mz-s

They give a little warning with the seemingly biweekly wifi and gratuity price hikes, but usually nothing for the other price hikes really. Everyone should pre-buy everything they want for their Carnival cruises, because the way Carnival is hiking prices right now you're pretty much guaranteed a 25%+ discount over the onboard price, especially if your cruise is at least 6 months away.

If even with record high revenue they are still losing money, it does matter a lot in my opinion. Do you know what a zombie company is?

I had the tomahawk pork chop and really liked it.

Did I read it correctly that even with record revenues, Carnival still reported a loss? They predicted they'd be profitable almost 2 years ago now...still losing money. At what point do we call Carnival a zombie company?

5 years is a reasonably long time. MSC is 3 years. Most land based loyalty programs like airlines casinos and hoteliers are much less, a year or so.

Maybe with these figures, on my next cruise I won't have to hear a little boy ask his grandmother "Granny what does bacation mean?"

Pretty much everything other than the gift shops and bingo/casino are charged a gratuity so expect to pay the 18% gratuity.

That's fair, everyone is different on things like this.

I'm sure there are some who would rather be prepared. I've always been of the frame of thought that I wouldn't want to know about anything like that while I'm on a cruise unless there was something I could do on the cruise to help it. Why ruin the cruise?

I've cruised out of Charleston a lot over the years, and that was always something I was worried about. Knowing that portion of the city is so prone to flooding. The city market which is right in front of the cruise terminal floods a couple times a year. Several times we drove my pickup down, knowing it was a few inches taller than the more comfortable and fuel efficient car we usually drive on trips just in case. What is doubly a shame for these cruisers is their entire cruise was rocky and abnormal due to weather, then they get back home they find their car totaled and they're stranded. Obviously Carnival can't control the weather so we aren't blaming Carnival or anything. But it's just a bad situation.

Carnival certainly can't control a respiratory airborne virus. But I've had coronavirus twice and both times I got it on a Carnival cruise. So there is a correlation for sure. Like you I don't blame Carnival because it is an airborne virus. But I do question their commitment to cleanliness, ventilation, etc.

Any expenditure has to be justified by increasing occupancy (and thus higher rates) or increasing onboard spend or some other metric that drives revenue. I'm not convinced that redecorating the Conquest class would do enough of that to pay off the extensive drydock bill.

Not free but they're like $9 I think.

I don't think the Sunshining of the Destiny class really provided the ROI Carnival was looking for so I don't expect it to extend to the newer classes.

Never hurts to ask then!

They could easily make a drink that tastes just like Sprite if they wanted to, just like they could make Pepsi taste just like Coke if they wanted to. But they want it to be unique. The question is will it find its own fanbase as time goes on. I don't really have a dog in this hunt, I prefer diet dark drinks like Coke Zero and Diet Dr Pepper. While I prefer those drinks I'll drink a Diet Pepsi or a Diet Pibb if that's all thats available.

You can call room service and order it once onboard as well if you prefer.

Pepsi Zero is available fleetwide, yes.

This is the new normal. The ships are not staffed like they used to be and never will again. They "addressed" the staffing issues by simply not hiring as many crew and cutting service from bow to stern, and by not decreasing our gratuity burden have shifted more of their salary expense to the guest's back.

Unless they offer 50 minute massages I doubt they have a way to ring it up that way.

Yes, it's more than doubled since they first banned bringing on bottled drinks.

I'm not surprised that nobody said anything to you on the last cruise, the cabin stewards are hardly in the rooms these days.

Those ships are still too big to fit under the bridges that many of us think of, like the one at JAX or Tampa. But they can still do tendering at places like Grand Cayman so that is useful I suppose. The megaships are too big to do tendering, by the time everyone gets off it's time to start getting them back on to leave.

Yes

Just be aware that many longer cruises do not offer priority boarding etc because there are so many Platinums and Diamond cruisers onboard anyway.