Traveling Tiki

5 hours ago, MissP22 said:

Do you recall which ship gave credit for cards turned in? 

I was on the Emerald over Xmas with my brother who was given credit for the full value of the card, even though he had used some punches on previous cruises. Apparently he asked about using a punch, and was told that they didn't use those anymore (he's not on CC so was unfamiliar with the change I guess). He pointed out that when he bought the card he was told unused punches would be honored on future cruises. They took the card, said they would look into it and then a credit for the full purchase price of the card appeared on his account. 

We were on this sailing as well. Agree with many things posted above, including the shout out to Alex from Serbia. He was great!  I think Aaron appeals to a certain demographic as both my daughter and my niece started following him on Instagram after the cruise 😂

We also did the aerial tram-butterfly garden-sloth sanctuary excursion in Costa Rica and that was the highlight of our shore excursions. Six of us went on that (age range 11-50) and we all enjoyed it. Touring the old city in Cartegena was probably my next favorite. Our kids did enjoy seeing Santa and I agree that I was pleased he came the night before rather than while we were on shore in Costa Rica.  We missed him in 2015 on the Ruby to Hawaii as we were on shore in Maui when he came. 

The Canal transit was such fun. We went forward on deck 15 - through what are often called the hidden/secret doors -and were able to film the first part of the transit from there. The lip at the front is just the right height to prop an iPhone and we did a time lapse video there ( along with about six other phones propped up there). It came out great!  I also watched for a while from deck 16 forward and kept explaining to people how the people on deck 15 got to where they were 😂. I definitely wouldn't have known about that if I didn't read it here. 

The power outage was memorable. It didn't really hit me that we were just floating there dead in the ocean until the captain said we were "in a safe place". I still wonder what caused that to happen. 

Thanks for the review!

We are sailing 11/25-12/2 on the Regal and received an email on 11/10 saying our movies will be Mama Mia! Here We Go Again and Ant Man and the Wasp. Hope this helps. 

I love flying Southwest. The boarding is not as bad as it sounds. You will be given a group (A, B, or C) and a number on your Boarding pass. Since you purchased Early Bird you will probably be near the end of the A group or in the early B group.

When it is time to board they will board passengers needing assistance first, then will call A group to line up. There is a numbered queue spot in the boarding area. So you just line up wherever your number is in the queue. They then board A group by number. After A group, they board families with small children and then B and C groups, again in numerical order.

When you board, just grab the first set of seats you see that you like. My husband and I can usually find two together right around the exit rows and we don't do Early Bird often so are usually in the mid-B group.

Hope that helps!

I had the same issue booking my December cruise. Spoke with two reps at Princess and the best I could get was #19 on the wait list. Spoke with my local AAA office and they spent the day making calls and were able to get us booked. So if calling Princess directly doesn't help you can try working with a travel agent. We are a party of 10 with only one in this age range. Princess told me that it was a limit placed for the kids clubs. Hope this helps. Good luck.