DallasGuy75219

This is an "it depends" question. As in it depends whether a particular ship decides to follow policy on a particular day or cruise. It depends on whether they are collecting outside alcohol when you return on from port on any given day. If they are, it depends on whether the security guard who sees you're bringing back liquor makes sure you actually check it in. If your liquor was checked in, it depends on whether the ship staff check to see if you're on a B2B before delivering it to your cabin on the last night. When you buy alcohol from the Fun Shops on the last night, they usually let you bring it back to your cabin. If they do, it depends on whether the Fun Shops staff look or even care whether you're on a B2B. So you can get away with it if the cards fall right, but know it's not guaranteed and you may wind up get your liquor back on the last night of the last cruise.

Clearly you are wrong. https://www.cruzely.com/answered-first-day-drink-packages-and-alcohol-on-galveston-cruises/ “State law and TABC rules prohibit any practice which could reasonably be interpreted to allow or encourage overconsumption of alcohol. This includes “all you can drink” packages or other promotions which allow unlimited alcohol for a buy-in price. These standards would apply to any alcoholic beverages served or sold within Texas territory, including any waters over which Texas claims jurisdiction. Once a vessel is outside of Texas territory, the state’s laws no longer apply.” Why does Royal allow drink packages on day one of Galveston cruises and Carnival doesn't? Probably their own individual risk tolerances for TABC enforcing this law against the cruiselines. Royal's all you can drink package clearly violates the law but maybe they don't think it's probable to be enforced. Carnival's 15 drinks a day, as close as 5 minutes apart, could still be reasonably be interpreted to allow or encourage overconsumption of alcohol, although more of a grey area than Royal's. At the end of the day, Carnival may just have a lower risk tolerance than Royal. And if they don't want to serve Cheers drinks in Texas waters, maybe it's just simpler for them to wait until day 2 for Cheers to be effective.

In New Orleans they cut the length of the 12-pack to make sure you don't have beer hidden in the middle🙄

Let me guess... New Orleans? Carnival agents in ther are absolutely the most ridiculous among every port and cruiseline I've ever embarked. I (legally) brought a bottle of wine aboard. They cut off the plastic wrapper around the cork and neck and were examining it with a flashlight, determined to find that I had filled it with something else, recorked it, and resealed it in plastic🙄

You should check in online for all, but no need to print anything for 2 and 3. Carnival's IT systems are crap and everything may not roll over for 2 and 3. Those check-ins (2 and 3) will probably not recognize you as B2B so will make you select a boarding time. Some people would advise you to pick the latest boarding time for 2 and 3 since you'll already be on the ship, to leave the earlier times for others who are boarding for the first time. Don't get too excited about having the ship to yourself. Almost all venues and services will be closed because just about the whole crew and staff are working to turn the ship around.

Doubtful. The core Carnival customer does not have the interest and/or means to take their family to Europe (or all over the world) for a cruise. If there was a market for this, there would be more Carnival brand ships homeported in Europe, not just when a ship was just built or drydocked there. This is an effort to get more productive use of Carnival Corp. assets in the short term without the expense of completely rebranding a ship.

Please learn how to read. I said nothing about the number of people needed to print cards. But since you went there, the time of the crew printing cards on the ship is a fixed cost. The time of the shoreline contractors who some are saving should print cards at checking is a variable cost. Even when cards were distributed at check-in, they were still printed on the ship at the end of the previous sailing. Notwithstanding the fact that the current process works, the investment required to print cards in the terminals is simply not going to happen with the current operating environment where cruiselines are still struggling to break even and stop the negative cash flows.

Yeah, because Carnival has bankloads of cash right now to spend on "nice to have" investments with no net financial benefits (reducing expenses or increasing revenues)🙄

I've only seen cards printed at check-in where the major cruiselines have exclusive use of specific terminals, e.g. Carnival and Royal in Miami, and that was years ago. Nowadays check-in for the major cruiselines is primarily done on tablets, making the process portable or mobile, not even done on a laptop connected to a card printer.

