Honolulu Blue

Thanks for noting this. I've seen the same.

Thanks for the reply. Celebrity moves fast! I'll make a note of this. You never know when it might come in handy.

This is also very interesting. How long did it take from mention to promotion? If it was during the same cruise, this would be the height of mixed emotions for me, assuming I wasn't in AQ. It's also telling that Celebrity thinks that moving to the AQ is a promotion, and at least some moves there are based on merit.

Thank you for the rest of the story! 🙂

Thank you for your insight as usual. I highlighted this portion because I think it's especially relevant to the OP's question and some of my thoughts on this matter.

Thanks for sharing this. Was this onboard a cruise? I've never proactively spoken to management onboard any ship about an outstanding employee. I've relied on surveys for this. Perhaps I should start? Two lessons that I get from your story: 1) One person can make a BIG difference in someone's life 2) Sometimes greatness isn't obvious; sometimes it needs to be pointed out by someone who notices and cares.

Actually I think their limit is meant mostly to send signals to two groups of people. To law enforcement, judicial, and governmental authorities, it says, "see, we TRY to limit our passengers' drinking to reasonable levels." To those who regularly imbibe more than the limit per day, it says, "You're potentially more trouble than you're worth. You should probably pick another cruise line." Whether Carnival Corp accomplishes their missions is a discussion for another place and time. JMHO. I'm out. Please continue your discussion. 👍

I got a couple of notes with my e-mails from ECP this afternoon. This coming TEC is 85% full. Pretty good, but Star Trek is at 97%. 😮 Also, next year's Rock Legends Cruise just changed their port stop to CocoCay. They were scheduled in Labadee. 😵, so they made the obvious call there. TEC is still scheduled to head for Haiti as one of their three stops. When will they make the change? Who knows??

The 80s Cruise released the highlight video of their cruise a few weeks ago. The jump cuts from video to video were mostly very fast, so I can't be absolutely sure that they didn't sneak me in there. But I didn't get a confirmed sighting of me. There were a couple of close calls. There was a closeup of Stephen Pearcy signing a copy of his autobiography. But it wasn't my book - the ink color was different. And during Sheena's concert, the camera was behind me, and I can almost tell where I was standing with camera in hand... but it was dark, and I didn't see enough details to confirm my presence. Oh, and former VJs Mark, Julie, and Alan did a little speech about next year's cruise. I think it was during the late concert, because I don't remember it and I didn't see myself. It's about 4 minutes long. Have fun!

A few notes from around the Net: Both Rock and Romance and Flower Power have sold out. R&R did it early this month, while FP took a little longer and sold out about a week ago. I hope George got his back to back suites if he wanted them. I got an announcement that Summer of 99 is on for next year. Creed will host again. No other performers were announced at this time. It will go April 9-13 and head from Miami to Nassau and back on the Norwegian Gem. It's about $2500 for a solo interior cabin, and I can take another $100 off if I'm willing to pay in full. Despite all this, I was intrigued enough to sign up for the pre sale. I'll get a time to book on or about May 27. We'll see what happens. Soul Train 2.0 keeps adding performers. It sounds like it's going to go.

I'm the complete opposite - I like the Millennium and Summit, which are both in the same class. I haven't sailed on any other Celebrity ships, but I like them well enough. On the other hand, I've done two Royal class ships and the Ruby. I liked the bigger, newer Princess ships better. I got half off on Internet on Princess on my third cruise. I value that much more highly than a bag of laundry, which I ordinarily don't do on cruises of 7 days or less. It's all about priorities.

Thanks for the kind words. I'm sure Celebrity is thrilled to have this repositioning cruise chartered. Traditionally, across cruise lines, cabins on repositioning cruises tend to be sluggish sellers that only sell out at giveaway prices. They might have passed along a discount for the charter to Jazz Cruises, which if true, then I'm happy for them. I like win-wins. 😃

I received my e-mail a few hours ago announcing the opening of bookings for the Journey of Jazz Cruise to the general public. A few details caught my eye - all the suites and some other top-end non-suite cabins are already sold out, as are the allocated solo inside and balcony cabins. Overall they say the ship is almost 50% booked. That's a pretty good start, IMHO.

This intrigues me... trivia as in going down to the local pub and competing with the locals, or staying at home and breaking out the box of Trivial Pursuit? Either way, I think I'll give you a wide berth if I see you on my ship. Then again, I'm only good at trivia in a few categories. 🙂

They LOVE Mr. Heald and they LOVE Carnival. Rare is the unkind word said about either.

To bend this topic around a bit, I use an Amazon Fire and don't have the Carnival app loaded on it. It's easy to switch the WiFi from my phone to it - just do the Silk thing and go to login.com . That will ask you if you want to login to this device and log off of the other device. Two clicks and done. I can't ask to be much easier than that.

