momof3cruisers

That night is a full night of comedy and Alchemy. We try to listen to the live music in the atrium but it is SO loud. You can’t even talk over it. Through all of this, we miss dinner. No big deal. Until we realize that after the last comedy show, it’s 11 o’clock and the only food anywhere on the ship is pizza or what we thought at the time (via the app) was an extremely limited room service menu more than half of which was pizza anyway. Guess we’ll have pizza. This line has a LOT of very crabby people commenting on the insanity of having ONE food option at 11 the night before a sea day. I mean, seriously. It’s not even midnight. Come on, Carnival. It is of course, very slow. There are only two poor dudes working back there. And I’m pretty sure the guy who comes out front has been there all day. In fact, he’s the only one we ever saw at the pizza counter. And he’s not a happy man. Who can blame him? My sea days run together. We played trivia, we sat on the balcony, hung out in Serenity, dealt with SLOW bar service in Serenity and at RedFrog on Lido unless there were a couple of different guys at each. One at Red Frog, one at Serenity who could get things moving. I’ve always felt that the bar tenders did a pretty good job of keeping track of who was their first. Not on this ship. Polite got you nowhere. You had to basically fight for your turn. Maybe that’s why fights are breaking out. 🤷‍♀️ While playing trivia on the first sea day, we went into the Red Frog Pub. Wow! This service not only sucked, it was downright rude. I was literally about to order after the bartender tipped his head up at me, no words, when some dude came up and just shouted out his drink. I literally had my mouth open about to speak. To my surprise, the bar tender turned and started making this dude’s drink. Dude’s friends shout over to him their drinks. The bartender makes four other drinks before turning back to me and saying, “do you want something?” This is not said politely or in the slightest way friendly. So I tell him my order and say and he wants…gesturing to Mr. The guy says back, “I’ll get to him in a minute.” Excuse me? We stay polite. We stay friendly. This guy stays a jerk. Every time we go in there he is slow and he is rude. Unless you are one of the very drunk, rowdy guys playing games in there. We tried dinner in the dining room 2 other nights. Both were dismally slow. We never saw the bing cherry soup menu which was a bummer. That’s on the 8th menu as far as I have seen. We may have just not noticed it and skipped that night. One night, we went because I used to like their spaghetti carbonara. I’ve had this since the restart and it was good. Not this time. It was hot. That’s it. The last night, we tried again and I got what I swear were short ribs on the menu. Never seen short ribs like that. Looked like roast to me. And One piece was literally all fat. I did get a new plate but the first one literally never should have left the kitchen. We went to sea day brunch one of the days. Mr was excited about the Flaming tomato soup. Is it supposed to be spicy? We assumed from the name that it was but Mr didn’t find it to be at all. No replacement for gazpacho. Service was decent. We also did afternoon tea. Great service and everything other than the cucumber sandwiches was very good. Sat with some nice people who had never done tea before. Throughout these days, I tried to get a decaf iced coffee at the coffee place in Serenity twice more. Still told no decaf so I figured it was a constant thing. But when I asked the girl at the coffee place on 2 forward why they didn’t serve decaf at the other one she said they should have it. So, not sure what was going on there. The comedy club drink situation was also failing. Many drinks were just made wrong. After dinner I like a drink called Smith and Kerns. Basically, it is a kahlua and cream with a splash of club soda. I don’t order it by name. I order a Kahlua and cream with a splash of club soda. One night, I got it with no club soda. Okay, easy mistake. I went up to the bar and asked if I could just get a splash of club soda in it. I was told no. Okay….Another one, I just got cream and club soda. Gross. Several martinis were being served in highball glasses which would have been fine, but they weren’t cold. At all. This was not just happening to us. A lady next to us asked if she could just have some ice and she’d have her cosmo on the rocks but the guy never came back. Things were coming apart at the seams. As my husband said, everything was fine as long as you didn’t have to rely on Carnival for it.

