SheehanDJ

I don't know if this applies to taxi's, but with private hired vehicles the law doesn't require the use of car seats. You may want to look into this option.

If you insist your kids are in car seats no matter the law, check into rental car companies, I know they rent car seats, don't know if they will rent them without renting a car too though.

Check the square footage, it is probably 10sqf bigger or something than a regular inside

Check sites like Trip Advisor and Shore Excursioneer, much less expensive than the cruise line. Much better tours usually too.

Seven drinks per day for every day of your cruise is basically alcoholic level stuff. Plus an absolute ton of calories. Do what you want obviously but the value is not there unless you’re a heavy drinker.

 

 

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Alcoholism has nothing to do with drinks per day. You could have one drink per day and be an alcoholic, if you can NOT make it thru the day without that one drink, technically that is alcoholism.

Binge Drinking:

NIAAA defines binge drinking as a pattern of drinking that brings blood alcohol concentration (BAC) levels to 0.08 g/dL. This typically occurs after 4 drinks for women and 5 drinks for men—in about 2 hours.

If you spread those 7 drinks over the course of a whole day, it doesn't even qualify as Binge Drinking.

It is obvious from your posts, YOU have a problem with alcohol, even it if is other people simply having a drink. I'm also sure you have your own vices you should probably address before worrying about what other people do. You know that whole "mote" and "beam" thing.

We stay in Ft. Lauderdale when cruising out of Miami, it is a bit less expensive usually and it's not like it is that far away.

We have never been on the Epic. But have had issues on NCL and RCCL with injuries and were accommodated nicely. NCL was much easier as the GetAway and Escape both had inside muster drills. The Escape was more difficult because it was in O'Sheehans and very crowded (wife had a high ankle sprain no crutches but she was hobbling.)

I had a neck injury on RCCL, could walk fine but standing still for any length of time was extremely painful, muster was outside and bringing a chair out would have been a carnival of errors. They let me sit inside around the corner.

You will be fine, go early, let your muster leader know what is going on. They will check you in and make accommodations.

It's not the drink package, or the sun, or the close quarters, or the limit on the package existing or being 15 drinks.

It is the people drinking, some people are mean and violent drunks. Period. I had a neighbor like this, awesome guy, wouldn't hurt a fly and would give you the shirt off his back. Right up until he drank a couple of beers, then out of nowhere and for no reason he would end up swinging on someone.

The problem was, he knew he was like this, but every weekend would end up in a fist fight with someone. The next day when you would ask him why, "Oh, its the booze, not me". Then why drink, "Why shouldn't I be able to have a beer like everyone else? It's not my fault when this happens." The real scary thing is, it wasn't massive amounts of alcohol, it was literally a couple of beers, not near enough to get anyone drunk to the point of a personality change. I ended up having no question the violent guy was the real personality, the easy going guy was the scam.

Since I quit smoking, I find that on cruises is when I miss smoking the most. I don't know why, because I do like that I do not spend so much time in one area smoking, or going out of my way to get to a smoking area.

 

Really? I'm the total opposite. I quit smoke on/just after going on a cruise. On a cruise ship I smoke maybe 5 cigarettes a day, not going to stop what I'm doing just to find a place to smoke. It never really bothered me, as I've always been like that, if I can't smoke I don't miss it type of thing. So I figured since I don't smoke on the ship that much I'll just not smoke on land that much. Just ended up not smoking at all.

Funny thing is I don't consider myself a non-smoker, I'm just a smoker who hasn't smoked in a year. If I start again I start again, If I don't I don't.

What I have been told multiple times from what I think are pretty good sources:

If you pre-pay your gratuities your name/cabin number is posted for the crew to see so that your room steward, waiters, know you have tipped. If you pay as you go daily they find it is a no new is good news scenario. If you cancel tips they are notified.

All the gratuity money eventually makes it to the crew. If a crew member gets in trouble the gratuity part of their check stops until they improve their performance. The example I was given was show up late for shift twice in the same week and you won't see your gratuity part of your check until you have been on time for a month. The week you were "bad" you never get tips for, those go into a pool type of thing and it pays for the christmas party and stuff like that. If you never improve your performance you get all the tips they held back on your last check they give you when you are fired.