I found the list of VIFP benefits from the last major change (when Diamond was added). The original benefit was "priority check-in and boarding", no mention of early cabin access, for Platinum/Diamond. FTTF (including early cabin access) became a thing after, at which time Carnival added early cabin access to Platinum/Diamond benefits so that when P/D complained anybody could now buy the benefits P/D had earned, Carnival could say "you're keeping all those benefits PLUS we're now able to give you a new benefit with early cabin access."

1. They can still take your pic at check-in if you're using a birth certificate or if they can't get (or don't like) the pic from your passport. But they do realize time savings from the 90%(ish) of people who use passport. 2. They block or severely limit your ability to charge your S&S until you've made a cash deposit at the kiosks or Guest Services. Then if you charge more than you deposited, they block you from charging until you deposit more.

In some ports CBP will come aboard and process B2B pax. In one port (Jacksonville) we only had to go to guest services on debarkation morning so they could make a copy of our passport and they took care of everything with CBP.

They did but they said that FTTF and P/D could go to their rooms. Now they show any exceptions for early access.

Not based on the empty hallways when I dropped my bags on my last cruise. The signs on the fire doors say rooms not available until 1:30 and don't mention any exceptions. Early access for P/D is an unspoken secret. As I recall it was a P/D benefit first. Then they figured out how to monetize FTTF but kept early cabin access as a P/D benefit so it wouldn't look like they were taking it away from P/D just to make them pay for it like the unwashed masses.

Not since they stopped selling FTTF with the restart and haven't publicized very much that Plats and Diamonds can drop their bags after boarding if their room isn't ready yet.

But the casinos alone can't stop the bleed. Until possibly when COVID protocols were just relaxed, the casinos were spending a big chunk of change to get warm bodies onboard with free rooms, free casino play, and free drinks, with the hope that they'd spend or lose more than it had just cost to get them onboard. Otherwise CCL wouldn't have just issued $1billion in stock and extended $339 million in bond debt.

I'm not old enough to have used metal keys for cabin doors, but I remember back in the day when on the Holiday class you had a VingCard for your cabin door and S&S card for everything else.

With travel insurance all your claimed losses don't have time be paid for at the time you take out the policy. What you do need to do though is add a cushion to the amount you insure for insurable costs you expect to incur after the date you take the policy out, e.g. cabin upgrades.

You're ignoring the complexity of making every cabin on the ship available for the everyone in a lower category to bid on, and then managing that process, even systematically. Princess has no incentive to build out that system and process when there are plenty of people willing to bid for a guarantee cabin in a higher category. If there was incremental money to be made by allowing bidding for specific cabins, one of the other cruise lines that beat Princess to the game would have already tried it.

... except those wanting something for nothing (free upgrades) and those with socialist entitlements who can't comprehend that people with bigger wallets than them are inherently willing and able to pay for nicer cabins than they can or will pay for. In other words the people b****ing and moaning about the change here.

Your "pool" scenario relies on the flawed assumption that no one in the chain is overbid, which is unlikely to happen unless you want expand the collusion to everyone booked on the sailing. Once anyone in the chain is overbid, the scheme falls apart for that person and everyone below, who just subsidized someone else's upgrade and got nothing in return.

Possibly not, but Carnival doesn't care. Room stewards and guest services are essentially fixed costs. I believe they are salaried for base pay, so give the room stewards more workload and let them figure out how to deal with it. Make passengers wait longer in line longer at guest services if people with tampered envelopes/missing S&S cards are prioritized, because every position at guest services is usually open at embarkation anyway. But the check-in agents are outside contractors, so reducing the number of them needed to check in a sailing is an increase to Carnival's bottom line.

Regardless of what category you're talking about, the concept is the same. Princess will charge what they think the market will bear, and someone, possibly with a bigger wallet than you, will be willing to pay a price that you personally might balk at.

https://www.carnival.com/cruise-food/?shipCode=PA

That's a huge assumption that no one lower in the chain got outbid, and even more unlikely if they were lowballing their bids. If one person anywhere in the chain gets outbid, the scheme falls apart for everyone under them in the chain, who just paid for someone's upgrade to a suite and now have nothing to show for it.