After watching sail away, we took a nap. One f the joys of cruising! We decided our more formal clothes were a no go after a full day of ocean and sun. So, I wore a more casual dress and Mr wore Dockers and a short sleeved collared shirt. Checked in for dinner and got assigned a table fairly quickly. Then things ground to a dead stop. After being seated, we did get water service. At which point we asked for a bottle of water instead. Okay. He’d be right back. 5 min later a different guy came by to pour water. Told him we had asked for bottled. But could we order a cocktail. He too said he’d be right back. Without taking our drink order. Wrong guy we figured. That was it. For a long time. No water, no bread. No more acknowledgement from any wait staff that we even existed. The people next to us had water and bread. I asked them how long they had been there and they said 30 minutes but they had actually placed their order. There was a lot of rushing around. 25 minutes after we were seated, the head waiter came to take our order. We ordered and then asked if he could take our drink order and if he had any idea if someone was getting the bottled water or if he could just send someone with the regular water. Yes, they would be right there. We eventually did get water and bread. No butter. Bummer. The folks next to us got some food but their cocktails hadn’t shown up. She tried to get attention from waitstaff but went ignored. At this point, I don’t remember what we even had for dinner. The folks next to us, had apparently ordered dessert cocktails too. When their dessert came, she reminded them. They never had received their original drinks. She commented to her husband that she didn’t care how long they had to wait, she was not eating her dessert until she got her drink. In the meantime, another couple had been seated at the table on the other side of us. At one point, the guy looked over and asked us if we thought they would ever get their order taken. Well….the couple waiting for their drink finally got it after another 20 minutes. It took over two hours for a not at all memorable dinner. At this point, I had not given up hope. I wrote the service off the first elegant night crush and we headed off. Spent some time at Alchemy. There were two bar tenders there now. Found out that when we had stopped the previous night, Giovanni had been on break and their third team member was out on medical because she had been injured. Giovanni was fairly new to the ship and didn’t have his white jacket yet. Katia kept telling people when they asked him about it that he was an imposter. Funny young lady. The two of them were crushing it! Perfect drinks and fast. One thing we really liked about this area is there is a large seating area as well as a small stage and throughout both cruises, there was either a duet who was very good or Ace Dyamante, a guitarist and singer who was great. We enjoyed listening to the music there several evenings. You had to go up to the bar as they were way too busy every night to leave the bar itself with just two or three of them. That was fine. The rest of the night we spent going to comedy. After a good night sleep, we woke up to a gorgeous morning. We were in Grand Turk. On our second leg, we had booked the Home Sweet Home excursion so for this week we planned to just head over to Margaritaville. There was a Holland ship already in port when we arrived at 11. We had breakfast up on the Lido—omelets for each of us. Got our stuff from the room and headed out. Tons of people were already getting back on the Holland ship. There was quite a line! We found out later that they got in at about 8. We headed straight for the pool and found some chairs partly in the shade. We saw the cabanas on the other side of the astroturf from where we heard and considered that if we were ever in Grand Turk for a fuller day, we’d consider renting one. That was at the beginning of the day. By the end, we knew we would not be coming back to Margaritaville. Holy loud music Batman! All bass. Some really inappropriate lyrics for a cruise company that’s trying to convince us it’s a family friendly line and a DJ shouting at people to get shots. A lot. A. Lot. Like she was CONSTANTLY yelling. Well, we are going to make the best of it. I got in the water for awhile. I was surprised at how shallow it stays throughout. There wasn’t an area that was deeper than my waist. I was wishing I had brought my floating mat. The pool was crowded but not terrible. Good temperature in the water. Mr read his book in his chair. When I got out of the water, I decided to listen to a book and sit in the sun. There were quite a few open chairs around just not in any shade as all the umbrellas were taken. I sat down a few seats away and put in my earbuds. When I got hot, I opened my eyes and saw that Mr was talking to a couple sitting next to him. Have I mentioned the introverted level of Mr? It’s extreme. He does not strike up conversations with strangers. Ever. As I got back into my lounge chair, I realized they were chatting about the vast lack of service all over the ship. And the loud music everywhere. Even on Serenity. There are very few places that don’t have music all the time. Not in the background either. These folks were very unhappy. We were aggravated and disappointed. I haven’t said a lot about that but it was seriously lacking. These folks were very irritated. I really wanted to listen to my book more and just tune out the world but that want happening. Oh well. Eventually they decided they were done. We stayed about 30 minutes longer then decided to head back. Throughout this time a few different groups had walked by and asked us where we got towels. We brought them from our cabin. Apparently several people had been told they were available on the beach and at the pool. Nope. The next week, I stopped a mom with a few little ones who was telling her husband that they didn’t need towels because the towel hut guy said they had them at the pool. I warned her that they did not have towels over there. When we got back onboard, we got changed and headed down to the lobby bar. I Made and Seti were serving up drinks and smiles. Very funny guys. This day, they had the Halloween drinks! Yay. I had been hoping for those. My cruise last October they had the specialty drinks all week. This one, it was just one day and then just on Halloween the next week. Sadly, I didn’t like them as much as the previous year’s options. While we were there, I went to guest services to check in about the B2B situation. I was told they would send info later in the week. That would be fine if it was said pleasantly. It was not. There’s a big guy from Zimbabwe that works there. He does not smile and he’s rude. I tried to clarify for my own peace of mind that they had it in the system asi had totally forgotten to link my reservations. He said, “We don’t do that. We know everyone who is continuing on.” Okay. And repeated that we’d get info later on. So, I’ll address this here. This was day 3. On the evening of day 7, they delivered the disembarkation info to the cabin mailboxes. We asked our room steward if we should have gotten something different he said yes. We talked about where our new cabin was and he said to leave our luggage outside our cabin on the last morning. Outside? We decided to check in with guest services. Got a trainee. She checked with the big crabby guy. We would get info the next day. At this point, no one had asked our cabin number even. Oooookay. Day 8, no info. Back to guest services. The main thing I wanted to know was where to go and when to be there. I am ALWAYS polite. They can’t tell me that. I’ll get info tonight. Seems kind of last minute and is making me a little anxious but we try to go with it. That night we get back to our cabin at 10:30. No info. Mr heads down to guest services AGAIN. Comes back with the info that we are to meet in the theater at 8:45 and leave our luggage INSIDE the cabin. That feels better.

No worries! The only Cucina option I saw was the chicken parm and there was no up charge.

