ZoeyVictoria

Same here in Florida, but they are closed on Memorial Day. Ours are scheduled for later this morning.

My late husband wore a 13 and was required to wear steel toed shoes when entering a warehouse at the shipyard where we worked. He left them by the door one afternoon and I tripped over one of them. I went flying and the shoe just stayed right where it was.

Don’t bother asking women, we will just tell you to take both 😂

No, I haven’t joined the roll call, but I should. And I will. I used to, but we ended up with so many cruises in a short period of time (Lifts & Shifts with Royal and Celebrity, other lines rescheduled) that I haven’t given any of them the attention that I had pre-Covid. I have been slow to research ports, join roll calls, and just generally plan. Next month we will reach the end of the very frequent cruises and get back to normal amounts of pre-planning. We will be driving to the port on Saturday morning. Occasionally we go the night before, but hotel pricing is crazy and we couldn’t get there early enough in the day to justify the extra expense. We have parked at Park-n-Go for at least nine years, it is our favorite. Have you ever been there when the monkeys were sitting on the employees’ cars, eating bananas?

A hold of $100 was placed on the morning of the cruise, before we even left home. The next day a hold was placed that basically was $100 less than what we spent the first day. So, $100 hold the morning of the first day, spent $123 on Day 1, hold was placed for $23 the morning of Day 2. At the end of the cruise, the total of the holds equaled the total amount we had spent. The total charge went through before the last two holds dropped off. It would be a mistake to use a credit card with a low amount of available credit.

My interpretation is that you need all of the boosters that you are eligible for to test within three days rather than two. If you are eligible to receive another booster (due to age) and have not yet received it, you need to stick to the two day requirement. We also live in Bradenton and are sailing on the Caribbean Princess on Saturday. We have used Walgreens for testing for our past eight cruises, with results within an hour each time. Even though we received our second booster in April, we scheduled our tests for Thursday instead of Wednesday, as we are trying to allow no possibility of a bad interpretation of rules by port personnel.

We were on the Conquest on Christmas last year. The part that surprised me was the huge number of families wearing matching Christmas pajamas on Christmas Day - not just in the morning, but all day long. We don’t even wear that type of pajamas, but felt just a little left out!

The chocolate melting cake is still available, but you will be eating it at a table without tablecloths. Fine with me, but a disappointment to some others. There are no tablecloths on the table where I serve the food I cook, either, so I am still way ahead.

We were on the same cruise. We enjoyed the cruise, but we had it booked again for August 27 and changed to another ship and date once we got home. Our experiences were quite different from yours. I am 69, my SO is 73, and we traveled alone. We live just less than an hour from the port, which is one of the reasons we were on this particular ship. This was my 74th cruise, with 26 being on Carnival. Embarkation: We arrived at 10:15 and pretty much just slowly walked through the process. There were problems with our boarding passes twice, but I believe they were due to inexperienced port employees rather than the printing on our passes as they claimed. Our boarding group A1 was called just a few seconds before we finished at the last desk. Dining: We enjoyed the MDR because we ate as soon as it opened, found a great team the first night, and had it set up to just go directly to the same table every night. The food was surprisingly better on this cruise than in most past MDRs. We did not enjoy the buffet, though. I stood in the omelet line four mornings because there was nothing on the buffet I would eat and the arepa at the Blue Iguana that I used to love was disgusting on this cruise. Cabin: We were booked in a porthole cabin but received a complimentary upgrade to an ocean view with a larger window a few days before the cruise. We couldn’t believe the amount of time we spent at that window, even stopping there for a few moments on our way back to bed from the bathroom in the middle of the night. We actually spent more time there than we normally do on balconies, and the rebooked August cruise is now an ocean view. Ports: We took the chairlift (Magical Flying Chairs) to the beach in Mahogany Bay and found shady chairs under trees. That was after a very confusing and disorganized wait in the Diamond and Platinum waiting area for priority debarkation, which we believe was due to an employee being late for work. There has been some dredging since our last visit there, resulting in a sharp drop off in the water. In Cozumel we went to Nachi Cocum’s younger relative, Del Mar Latino. It is on the waterfront, walking distance from the ship with no beach but with a pool and a view of the waterfront. A small area, maybe 30 loungers, and adults only. The included food, drinks, and hospitality are every bit as good as Nachi Cocum, at a price of $29. Very easy, pleasant day. Observations: We did not experience the upsetting behavior that you saw, though we saw many interesting outfits. People watching was spectacular on this cruise 😂. We found the people to be about the same as on other cruise lines/ships as far as being friendly. We enjoy speaking to people casually, but are not looking for new friends to spend great amounts of time with. Our biggest problem with this cruise is that it was LOUD! The volume seemed to be higher than usual in the theaters, the lido deck, and the buffet. We usually enjoy some time around the pool deck, but it was just too loud this time. We searched for quiet places in the shade to watch the water or read, but literally the only outdoor place is Serenity. Arriving in the afternoon was pointless, so we arrived really early (before 8 a.m.) one morning. We left about 11:00 and took our things with us because it is so rude and unfair to hold chairs that we wouldn’t be using for hours. So no quiet place that afternoon, either. Our other problem was the limited food options. We prefer ships with a better layout in the buffet, more casual options, and a steakhouse. We enjoyed the short drive to the port, being on the top deck as the ship passed under the Skyway bridge, the MDR experience (not the norm for us), the ports, the shows (Epic Rock is my favorite cruise show), and the crew. But otherwise, I think we have outgrown the Fantasy class of ships. We will use Royal Caribbean for our easy Tampa cruises and stick to larger ships on Carnival.

