mz-s

The tides are shifting worldwide...the cruise lines are not going to be able to rely on a nearly endless supply of cheap labor forever. Cutting salaries hoping to make up the difference by slamming guest bills with hiked gratuities won't work forever. Crew will move on to other industries and/or lines, like the guests can and do. Tipping culture has come to a head in the US in particular and by and large, people are sick of it. We are tipped to death in this country.

It's really not worth the hassle to buy a travel router and try to get the Carnival wifi logged in to it. The wifi is so slow on all but the newest ships, it becomes positively unusable when shared among multiple devices. Carnival is at least 5 years behind their competitors when it comes to their wifi.

I may have you mistaken with someone else but I seem to recall that someone in your party has mobility issues. You may find that the atrium elevators are not large enough if they are using a mobility scooter.

Yes, if you add gratuities now then you are locking in the current rate. No matter what the recommended gratuities are when you sail (I'm sure they'll hike the rate a few more times until then) you will pay the rate agreed upon when you added the gratuities to your booking. Same with pre-booking the steakhouse, or pre-buying Cheers, etc. You're paying today's rate for when you sail.

I love the carved meat station on Lido. A lot of times my wife and I will eat early in the MDR (we always do YTD), then a little later closer to the end of the buffet service we will go up to the buffet to sample the carved meats, fried shrimp, desserts, etc.

That's the biggest problem on Virgin Voyages right now isn't it, lazy crew? Nothing could be further from the truth.

That was the price I remember being mentioned in the Hub app in September. May or may not be the same now.

That forces the cruise lines to give up the charade that they're gratuities and not salaries paid by guests though.

That's the rate I remember for using the in-cabin phone. But when using your cell phone you're dependent upon your cell carrier's roaming rates and that can well be $2.99 a minute.

Yeah I booked a cruise shortly before Thanksgiving and I've already gotten emails about two cutbacks/price hikes since. The cruise isn't until Summer 2024. Who knows - by then all that will be included might be bologna and cheese sandwiches! BYOM (bring your own mustard)!

The biggest issue with your room is probably going to be the fact that only I think two elevators on the whole ship go up to your deck.

I attached a screenshot showing $65 for me. Might be an issue on my end. In Chrome it shows $65 but if I open the same link in Firefox it shows $48...bizarre.

I am in favor of gratuities being actual gratuities and not just a way for the cruise lines to shift the salaries of the workers from their balance sheet to the guest. In other words - move to the Virgin Voyages model for gratuities.

Mandatory gratuities are not gratuities, they're more akin to resort fees and have to be disclosed at the time of booking.

Interest free loan for Carnival...considering what they're paying in interest for their debt, that's a huge deal for them.

attaching a screenshot of what I'm seeing with this link.

I've had more and more of this since the restart. I never got the runaround before COVID on a Carnival cruise. Overall the level of service on a Carnival cruise seems to have declined somewhat since COVID.

https://www.carnival.com/cruise-food/steakhouse Steakhouse page says it's $65 per person now too. Insanity!

The WiFi is robbery at these prices. I'm not going to discuss gratuities because I do not have the strength to argue about it.

I did have them request I pour out my drink before I went through the scanners at Half Moon Cay, before getting on the tender to return to the ship.

Royal must know something Carnival doesn't because they figured out how to do it.

Carnival blocks Wifi calling. You can try facetime audio/facebook messenger/skype calls however.

I blame Arkansas for getting all this going.

If you have to do video you're going to have the best experience with Premium. If you can make due with Facetime audio or Facebook messenger audio calls, then value or even social should work.

And that means for example if you're using upper pullmans in your room, they are deployed for the entire voyage making the room dark, cramped, and actually dangerous since they're right at head-level.