He must have missed the cruise before that then. 😂 We were on Spirit Oct 22nd until you got on. Service was deadly slow especially in the dining room. We heard a LOT of complaints about bar service in the casino. We don’t spend much time in there but people were griping! The only even remotely fast service was the lobby bar, Red Frog on Lido and Alchemy. Comedy Club was okay.

Well, I can tell you that from paying extra (not as much as in your case, but still extra) on Freedom for a Lido balcony, when we were moved to Spirit we were placed under the Serenity area with no acknowledgement of a downgrade. We were told it was still a balcony. A couple we chatted with onboard had paid a LOT more for an aft wrap balcony and were moved to a suite with a regular sized balcony. They were not happy but were also told it was a comparable trade and in order to get back into an aft wrap it would be an additional $1000. I wish you luck.

They do not have any other options. Sorry. As for bringing your own,I would imagine that if you head down the beach away from the crowds, you could find a spot. Kind of awkward to carry on though

Up early the next morning. We contemplated the dining room but decided that since we knew there were snacks and such in the cabana, we’d do something quick on Lido. Since our cabin was at the back on 8 it was a super quick elevator ride up to 9 basically right in the middle of the buffet area. The buffet area is a little weird and n Spirit. Each section is VERY small. There are two main areas and at breakfast, generally two sections out of 4 were open, offering the same thing. Pastries, cereal and maybe something else were in various other spots like where the salad bar and Sweet Spot are at other meals. Even though the sections felt quite small, because there are less people on this ship, it was never too bad of a wait. One thing that was odd to me was that they had to serve you the oatmeal. So between that and serving bacon, there were two areas that bottle necked. As an aside, can anyone explain to me why Carnival just puts the bacon in a pan that seems to also be holding all the grease? Why don’t they use the pans with holes in them that fit inside another pan so the grease can drain? This is a mystery of life for me. Is there some culinary secret preventing this easy solution? I got bacon and oatmeal so I got to participate in both things being served. Mr got an omelette. Those omelette guys were ninjas all week. Fast and really good food every single time. I was really looking forward to an iced coffee, but due to my various health things, I can only drink decaf. I went to the coffee bar on Lido, aft, basically in the Serenity area. Ordered and he told me no decaf. I was surprised. Asked him if this was just for then or if he never had it. He said, “This bar has no decaf. You can go to the other one.” On 2 forward. Ummm, thanks. 🤨 We needed to be in the Pharoahs theater by 8:30 if we wanted to be on the priority shuttle so we got ourselves over there. (Passed the other coffee bar and got my iced coffee.) As we waited, the guy who seemed to be in charge of the excursions dept explained to everyone exactly what the plan was including what to do once we got to the island. He was very good and concise. We had extra time, so he started giving info about the other places we would be going also as well as answering various questions people had. When it came time to head to the tender, he led us all single file over and down and around to where we boarded. There was a little secret staircase involved that was steep AND narrow. This girl had to concentrate! Mr mentioned later some things “we” had seen on the way down. Honey—this little girl who is slow and with balance challenges was FOCUSED! I didn’t have time to be looking at the scenery! I need to stay with the group. We got on the tender and waited. And waited. People around us were getting cranky. At the front of the ship, they were filling another tender. It was definitely confusing as to why we had started completely forward and then boarded a tender midship as the supposedly priority group when they were also loading a tender at the forward opening too. Eventually, we got underway. Once we reached the island, we bypassed the folks getting distracted by the photographers and headed to the info booth. We checked in right behind an older couple and were sent together to a sort of extended golf cart instead of the truck that normally takes everyone to the cabanas etc. Once we were all 4 seated, the driver was ready to go. That was quick! Nice guy. Not a ship crew member, one of the people who just works on the island. He gave us info about where everything was as he drove us first to their drop off and then to ours at 11. He told us that when we needed a ride back to lunch or to the tenders, to just go to the road and yell, “Champagne “ which was his nickname. This came in VERY handy later!! We walked down the path and climbed the steps to our oasis for the day. (I will post pictures soon.) One lesson I will share with you here. When you go to the excursions desk to reserve your particular cabana after you board the ship. They ask you how many people. The rental fee is for up to 4. But if you say 2 like I did, you will only get drinks for 2 people. Two sodas and one bottle of water each. I wished by the end of the day that I had said it was 4 people. The cabana includes 4 floating mats and snorkel equipment also for 4. The aforementioned drinks as well as tortilla chips in a big bag with salsa, sour cream, and guacamole. Also a tray with various fruits like pineapple and melon, 4 oranges and a nice veggie tray with ranch dip. I swear that the last time