Will Christmas be as crowded as Thanksgiving????

[groundloop]

We were on Freedom for Thanksgiving last week along with 3700 new friends (which included 1100 mostly well behaved kids), to say that the ship was packed to the gills with people is an understatement.  I guess I should have expected it seeing as how cruising is mostly back to normal now.  I normally avoid cruising on holidays, but we'd done a cruise last Thanksgiving which was relatively sedate and for some crazy reason I was looking forward to a repeat.

 

My adult daughter talked us into doing a Christmas cruise this year as well (on Magic), now I'm starting to wonder what we've gotten ourselves into.  For those of you who've cruised both Thanksgiving and Christmas before should I expect Christmas to be just as crazy as Thanksgiving?  

[ColeThornton]

Yes.

[Theosprey247]

Why wouldn't it be?  People often have more time off around Christmas than Thanksgiving.

[asalligo]

Always more cruisers at Christmas than Thanksgiving. Christmas week and New Year's week are some of the biggest weeks for Carnival and sold out every year, where Thanksgiving often does not sell out completely. If crowding is an issue for you though, you just need to try some of the ships with more public square space per passenger like the Pride and the Spirit. Below is the passenger space ratio for Carnival cruises. Many people do not care about this, but for me it makes or breaks a cruise. Unfortunately, Carnival needs to maximize profit, so I doubt we will see another ship in the 40 square feet per passenger class, but they sure are nice. 

 

• 41.7 – Spirit class ships (Spirit, Pride, Legend, and Miracle)
• 37.6 – Carnival Splendor
• 36.9 – Conquest class ships (Conquest, Glory, Freedom, Valor, and Liberty)
• 35.6 – Carnival Dream
• 35.2 – Carnival Magic and Breeze
• 34.3 – Fantasy class ships (Ecstasy, Sensation, Elation, and Paradise)
• 34.3 – Carnival Sunshine
• 34.1 – Mardi Gras, Carnival Radiance
• 34 – Carnival Sunrise
• 33.9 – Vista class ships (Horizon, Vista, and Panorama)

Edited November 30, 2022 by asalligo

[Mic101680]

Yes. Just as crowded, if not more so. I much prefer off season cruising (January/February/early March before spring breakers start coming in) due to lower crowds, fewer children, and still generally great weather in the Caribbean with less worry of big storms.

[csm5986142]

Yes, it's very similar.  But I thought the airports were worse than the ship.  Super expensive and every flight overbooked (paying volunteers to take later flights).

[vwrestler171]

It will be worse since more families will travel due to kids not missing any school.

[jsglow]

3 hours ago, asalligo said:

Always more cruisers at Christmas than Thanksgiving. Christmas week and New Year's week are some of the biggest weeks for Carnival and sold out every year, where Thanksgiving often does not sell out completely. If crowding is an issue for you though, you just need to try some of the ships with more public square space per passenger like the Pride and the Spirit. Below is the passenger space ratio for Carnival cruises. Many people do not care about this, but for me it makes or breaks a cruise. Unfortunately, Carnival needs to maximize profit, so I doubt we will see another ship in the 40 square feet per passenger class, but they sure are nice. 

 

• 41.7 – Spirit class ships (Spirit, Pride, Legend, and Miracle)
• 37.6 – Carnival Splendor
• 36.9 – Conquest class ships (Conquest, Glory, Freedom, Valor, and Liberty)
• 35.6 – Carnival Dream
• 35.2 – Carnival Magic and Breeze
• 34.3 – Fantasy class ships (Ecstasy, Sensation, Elation, and Paradise)
• 34.3 – Carnival Sunshine
• 34.1 – Mardi Gras, Carnival Radiance
• 34 – Carnival Sunrise
• 33.9 – Vista class ships (Horizon, Vista, and Panorama)

While I 100% agree, especially as it pertains to the awesome Spirit Class (look at my Sig), I will say that sometimes public space per pax is an imperfect science.  I actually believe they did a darn good job re-imaging the public space so it could be utilized both daytime and nighttime.  There's some inefficiency in the standard Conquest Class design with some historically underutilized spaces. Admittedly not a fan of the new Liquid Lounges (especially post Vista) but doubling up to convert to nightclub is a great use of limited square feet. 

[ZoeyVictoria]

It will be worse and there will be more large multi-generational family groups.  Expect it to be more difficult to move around the ship easily because of the groups. 

[RockHoundTX]

Just piling on. Yes, any cruise from Dec 17th to Jan 5th will be completely sold out. I have sailed with my kids on Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. When it comes to kids, Halloween is the least (since most kids in school), Thanksgiving next, and Christmas by far the most. You should expect the number of kids to be roughly 20% higher than what you saw at Thanksgiving with a very large majority being middle and high-school aged. At least here in Texas, it is easy to get Elementary and Intermediate kids out of school for a few extra days for a cruise but Middle/High School can usually only go during Christmas or Summer Vacations (my son had college classes over Thanksgiving week so that was not even an option this year). 

