knagl

That's a crummy situation. Assuming you don't have a PVP (which I'm guessing you don't if you were calling the regular customer service folks), I would try calling again. If the next person you talk to gives you the same story, politely tell the agent that you're not satisfied with the denial and ask to speak to Carnival's "resolutions department." The resolutions department folks are a higher tier of customer service who deal with more complex situations than the first-tier customer service operators. They're also empowered a little bit more to actually fix things. I think it's a good next step in your situation, and it's not going to cost you anything to try other than some time sitting on hold. Good luck!

^^^ this is the way. There's no fee if you charge money to your room with your Sail and Sign card at the slot or video poker machines. The on board credit will cover your casino charges. You could do a couple hundred here and there over the course of the cruise and it won't be an issue at all. Just give them some play (ie. don't charge $200 and immediately cash it out at the cage without playing at all).

I'm not much of a coffee drinker, but my husband is. On our cruise on the Spirit last year, he really liked the coffee from one of the machines at the lido buffet. They seemed to have two different styles of machines on the lido deck (one had beans visible in an enclosure at the top of the machine, and the other didn't have that enclosure), and he strongly preferred the coffee from one of the machines over the others. It might be worth trying a couple of different machines to see if one brews more to your liking.

I prefer the 80 grit stuff from 3M, but whatever works for her...

That doesn't answer FastShip24's question.

This isn't a thing. Carnival does not offer a service on embarkation day to hold on to liquor. Their liquor policy specifically states: "Guests are prohibited from bringing alcoholic beverages on board with the following exception [allowed bottle of wine or champagne]. ...Outside this exception, all liquor, beer, other forms of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages are strictly prohibited in both carry-on and checked luggage and such items will be confiscated and discarded and no compensation will be provided." Source: https://www.carnival.com/help?topicid=2633 Typically, if you buy something at a port stop during the cruise or in the Fun Shops, it is delivered to your cabin on the last night of the cruise, or is available for pickup on the final morning, depending on the length of the cruise. However, for back-to-back guests, your purchases are supposed to be held until the final day of the last leg of your cruise. As such, even if you can buy it in port or on board, you likely won't have access to it until your entire cruise is over. It's possible that your B2B status will be overlooked and you'll get your items on the last day of the first leg, but you can't count on that. Your best hope for making this happen is to make friends with someone from another cabin on your first leg who isn't doing a B2B and have them purchase (or bring on board from a port stop) the RumChata. They will receive it at the end of their cruise and can hand it off to you.

This was addressed earlier in the thread:

Here's an article about it from about five days ago: https://www.cruisehive.com/carnival-cruise-ship-air-conditioning-issues-lead-to-refunds/107749

You can sign up for classes via the HUB app once you're on board. I suggest doing so ASAP as the spots go quickly. Scroll through all of the days of your cruise in the app to see availability on future days. SoulPlay is only on the Carnival Spirit.

The tram didn't take long at all in our December, 2023 visit, and there were multiple trams running constantly. We took the tram and then rented a golf cart to explore the island. We wound up at Radio Beach for a while, and it was fine. I think the advice in the post by lazydayz above is good. I was really not impressed with Bimini and I'd be fine never going there again, but to each their own.

Carnival's website used to explicitly permit bringing on an additional 12-pack per person at ports of call. They removed that wording at some point over the past few years, but on our December 2022 cruise on the Spirit we had no issue at all bringing additional 12-pack soft drink cans on board during port stops. Only once did security even give it a closer look, and that was just to make sure it wasn't beer.

The Magic's spa facility is excellent, and yes, access to the thalassotherapy pool is included with the spa pass or for folks staying in a spa cabin.

In December of 2022 on the Carnival Spirit, Fun 21 was dealt from a shoe and had a $6 minimum. Also as a reference point since it was brought up in the thread, roulette was double zero, with a $5 minimum on one of the tables.

We did two weeks on the Spirit this past December, and ate dinner in the MDR every night. Most of the items ranged from good to very good. There were a couple of misses, but overall I thought the food quality was decent. As far as the rest of the options, the buffet was hit-or-miss (but it usually is) -- a few really good items, and a few that didn't look that appetizing. The omelette station for breakfast was always great. The deli had plenty of solid choices and the workers allowed some flexibility with minor modifications to the posted menu items (i.e. substituting the cheese used in a sandwich or adding bacon).

To help muddy the waters here, we had a back-to-back on the Spirit this past December in two different port-side balcony rooms. Our first room got nice and cold, to the point that I nearly turned the thermostat a little bit warmer. Our second room was unpleasantly hot. After a visit to Guest Services (our steward was newer and didn't really seem to understand what to do about it), an HVAC technician came to our room. It was reading 76 degrees with his fancy thermometer if I remember correctly. He disassembled part of the ceiling of the cabin and opened some dampers to get some better chilled airflow. It still never got anywhere close to as cold as our first cabin, but it was a little more tolerable for the rest of the cruise.