we rented one, we also didn’t have to bring towels but this time we did. No big deal. Inside the cabana there is a little fridge in a cabinet next to other cupboards and a long counter with an ice chest as well as a bucket of ice like you get in your stateroom. There is a ceiling fan and an a/c unit in the window at the back. The main area has a table with 4 rattan chairs. On the porch type area are two lounge chairs and a nice misting fan. We couldn’t get ours to mist but the breeze from it is great. There is also a little area with a fresh water shower. These used to be more on the ground but I know some people had issues with random people using their showers so I think that may be why they moved them up after the main steps up from the beach. Since we had chosen 11, we were pretty far down the beach from where most people go. There were maybe 20-30 people total on the beach throughout the day. The restrooms are behind 9 so it wasn’t a hard walk to get there at all. There’s also a close by life guard station which is nice especially when you have kids. I always appreciated an extra set of eyes when I had kids at any beach. We also could not hear anything from the pirate ship. Until we got out into the water. Then you can’t get away from it. 😂 I noticed in the FunTimes that they were doing various games on the beach in the afternoon. They did limbo, a sand castle competition and musical beach towels. That one was painful to listen to. The Fun Squad member had to really work hard to drum up any interest in it. And then it seemed to go on forever. From what he was saying on the loud speaker, it seemed at least one person just walked away from the game in the middle. Lol I felt bad for the guy. We spent our day lounging on the comfy loungers (they are nicely padded) and swimming/floating. I have this awesome float mat I got from Amazon. It’s mesh and has a tube at each end that you blow up. You can then lay on it, sit in it like a hammock etc. It’s my favorite cruise unnecessary but awesome to have item. At around 12:30 we headed over for lunch. We looked for our buddy Champagne but didn’t see him so figured we’d start walking and eventually find the barbecue area . We did but that food was nothing to write home about. It’s not helped that Carnival is very fond of putting walnuts in things like banana bread and brownies. ☹️ That’s the one nut I am allergic to. Mr had a burger and some jerk chicken. I had part of a burger that was rather cold and some watermelon. Decided I’d just have a bit more of the veggies and chips back at the cabana. We strolled back over to #11. I settled in with by audiobook on the lounger. At about 1:15, a dude came by to see if we were done with the ice chest. Well, since we still had drinks in it, no. We weren’t. Then the cabana host came by to ask us if we were ready to leave. This was before 2:00. The last tender was at 3:45. We arranged with her to be picked up at 3:30 for the last water shuttle back. I swear not 15 minutes later, her assistant came by to see if we were ready to leave. What the heck people??? I’m trying to chill and listen to my book. I have looked forward to exactly this for the last 10 months. Bug off! By 2:30, Mr had helped a guy take our remaining drinks out of the ice chest so he could take it, one guy came to collect the snorkel equipment that we never received, another came to ask about the mats, and someone else about the food trays. Honestly, this really tainted the experience for us. It was disruptive and frustrating and the last two times we rented cabanas that didn’t happen. Those cabanas cost a fortune and to have people coming to collect things etc for the last 2 hours of the day is not what I felt I had paid for. At 3:25 we had everything packed up and were ready. Our cabana host said she would come get us at 3:30. But she didn’t. We walked up to the road thinking maybe the shuttle would be there. Nope. We started walking, got to the restroom and DH decided to walk down and see if she was on the beach somewhere and we had misunderstood the plan. Nope, she wasn’t there either. So we continued walking. Then, I heard a golf buggy thing. I literally yelled “Champagne!!” And ge came booking around the corner! What a guy! He hot footed us over to the shuttle area, flying around corners etc. It was quite a fun ride. He was so worried they would leave us. I was almost certain that on this island of all places, we would not get left behind. However, I really don’t like to be late or rude so I was glad he was going so fast. We made it there and through security and onto the boat by 3:42. Phew!! And what then surprised us was that at least 10 more passengers boarded the tender after we did. And they weren’t even hurrying! 🤷‍♀️ It was cool to be on the last one because we got to see them load up all the security stuff etc. We had a nice ride back to the ship. Chatted a bit with a few crew and felt SO sorry for one of the excursion staff as we hit a rogue wave and the poor girl got absolutely drenched! Her back was to it and I literally had time to say, “Wa….” And it hit her. Bummer! Hoping she got time to go change before she had to be at the desk. Pleased that we did first n, last out as that had been our plan to get every (interrupted) moment out of our cabana. Once we got onboard, we were both in great need of a beverage so we found a few of those at the lobby bar (at this point we were learning to go to the lobby bar or Red Frog bar on Lido for anywhere near quick service.) and then headed up to watch as we headed out to sea from our balcony. Tonight was elegant night. We had just spent the entire day at the beach. How elegant would we really be able to get??

