TO WAIVE AUTHORITY TO ARBITRATE CLAIMS ON A CLASS ACTION BASIS. So even if she wants to do a class action lawsuit, she can’t because she signed this contract. No wonder she’s going online raging against Carnival, I doubt any lawyer will want to deal with this.

Her false statements: 1. She stated that Carnival told her to share her countdown tracker, then when she shared it she was a victim of identity theft, making it look like Carnival is putting their customers at risk. That’s not true. She shared a picture of herself logged into her planner with all her info on display. 2. She stated that Carnival gave away her cabin to someone important because it’s such a sought after cabin, making it look like Carnival steals guests cabins. That’s not true. 3. She continues to purport that Carnival sends weekly emails that includes your countdown tracker (which has private information on it) putting you at risk of identity theft. That’s not true either. The countdown tracker has no private info on it and it’s only found in the hub app. 4. She is also saying “Carnival is lying, no one stole my identity.” If Carnival has proof of the identity theft as they claim, then that’s a lie too. She has put these claims in videos published on social media for the world to see. And I’ve seen tons of comments by people stating they are canceling their Carnival cruise and never sailing with Carnival again because of her experience. So there are definitely damages. Do I think Carnival will sue her for defamation or slander? No. But would they have a case against her? Most likely, but I’m not a lawyer so that’s up for debate. I just think she’s making some assumptions and presenting them as fact and that could come back on her.

I completely agree. She has stated that she will continue to, as she puts it, “put pressure on Carnival until they cave.” So she intends to continue making defamatory videos about Carnival because she thinks it will make them reimburse her. And she expects “a full apology and to be completely reimbursed for the cost of the entire vacation,” not just the cabin she paid for. And in her latest video just posted, she says that by updating their website with a message that warns cruisers to not share their personal information with others, Carnival is admitting fault. She’s really digging herself deep and opening herself to legal actions.

If I gave someone 10k when I wasn’t required to do so, I would expect a thank you and a nice comment too, it’s only common courtesy and it shows good manners. But Carnival didn’t even ask for that much from her. If you listened to the conversation (which she recorded and put on TikTok), the only request Carnival made was to say, and I quote “Carnival resolved the issue.” No gushing write up, no words of appreciation, just a simple sentence saying it was resolved. That’s not asking much.

I think the reason people are blaming her is because she is denying responsibility and taking zero percent of the blame when nothing would have happened had she not shared her full name, confirmation number and email online. Even though they didn’t have to, Carnival tried to meet her halfway by giving her 2 inside cabins or 10k to book the same cabin on a future cruise and she turned them down. She won’t accept anything but Carnival taking full responsibility and paying her for everything including airfare, hotel, etc. Plus it upsets people that she’s making new videos about it daily on TikTok slandering Carnival saying that “Carnival is shady,” and that “Carnival screws people over all of the time,” and that “there was no identity theft, Carnival probably double booked my cabin.” In the beginning she even made a video asking cruisers on board the cruise she missed to go to cabin 17210 and ask them how long ago they booked that cabin. I was so worried about that poor cruiser getting harassed on their cruise. And now she is requesting that people leave comments about their bad experiences with Carnival on the comments section of her video so she can get with them and file a class action lawsuit against Carnival. Initially I felt sorry for her and tried to help, but her inability to take responsibility for her actions plus her unprovoked attacks on Carnival has made it impossible to pity her.

Hmm I never thought of that possibility

We ordered pizza, canned sodas, fresh fruit, burgers, bottled water, etc. They never charged us for anything we ordered. I didn’t try alcohol though.

She continues to make posts on TikTok almost every day slamming Carnival. She called them shady, says they screw people over all the time, she asks people to share their bad experiences to put pressure on Carnival to give her her money back, and that the new warning on Carnivals website to “not share personal info” is an admission of guilt on Carnivals part. She’s really going off the deep end in going after Carnival. She even blames Carnival for her sharing her info to social media. She says in her posts that Carnival sends weekly emails that includes a countdown tracker that they encourage you to share on social media. And that the tracker has personal info onto it, so it’s not her fault for sharing it but Carnivals. I get emails from Carnival all of the time but I’ve never seen one that included the countdown tracker, or a link to share it. The only place I’ve seen the countdown tracker is on the hub app and yes there’s a link to share it but there’s no personal info on it. Am I missing something? Has anyone else gotten weekly emails from Carnival with a countdown tracker in it encouraging you to share it?

I emailed the hotel and they will hold our luggage for free until our room is ready so I feel much better. And we found a local tour guide that came highly recommended and he will take us around in his air conditioned car to see the sights. The price was quite reasonable for a private tour too. We will definitely be checking Gardens by the Bay, it sounds wonderful.