Same here in Bradenton. Exactly, in fact - one day added, some morning appointments gone, all afternoon available.

Nothing after the 22nd in Florida. Hoping they are just cutting back to three days available to schedule in advance instead of seven. 🤞

I don’t see any reason to make that change. Ships are sailing fuller and fuller every week with the current protocols, so what could possibly be accomplished?

Labadee and Coco Cay on the same cruise! Not sure what to do in Falmouth. We are some of the few people who prefer shorter cruises (5 is perfect for us), so the 6 nights attracted us.

No, we are on the 14th. Probably the same itinerary.

I was on the Harmony April 10-17, earned 840 points, and received a free cruise. There were many to choose from, I selected the 6-night Explorer in August. Most were through June, but a few through the end of September.

Can the D+ BOGO be used for Chops lunch?

I tried it for the Mardi Gras in February and it was a disaster. Difficult to use, spent way too much time on it, and then they hardly glanced at it and requested all the paperwork anyway. I swore I wouldn’t do it again, but gave in this week. As mentioned above, I spent way more time fighting it than I will save, but it is ready to use tomorrow morning to board the Paradise. We’ll see how it goes this time.

I am Platinum, my SO isn’t, so we use my tags on all luggage. I also know which one of us would be at Guest Services trying to track down late/missing luggage, so my name might as well be on the luggage 😂

We booked the Celebration for October 2023 because we thought it would only get more expensive, and because we had a Citi Card offer for a $250 statement credit for spending $1,000.

I received a call in 2016 or 2017 to move from an inside to a corner aft balcony for $292. Yes, we did it! While I was chatting with the rep, he told me that it was a targeted offer for “Platinums in insides”.

I thought possibly that area became a quarantine section. The senior rate was available only on the two lowest decks, which seems like a logical place for quarantine cabins. Now we are up two decks higher, so we can use the stairs to get to the MDR and theater. It wasn’t a huge deal, but nice anyway.

I received an email a couple of weeks ago to move from a porthole to a balcony for $200 on the May 7 sailing of the Paradise. I turned it down because there was a senior rate available for this cruise and we paid just $445 total for the porthole. Just a few minutes ago I received a call offering a complimentary upgrade to ocean view. We moved up two decks and a few cabins closer to the elevators. Not a huge deal, but why not take it? It seems that printing boarding passes and luggage tags triggers changes like this 😂

It is possible that someone with a beach villa booked will get a positive Covid test and have to cancel the cruise. I would check daily as you already are doing, but much more frequently once the testing period begins.

Yes, daytime only. It struck us as almost funny, so the only time it was really annoying was during mid-afternoon nap/rest time. We were in 14486, and the noise seemed to come from the huge white space in that area. We went up there to look more carefully once we figured out what it was, and the base of the ride appears to be in that area.

We were in an aft cabin on Deck 14 and it sounded like the Bolt was running through our closet. We could actually tell when the boost button was pushed. We also thought the ship was too new to have the vibration that it did until we felt it on a port day, while docked. That’s when we realized our cabin vibrated from the Bolt. I believe the base of the ride is attached to the ship on Deck 14.