Sorry guys. Weekend got crazy on me. Had a friend come in from out of town. okay, don’t recall what we did between sail away and dinner but we used the Hub app to check in. We prefer Anytime/My time, whatever it’s called . We were assigned a table within 10 minutes. We headed over and as is common these days, there were a lot of confused people regarding being required to use the app to get a table. We waded thru those folks and were brought to our table. We were greeted quickly after sitting down and orders were taken. I ordered the calamari which was good though I miss the creamy sauce they used to offer with it. Also decided the share the quesadillas. Mr ordered the Roasted tomato soup in hopes it would make up for his beloved gazpacho getting axed awhile back. (It didn’t but he said it was good.) For mains I chose the chicken parm Cucina option. Love that this is being offered! So good! Flavorful sauce, nice piece of chicken. Loved it. And Mr ordered the everyday steak. I tell you, that was the thinnest steak I have seen in my life! However, it was actually tender and had a good flavor. We were pleased with everything we ate. It was all hot and service was great. Mr ordered tiramisu for dessert and I chose the kids banana split. The bananas were a little green for my taste. She have waited a couple of days for them to ripen up. After dinner, we stopped by Alchemy and made the acquaintances Katia. This super girl was running the entire bar by herself. We got our drinks of 40 is the new 20 forDH and a Deal Closer for me and walked on toward the comedy club. We saw SO much comedy this cruise. They had really great comics. Tim Kiminski was the first guy. He spends a bit of time before his shows walking around meeting people. Just a nice, down to earth guy and HILARIOUS! At the start of his show after Harvey introduced him, he asked for the house lights to be brought up. Uh oh. Yep, audience interaction but beyond the funniness level of anyone I have ever seen. Seriously, if you get a chance to ever see him do it. People were lining up outside of the comedy club before 10:00 to get into his 10:30 shows. He never repeated any material, no vulgarity, and he did up to 3 shows a night. Sean Kent was our other comedian this week and was also VERY funny. It was a great comedy week. Brad Trackman came on at the end of the week, and he’s good but unfortunately, he only has 3 sets. He told everyone that at the beginning which was considerate. A few notes in general about the comedy club on Spirit. It’s in a weird location. It’s under the main theater at the front of deck one. The rest of deck one is cabins. I felt sorry for the people on that deck. There are nights comedy gets out at midnight and then people who have just been having all kinds of fun are walking down the hallway. That would really stink if you were trying to sleep. There is also nothing else to do on that deck. So if you want to go to say, the 8:30 show and then the 10:00 show, you have to completely leave the area. That’s kind of inconvenient. The comedy club host is Harvey. He’s adorable. From Columbia and started with Carnival as a waiter! Very cool story. I’m sure we will seem him as a cruise director someday. Bar service in there was always pretty decent except for one guy who managed to get our orders wrong 3 times. We just avoided him after that. Sadly, I don’t remember his name so I can’t give you a warning. 🤷‍♀️ The next day was HMC and we had a cabana and wanted to be up early, so after a few comedy shows we headed off to bed.

Oh and weird art above the bed at Embassy Suites. So weird.

In order those are: us, ships in Port Canaveral, views from our balcony(I think we were at G and normally they are at D. We were at D when we came back.) And a tour boat I saw from Serenity. Serenity is at the back of the ship which is really nice when you are at sea as you don't get wind busted to death like on many ships. It also has a pool. The only trouble is, it's right outside the buffet so there were some confused folks who didn't get that it was 21 and over. The staff was on top of that it seemed and after the 1st day we didn't see kids out there. They also play fairly loud music out there that we didn't love.