Thanks everyone. A few quickie comments on your comments and lessons learned: Perhaps "scream at me" is an exaggeration. The polished MDR employees are unlikely to scream at their passengers, even me. They're more likely to scream at the chef when he rebuffs my request, which doesn't make me feel much better. Or they're likely to put me on the crew dartboard for the week as the most unreasonable passenger they've had to deal with. That doesn't make me feel any better either. It doesn't seem to be popular among this veteran group, but perhaps that was just the weekend crowd. Why ask about what is apparently such a radical thing? The stomach wants what it wants. I'm sure many of you have food cravings and/or memories of meals from the recent past. I wondered about how flexible MDR menus actually are. It turns out that they're not too flexible. Flowers are red. Green leaves are green. There's no need to see MDR menus any other way than the way they always have been seen. The "proper" procedure for this seems to be similar to the special needs menus - ask beforehand and maybe I'll get what I want. It sounds like too much hassle for all involved for me to try it (even on luxury lines), so I don't think I'll be doing this any time soon. Some of you, I'm sure are breathing a sigh of relief. I briefly forgot about MDR pre-plating. I'm sure regular restaurants at sea and land do the same (especially with popular meals/entrees), but not to the same degree as everyone's favorite MDRs. Thanks again, and I look forward to continued replies with more wisdom.

Two things come to mind quickly - economies of scale and a group of co-workers - where being together is about efficiency and not about enjoyment. I'm glad you have a clan that you like to travel with. Sometimes I wish I had one. 🙂

I'm bumping this because John Heald mentioned Journeys cruises in one of his FB posts this morning. He says it's "important for the beards" to find out how many we've experienced, what we liked about them, and how they can improve them. I found it interesting to note that hardly anyone had an unkind word to say in the comments on this post about Journeys cruises - even considering the bias of the group it's pretty overwhelming. Feel free to take a look and what was said and comment in your spare time.

I mostly cruise on mainstream cruise lines for... reasons, but your answer in re: premium/luxury lines and their ability to whip up special orders is enlightening. Thank you for it.

The above is what i would do - fill out the survey honestly and send a separate communication to the executives. OP, I hope you get what you want out of this. I've always believed that honesty is the best policy - no matter where it leads.

Here's something I always wanted to ask, but didn't want to get screamed at by the waiters and/or Maitre'd - if an item is on the MDR menu on one day during a cruise, can I order it and get it on some future day on that cruise? Or if it's due to be on the menu later in the cruise, can I have it today? Let's assume that it's an item that's not on the "every day" menu, if the cruise line has such. I assume a lot of the answers here will be some variation of "it depends". And that's fine. Perhaps the best answers will be what happened when you did it, and where you did it. Thanks in advance!

It's a rainy Sunday here in Michigan. I'm two weeks off from my latest music cruise adventure. The next one is in several months, though I do have a concert in about four weeks. Let's hand out some silly, meaningless awards around here with pictures. BEST CONCERT BY CRUISE TEC honorable mentions - Stephen Pearcy, Debbie Gibson Winner - SHEENA EASTON. This surprised me too. I didn't expect her to hit me as hard as she did. And she didn't even play her GOOD songs - not many of them, anyway. R&R honorable mentions - Pablo Cruise, Bella Donna, Lez Zeppelin, Ambrosia & Friends Winner - GENERATION RADIO. I did say that the more Chicago they played, the better I would like it. They played lots of Chicago, so I liked the show a lot. They even played "Along Comes a Woman", which is my favorite Chicago tune. And that wasn't even the best song they played. I'll get to that one shortly. McDonald LaBelle Cruise winner - Well, I only attended two concerts here. No surprise who I picked as the better of the two. BEST SONG PLAYED LIVE BY CRUISE TEC honorable mentions - "Telefone" (Sheena), "Lay It Down" (Stephen Pearcy), "Teacher, Teacher" (38 Special) TEC winner - "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic". 80s era tribute band Jessie's Girl did this one. It's a nice surprise; they didn't do this on the show I saw last year. It was a good version, though the Stinger and the boys in blue can/would do it better. R&R honorable mentions - "Love Will Find a Way" (Pablo Cruise), "Waiting for a Girl Like You" (Foreigner), "Baby Come Back" (Peter Beckett with Ambrosia) Winner - "Danger Zone" (Generation Radio). I didn't expect them to play this one. Well played sirs. Forgive me for not using another picture of the Radio stars; let's do Pablo Cruise this time. McDonald LaBelle Cruise winner - "Sweet Freedom". Yes he played it. I wasn't sure he was going to. Let's show the entire band this time; he had quite a few people around to make him sound good. SONGS THAT I LIKE MORE NOW THAT I'VE HEARD THEM PERFORMED LIVE TEC - "Over the Wall" (Debbie Gibson). Cute song near the end of the "Electric Youth" album. She played it second at this concert. R&R - "Kashmir". Lez Zeppelin did the honors. A 10 1/2 minute song that captivated me throughout. Do I really need to say more? BEST SURPRISES (NOT CONCERT RELATED) TEC - Who knew Ray Parker, Jr. liked us so much until he told us? Also, he mentioned my podunk little town in one of his stories. R&R - Who knew I'd like the tribute artists (like Bella Donna) very nearly as much as the bigger names? McDonald LaBelle - Who knew that George Wallace deemed me worthy to take a selfie with him? Sorry this isn't it. 😞 Also, I didn't find Nassau to be the horrible place that some cruisers had mentioned it would be. The port area seemed quite nice to me. I wouldn't mind coming back sometime. OK, enough silliness for one day. Thanks for indulging me. 🙂

Whenever I see ribs on the MDR menu.my interest is piqued. I like prime rib, short ribs, and the BBQ ribs. 👍

You speak the truth, not only about cruise info, but ALL information. Since the rise of the Internet and the movement of much data there, there has been a TREMENDOUS rise in the amount of available information, but also a rise in the amount of opinions that are sometimes disguised as information, and a rise in outright untruths. It can be hard to tell which is which.