Honolulu Blue

Thanks all! It's a little more interactive than I thought it would be, but I can deal with that.

Hi guys. I bit the bullet and decided to prepurchase $200 in slot play on my next cruise from Celebrity, which will give me a bonus $20 in freeplay. I have faith things will work out all right, but I figure it's good to ask those who have done this before. So... how do I do this? I'm at my chosen machine with card in hand. Do I need to "start" the machine with cash of my own? Can I set up my PIN directly from the machine? Will the freeplay show on the machine? Can I select to use the freeplay first, or is it used to replace my bet (whatever it is)? Can I use it with video poker? Blackjack? Keno?? Is 1x play on the purchase amount + freeplay sufficient for me to cash out my winnings? I don't want to burden the poor casino workers any more than necessary, so thanks in advance for your help!

One interesting thing I noted about these changes is that the plan to move Lobster Night to the second elegant evening means that there's no immediate plan to eliminate the second elegant evening. There had been chatter about that possibly doing that.

I can confirm this. I stayed here several months ago when I was in a similar situation as the OP. My quick summary is the check-in was slow, the room was dated but clean, but overall, not a bad option.

I don't have any answers for you, but you might get better answers if you cross post this to the Royal Caribbean forum at https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forum/51-royal-caribbean-international/ . Self-disembarking procedures vary from cruise line to cruise line, and even by ship.

Adios, hasta nunca. 😛 Carnival did sell/give the ship to Costa in 2000, which was not long after you sailed on her. I have no reason to doubt what you saw, but I also have no reason to doubt what Wikipedia said in the article I referred to. I have no personal feelings about the Tropicale. I've never sailed on her under any of her names.

The Tropicale wasn't THAT old; it was built in 1981. Indeed, electrical gremlins and all, it survived under various owners until finally getting scrapped in 2021. Thanks Wikipedia! >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Tropicale P.S. Don't be surprised if there's a new Tropicale in the next decade from Carnival. It seems that they're in the business of recycling names and putting them on their newest ships.

Cute. I occasionally get minor cases when I disembark. It's hard for me to choose my favorite souvenir. The prizes for winning trivia are always nice, when I can get them. My refrigerator is nearly covered in magnets from the places I've been. Lately I've been taking more and more photographs, and those are valuable to me. And sometimes I book future cruises onboard - the future anticipation is nice, the future bills... not so much.

I'm currently maxed out at five: this weekend - Celebrity Millennium February '23 - Celebrity Summit (music charter - Ultimate Disco Cruise) March '23 - Navigator OTS (music charter - The 80s Cruise) April '23 - Ruby Princess (80s themed cruise) January '24 - Carnival Dream I'll probably work on booking another Carnival cruise after my upcoming cruise. I have some FCC that I need to use there. There were a few weeks during the pandemic that I had ZERO cruises booked. But other than that, I've almost always had at least one on the books. What, no Flower Power? 😁 We'll get you on there if it's the last thing we do!!

Though I'm sure this isn't what OP is looking for, Carnival (yes, the whale tail) has some lectures on its longer Journeys cruises. The ones offered cover social media, the history of celestial navigation, and basic photography. They even offered pins to those who attended. Now that I've horrified everyone, some notes I found interesting: It's interesting to see the various takes on social media by the different lecturers - one would show us the basics of how to build a blog, while another gave us security tips. Also interesting is that one of my social media lectures also turned out to be the lecturer for celestial navigation. The qualifications seem to be pretty low. 😉 Carnival had a lecturer for my trip to Hawaii describing the flora and fauna of that group of islands. That was a one-off, though we did have announcers on my various trips through the Panama Canal.

I don't think it will take long, maybe a few weeks. I'm curious - how is the show doing in Australia?

@mjrich73: Thank you for attempting to do the right thing. You've done all you can reasonably do. You'll have to receive your reward in another life. End communication.

Technically it's not canceled yet... it's been punted over to Paramount+, the streaming channel. Source: Breaking News - "The Real Love Boat" Moves Exclusively to Paramount+ Beginning Wednesday, Nov. 2 | TheFutonCritic.com

My perspective on things: I think Princess is trying too hard to be all things to everyone by marketing to basically everyone all at once. Boomers are still in love with the Love Boat. For Gen X they have 80s and comedy cruises (swoon 😍). For the Millies and Gen Z there's the reboot. The Medallion and its app mostly attract the younger souls. And for racing fans there's the promotion with Daniel Suarez and his team. I expect Princess to narrow things down eventually to just a few groups on whom this marketing works. It will be interesting to see what they think works in the years to come.