Some pics

Sorry about the delay in continuing. I came home with a pretty bad cold and have some work to catch up on. I really thought I had pictures of the Hyatt but I guess not. We got to Orlando, picked up our luggage and headed to Avis. Where ridiculousness ensued. First off the line was rather long. As we stood there, we realized it was taking at least 20 minutes per renter at the counter. Why? So, as mentioned, standing and I do not mix. This is one of the very loving things Mr does. When long lines are involved, he stands in it while I find somewhere to sit and join him when he gets to the front. So we did this. When it was our turn, we went up and I pulled out my credit card and license. Now, my hard copy of my license is expired but I had the one from the state from when I renewed it. It has my picture, it says exactly what it is but has the word temporary on it. Dudeman was not okay with this. He says "Your license is expired." I say yes it was but I renewed it just haven't gotten the new hard copy yet. He says I can't use that. I asked why. It's a legal document. It has my picture. The license # is the same on both items. Nope can't use it. Okay. Let's just use Mr's license. Can't do that, it's under my email. ALL of our travel is under my email. Has to be Mr's. Okay. Also can't use my card. Okay. It takes FOREVER to get the new info to go. Then their system is having issues so it won't take Mr's credit card. Well, what do you want from us. He only has 1 and we are NOT using a debit card for a car rental. Keeping in mind, the card is not the problem. Their system is having issues. They try a few more times. It finally goes through. Thank goodness. We have exceeded my standing time. We are assigned a car. BTW part of the delay is him trying to scare us into buying the extra insurance. So we hike out to our car. It is the last row in the LAST parking spot. Except....there are two people in it! I go up and gently knock on the window still startling the poor woman inside. I ask if they are sure this is their car. She is. Shows me her paperwork. Sure enough! Same exact car assigned. So we walk alllllll the way back to where their Elite or whatever area and I grab a guy and tell him the situation. He is my new best friend. He takes care of us quickly and assigns us a car right up close. We entered the Avis line at 10:30. We drove out of the parking ramp at 12:45. At this point we should have taken the bus. But we are on our way. We head down the beachline and stop along the way for a Coke and a snack. We love this drive, we set up our Amazon music to sync with the car and the day is glorious. We get to Cocoa Beach and follow the A1A down to Melbourne at which point we head over to the Tollway but the Google lady tells us the I95 is actually faster right now. Weird. Along the way we needed to stop at Target for a couple of things. So I programmed that in. While we were in Target, the Google lady got drunk. I think she had the Cheers package. The rest of the way to our hotel she kept telling us to exit. Supposedly we were switching over to the Tollway. But we'd go like 5 to 10 blocks and she'd have us make a U turn back to 95! It was nuts. This happened 4 times. Had I known how to get to our hotel we would have shut it off. We just ignored her. It was quite an adventure. Got to our hotel and it was PACKED. Mr dropped me off to check in and went to hunt down a parking spot. Here I met my next new best friend. We were staying at the Embassy Suites Miami airport. We have stayed there a few times before and it's comfortable, near places to eat and has a reception in the evening and breakfast in the morning. My new best friend's name is Sam. He's gets me checked in and asks if we have a car. Yep. He says, " I see you are only here for one night so I'm not going to charge you for parking." What a lovely young man. I say this out loud. He chuckles. Then he says "I'm giving you a few extra drink tickets too." I tell him he is my new best friend. He thinks I am weird. That's okay. Mr comes in. We head to our room to drop off our stuff and then back down to the Mgrs reception thingy. The snacks aren't much but those drinks! Mamma! I got a rum punch and a vodka sunrise. They packed quite the punch. Folks, I was DRUNK after three drinks. We realize that we have had a Danish and a snack and it's now 7:30. That might be the trouble. We decide that ordering pizza to the hotel is a good idea. My husband was probably that young lady's new best friend. I had put in a $5 tip in the app and he gave her a $5 when she came. Pass on the good. I hope it made her night. It's been a long day. So we brush our teeth (with our new toothbrushes from Target. 😉) and hop into bed. Morning comes fast. We decided to try to leave the hotel by 9:00. So we had a nice breakfast and got on our way. Mr starts driving before I pull up the map. Where are we going? "This way." Uhhhhh. Okay. Turns out this way was not the way. So we get ourselves mapped out. Find a gas station on the way and get to the cruise Port Avis office. PERFECT timing. Hop out of the car and get the last 2 seats on the shuttle to the port. Everyone else is going on Royal. We are dropped off first. They all are commenting on how organized the Carnival area is. That you can tell where to go and other are lines set up. They say over at Royal it's a hot mess. It is indeed organized. We have a 10-10:30 check in time. We need to get on board early to get the cabana we want at HMC. But we are EARLY! It is 9:34. We are not supposed to be here yet. But the doors are open so we approach the first lady. She waves us in. They do the boarding and Verifly check then through security and over to the waiting area. It is now 9:50. Wow. As we sit there we start chatting with some people near us as they say "you decided not to wait the extra hour either, huh?" We have no idea what this means. She says they got an email from Carnival to come an hour later. I usually get texts about any boarding info and hadn't gotten one. I check my email. No notice. Oh well, we're here now. At 10:15 they come in and announce that A1 and A2 can board. (We weren't in the normal terminal and at this point only like 20 people were in this room.) No one gets up. But people in the other area are going must have been where they put all the A1s and 2s. We sit there maybe 10 more minutes and they come in and say A1-6 can board. Mr just ran to the restroom so we are the last ones!! I'm a little irrational and stressed because I don't want a sucky cabana. Lo and behold when we get to the Excursion desk, we are only the second people to get there. We get #11. I don't like to be near the pirate ship. I'm quite happy we never got that email about the delay. Okay. Off to muster. One really nice thing about Sprit is that all the muster stations are on deck 2. Either Starboard or Port at both aft and forward. Makes it very easy to find your spot. We are aft on Deck 8 so our muster station is aft on Starboard side. This is my 4th cruise since the restart but Mr cannot quite believe that was it. We are free!! So we go in search of a beverage on Lido. Red Frog is the spot. We each grab a Reds Rum Treasure and sit down to enjoy the view of both ocean and people. After a while we decide we'll go check out other areas. We don't make it too far before we find the Serenity deck. And an open clamshell on the shady side. We hang out there until cabins are ready getting a few drinks here and there. Meet some friendly folks, relax until we realize our butts are absolutely soaked. Like through the underwear. Well that's not cool. 😂 Thankfully rooms are ready. But our bags aren't there. Well we didn't figure they would be. We try sitting on the balcony but it is in direct sun and HOT. So we put towels on the couch and sit there. The bags came quite quickly and we got changed. I went Back out to the balcony and Mr laid down for a little snooze. While I was outside the room steward came by and Mr picked morning service. I wanted evening but no big deal. We are on a cruise. It's all good. He says he almost laughed because the steward said his name was Superman and he thought he was joking. But he was not. Except it was Suparmen. Just try and convince autocorrect that is what you really mean to type. In summary about him, he really was a superman. In and out as quick as a wink. Always in the hall making sure everything was good. Just a great guy. We are now dry. Mr is rested and we are hungry. So it's time for some food. Blue Iguana for me. Sad to find out they did away with the taco salads in the tortilla bowls. Oh well. I'll get a burrito. Mr heads to either Guy's or the deli. Get a selection if a few very small (on purpose) pieces of cake And we find a beverage. There is not a bar waiter to be seen this whole time by the way. No one walking around with trays of Funships. Nothing. Kind of weird. After lunch we headed out to Serenity again. I have decided that my favorite drink in the world is the Skinny Fizz. I soon figure out that at other bars if you ask for a fuzzy navel with club soda its the same thing. Yay me!

