cantthinkofanythingfun

I was on last February as well. It's a nice relaxing cruise. It's definitely not a destination ship, and unfortunately, the itineraries from Baltimore aren't the best, but it is a nice way to just get away. The food is decent. The drinks are cold. The Serenity area is great, but does fill up quickly. My advice would be to get to Baltimore a little early and drive down North Avenue or Greenmount Avenue. After doing that you will have a pretty good idea of what Freeport is like, and you can just chill on the ship that day and get a great spot on the Serenity deck. Definitely do David's Steakhouse. Best meal I ever had on a cruise ship.

My first cruise I was in my very early 30's and I hated it. The thing that I hated most was that you really didn't have enough time to enjoy each stop. Now, ten years later, I love it. I've been to most of the islands, and at some stops (Port Canaveral, Nassau, Freeport) I don't get off the ship. I think the cruise to Bermuda is perfect. You get to experience a good portion of the ship and the destination. The Breakaway is a blast, and I really think it's target audience is people in their 30's and 40's. As others have mentioned though, you will have a lot of kids on that sailing. It's kind of one of the last weeks to get away before school starts. There was a time when that would have bothered me, but now that I have one, not so much.

With the drink package, it is basically all-inclusive. If you want to make it truly all-inclusive spend the $120 each and get the dining package. You can eat wherever you want then.

Carnival is getting ready to launch a huge new marketing campaign where they are combining all of their brands. They will all fall under one website. There is going to be Superbowl ads and everything. I wouldn't be surprised if they are testing some of the back-end of that site before it officially launches.

Those are all very valid reasons. Especially the small ship part. I always book late, and could never get in on the anytime dining, and I hate set dining times and eating with strangers. I just buy the dining package on the Breakaway. My son did like NCL's kid's club, but he is a bit younger than yours. I'm a former smoker, and I still occasionally enjoy a cigarette. The smell of smoke doesn't bother me much, but I always thought it was worse in the Pride casino. NCL requires you to be playing to smoke and you can't smoke at the casino bar. Half of the Pride's casino bar is smoking, and there are a lot of non-gamblers taking advantage of it.

The two big reasons I prefer the Breakaway is that the entertainment is fantastic in my opinion. The other reason is a bit sappy. Every time I sailed the Pride was with my ex-girlfriend. It was kind of "our ship", and I do kinda miss her.

I have a huge problem when I cruise because my family and I don't drink saltwater and can't stand the smell of it.

I was on the Pride last year and they had nothing like Norwegian's iConcierge. If you are on the ship's wifi and you have Apple devices, you could send iMessages to one another. If you don't have iPhones you could download a texting app like Whatsapp to send texts via wifi. Last year though, the wifi on the ship was pretty bad. I just ended up buying an international data package from Verizon.

I'm curious as to why you decided to come back to the Pride. After sailing on the Breakaway twice this fall, Carnival would have to offer a pretty great deal to get me to go back to the Pride, and I live 10 minutes from the Port of Baltimore.

On Thanksgiving on the BA I watched the football games on the big screen in Spice H2O. Ten Years ago I was on a Celebrity cruise for Superbowl Sunday and they only got the game on some international feed. It was weird. There were no commercials. They didn't show the halftime show, and the announcers were explaining the rules like you had never seen a game before. Last year I was on a Carnival cruise on Superbowl Sunday and the game was on everywhere with the regular network feed.

On my last cruise I stayed in the Haven and a father and son stood behind me as I was going in and I held the door for them. I assumed they were guests, but after holding the door open the father said to his son, "Do you want to check it out?" I didn't really care or make a big thing about it. I just told them that it wasn't all that spectacular, and that is my opinion. I may be in the minority, but I find a cruise with NCL to be a tremendous value, but a cruise on NCL in the Haven is a bit of a rip-off. I would rather book a balcony or mini-suite, buy the UDP, UBP, book a few excursions, and still have money to spare.

I personally wouldn't book any flight before 1:00. I've been on the Pride twice and disembarkation is awful. I've flown out of BWI well over 100 times, and the security lines are the worst I have ever seen. I'm assuming the ship is coming in on Sunday, but if it's a weekday, traffic can be miserable. Everyone around here works for the federal government, and they basically just get to work whenever they please.