Pretty much universally all the crew like this system better than the envelope system of the past. Empty or very light envelopes were evidently very common.

Bartenders HATE the drink packages as over all they are making less tip money. They are pour way over 6 drinks per person per day but only getting tipped for 6 - 7 drinks.

Cash tips vary boat to boat, department to department, and sometimes bar to bar. The majority pool cash tips.

1. Call the cruise line and make sure you are good to go.

2. Inform the cruise line that you have fired your TA for lack of service and they may wish to consider removing him from their list of recommended agents.

3. Make your final payment to the cruise line.

4. When/If the TA calls you back to provide an excuse let them leave a message and don't return their call.

5. If the TA persists, answer and pretend you have no idea who they are and that they couldn't be your TA because your TA responds to your inquiries and if they happen to be unavailable for an extended period of time they have someone as a back up. Please stop calling this number.

I went thru 4 TA's before I found a good one. I trust her and she does an awesome job. The first 4 only really wanted to talk to me when it was time for me to make a payment or to physically book a cruise that I had done all the research on. My current TA calls/emails me if they have any deals going on, warned us off of MSC SeaSide (which was on our must do cruise list) before it became rampant public knowledge about the smell issues. Recommends ships/itineraries/etc both to look into and avoid. In other worlds she realizes she is more than just a sales rep for vacation companies, she is also suppose to provide great customer service.

I'm sorry you got stuck with a bad TA your first go round, keep shopping for one, good ones are out there.

Like all things flight related anymore, it depends on SouthWest Airlines. You being in Chicago, wait for the real cheap fares to get down to FLL. We have done short cruises out of Indianapolis via SouthWest Airlines when we can get a cheap fare.

Its not going to get better....anytime. Your just going to have to deal with it. Many more non smokers than smokers.

Didn't you read the posts? People are dealing with it, they are jumping ship (whee) over to RCL and CCL. No better vote than with your wallet.

It does sometimes work the other way, we got a fare drop on our upcoming Freedom cruise along with $75 more OBC.

Here is the card I made for our Poker Run & Bar Crawl. I will print them so each player gets a 1/2 sheet of card stock or heavy paper. The playing card info will be on the front, the rules on the back. I will contact the food & beverage manager prior to the Crawl & let them know how many people will be participating & our tentative schedule. Some people have told me that some crawls have the bar tender(s) move with the Crawl & you order your drink prior to arriving at the next bar. Our Crawl is in April & we already have 18 people signed up — so my guess is there will be a bartender traveling with us. If you have a small group, that wouldn’t be necessary.

 

Good luck with your planning. I’d like to hear what you have come up with for your event.

 

 

 

Vickie

Other than cruise specific stuff and no hold back for charity this looks just about exactly like every poker run card I've seen. Variation I've seen on the buying an extra draw is there are only x number of extra draws and they have to be bid upon.

Kind of a rule of thumb.

If you want to see/participate in all the shows/activities opt for early dining. The main shows everyone get's to see as there is a showing for both early and late diners, what you will miss is game type shows (not the big ones like Quest or Newly Wed).

If you want to enjoy a mostly quiet pool deck after 3 - 4 pm opt for late dining.

You can get the best of both worlds by opting for early dining and coming back from port days early.

Bring a Yeti type glass and a box of Gatorade (or the like) flavor packets and you can drink an assortment of free drinks all cruise long.

Old San Juan is perfect for just walking around on your own. There is a free hop on hop off trolley if you want to go to the forts or see more of the town than is easily walkable. Shops range from your standard made in China tourist stuff to a lot of artisans on the side streets. Same goes for restaurants, Sr. Frogs to mom and pop diners.

I've posted this before on other threads, but one more time won't hurt I suppose.

There are countless post here about ALWAYS fly in the day before, you are crazy to risk flying in the day off, so much less stress, etc, etc. These posts number about the same as the number of posts about how to make a 7:00am flight on disembarkation day with carrying off luggage, sleeping by the exit door, sprinting thru the terminal, etc, etc.