That whole assign you a room thing is one of the big reasons I won’t sail on. Virgin. What they think is best might not be what I think is best. October—other than the lobby bar, every bar on Spirit had very long waits depending on timing. OP, I totally understand what you are saying. After our recent B2B, we don’t need to branch out as we have sailed many other lines already and liked them. However, due to lack of service in general (and a few outright lies) my husband is DONE with Carnival. I have another cruise scheduled in Feb on Paradise. I was on Paradise last March and it was great. If it’s not back to the same levels, I’ll be done too.

There were two women I was talking to in the guest services line on Spirit Oct 30th sailing and they were really upset because she had called Carnival and asked about the vax requirement and were told they could get off in Grand Turk. They could not. When they tried to scan off the ship an alert came up that they could not get off.

We actually try to find a port we don’t want to get off in. Lol. It’s nice being on the ship with so few people. Food and bars are open, trivia and other games are planned, various areas have some music playing. It’s quite nice.

We had a truly fantastic time at dinner. With one mess up after another. Maybe the MOA was a mistake 🤷‍♀️ We had a 7:00 reservation. I walked up to the host stand at 6:55. The girl looks at me, I tell her we have a 7:00 reservation. She says “then come back at 7:00.” I laughed. I truly thought she was joking. She was not. Okey dokey then. I go stand with the fam for 5 minutes and go back up. She then says, “I’ll tell you when your table is ready.” No smile, no cheery anything,. Okay, this poor girl hates her job. So we wait. And wait. At 7:40 we are taken to our table. We sit down and are given menus. After about 15 minutes the waiter comes to take drink orders. We order and say we are ready with dinner orders if he wants to take them too. He says we should wait. Odd but okay. We place drink orders. I don’t hear what the 22 yo orders and after the guy brings the drinks, boyo looks unhappy. He says, “I’m really sorry. I ordered this drink and I don’t like it. It doesn’t taste like I thought it would.” I sip. Tastes like a mojito. Looks like a mojito. What did he order? Some kind of mojito. Thankfully we still have our menus so we look it up. It was supposed to have coconut something or other and pineapple. This is not that. When the waiter comes to take our order (at 8:10) we tell him about the drink. He takes it away. Comes back 10 minutes later to say they don’t have the other ingredients so the bar tender just made him a regular one. Ummm. No. Boyo orders a Pepsi. And….we get to order. It is now 8:20. We are talking a laughing and having a great family…meal. With no food. At 8:45 we get our chef. Sadly, no fun stuff, no interaction, nothing. Well, the food was really good. We hug the girl goodbye, the boys drive us to our hotel, we get on the list for the shuttle at 5:00 and head off to bed. The hotel is a Hyatt Place. It’s very nice, great beds, super quiet and reasonably priced. Good place for a night before a flight. in the morning we are up early and ready to go in good time for the shuttle. My daughter and I did this back in Feb and the shuttle was overbooked. She ended up on my lap. She is 26. Small thankfully and it’s a short ride. This time it’s just us and one other guy. The driver is super friendly and helpful. He got us dropped off right where we needed to be and we went to check in our bags. That went very smoothly and we judged that the security line was short enough for me to make it without wheelchair assistance. I have three autoimmune disorders that don’t play nicely with standing for a long time or too much walking. We got through pretty quickly and got to the gate. Mr went off to get us some coffee and breakfast carbs and things were looking good. A trick I have on Sun Country is to pay for middle of the road seats that have a charge for the middle seat. Then we choose the aisle and the window. Most people don’t want to pay for a middle seat. We were in luck. No one did. We were in the last boarding group and the bins over our heads were empty. I asked the flight attendant if we could just put our bag up there and she said to go ahead. Lovely! Really good flight, decent in flight entertainment and soon we were landing in Orlando. Next up: Orlando to Miami.

I found our cruises on the social media location and started seeing ideas of things I just knew I needed. Mr didn’t have towel clips. That needed to be remedied. I like having an extra towel but those Carnival ones get heavy so I NEEDED a microfiber towel. I have one cruise luggage tag but clearly needed at least one more. Mr also doesn’t have a reusable straw, he needs one for sure. (Which I might add, he never used the entire time!!) I joined gift exchange groups—on BOTH cruises. Oh! It’s Halloween! We need costumes! People, I tell ya! I was out of control. Mr is quite an introverted dude. But I convinced him to dress up as Fred and Velma from the old folks home. He was easy. Blue shorts and a white polo with an orange cravat. For me, I had the perfect shoes already. I got an orange tshirt and orange knee socks and ordered a skirt. Now, I am a curvy lady, you might say chubby. You might say something else, but let’s be nice. So, I ordered the largest size they had which Amazon said would fit me. Actually Amazon said I should get the next size down. Ha! Haha ha ha! I don’t know what 12 year old they thought was shopping for a 3x pleated skirt but that thing was NOT fitting me. I’ve just started sewing. Maybe I could make one! Y’all remember about my creative, sometimes silly brain? Yeah. Get back to reality—you do not have time to make a skirt one week before you leave! Dang it. New costume idea….Pirates. Yeah, not the height of creativity but it’s something. We’d wear red shirts, black shorts/capris and piratey “stuff.” That ideally didn’t take up too much room in our suitcase. I was gettin a little worried about those two suitcases. However, the night before I managed to get everything in the suitcases we were taking. No carryons because we were on SunCountry so we had a duffel bag I use for the gym and one of those awesome mini suitcases that fit under the seat in front of you. Off we go to meet the girl child at the Mall of America to dine at Benihana. Always a fun time, right? Well….thankfully we make our own fun!

