Tapi

Not on Royal, but when we sailed on Celebrity last November, we had friends who decided to join us last minute. They wanted to go as cheaply as possible so they booked an inside cabin. They didn’t realize that balconies were cheaper until I pointed it out to them so they called and switched to a balcony. Sometimes it works like that.

Yup. We booked Wonder on a Boardwalk Balcony which is cheaper than inside and ocean view cabins.

I do agree with you that other mainstream cruise lines have experienced poorly behaved guests, but I believe that the key difference is that, on Carnival, it has become more prevalent; a byproduct of the “fun” atmosphere that they promote. To make things worse, it gets magnified by social media. I’m one of the “lucky ones” who did get to witness a fight during a Carnival cruise. It was a full on brawl in the middle of the atrium on the Sensation. It was BAD. 20-30 people got in it, with fists and glasses flying everywhere, We had to run for cover. Never have I ever witnessed something like that on a cruise before or after. I have a dear friend who, for years, was a die hard Carnival fan. He video messaged me from his last Carnival cruise a few months ago, showing the out of control behavior unfolding in real time. He concluded by saying that he can no longer in good conscience continue sailing on Carnival or recommend it to others. That to me was sobering. I’ve been sailing other cruise lines for the last few years and none of my upcoming cruises (in my signature) are on Carnival either. I’m getting older. I’ve been cruising on lines like Holland America and Celebrity 😱 . Not as lively as Carnival, but they have become more appealing to me. Carnival continues to have a very special place in my heart though. I think that they still provide a solid product, specially with their newest and latest ships. But they need to keep working on cleaning up their image and suppressing poor behavior.

November 2018, our ship stopped in Marseille, France. Little did we know that the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) protests had started erupting all over the country a few days prior with hundreds of thousands of people protesting and blocking roadways. No word from the cruise line except for a revised “all aboard” time that had been changed to 2 hours earlier than scheduled. We made it to Vieux Port without issues, but that’s when we noticed a big police presence who informed us about the ongoing protests and the potential for violence. We were encouraged to return to the ship at once since protesters were expected to swarm the area in the next few hours (which explained the earlier “all aboard” time). We cut our day short and hailed a taxi back to the ship. That’s when the fun began. Protesters had already started congregating and blocking major roads. We couldn’t make it back to the ship the same way we came. Our taxi driver started speeding down backroads and alleyways trying to evade the protesters, only to find another road block. He started flagging down other taxi drivers to ask which way to go. Our hearts were racing for a bit because it felt as if we were in a chase scene from a movie, trying to evade the protesters, not knowing if we’d make it back in time (or safely), but we breathed a sigh of relief when we finally made it back to the ship. Definitely a somewhat different day in port for sure.

I wanted to introduce my 6 and 8 yo kids to Europe, and a Mediterranean cruise was, without a doubt, the best decision. Super easy to do and affordable, It was an absolutely wonderful experience for the whole family. But as others have said, you will barely scratch the surface, like barely, BARELY 😂. You can sample, and then maybe one day return to the places you enjoyed the most.

I’d lean towards Mariner except for it being 2 short cruise B2B. Different vibe then on longer cruise, plus one day somewhat lost on turnaround day.

Odyssey hands down.

When we did Aurea a few years ago, it was great, specially if you got an Aurea suite. Obviously not quite YC but enough to make the cruise extra special. But the perks have been diluted. I wouldn’t do it now.

$12K on a Carnival cruise in an inside cabin?? Something doesn’t add up. I don’t think I’ve ever spent more than $3K on a 7 night Carnival cruise for our family of 4, even sailing during school breaks and in a balcony stateroom. Heck I’m taking my family to the Norwegian Fjords this summer for 1/3 of that! Not even when we did a 7 night Disney cruise over Thanksgiving did we pay that much. We faced a similar dilemma when my father turned 80 and the whole family got together to take him on a cruise. How did we figure out which one to take? - First and foremost, we asked HIM where he wanted to go. It was HIS cruise. - Second, we compared everybody’s summer schedule and pinpointed one week that would work for everybody. - Third, we asked what everybody’s budget was. Once we had all that information, we picked 3-4 choices, sat down, and then made our final decision from there. We actually ended on a 4 night cruise to Cuba aboard an older, smaller Royal Caribbean ship. It wasn’t anybody’s dream vacation, but it was what met everybody’s needs. We all had to compromise to make it happen. Nobody got exactly what they wanted, but we were so happy to be traveling together. At the end of the day, it was a wonderful cruise experience. Super memorable to have everybody there to celebrate my dad’s 80th birthday. Believe me, nobody must HAVE water slides and zip lines to have an amazing family cruise. Don’t want to fuel the fire, but if your SIL must have the cruise that meets all of her needs without taking into consideration other’s needs and budget, she’s not planning this trip to celebrate the in-law’s 50th birthday; she’s planning it for herself. Find a way to amicably meet somewhere in the middle.

