Tapi

Cabanas for rent at the pool edge so if you want that spot you pay for it. Towel hog all day it's yours.

Princess has those on their new ship, Royal Princess. From what I've been reading, they seem to be very popular. Take that, chair hoggers!

New Underwater Grand Suites:

What would I incoporate on the new Carnival Vista? An iron clad, permanent contract with the port of Mobile (my closest port of embarkation) to sail year round. ;)

Seriously, my main reason for cruising Carnival is price and convenience, so I hope that whatever they come up with for the Vista doesn't increase the cost of cruising on Carnival. I'm honestly fine if they keep what they currently offer on the Dream class. If I want more bells and whistles, there are plenty other cruise lines out there to choose from. Carnival doesn't need to become one of them.

The interline rates are great; however' date=' you do not get any elite benefits, shipboard credit, laundry, etc. in fact, you get a "blue"card when you check in on embarkation day.[/quote']

 

Wow, I'm surprised at how restrictive interline rates are on Princess. I'm an airline pilot and I've taken advantage of these rates for years (mostly on Carnival). On them, you don't give up any benefits. You maintain all the benefits that you're entitled to (I'm currently Platinum on them, so it would really suck if I had to sacrifice my benefits for a lower rate).

 

Carnival's interline rates are very competitive (usually a couple hundred dollars cheaper than the regular rate), plus you can book them directly through Carnival. No need to go through an interline agency or pay additional booking fees. :D

Freeport is pretty dumpy, but I secretly like it because its not as commercialized as Nassau. :o

We enjoyed the Boardwalk view for about a day. After that, we were having ocean withdrawal. :o

As far as the new ship design goes, hopefully it is not a larger ship. I was on the Breeze for 14 days and yes there were lines and yes it did feel crowded at times compared to the smaller ships.

 

It's not the size of the ship, but how many passengers are stuffed in it (space to passenger ratio). Also, the design plays a big role.

That's the reason why ships like Royal's Oasis twins feel so spacious and there are no lines even though they carry over 6,000 passengers.

If Carnival is eliminating the atrium in favor of more cabins, and they will maintain the general layout as the Dream, Conquest, and Destiny class, the new ship will definitely not feel spacious.

I'm thinking Silver Seas Cruise line for him and the gang.....;)

I was thinking a Holland America cruise.

...the Sunshine is all new

This is the same misleading tag line that Carnival used on their website when they introduced the Sunshine. A lot of people had no clue that Sunshine was an old refurbished ship.

I would've had much more respect for the Sunshine if Carnival had been up front about this ship from the beginning instead of trying to make it something it's not. With some creativity, they could've definitely created A LOT of hype with the Sunshine without calling it "an all new" ship. All they've done is confuse, anger, and mislead people while creating false expectations.

With that said, I do want to try the Sunshine some day, maybe for an inexpensive getaway. But if I do so, I want to do it with realistic expectations, fully knowing what the Sunshine TRULY is, not what Carnival (and Carnival loyalists) want me to think it is.

Tapi read my post before this one.

Gotcha

if you don't like what I said or my opinion and advice don't read them.:o

Opinions and facts are two very different things.

. If Royal doesn't step up and offer some different itineraries out of PC, IMO they're going to find people who sail for the ports leaning away to other lines.

Don't forget that Explorer of the Seas is coming to PC with some new itineraries. Check them out!

You can't compare the Sunshine which is a very small ship, one of the smallest ones sailing in all the major cruise lines,

Ok. Let's be objective here for a minute. At 101,000 tons, Sunshine is not the largest, but she's far from being one of the smallest cruise ships.

p.s...I Love that picture of Tapi The Dog.

Thanks! :D

And if you post the question on the Carnival board you will probably get a completely different answer. ;)

 

Tim

You'd be surprised. There's been a lot of frustration and dissatisfaction on the Carnival board recently. There are still many hardcore Carnival loyalists, but when people post comparison questions, many times the overwhelming response has been to sail on a different cruise line. Even when the Freedom of the Seas has been compared to the Carnival Dream (a much newer and larger ship than the Sunshine) people have overwhelmingly suggested the Freedom of the Seas.