Hello all! My husband and I returned on Sunday the 6th from a long 17 days away from home. B2B for 8 days going to HMC, Grand Turk, Aruba and Bonaire. Then 6 days going to HMC, Grand Turk and Amber Cove. We love HMC and GT so were happy with the repeats. There were definite ups and downs on this journey. Some downs which has my husband done with Carnival for at least the foreseeable future. We will get into that as we go along. So, who are we? My name is Julie and after this set of cruises, I am one day short of Platinum. This was my 4th and 5th cruises since the restart. I’ve cruised everything from 3 day booze fests out of Long Beach to 8 days on the Breeze in a cove. Some of those with my family, some with my sisters and 2 by myself. Mr. is not quite as experienced a cruiser as I am but we’ve both been on Royal, NCL, Disney and Princess. We are in our mid 50s, have three grown kids and live in MN. We were celebrating our 30th anniversary in October so decided to go for a splurge and do TWO cruises staying on the same ship. We did a sort of side to side in 2019 with a day in Miami between on Victory and Glory but we were excited to be able to stay n the ship with what we had heard was a quick no hassle turn around. 🤨 Here’s your first hint about the downs. In checking airfares, I was stunned to be finding fares of $900 and waaaayyyyy higher from MSP to Miami or Fort Lauderdale. Ummm, excuse me? What is going on here? And that was on Sun Country and Spirit! Delta was $1200. Good gracious! We contemplated driving for a hot minute. We’ve driven to Orlando probably twenty times. But to Miami only once . At which time Mr said that was never happening again. And in this relationship, I do the navigating he does the driving. Sooo….I figured I better find other options. Hopper was telling me things were not going to get better in the way of prices so I started getting creative. I looked at Orlando…$400. Well okay then. How can we work this out? A few times I have ridden “The Florida Bus” from Orlando to Miami. It’s a nice ride, inexpensive and easy. I was sure I remembered that they did a pick up at MCO but either that was wishful thinking, my memory is going or they changed it. The nearest pick up was at the McDs on International Drive. And the departure time was at 1:00 and our flight landed at 10. We didn’t want to waste three hours waiting around PLUS the fact that we were going to have to add in Uber rides here there and everywhere and life was getting too complicated. So my creative and sometimes silly brain decided to check car rentals. Not bad. About $100 each way. We love driving down the coast. So, I booked with Avis and we had our transportation plans set. A few weeks before we were going to leave, Mr asked me for I think the 80th time when our flight left. This man is brilliant, loving, an amazing considerate husband and an amazing employee who is always up to the minute on work. But when I start talking I’m pretty sure my voice turns into Charlie Brown’s teacher. So, I told him again. And then I started to think…..hmmmm. How was this going to work? We needed to be at the airport by 5 or 5:30. In the morning. We live 45 minutes from the airport. So I need a boy (20 or 22 years old) to get up at like 4 in the morning and drive us to the airport. That doesn’t sound like the best idea. Okay, hotels near the airport it is. Made a reservation at the one and only hotel on the 494 strip that has a shuttle that starts before 6 a.m. And then we decided what the heck? The girl child lives about 5 minutes from the airport (she has cats, I’m allergic, no bunking on the couch there) so we decided to take all the kids out to dinner and celebrate our anniversary. Plans were made. It was time to pack. And shop on Amazon. A lot of shopping on Amazon. 😎😎

Don’t do this if you are on the Spirit. They will A) look at you like you are an idiot and B) tell you that is not a thing. Also, they will tell you when you ask (including on the last day of your first leg at 7:30 PM) that information about what to do will be delivered to your cabin. When it is not there by midnight, they will deign to tell where and what time to meet in the morning. I.e. 8 hours from when you are asking…for the third time. We had such a negative experience, we won’t be doing a B2B again. Heck, my husband will likely never sail on Carnival again but that’s a separate post.

I am wondering if you can indeed order breakfast the night before to be delivered in a specific time frame the next morning. Have people actually done this? Also wondering, when you order the items for a cost, is there an 18% automatic gratuity? And if there is, is it still customary to give the delivery person a few dollars? Thanks!

Does he only work during comedy and karaoke then? Seems like they usually have to work more hours than that

At the Red Frog Bar, not sure about Pub, they have Ting which is very similar to Squirt.

Well ick. Who wants to drink that? 😂

I’ve sailed on Paradise with 5 adults in 2 ocean view cabins. Our rooms were next to each other. Never got connecting though. You can see on the layout on the Carnival website if rooms connect or not. They indicate it with a little back and forth arrow.

It’s just common cruise courtesy. All you have to say is that you won’t be there the next night.