That’s huge right there. We had zero breaks during the entire cruise because we didn’t have anybody with us. If we’d had an hour here and there to recharge, it would’ve been a different story. Good news is that we learned a lot from that first cruise experience with a baby. By the time our daughter was born, we had figured out a bunch of do’s and dont’s. For our daughter’s first cruise (at 15 months old), we had the whole extended family with us. For that cruise, we had grandma/grandpa, aunts/uncles and older cousins to help. 😀

It’s great as long as your kid is not younger than 2. Our son’s first cruise (13 months old) was on Carnival and it was pretty rough to the point that we were considering cutting the cruise short and going home. We underestimated how challenging it would be to sail on a cruise line that didn’t provide anything for kids that young. Our fault. His second cruise (18 months old) was on Royal’s Allure of the Seas (which has the Royal Babies and Tots program with dedicated facilities and toy lending program, as well as separate pools and splash zones for babies and toddlers still in diapers). The experience was like night and day. We didn’t want that cruise to end! We went back to Carnival (Dream) after he had turned 2 and that experience was a compete 180 from his first Carnival cruise. Very enjoyable.

All I can say is that the stress associated with booking an early flight is not worth it. We booked a 12:25pm flight about 11 months in advance. A few months before departure, the airline changed it to 11:25am. Then to 11:15am. Once on the ship, we learned that due to some technical issues at the port, we wouldn’t be docking until 8:00am. I wasted the last 24 hours of my cruise stressing and obsessing about getting off the ship in time and making it to the airport, and made my family’s life miserable in the process. Long story short, we did make the flight, but we didn’t make it to the gate area until 10:30am. In our case, there was only one flight home on that day, but if you’re flying somewhere that has more flights, pick a later one, even if it’s more expensive. A good bargain on a cheaper flight can quickly become very costly.

It won’t be like a 5 night Caribbean cruise for sure. Longer itinerary in Europe outside of the summer school break in the US. You can expect clientele to skew on the older side. With that said, we took our kids on a Mediterranean cruise during the month of November and they loved it. There were few kids their age onboard. We only met two other families from the US. But there were quite a few kids from all over Europe at the kids club. Even with the language barrier, they made friends and had a great time. In fact, they keep asking when we will be returning.

I had never used Squaremouth until I started looking for an insurance policy with CFAR for a special cruise that I have planned for 2024. I had always used Insure My Trip but the premiums were insanely high for this trip. So I started googling policies and I came across Squaremouth. The policy that I found through them was literally 1/3 the price compared to the cheapest policy through Insure My Trip. I double and triple checked the fine print to ensure that everything that I wanted covered is indeed covered.

That gives me some hope. The money order for my daughter’s passport was cashed on March 24th, but as of the last time I checked, the website wasn’t showing any status whatsoever. I called their 800 number and the representative I spoke to said that it may have been a website error. She told me that if the money order was cashed, that means that the application has been received and it’s being processed. We are also traveling at the end of June so we still have some time before I go into panic mode.

Welcome to Cruise Critic. While the situation is unfortunate and most people will agree that it would be a huge letdown, you should have time to salvage your vacation. What was the original ship/sail date? With so many ships sailing in Alaska this season there should be a replacement cruise among all other cruise lines that will be an aceptable replacement.

Don’t know about P&O, but on several American cruise lines, the ducks are insanely popular among many cruisers. I’ve found a few ducks myself over the years. I’ll pick them up and put them right back where I found them. No interest in participating. 😂 Personally, I think that the concept is an absolute waste of time and effort (along with some of the elaborate door decorations that some people come up with). But I know that all of these activities bring immense joy to those who choose to participate in them, so I don’t object.

Last time we sailed from Miami, we stayed here: https://www.yvehotelmiami.com/ Nice and chic boutique hotel across the street from Bayside Marketplace. It has a cool restaurant and a bar. Our stay included coupons for free drinks at the bar. If you book a high floor looking towards the port of Miami, you’ll get a nice view of your ship sailing in early in the morning (we did). 😃

Yup, all it took was one time on Delta One going across the Atlantic when they were 6 and 8 years old, and from that point forward my kids thought that they were too good for anything less than that. I was quick to rectify the situation by booking flights on Spirit for a subsequent trip (“yeah, there’s no inflight entertainment so bring a book and a bottle of water”) with no seat assignment (“oh well, we may get separated”), or paid luggage (“you can only bring whatever you can fit in a bag that you’ll have to shove under your seat”). 😂 That brought them right back to Earth. Glad I nipped that one in the bud early on. We still fly First or Business class sporadically, but now when we do, my kids treat it as a privilege that they are truly grateful for, and not as something that they are entitled to. Phew.

Oops, I’m normally pretty good about not bringing prohibited items, but I must say that I didn’t know about heating pads. My wife had a car accident before our November cruise so we packed an electric heating pad. We didn’t attempt to hide it. In fact, our cabin steward provided an extension cord since the closest electric outlet was far from the bed. 🤷🏻‍♂️ She used it all week long and was never questioned.