It could be anywhere from mid 40's to nearly 80 degrees in early October. Fall and Spring weather is very inconsistent here. It will probably be in the 60's. The good news is that you will be far enough south on day 2 of the cruise that it will be warm. The other good thing about Baltimore is that you will have cell phone service on the first day of the cruise as you sail down the Chesapeake Bay.

My point exactly. I don't agree with the 'standard' or 'expectation' that some industries are tipped for the job they are already being paid for, while others are not. But it is about an employer who poorly pays. Many have stated that tips are a major part of their wage, so to not tip is taking away much of their income. You even said so much yourself. See highlighted.

As for the restaurant analogy, if the bill at the same restaurant is $100 and the next night $200 was spent, the tip EXPECTED would be double. Same restaurant, same ambience, same service, same menu, maybe even the same server, but double the tip. That makes no rational sense if we are actually tipping on the quality of the service. But really we are not, we are tipping on the total cost of the meal; restaurants even give a break done based on the total bill of ideal tipping; 15%, 20% etc. It has nothing to do with the quality of the service.

If you want to make a stand against an employer that poorly pays please do so by boycotting those establishments and not stiffing the server.

It would be nice if they gave Haven guests priority tenders on the way back to the ship. The line does get incredibly long at the end of the day.

Buy-in seems super high variance for them too. $125 to win a seat on a cruise you have to purchase a ticket for?

The ones I have seen will comp you the next cruise. You will still have to pay for taxes and port fees and whatever it takes to get you to the boat. You aren't going to find serious tournament players in a cruise ship tourney.

See here is where I have a problem. If we are ideally tipping for services received, why is the tip a % of the bill?? The amount is then calculated on the final bill, not on how well I was served or treated by the staff. Is service better for a $200 bill vs a $100 bill? Not likely. Do I receive extra perks or services if I choose to order the fillet mignon over the grilled chicken?? Or a bottle of wine instead of a glass? No! The food and drinks were served to me all the same, I just chose to spend more on the food items. But I am 'expected' to pay double in tips. So I am actually tipping on the value of the food, not on the service received.

 

If someone is working for an employer who pays them poorly and then they have to rely on tips to 'make a living' why is it my responsibility to supplement their wage??

 

Do you tip the people who clean up after us at McDonald's, Burger King?(like they do on the Lido deck) Not likely

Do you tip the guys who pump our gas at -30 degrees. Not likely

Do you tip the person at Tim Horton's/Starbucks who serves you your coffee? Not likely

These are all services provided to us in some way or another.

Why not tip them?? :confused:

This may be a US/Canada cultural difference. In the US servers pay taxes based on a percentage of their total sales. That is a good reason to tip based on the size of the check. They are also only paid about 2 bucks an hour from the restaurant. We don't tip at McDonald's, but fast food employees are at paid the normal minimum wage. We have very few gas stations that still pump our gas for us, but when full service gas stations were prevalent, people used to tip. Of course you got your oil checked and windows washed as well. New Jersey has a law requiring gas stations to pump your gas, but you don't get any extra frills with it. I believe most Americans do tip at Starbucks. I'm not much of a coffee drinker though. I just see a full tip jar every time I go to one. You say you aren't cutting out tips to save money, but reading your posts, it appears that's exactly what you are doing. Maybe I'm overly sensitive to it because I was a server and bartender in my younger days. It is incredibly hard work. Also every restaurant I ever worked in required waiters to tip the bartenders and bus staff. So when you stiff the waiter because you don't think you should pay more for more expensive food, then he/she may actually be paying for you to eat there, because he/she is paying the IRS and bar and bus staff based on the size of your check. I wouldn't recommend frequenting any of those restaurants where you stiff the staff.

Has anyone seen an active video poker table on a cruise in the last few months? It seemed really dead on our last trip.

I have only seen them active for tournaments, and I really don't feel like spending a whole cruise stuck to a tournament schedule. If I ever cruised solo I may try it.

Poker generally, and hold'em specifically, is my main gambling game. Used to play on PokerStars and Full Tilt as a full time job in college before Black Monday. However, on my last cruise, the hold'em table was almost always empty (probably due to a crazy non-capped 10% rake), so I broke even in blackjack.