You are aware that the Carnival Sunshine is a refurbished ship built 17 years ago, and about 2/3 the size of Freedom of the Seas, right? In addition to that, they added a couple hundred cabins during the refurbishment making it one of the ships with the worst space to passenger ratios.

With that said, Carnival did do a great job taking an old ship and making it look modern and contemporary. If you choose to do the Sunshine, do so with realistic expectations.

We cruised to Alaska once before on Princess and we had Michael Modzelewski for our Alaskan expert. His presentations were so incredible. I was anticipating something like that at Glacier Bay, and though the Glaciers were beautiful, the very slight narration was a lady reading a script written for 4th graders. I'm just wondering if Hal ever has interesting port experts.

Keep in mind that I don't have other experience with Alaska port lecturers or experts, but here are my thoughts. :o

We went to the presentation on the Crow's Nest as we entered Glacier Bay where we met the young lady that you refer to (a Park Ranger). We then met her again on deck as she walked around answering people's questions (she was actually very knowledgeable and didn't skip a beat when she got bombarded with questions from my teenage nieces). But I agree that her delivery over the loudspeakers was a bit lackluster (I had to laugh when she said something along the lines of: "If you look to your right, you'll see a dot moving. It's a bear. If you have binoculars, you may get a better glimpse of that dot").

Even though she might not win any awards for public speaking, we feel that we learned quite a bit about Glacier Bay listening to her and were glad she was onboard.

I don't know if its the same Princess expert you refer to, but I do remember watching on You Tube a video of a Princess ship going into Tracy Arm while their expert spoke and It was truly mesmerizing.

In August we are taking all 8 of our family on the Westerdam itinerary. They range from 5-65 and all are excited about it.

It was an absolutely wonderful way to get the entire family together! My 74 year old father is extremely happy at the fact that we were able to get all the kids, their spouses, and all grandkids together for this vacation.

Hope your cruise is filled with great memories as well!

(Southwest is our favorite airline because of no mashing around at the gate jockying for position to board (even though you have seats assigned)…I'll take the "line up" way…at least for the flights we've taken, it's been more civilized.)

Southwest is new in Atlanta (as they continue to merge with Air Tran). I think that a lot of people here are trying them out for the first time and are not familiar yet with the way Southwest does things, which would explain the utter chaos going but not returning from Seattle.

...too bad about the lost bag and since you're a pilot (I remember from a previous thread) flying SW for the first time, they lose your bag!

Yup. We are used to flying standby (or "non-rev") with just our carry-ons, but since this was a major vacation with lots of bags (and we didn't want to run the risk of flights being full and not making it to Seattle in time for the cruise), I decided to buy confirmed tickets. Southwest happened to have the lowest price and flights that were convenient to us.

I'm fully aware that things happen, and that a bag can be lost by any airline, but the way the whole thing has been handled has been worse than the food poisoning incident! :eek:

I love it when someone does a review and touches on the good and bad in a positive way. Great job. Love your pictures. Do you mind telling us what kind of camera you used?

Thanks! I used a Nikon D3100. Bought it specifically for this trip :D

SUMMARY:

Would I do an Alaska cruise again? ABSOLUTELY, 100% yes! If I didn't use the word wonderful enough times, I'll use it one more time. It was a wonderful and truly amazing experience! I'm thinking that next time, we'll opt for a one way from Vancouver, spend a few days doing Denali, and enjoy all the great tours (like the helicopter, dog sledding, floatplane, etc) that we didn't get to do this time because we were traveling with small children. But the purpose of this trip was to get the family together so I couldn't just leave the kids behind. Next time may be a completely different story.

Will I ever cruise Holland America again? For the right itinerary, absolutely (and looking at the brochure that we picked up onboard, there are plenty of itineraries worldwide that I would be very interested in). But I don't think they'd be my cruise line of choice for a vacation where the destination is not the main focus. While part of me craves a more traditional cruise experience like what we enjoyed on Holland, I'm very interested in newer, larger, and more innovative ships just for the mere fact that they may be a better option at this stage of my life (raising a young family).