 

Did the Christmas cruise on VIsta last year and it was a complete mad-house. The kids-clubs were completely over-whelmed and were kicking kids out. That means packs of 10-13s and 13-15s roaming the ship. I have kids (who have been on 20+ cruises) in both of these age-groups and it was by far the most chaotic cruise I have ever been on (but partly since that was the peak of Covid last year and the ship was WAY under-staffed).  

 

As mentioned above, expect more "multi-generational" as well. That means more scooters, more people needing to take elevators (which becomes a double-wammy with the kids riding elevators for fun), and just everything being a little "slower" than normal.   

[pe4all]

As others have said, Christmas will be worse than Thanksgiving.  Many more kids because most schools only give off Thurs/Friday of Thanksgiving, whereas Christmas break is usually a week long so kids won't miss school.  Triple and quad cabins will be filled, whereas during Thanksgiving the cabins probably were not - some still having doubles in them.  We still had a great time on all our holiday sailings.  Just be patient as lines for everything will probably be longer.

[groundloop]

2 hours ago, pe4all said:

Just be patient as lines for everything will probably be longer.

 

My adult daughter (who happens to be a second grade teacher) doesn't do patient  🤣.  She was cussing Carnival constantly for 'overbooking' Freedom  (double occupancy capacity 2980, total capacity 3754).  As I'd mentioned we had 3700 guests, so we were pretty much totally maxed out.  I suppose that should prepare us for Christmas since it really can't be any worse.

 

And yes, this was the first time we've ever sailed on a holiday without any Covid restrictions.  We did Thanksgiving last year on Pride and that was quite pleasant, nothing like this year on Freedom.

 

 

 

 

Edited December 1, 2022 by groundloop

[ZoeyVictoria]

2 minutes ago, groundloop said:

 

My adult daughter (who happens to be a second grade teacher) doesn't do patient  🤣.  She was cussing Carnival constantly for 'overbooking' Freedom  (double occupancy capacity 2980, total capacity 3754).  As I'd mentioned we had 3700 guests, so we were pretty much totally maxed out.  I suppose that should prepare us for Christmas since it really can't be any worse.

 

And yes, this was the first time we've ever sailed on a holiday without any Covid restrictions.  We did Thanksgiving last year on Pride and that was quite pleasant, nothing like this year on Freedom.

 

 

 

 

We became quite spoiled during our reduced occupancy cruises and are now super aware of the crowds. It has been a bit disappointing and we are anxiously awaiting the day it seems normal again.  The reduced occupancy is pretty much our only positive memory of Covid days!

[pe4all]

2 hours ago, ZoeyVictoria said:

We became quite spoiled during our reduced occupancy cruises and are now super aware of the crowds. It has been a bit disappointing and we are anxiously awaiting the day it seems normal again.  The reduced occupancy is pretty much our only positive memory of Covid days!

Totally agree with you.  Sailing Freedom January with 40% occupancy, then Horizon with 60% occupancy (and even then felt a bit crowded) and then Magic with 100% capacity made me thankful for the less-crowded sailings we were fortunate to go on.  Moving down to a smaller (Spirit) ship this January - hoping that the lesser amount of people on the ship - even though the ship itself is smaller- will be okay. (I think the passenger to space ratio is decent also)

[groundloop]

3 minutes ago, pe4all said:

Totally agree with you.  Sailing Freedom January with 40% occupancy, then Horizon with 60% occupancy (and even then felt a bit crowded) and then Magic with 100% capacity made me thankful for the less-crowded sailings we were fortunate to go on.  Moving down to a smaller (Spirit) ship this January - hoping that the lesser amount of people on the ship - even though the ship itself is smaller- will be okay. (I think the passenger to space ratio is decent also)

 

Yep, our first cruise post-restart was on Magic with around 50% occupancy.  Some days the ship seemed like a ghost town.

 

I suspect that you'll like Spirit.  We've sailed on Spirit once so far plus three cruises on other Spirit Class ships, they're my favorite.  

[jsglow]

I remember the days of sailing Thanksgiving and/or Spring Break with the kids.  I miss those days sometimes, but not always! 

 

The best thing about being retired is avoiding the car during rush hour! 🙂

[ZoeyVictoria]

14 minutes ago, pe4all said:

Totally agree with you.  Sailing Freedom January with 40% occupancy, then Horizon with 60% occupancy (and even then felt a bit crowded) and then Magic with 100% capacity made me thankful for the less-crowded sailings we were fortunate to go on.  Moving down to a smaller (Spirit) ship this January - hoping that the lesser amount of people on the ship - even though the ship itself is smaller- will be okay. (I think the passenger to space ratio is decent also)

We usually take our Christmas cruise the second week in December, but got a really good deal this year for nine nights on Jewel of the Seas 12/22 through 12/31.  With the Jewel being older, smaller, and lacking the kid-friendly amenities of the larger, newer ships, we are hoping it won’t be as bad as it could be.  But now, 21 days before sailing, the only available cabins are a few suites, so I don’t know.  Hopefully the crowds will consist of more older couples instead of so many large family groups.  Either way, we will enjoy it.