 

My question is, will they allow me to have a detailed "correct play" chart with me at the table? Some casinos will, some won't, and I'm trying to learn "other blackjack skills" currently, too many things to keep track of at once.

Gambling on a ship is generally awful. The rules and odds are nearly comic. I wish more people would play hold'em on the ship. I'd play even with the ridiculous rake. Most people on a ship wouldn't be solid players and I think I could pay for my cruise at the least. It would be like the old days in Atlantic City when the movie "Rounders" came out and everyone thought they could be professional poker players.

If you are trying to use a simple +1,0,-1 count system on Blackjack, I wouldn't even waste my time. Most ships use a 6 deck shoe with a continuous shuffle. I've never used a count, but I have always done well at visualizing the flow of the shoe and using that to determine when to raise my bet, when to double, and when to go against basic strategy. You can't do any of that with a continuous shuffle. Carnival has a game called "Fun 21". It's Spanish 21 with the exception that instead of taking the tens from the deck, they remove the queens. They don't tell you this. You think it's Blackjack with some crazy player favorable rules. I played for a few hours and won quite a bit of money, then I started losing. It took me about four hours to realize there were no queens in the deck.

I wouldn't even think about slots I'd buy a wad of scratch offs at home and rub them out at the casino bar before I played a slot machine. Land based casinos have to compete with other casinos and are state regulated, so they have to publish their payouts. They try to compete with one another to get slot business, so the payouts can hit in the mid 90 percentile. Cruise ships know you can't jump overboard and swim to another ship to gamble, so they turn those machines way down. If they are paying out 80% I would be surprised.

I love gambling, but I just don't have a desire to do much of it on a cruise ship. It's almost like a charity firehall casino.

We are not a family of four, only 2.

I cannot control how a company chooses to pay their employees, whether it be a wage, tips, a combination of both or otherwise. I am not trying to be rude or cruel, but everyone has a choice in the job they choose just as I have a choice to tip or not. IMO, the cruise lines should pay their employees an adequate wage so they do make a decent living.

I actually have no idea what any cruise line employee makes. Does anyone really know??

While everything you say is true, you seem to enjoy cruising. You should be happy that many people choose to work on cruise ships, and many do because they can make a decent living compared to others in their home country. That's because of our tips. If you want cruise lines to just pay them more and cut out the tipping then prepare to pay A LOT more for your cruise. There are luxury lines that do just that.

I don't know but yeah- CRAZINESS. Pride lead prices via a certain cruises sale website (that I did not book with but is an easy way to check multiple lines at once) for an 8 day on Dec 26-

 

Inside from

$1099

$137 per day

 

OceanView from

$1219

$152 per day

 

Balcony from

$1289

$161 per day

 

Suite from

$1969

$246 per day

 

Vs The Grandeur 10 day, Dec 27-

 

Inside from

$877

$88 per day

 

OceanView from

$1019

$102 per day

 

Balcony from

$1828

$183 per day

 

Suite from

$2196

$220 per day

 

We got an OV and an inside across form eachother (teens) Had we gotten a balcony it would have cost more on Grandeur.

 

ETA we actually got an even better deal than listed because of military rate, both lines offered it but Grandeur was again less.

Wow! My last cruise on the Pride (about 10 months ago) I paid 599 for a balcony. I know New Years week is expensive, but I hope Carnival doesn't think they can raise prices that much because they threw a burger joint and a movie screen on the ship. I'll continue to suck it up and pay the ridiculous parking fees to cruise on NCL out of New York.

After two cruises in three weeks on the Breakaway I can almost recite that to you word for word. I can even throw in the narrator's Canadian accent.

I just booked Grandeur yesterday for next New Years- we knew we wanted something close by so I compared it with the Pride and surprisingly 10 days on Grandeur is less than 8 on Pride! That made the decision easy!

How in the world did this happen? Is this for like an inside room? I guess I am a balcony snob and only price those rooms, but every time I have priced a cruise the Grandeur is always at least twice as much for a balcony room over the Pride. Of course the Pride does seem to have a lot more balcony rooms. I tried to book a last minute cruise on the Grandeur over Thanksgiving week and it was twice as much as a mini-suite on the NCL Breakaway out of NYC. That's a relatively new ship. The Grandeur was actually the same price that week as the Quantum was, and it was the Quantum's Maiden Voyage. I went with the Breakaway. I have always found RCL's prices for that ship to be obscene. It's an old ship. I pass it every week, and the Pride actually looks like it's much nicer from the outside (The Pride is pretty ugly on the inside). The ship caught fire a couple years ago. I could see paying a slight premium to sail on RCL's Oasis, Allure, or Quantum. Those ships are like Disney World at Sea, but I just don't know where they get off with their prices for their older ships.

