DallasGuy75219

Did they actively or physically/forcefully exclude you? If so, report them to Security. If not, they're paid passengers and have the same right to be in public areas as you. The fact that a public venue is crowded or may be occupied by people you don't want be around doesn't mean you were excluded; you just chose not to join the crowd and be around them.

The legalization (either for medicinal or recreational purposes) in many states has gotten people used to smoking it more regularly because they can now (legally) smoke more openly. At the same time decriminalization tends to decrease prices due to open competition vs. prices for illicit drugs on the black market.

@Crismess669Just remember to scrape the mold off first.

Scrapbooking is still a hobby; I know my SIL does it. Just a speculative answer to your question.

Olive Garden doesn't consistently change to cheaper and inferior dishes like Carnival.

Similar story on Princess in November... Princess Cays, San Juan, Amber Cove, and Grand Turk. Hope it doesn't turn into a 7 day Bahamas cruise😬

Easier to mount in a scrapbook?

I know it went away on the Spirit but frankly don't cruise Spirit class very much.

The cheerleaders have gotten into the KoolAid again.

Always a line unless you get there right when it opens or go on port day when most pax are off the ship. The Spirit class (or at least some ships) used to have a small buffet with rotating Chinese (maybe pan-Asian) food that was actually pretty good. But I believe it got replaced with a paid venue (likely Seafood Shack or sushi) when Carnival started pushing these harder.

How is this so difficult for people to comprehend? Whether 2 people pay $100 each that gets refunded as OBC or one person pays $200 that gets refunded as OBC, the cruise is effectively free because your fare is refunded as OBC. A solo cruiser is not penalized because the $200 paid still gets refunded as OBC.

The cards have an imbedded RF chip and can be used by tapping or getting within a couple inches of the medallion sensors, just like using a tap--to-pay credit card at a retail terminal.

Carnival is $2.50 coin in per point on slots, so $8,750 coin in. But that's still a decent chunk of change for a 3 day Carnival cruise so a balcony bounceback sounds about right.

No, some are a selection of ports/ships/dates and others are just about any sailing up to a certain number of days. Since your previous gambling (< 1,000 pts) was on the light side you may have only qualified for the most restrictive of offers. But back to the original question, they don't publish thresholds to get free cruise offers. They'd rather keep you guessing and erring on the side of gambling more to try to qualify for free cruises, if earning comps incentivizes you.

They gave me a backup card on Regal in July when I changed rooms in the middle of a B2B and my medallion initially wouldn't open the door to my new cabin on the second leg. Their idea for the card, not mine. I don't think Guest Services is completely doing away with cards, they're just pushing people to use the medallion and are trying not to give people a card "just because they don't like the medallion" unless they absolutely insist.

Wait until the reader/tablets can't find your medallion in range and your server wants to scan your medallion😵

The free drink was the consolation prize for Golds when they got disinvited from the past guest party and it became the Plat/Diamond party.

Even worse the caramelized cheesecake and double chocolate brownie that got cut from one iteration of the original comedy brunch menu.

NCL tried to prohibit that for a hot minute (forcing people to order room service, disguised as an effort to keep dirty dishes out the hallways) but it didn't go over well and they quickly rolled it back.

This may just be something that people need to come around to because it's a new concept on Carnival, but the point of the "station" concept is that everyone need not wait in the same long cafeteria line when each person is going to want maybe 10%-15% of all the food on offer. The works well on Princess' newer ships and on Royal, but personally speaking it takes it bit to get out of the mentality that you have to form a line but instead can just step up and serve yourself whatever you want. Ultimately this winds up being more efficient for everyone, unless you're the type that can't make a decision on what to eat without slowly meandering by everything on offer.

Both publish total revenue and total fleet size in their annual reports. Or use comparable published numbers like passenger fare revenue for the numerator, number of double occupancy lower berths for the denominator, etc. Not that hard to calculate but I'll let @Colorado Beach Bum do that analysis over the 10-year period he alluded to, lest this cruising hobby become too much like my real job.

I think we're essentially making to the same point. Somewhere around the late 2000s or early 2010s some Carnival executive gave an interview or speech and publicly said they weren't going down the same road as Royal and NCL, i.e. they were going to do their own thing and weren't going to be an innovator or even a follower. Fast forward ~10 years... Carnival sees the revenue premium its competitors are getting for their innovative ships meanwhile Carnival's newbuilds are still souped up copies of the 20+ year old Destiny class, and Carnival can't compete with hard product so has to compete with price. But when you're competing on price and can't differentiate your product to get any sort of revenue premium over your competitors, the only way to increase profits is to cut costs, so Carnival got into a downward spiral of more and more cuts and even less and less pricing power. Then throw in a 1.5 year total shutdown of cruising and Carnival is in the worst financial position of the big 3 cruiseline holding companies.

Carnival Corp has a much larger total fleet than Royal Caribbean Group, so my "criteria" is something not biased towards Carnival Corp's larger fleet size. Come back with something comparable that adjusts for fleet size, like total revenue per ship in service, and we'll talk.

What ship and itinerary was this from? I'm doing a 10 day Australia next month and am wondering if the menus will be different from the usual in North America.

Chocolate melting cake is on the menu every day. Save it for the day(s) when you don't like the other desserts that change daily.