Susan in Maine

It may not be absolutely necessary to have a passport. BUT if anything happens so they are not on the ship when it comes back, they won't be able to get back into the US without one.

For example: they get sick and get left behind in a port for medical treatment and need to fly home. Or there is an emergency back home and they have to leave the cruise and fly home. 

You can get back into the US from a cruise ship without a passport, but any other way requires a passport.

Just sayin'

Have you checked with Carnival to see if you can change the name on the reservation?

Thanks for the advice. We are looking at one of the Fantastica balcony cabins right after the first "hump" - the balconies look HUGE! Example: 10080 or 10087.

I am considering a MSC cruise in November. Has anyone booked the rear facing cabins? What was the experience like?

Thanks!

Thanks for everyone's help!

Thanks for the information!

Hope springs eternal, so I'm planning a cruise for my 65th (!) birthday in November.

Looking to splurge (maybe) - has anyone booked the Anthem Royal Suite Class Guarantee? What suite did you get? Would you book the guarantee again?
 

Normally I prefer to pick my own cabin, but to pick my own would cost an additional $1000 for two of us.

Thanks for your help!

Thanks everyone for your thoughtful replies. I'm going to consider it for a while before I make any decisions.

I'm going to be an optimist and believe that we will all be cruising again someday.

So.......... Is the Carnival Credit card worth getting? Are the perks pretty good?

And.........do you think Carnival will be around long enough to use the perks?

Thanks!

5 minutes ago, Goodtime Cruizin said:

Here's an NPR article on a study or actually two studies about how the death count as dropped dramatically. 

 

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/10/20/925441975/studies-point-to-big-drop-in-covid-19-death-rates?fbclid=IwAR07WEHN84HcbEKKsy8Wta-itSbH3m4S0A3ztLBdaEozzyL0XtG0l9hYA8E

 

Yes, we are finally learning to treat the virus, so fewer people are dying. But just as many, if not more, are still getting sick.

I get that people want to cruise - I do too.

I also get that passengers can, to a certain extent, be careful and have SOME social distancing.

But what about the crew? Do we care so little for them that it's OK for them to risk their lives so we can go on a cruise?

4 hours ago, Goodtime Cruizin said:

 

I don't have any idea if these people (patients) would have died or not, but the hospitals would not have been paid as much. The coding of Covid is a very, very, important revenue stream for hospitals these days. 

Please site your source.

https://www.hcinnovationgroup.com/finance-revenue-cycle/revenue-cycle-management/news/21151583/kaufman-hall-report-covid19-pandemic-caused-hospital-margins-to-plunge-in-first-half-of-2020

2 hours ago, Goodtime Cruizin said:

 

OK... fair enough... you want facts. Here you go.

 

Hopsitals are paid addtional funds from the US Government for Covid patients reported as being in Intensive Care, and also for Covid patients they report as death by Covid. 

 

Spin that.  

 

Bottomline... 'You get what you reward for' or 'You get what you pay for'.  And I'm pretty sure that every hospital across our nation is as honest as Fauci. 😉

 

Please cite your specific source regarding extra payment to hospitals for Covid patients.

The reality is that many hospitals are having to cut staffing and services due to the resources sucked up by Covid patients. Medicare and Medicaid don't pay proportionately for ICU care the way they do for so-called "elective" surgeries - hip replacements, knee surgeries, carpal tunnel, and the like. It's the elective surgeries that are the cash cows for hospitals, NOT acute care patients. If (and that's a big IF), hospitals are getting any more money for Covid patients, it's because they cost so much to treat.

34 minutes ago, Heymarco said:

So at the time this was written, 198K were from COVID. What are the other 100K from and why is no one talking about that? This truly shows how great those stats are. 🙄

Actually the total deaths as of 10/16 is 21C6,000. The excess deaths may be from Covid. They also may be from people who were afraid to go to the hospital because of covid, or did not get good treatment because of the resources tied up by covid. No one knows why they've died, just that they have.

On 10/25/2020 at 10:42 AM, not-enough-cruising said:

So the heroin overdose I saw in the ER would not have died if she had not had COVID? 

The motorcycle rider with the closed head injury at my hospital would have miraculously survived his subdural hematoma if not for the Covid in his body? 

 

It is infuriating when the un-informed such as yourself make ridiculous comments about a topic you clearly do not understand. 
 

it has been stated millions of times all over the web “there IS a difference between dying WITH Covid, and dying FROM Covid” The published numbers are not a fair representation of either cohort. 

Likewise there is a difference between dying WITH heart disease and dying FROM heart disease. While a significant % of the deaths from Covid are patients with pre-existing conditions, they would not have died but FOR covid.

 

On 10/25/2020 at 7:03 PM, Heymarco said:

Wouldn’t the same logic dictate we shut everything down and wait in a bubble until this passes? Why not restaurants, hotels, water parks, etc? Not sure why cruising is being singled out at this point. 

Lots of those other places ARE closed, or extremely limited.

Hotels, while open, are not serving breakfast or servicing rooms on a daily basis. They don't clean your room until you check out. That's really different from expectations aboard a cruise ship.

The issue with a cruise ship is that it is a restricted space. That means that people are in closer contact for longer period of time than at a restaurant, for example.

And while the passengers may have some flexibility as to how much time they spend with other guests,  the crew doesn't. They are in very cramped spaces.

Currently there have been 8.6M cases of confirmed Covid 19. That's approximately 1/38 of the total population of the US. Let's say that an extra 50% of the people who have had covid haven't been tested, for a total number of positive cases of 13M - 4%of the total US population. 

This means we could have 7.5 MILLION deaths if Covid isn't controlled somehow.

I want to go on a cruise as badly as everyone else, but it's not worth dying for.

