mz-s

I don't know about you, but the best thing I ate on my Magic cruise was at best mediocre. I would have had better food had I stayed at home and ate at Golden Corral all week. I absolutely reamed the food in my post-cruise survey.

Wow I wish the late night snacks buffet looked anything like that on the Magic 2 weeks ago. It was positively disgusting.

There is no pizza on the late night snacks buffet. You go to Pizza Pirate (or Pizzeria del Capitano if it has been rebranded on your ship) for pizza.

that requirement is not in effect on Magic - that’s all I can say. It may be in the employee handbook but if nobody is enforcing it they might as well rip out that page.

They should have named the company after whoever came up with FTTF. It's easily the highest margin product they offer, higher margins than Cheers or the cabanas on HMC or the casino or anything else. Genius product.

With Premium yes.

It's so widespread on Magic at least I doubt it's still a requirement. And many crew on the ship had a very tenuous grasp of the English language. It used to be that Carnival was proud that all of their guest-facing crew spoke fluent English at all times. No longer. Perhaps Magic is now a "training ship"? I am not sure.

If early embarkation cost them anything it would have already gone away. Since Carnival doesn't employ the crew at the pier it costs them nothing to provide that perk. The portion of the perk that did cost Carnival something - rooms being ready early - is gone.

The standard of service on Carnival used to be that only English was spoken by crew in guest areas. There is a lot that used to be the standard on Carnival that is no longer. Add this to the ever-growing list.

I was on deck 1 at the very back of the ship, literally the last cabin on the hall, once. Right above the thrusters. Free magic fingers and free alarm clock on port days. I didn't care, it was a free cruise with casino rates.

What is left for them to do, take away the free fanny pack? We've already lost cabins being ready at boarding (people on here go so far as to call us entitled when we drop off our carry-ons). I'm not sure why people stress about being in the first boarding group at this point. There's nothing to do on the ship except eat until at least 1:30, so what's the rush. Carnival has nothing remotely close to the Sky Club.

Lots of folks cruised a lot over the past 2 years when cruises were cheap and we had lots of vacation time and onboard credits to spend. So there's a "bumper crop" of platinum guests right now.

I think it probably takes 3 weeks to do all the statutory required things like hull inspections etc. The upkeep things they do during drydock are just a side quest so to speak. Drydock time is expensive so they understandably want to get as much done as possible. They'll have everything waiting at the dock and before drydock, a lot of work is done on the ship to prepare. As far as the staterooms they can have the block of staterooms completed offsite and assembled, ready to slot in the ship so 3 weeks is certainly doable. The drydock where the Elation received those added staterooms was only 3 weeks. They did much more on that drydock as well.

Remember when your room would be ready at embarkation? Those were the days.

Not leakproof. No discount on refills. Don't know if Radiance has them but yes they're the same Tervis tumblers as the ones pre-filled with rum punch on day one.

I don't know of any rhyme or reason as to when these drop. There may only be one or two rooms available so yes they go quick. When you find one and can go, book immediately. Check back throughout the hour and day until the cruise disappears from your view. Often someone will go through the process to book but won't actually book the room - the system will hold a cabin for them for perhaps 15 minutes, then it is released. So just because there's no cabin available right now doesn't mean it's totally sold out.

Likely what they'll do is convert the aft lounge into more staterooms and combine the midship lounge and disco into the Limelight Lounge. They should convert the aft bar to Alchemy - the Ecstasy had that 5 years ago. Not sure why Paradise never got that upgrade.

Not anymore, plenty of non-English chatter amongst the crew on my most recent Carnival Magic cruise over Labor Day all over the ship.

They usually have mustard, ketchup, etc., available at the Lido buffet.

It may just be that since Norfolk is the new port, demand is higher and so Carnival is charging more. I certainly wouldn't pay more to sail out of Norfolk. I just got back from a Norfolk cruise and liked the city a lot. I liked the port facility - much nicer than Charleston's (which isn't hard to do). But on the whole I still would have rather cruised out of Charleston. It is what it is though.

If you google carnival mdr kids menu, you'll find it. It's the same every night, it's fairly basic stuff. I've never rented a car in any cruise stops! That's something I'd like to do actually. Neat idea! I think Gold Rock Beach is fairly close to the new Grand Celebration Key resort area that Carnival is building on the island.

Yes Norfolk has done a great job. I hope to sail out of there again - and will absolutely be using Asphalt Lots as well. Those menu items are available in the MDR on the kids menu, FYI. And yes - anybody can order from the kids menu. You were getting on the ship as I was getting off. Some cruisers on my sailing were planning a B2B but I don't know if they ended up doing that or cancelling. Frankly I probably would have cancelled although I don't know what compensation Carnival offered to folks who decided to cruise, obviously it's not Carnival's fault but it's tough to come up with anything comparable to Bermuda.

They may move elegant night but I can't recall a time when elegant night wasn't the second night of a 5 day cruise. So I'd say it's unlikely they'll move elegant night. The app still says certain clothing items aren't allowed etc. But in terms of enforcement, nobody cares. At least not in the MDR. I don't know how the dress code is enforced for specialty dining.

I was on Magic over Labor Day - good luck. Everything we ate on the ship was at best mediocre and at worst positively unedible.

As of 2 weeks ago you cannot walk all the way around deck 5 anymore on Magic - the forward area is now "crew only" although I'm not sure if that is a permanent change or if they were refurbishing the area. It's possible it'll be opened back up to guests in the future.