As to the OP's topic. Like it or not, Carnival seems to have a reputation of being a booze cruise and a lower class line. It's an opinion held by many people that have never sailed on it. I don't like stuffiness, and I'm certainly not going on vacation to judge people. My first cruise was on the Celebrity Millennium when that was a new ship, and I hated it. I never thought I would ever cruise again, but I got a ridiculous deal on the Pride out of Baltimore and needed to just get away from everything for a week. I had a great time. NCL is my favorite line, but I have no issue with Carnival. It is up to their marketing team to change Carnival's low class perception. If I were them, I would take those older ships that run short cruises, and do tend to be party boats, and make a whole new line out of them, or tie them in with AIDA.

If the option of auto tips to be removed exists then people have that option.

I don't remove them to 'save' money, but I want to choose who I tip and how much, that simple. Tipping in any industry is optional, not mandatory. I am not anti-tipping either, but it is at my discretion.

Tipping is certainly optional, but businesses have adjusted their wages to the point that if too many people choose not to exercise the option that their employees won't make a living wage. That will cause them to charge everyone more for their services to make up for their employees lost wages. You say you aren't removing auto-tips to save money, but you are saving quite a bit. For a family of four you are looking at around 50 bucks a day with the auto tips. That's about 350 bucks for a 7 day cruise. Based on what you said you tip the few people whom you think serve you, you pay about 50 bucks for the whole cruise. The fact is that there are a lot of people behind the scenes that are helping make your cruise more enjoyable that rely on that tip pool. You also may be tipping those people that do serve you less than what they would normally get from you if you did leave the auto tipping on.

I would never ask for the auto tipping to be taken off, even if I don't use all of the services. The reason is that Carnival, and most every other cruise line, has figured that money into their employees pay. The auto tipping is never going away, but if enough people start to opt out then cruise fares will go up to pay the crew a decent wage. I never use the MDR, but I do tip extra at specialty restaurants. I always get the drink package, but I still add an extra buck or two per drink. I give the cabin steward 50 on the first day. That typically makes him more attentive, and if he does a great job then I give him another 50 at the end of the week. I don't tip extra at the buffet. Frankly, I've never seen that before. I look at the auto-tip as part of my fare. The same way I look at taxes and port fees. I really wish the cruise lines would just automatically take them upfront instead of tacking them onto your bill at the end. If I have to seriously budget my tipping while on vacation, then I probably shouldn't be on vacation. The extra tipping I do certainly adds to my experience. If I go to a bar, the bartender brings me my drink before I order it. My room stewards seem to go above and beyond. My last Carnival cruise I asked the room steward in the hall if I could borrow a pen. I made a comment along the lines that I surprisingly liked these Carnival pens. That night there were 20 of them on my bed with the fun times. These people probably work harder than most of us. They really don't make a ton of money and they spend most of the year away from their families. They deserve any gratuities they get.

You priced a ship that will be brand new on a very popular week. If you are going out of Miami, price the Getaway. Still a relatively new ship, and probably much less expensive. You can also wait last minute and the price will drop. This year the Breakaway was running about $1600pp for a balcony on New Year's week. New York has a lot fewer ships than South Florida and I'm sure that drives up price. The specialty restaurants cost extra. You can pay $120 extra and eat in as many of them as you want, as many times as you want. You can also pay $15-$30 per visit. If you book before January 31 you can get the dining package for free, or you can choose the drinking package for free. That costs about 500 bucks a person normally.

Everyone's budget is different, but for a once a year week long vacation, I feel that NCL is worth an extra $800-$1000 extra over Carnival.

I've only had one PCC call me, and to me it seemed like it was a sales job. I'm sure they work on commission, and many people just aren't cut out for that.

The one time I stayed in the Haven, the cocktail party was held the same night as the Norwegian Night Out, so many people were dressed up.