Boy was I wrong! Just sayin'

Holy cow the cruise bargains are amazing! I know lots of people are cancelling their trips, but these bargains are really hard to turn down.

Here's my question: My passport expired in February. (I know, I know - I'm kicking myself). If you need to fly home from The Bahamas, is a driver's license and birth certificate sufficient?

Thanks!

I don't believe they will cancel any cruises. This is a different situation from when a ship has mechanical or other physical issues  - the cruise MUST be cancelled because it is unsafe to sail it.

In this situation, it would be extremely expensive to cancel a cruise and just have a ship sitting there. There are contracts to the crew, for restocking the ship, and other fixed costs. So even if the ship is only say 25% full, it is still getting SOME revenue.

My daughter and I sailed (thru a hurricane!) the first weekend in November right after 9/11. In spite of the huge drop of tourists at the time, cruises were not being cancelled.

If I were in a position to do so, I would be booking a cruise right now!

45 minutes ago, VentureMan_2000 said:

Really... ?  Do you board with white gloves ?

Why do you bother with Carnival if white hulls are important to you ?

 

Seriously? I had a cabin on the Liberty in September and the balcony had serious rust. It really makes one wonder about how well the ship is being maintained.

Five months later I've been thinking about this cruise.

It comes down to a really bad cabin experience and that colored the rest of the cruise. Looking back, I should have requested that the head steward for our part of the ship to come to the cabin so I could explain the issues.

Unfortunately on a four day cruise, you don't want to have to take the time for that. And I kept expecting it would be taken care of - I didn't have this experience on previous Carnival cruises.

And thanks everyone for your supportive responses.

On 11/16/2019 at 6:51 PM, cubicpond said:

sounds to me you are looking for white glove treatmenton a discount criuse.

No, I wasn't expecting white glove treatment at all.

I've cruised on 5 different lines, and am realistic about what Carnival can provide.

However, the cabin should be clean - seeing dust everywhere to the point of having to brush off clothes is over the top. The balcony was disgusting and never cleaned. This was the dirtiest cabin I've ever had in my 14 cruises!

CruizCuz:

Thanks for the affirmation.

No, I didn't get the aft balcony - the reminder of how far away they are from everything made that decision for me!

Yes, the majority of the issues revolved around a cabin that wasn't taken care of and a steward who didn't seem to notice or care. Since I was not 100% physically, I spent quite a bit of time in my cabin. And when you can't go back to your nice quiet CLEAN cabin, it does affect how you feel about everything else.

Yes I could have called guest services for glasses in the bathroom and for someone to come and really clean our cabin or give us another one. The point is: I shouldn't have to.

This cruise wasn't BAD, it just wasn't all that great.

This cruise was a disappointment. My daughter and I enjoyed our cruise (she loved it!) but it was lacking in many ways.

Let me note that I was on a knee roller having broken my foot in early August, so there were a lot of things we didn't do and places we didn't go. Also - this is my 14th cruise on 4 different lines.

So....

The excellent:

I can't say enough about our wonderful servers in the MDR's. Sharme at dinner and June and Rosie for breakfast were the best!! Those meals were the highlights of our days!

Embarkation: Check-in was easy and I had a wheelchair escort - everyone was very helpful!

Fellow passengers! Everyone was so helpful and thoughtful when I was trying to get around the ship. (Note: Don't break your dominate foot six weeks before a cruise)

Kiss On The Lips

The cabin was decorated with our bon voyage package when we arrived

The good:

NoNo was a great cruise director and kept the ship hopping

Music in the main atrium was great, altho I don't ever remember hearing Led Zeppelin played by a string quartet before.

Towel animals every day

The OK: The food, except for that wonderful lava cake, was hit or miss. We had late seating in the Golden Olympian and a few things were delicious but most of the main courses were just ok. The braised dishes tasted alike and I couldn't tell if it was beef or lamb! Frozen broccoli florets were on almost every dinner plate. Seriously people? Appetizers were better altho my ceasar salad was pretty watery the first night and one night it took 50 minutes to get them. My daughter REALLY enjoyed the seared tuna appetizer - all three plates of it! The pizza was pretty good. Because of my mobility issues, we didn't eat at any of the other venues.

The bad: Our cabin was dirty and the balcony was so covered with salt I didn't really want to go out there. The glass door to the balcony and the glass on the balcony itself was so dirty and clouded you could hardly see thru it. There was visible rust and paint peeling on the sea-edge. The bathroom shelves were covered in dust, as were most of the other surfaces. I had to dust off clothes that we had put in the cabin drawers. In fact, the cabin looked like it hadn't been used for at least a couple of weeks. We hardly saw our room steward and it took until the second full day of the cruise to get the shower stool I requested.

The cushions on the couch showed significant wear and tear and there were stains on the carpet. All in all the cabin was just really sad and needs a major overhaul.

I am well aware that I could go to guest services for a lot of this but having been on several cruises I kept expecting the cleaning to get done. <sigh> Since it was a 4-day cruise, by the time I figured out nothing was being done, the cruise was almost over. Also, because of my broken foot and being in pain, just getting to guest services seemed like an ordeal.

Two "I know you're cutting costs, but seriously" category: 1) Only one chair on the balcony? If you promote your balconies as a wonderful private place, you oughta have a chair for each person. The room steward looked at me like I had two heads when I asked for another chair. 2) What's with no drinking glasses in the bathroom?

And finally, a couple of comments on ship design. Putting the galley in the middle of the ship with no way to get from one end of the ship to the other on that deck is a BAD IDEA. A REALLY bad idea. And am I the only one to find the decor on the Liberty incongruent with the name of the ship?

This was my third Carnival cruise, but there's a pretty good chance it will be my last.