Was there anything that I did NOT enjoy about this cruise? Mostly minor things not even worth mentioning (or already mentioned). But there's ONE thing that wasn't so minor. On the morning we were scheduled to arrive in Juneau, I became violently ill with constant vomiting and diarrhea. I found out that my niece had also woken up with similar symptoms, so needless to say, the first thing that crossed my mind was a Norovirus outbreak. Thankfully, we were traveling with 3 doctors in our family who brought an arsenal of medicines with them, diagnosed us, and brought us back to health by the afternoon. Our symptoms and length of illness pointed to food poisoning. Upon comparing what my niece and I had to eat the day before, we pinpointed the source of our illness to one thing: PIZZA

Obviously, after this experience, I became hyper vigilant of anything that I ate the rest of the week, avoiding items that were at a higher risk of spoiling or cross contamination. And I also became more aware of how food was being handled. And that's when I noticed some food workers, wearing gloves, but touching surfaces, taking trash out and then handling the food. I watched as one worker put too much rice on someone's plate and then grabbed the excess rice with her hands and dumped it back in the original container. I lost my appetite fast and walked away. I also walked by the pizza station and noticed slices of pizza sitting under the heat lamp and made me wonder if someone else would also get sick. Amazing the things you notice after you get food poisoning! I did report what happened and included it in my guest survey.

So, taking the lost bag and the food poisoning incident out of the equation, we had an amazing vacation and I would do it again in a heartbeat. This is one cruise that everybody, cruise enthusiast or not, should experience.

Which brings me to my brother in law who considered cruising to be comparable to medieval torture before this vacation. Initially, he tried to focus on the negatives but by the time we got to Juneau and he hopped on the glacier helicopter tour, he became a believer. I don't think he'll become a cruise enthusiast like I am, but he enjoyed the experience tremendously and might even consider taking another cruise some day (gasp!)

- Victoria: Back to clear, beautiful days. What we originally thought would be a technical stop to fulfill law requirements turned out to be one of our favorite ports of call. The ship arrived at 6:00pm and we had to be back onboard by 11:15pm so time was very limited.

We took a taxi and were dropped off near the Parliament. From there we walked to the Fairmont Empress hotel. We took one of the side streets and had dinner at Nautical Nellie's before returning to the ship. Victoria is one of those cities that makes you want to return for a longer stay.

We used our balcony one final time to watch the ship sail away from Victoria while, making a mental note to come back some day.

And just like that, 7 days of one of the most amazing cruises I've ever taken were over. We arrived back in Seattle under blue skies and 77 degrees.

Debarkation was an absolute breeze. The silent method was extremely efficient and we were in our taxi to the hotel in minutes. We enjoyed one more day in Seattle (visiting the Space Needle and Chihully Gardens) before catching a 6:00am flight back to Atlanta the next day. Just for the record, the return flight went smoothly and no bags were lost. Yay!

- Ketchikan: The only time during the week where the skies were overcast and chilly. Since we had small children in the group, we opted for the Ketchikan Duck Tour. Very cheesy but very informative. We started the tour asking ourselves what we had gotten ourselves into, but finished laughing along with the other passengers. It was nice to get a perspective from both land and sea.

After the tour was over, we walked to Creek Street and browsed the stores. If I have to pick a least favorite port of call in this itinerary, Ketchikan would be it. With 4 cruise ships in port at the same time, it felt a bit too crowded (like Nassau or Cozumel on a busy day). Don't get me wrong, I'd go back in a heartbeat since we had a great time. We just liked the other ports more.

- Sitka: A little hidden gem on another beautiful clear day. Originally, I had been a bit bummed out because I wanted to visit Skagway and do the White Pass and Yukon Railroad, but this itinerary visited Sitka instead. Now I'm glad I had a chance to see this place.

We were tendered ashore on the ship's own lifeboats. Sitka is (thankfully) not as developed for cruise ship passengers as many other Alaskan destinations (they only receive an average of 1 ship twice a week). It doesn't have a cruise ship dock and you are not greeted by chain stores like Diamonds International or fancy Welcome Centers. Instead, there's a sign that says "Welcome to Sitka" next to a visitors booth.

We opted to walk along the waterfront to the Sitka National Park, cut through the forest, and visit the Alaska Raptor Center where we got to see up close many rescued eagles as well as other birds.

On our way back, we walked along Lincoln Street through the downtown area, visited St. Michael's Cathedral, and browsed the shops before going back to the ship.

Other family members did a Kayaking tour and loved it.