The short answer is you'll probably get better answers by reposting this in the Solo Cruisers forum at https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forum/279-solo-cruisers/ . To answer the question in your title, it's very interesting, but to make a long story short, there's no one cruise line that's far out in front for solo travelers. NCL does some nice things for solos, but it all depends on what you really want out of your cruises. To answer the specific question you asked, again, it all depends on what you want. If you want to be seated in a section of tables with singles for dinner night after night, NCL sets this up. If you want to dine with the same people night after night and possibly get to know them, fixed dining is what you want. If you want to NOT dine with the same people night after night, the cruise line can arrange this too. If you want a buddy to eat with, you can try arranging something in your roll call (or equivalent elsewhere), or even on the ship. Notice that I've mostly focused on dinner in the above paragraph. For all cruise lines that I know about, there's no assigned seating for breakfast or lunch anywhere. Plan accordingly.

I'm glad you got your answer. But mostly for my satisfaction, let me try to elaborate on what's going on. Those pretty penny video slots that have become ubiquitous over the past 25 years are mostly not available to be bet for one penny a spin. There's a minimum number of lines required to be bet (mostly 25 to 100). And yes, I've seen penny slots where the minimum bet is $1. That could have been what your friends saw, but it seems that a poster here has countered it. The more traditional reel slots, which mostly have 1 to 9 lines per spin, haven't been seen in pennies for some decades. Even for quarters they're becoming scarce. I wouldn't be surprised if the minimum bet size for those were $1. As for the shows, dance club, and piano bar all being shut down... I've heard of each of those, individually, being shut down on ships on other cruise lines - mostly in the beginning of the year when Omicron was running riot. Lately I've heard of spot shutdowns due to illness/quarantine issues and the occasional visa problem. I think having one or the other being shut down plausible, but all of them... not plausible. Perhaps they only looked during daylight hours, or maybe they're (making finger gesture around ear that's probably been canceled these days) showing their age.

Thank you for sharing an insider's perspective. I'd be very interested to know how big an embarkation pool was being tested. There's quite a difference between embarking 300 a week and 5000 a week. My hope is that everyone tests before embarking on their cruises 🙏, but based on data points here and elsewhere, my hopes are being shattered on a regular basis. ☹️

Small update, both from The 80s Cruise... Nina Blackwood is OUT as a host, with "Downtown" Julie Brown taking her spot. Six of one, half a dozen of the other, I think. And the last theme night was revealed as "A Nightmare on the 80s Cruise". There were some scary movies, scary songs, and scary videos during the decade, so I'm sure some will have fun with it. I don't think I have anything that matches, but I haven't thoroughly checked yet.

Megan duBois of FamilyVacationist.com wrote a guest article in USA Today that said some nice things about themed cruises and the cruise lines that host them. The 80s Cruise was mentioned by name and a paragraph was dedicated to Princess and its 80s and comedy cruises. It also had a link to Celebrity's music-themed cruises for 2023 at Themed Cruises, Music Cruises & More | Celebrity Cruises .

My last Carnival cruise just before the pandemic lasted 14 days and had 8 port stops - including San Juan. They dropped one of our stops (Antigua) roughly a year before the cruise for some silly reason and replaced it with something else. This also changed the order of our ports, and more arrival and departure times were changed. While we were on the cruise, we had to swap around the order of the ports due to being slowed by high headwinds and an extra fuel stop. Of our eight stops, only ONE was on the same day with the same times. We didn't get compensation for any of these changes.

It's been a while since I've been on Carnival, but I don't recall much, if any, scent from the clothes they cleaned for me. As far as requesting perfume free, go ahead and ask customer service here and ask again when you're onboard. I don't think you're going to like the answer, but it's a fair question.

I would, for the right price on the right cruise line. The concept interests me, and the execution could be good. Bring it on!

I continue to be mystified by this. I was on the Majestic in April and had Princess' Internet access from San Francisco down to Ensenada and back to LA. The speeds weren't great, but I got a consistent 3-6 Mbps down when I bothered to use it - and it was good enough to do some video streaming. The ship was only about 70% full of passengers, but the difference between 70% and 100% shouldn't cause THAT much difference between decent/OK Internet and a total disaster.

I'll take your word for it, but I don't see much difference between this and any of their R-rated games.

This got me to thinking... have any of you heard about something like a comedy "open mic night" at the comedy club on any Carnival ship? I can't say that I have, but there have been thousands of Carnival cruises that I haven't been on.