If it is logical and stress free to ALWAYS fly in the day before, isn't it logical and stress free to ALWAYS fly out the day after too?

When we were younger we wouldn't do either, but now being older and wiser, who needs the stress at all.

We are going in September, but we cruised Adventure in 2016 out of San Juan.

Embarkation is mostly the same as any other cruise, you can board around 11:00am, the ship just doesn't leave until 8:30pm.

We arrived in San Juan a couple days early so just boarded and stayed on board around 11:30. A lot of folks dropped off bags then went to Old San Juan, a lot got on then got off after lunch.

Order the kids’ Mini Brownie Madness for dessert and thank me later. [emoji4]

 

 

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Never tried that one, I always order a banana split at least once during the cruise and watch the table mates eye me with envy.

Always just dump the melted ice/water in the cabin into the water bottle.

I quit when they turned to continuous shuffle.

Me too.

OJ probably killed Nicole and Ron.....

 

"It was probably caused by a discarded cigarette end heating combustible materials on a balcony, which smouldered for about 20 minutes before flames developed. " - MAIB (Marine Accident Investigation Branch) report.

 

Anything is possible. Maybe a mosquito carrying a lit match started the fire.

 

Why it spread (while interesting) doesn't take away from why it (probably) started.

 

probably

 

• Almost certainly; as far as one knows or can tell.
  

See we were on the same page, almost in agreement, but then you go to the extremely ridiculous desperately trying to "make" a cigarette the "reasonable" solution. Let me help you out with your statement.

"Anything is possible. Maybe a spark escaping from the funnel started the fire." (Much greater possibility than your mosquito and it's match. However, bad for your side of the argument.)

Now doesn't that make it interesting, let's for just a second assume facts not in evidence (you know like the folks insisting that this was caused by a cigarette) that this is what happened. Where does the liability shift? The cruise line, not some random smoker. Guess who would get sued.

If cruise ships designated a section of the ship as 'Smoking Allowed', say maybe 10% of the cabins....all in the same area, probably a back corner...

I'd bet they would sell out.....and quickly

 

And it could be smoking on the balcony only, not the cabin....and they would still sell out...

As you can tell by the majority of the responses to this here is what would happen.

A non-smoker would book one of these smoking rooms because they really wanted to go on the cruise and stay in that particular cabin. Then they would crucify the cruise line on every social media site in existence about how their money wasn't refunded and a free cruise wasn't offered even though they complained multiple times about the smoke. They would be justified in these demands and in their complaint because THEY don't agree people should be allowed to smoke anywhere, and that no one can tell them where they can or can't stay or go because they spent good money on THEIR vacation.

Now the irony comes in when you point out to them that it is also your vacation and your good money too and all you are asking is to be left alone in your designated smoking area. This really gets their goat, why they will set aside their smuggled on board rum runners, grab a towel off one of the several chairs they have been holding all day, call over their 10 year old child who is in the adults only Solarium (he is very mature don't you know) and just tell you exactly how you are mistaken.

Granted, these folks aren't in the majority, they are just the loudest.

I don't believe that your idea would make it past the execs but if implemented, those ships would be easy to spot.....

 

 

This is my favorite picture about why they should ban smoking, keep posting it every chance you get, do it enough times and maybe it will become a "fact"

Unfortunately people like me point this out:

"The fire was probably caused by a cigarette left burning on a balcony, which had become hot enough to melt the balcony divides made from plastic polycarbonate, a material that had been approved by international cruise line safety rules."

PROBABLY - not for certain. PROBABLY as in they don't know.

What they do know is this:

The following items were at fault for allowing the fire to spread as quickly as it did:

• The balconies' polycarbonate partitions, polyurethane deck tiles, and the plastic furniture were highly combustible and produced large quantities of very thick black smoke when burned.
  
• The glass in the doors between the staterooms and balconies was neither fire retardant, to meet with the requirements of an ‘A’ class division, nor self-closing.
  
• The balconies crossed main zone fire boundaries, both horizontally and vertically, and were without structural or thermal barriers at the zone or deck boundaries.
  
• No fire detection or fire suppression systems were fitted on the balconies.