I normally don’t add travel insurance until close to final payment and before purchasing non refundable items like airfare. The caveat is that if anything happens before you purchase insurance that eventually prevents you from taking the cruise , you won’t be covered. One example was last November when we were sailing on Celebrity. My wife had a car accident before final payment and before I purchased insurance. As we approached our sailing date, she was still in so much residual pain that we almost canceled the cruise a few days before departure. Because the reason for her condition was the accident, the insurance wouldn’t cover anything since it happened before we added insurance. We ended taking the cruise, but we coordinate special assistance at the airport which was her worst concern. We made it happen probably against our better judgement, partly fueled by the fact that we’d loose all of our money. I do have a cruise for 2024 for which I already purchased insurance because I wanted to have CFAR coverage. And even though we’re fairly young and in relatively good health, I also wanted to ensure that we wouldn’t be disqualified for any pre-existing issues after our situation last November. It’s a much more expensive cruise than what we normally book, and since it’s not for another year and a half, I wanted to ensure that all of my bases are covered. It was only a couple hundred dollars worth of peace of mind.

Unfortunately, the cruise line is under no obligation to wait for him, and in many cases they won’t. However, if a flight that the cruise line is using for their air program is delayed or canceled, and there are a lot of cruisers on that flight, they may make the decision to delay the departure to accommodate those passengers if they’ll be arriving at a reasonable time that won’t impact the rest of the itinerary. This happened on Carnival, but I have friends who’d purchased flights and transfers through the cruise line and their delayed flight arrived in MIA at departure time. They were met at baggage claim by a cruise line representative who waited while they got their luggage and escorted them to an awaiting bus. The bus was full with delayed passengers. On that instance, the cruise line did wait for them. Their first port of call the next day was Key West so I guess they figured they could hold the ship a few hours without impacting their arrival the following day. Once again, the cruise line is under no obligation, and them holding the ship shouldn’t be expected. Best of luck and if you have time, come back to tell us what happened.

I just looked at flight aware, and there’s a canceled flight between BOS and FLL on Jetblue that was scheduled to land at 9:03am. My bet is that this is the OP’s flight.

Personally, I haven’t had too many issues with MSC, but a lot of people do post several nightmare scenarios pre-cruise when dealing with MSC’s customer service over the phone. Their website and IT are notorious for having glitches as well. If you do have an issue, it’s better to shoot a quick email to a TA that can do the dirty work for you instead of you wasting time attempting to get someone who can actually help you. For me, the worst issues had to do with when we did the Loyalty Match Program. Their system kept merging my account with my son (who has the same first and last name as me), and several times when I’d log in to look at my reservation, it would return an error saying that my booking was invalid. The system kept flagging the booking as having the same person double booked. It took several phone calls and literally countless hours trying to get it rectified every time it glitched. They finally solved it by having both my first and middle name listed under my first name. Another issue was when we booked one cruise which was later canceled. No notice from MSC. I found out about it because I logged in to look at my reservation and MSC decided to move us to a shorter sailing on a different ship from a different port of embarkation without consulting with us to see if that would work. Once again, it took several calls, first to rebook us on an itinerary that would work for us, and eventually canceling altogether when we decided that we didn’t want to cruise at the time. Getting a refund took a lot of time, patience and self control but I got it resolved. The good news is that once onboard the ship, their customer service has always been responsive and willing to help. One example was for our first post COVID cruise when we learned that the cabin that I had cherry picked was changed to “TBA” a few days prior to the cruise. The new cabin that was assigned at the port was not acceptable to us so we proceeded to guest relations. The cabin change had to do with the limited capacity and reduced staffing that the ship was sailing under which blocked our original cabin. But they were very helpful, apologetic and willing to rectify the situation. They pulled up a deck plan showing all the cabins that I could choose from and made the change. They even offered to allow me to go look at the cabin before committing to it to ensure that it was to our liking. Funny thing was that the new cabin had 2 bottles of wine chilled and waiting along with a ticket for a reserved umbrella at Coco Cay with someone else’s name on it. Apparently, whoever had originally reserved that cabin had ordered those items and then had canceled last minute. I took the items to guest relations telling them that they were for someone else but they told me that we could keep them. So we got some free wine and an umbrella out of the whole situation. 😂

That may not be the case anymore. Just a few days ago, there was a thread on the Princess board with a similar complaint to yours. They’re sailing in a few weeks and booked on a standard balcony. Now, not only are balcony prices less than half what they paid, but mini suites are cheaper as well. Princess refuses to refund, credit, or upgrade, citing their terms and conditions and also that these prices are for last minute, new bookings only. So it seems that your situation with Royal is becoming more and more the norm across the industry as cruise lines reinforce their policies. I know it sucks, but those are the rules.