jam19872016

Thanks for following along!

The casino is 100% owned by CCL. It is managed by Ocean Players Club but Carnival owns OPC. Therefore yes, that loss is 100% profit to Carnival minus any overheard from slot maintenance, payroll, and promotional comps extended which sound like were a pitiful 50% off.

I can say with 100% certainty she will not see this review. She has not come to embrace technology in any way lol. She has a flip phone which technically can access the internet, but I doubt she would know how to if she even had any interest to lol. Enjoy Venezia, she looks amazing and if I can't get on a cruise from New York I want to at least do the repositioning to Port Canaveral but I'm more of a last minute booker, which is getting harder to do these days without paying an arm and a leg and a first born. I'll be very careful in Barcelona I have definitely heard the stories and my mom even had her own experience with one on a Europe trip although it wasn't in Barcelona. I want to say it was somewhere in France but can't remember. Thankfully he wasn't very good and she realized what was happening and yelled which frightened him away. Enjoy your trips and thanks for following along 😁

Made it to my mom's after a couple pit stops. Tried to wait out the nasty weather but the rain just kept going. After an hour pulled into the rest area I got back on the road and powered through it. Passed three accidents on I95 all within five miles of each other. Thankfully I made it safe and sound.

Thank you. There will be lots and lots of food pics 😀

Last day of work completed. All packed up and hitting the road now. Next stop, mama's.

Slight change to the plans. My idea to get loaded up before work proved too ambitious so I will be doing that after work and THEN getting on the road. Already getting lazy and I'm not on vacation yet 😀

Work day all done and just one more to go. My new phone was waiting for me when I got home. Tracking never did update its location and then as soon as I opened what I suspected was my phone, it magically changed to "delivered today". Not helpful at this point lol but I'm glad it made it. Got an early day tomorrow as I pack up my last few items and load up my car for the drive to my Mom's (about 3.5 hours away) after work.

Thanks for following along. Hopefully the Wi-Fi will play nice and I can provide a sneak preview of what to expect on your TA.

Thanks for coming along! Very exciting 😁 Thanks for following along.

Four days to go. I can almost smell that sea air now. Almost. I've got work today and tomorrow and I will do my best to be productive and not check out mentaly but I can't make any promises. I'm still stalking Lee but nothing seems to have changed in the last 24 hours. I have stalked enough of them to know it checks a lot of boxes that other nasty storms check. The worse ones seem to start off the coast of Africa with lots of time to travel towards the US gaining strength along the way. Perhaps I have a Florida bias though. If I lived in Texas I probably wouldn't be too thrilled with the ones that come in through the Gulf. I've ordered a new phone for the trip. Amazon says it will arrive by Friday but I'm not seeing any progress on the tracking information. Hopefully it will arrive by then as I leave town to my mom's place tomorrow after work. I don't think my current phone is going to live for another two months and I cannot find a phone for this cheap anywhere but Amazon. Well I guess I have to stop procrastinating now and get ready for work. Talk to y'all soon.

You're welcome.

Exactly. I want to be as far away as possible. Last year I was on a Panama Canal cruise when the hurricane hit. People actually flew home from Cabo to their homes in Florida. Then the wifi went out. It was nerve racking not knowing what was going on but it was the safest place to be.

Im excited for Barcelona and having the opportunity to spend a few days there. It will also allow the port days there to become ship days. I love the Freedom but dream class is my favorite. Can't wait to see her brand new tail. I'll try but make no promises 😀.

Indeed 😁 Thanks for following along. Thank you!

Nice I bet that will be fun also. I'm excited for the opportunity to explore Europe without the hassle of flying. Thanks!

Five days to go! I'm off work today. Packing is done which is usually a last minute item but I'm so excited I knocked that out last weekend. I do have a few errands to run today but other than that its a hurry up and wait kinda day. I see Lee is a thing now. Its too soon to worry yet but I am definitely keeping an eye on it. My cruise may become a western itinerary which if that's the worst that happens I am okay, but its path is a little too close for comfort. I understand the risk of booking during hurricane season and I accept all that comes with it, but living in Florida has me worried for my property. We'll know a bit more the next few days, fingers crossed.

Yes indeed! For the longest time I think we all just assumed it was going to happen but I don't recall it being stated anywhere. But a couple of weeks ago John Heald did confirm that she would be getting a new tail while in Spain during her drydock.

Thanks for following along! I am super excited for this unique trip. Looking forward to reading your Venezia review, I'm eyeing the repo down to Port Canaveral next year with a few days in New York at the beginning.

The itinerary: My mom wanted a visual aid to help her remember where she was going so when her friends asked where she was going she could tell them where. I did some googling and found a template to use that let me create the following. It's not perfect, but it works for its intended purpose created by an amateur lol. The times seem to be traveling times, which is completely irrelevant and not indicative of how much time we are in each spot. It also doesn't take into account the fact I'm on a ship, so the line doesn't match my route. The ship will almost certainly not being crossing land 🙂. Like I said, amateur. Edited to add its kinda hard to see. Sorry about that, its bigger on my screen and in print. May have to get out the magnifying glass for this one 👀

Happy to do it! Thanks for following along.

Don't talk to strangers: I realized I didn't introduce myself. I'm John, 35 from Florida. I don't think I have ever shared my name on here before, no going back now 🙂 . I will turn 36 at some point during the trip. I'm not big on celebrating birthdays so the exact date will remain a mystery 😄 . With me is my my mom, Mom, who is 67 also from Florida.

Here is a link to a review I did of my b2b2b2b on the Spirit last year so you can see what you are getting yourself into. Like that one, this trip will have way way too many food pics, scarce details on ports of call (hopefully a little more though since I really do want to try and explore Europe) and the potential for Wi-Fi outages to cause chunks of time to go unreviewed or posted recorded in front of a live studio audience instead of actually live.

We arrive in Barcelona on October 4 where we will spend five days at a hotel exploring Barcelona. I'm looking at some nearby cities to possibly explore also since we will have time to be a little more immersive. It will again depend on my mom's energy level. On October 9th we will board Cunard's Queen Elizabeth for a 14 day Mediterranean cruise. Never in my wildest dreams would I imagine myself booking a trip on Cunard. It seems way too formal and stuffy for me. But for the price, I could not pass it up. Fourteen days was just $899 pp. I was looking at seven day trips on even Royal and MSC for almost that cost. Nothing else out of Barcelona was as cheap as Cunard, by a lot, so I bit the bullet and booked it. As a customer I'm excited to try a premium line for that cost. As a shareholder, the low fares Cunard has to charge is a little concerning. Bonus, I'm able to claim my shareholder credit for the first time since all my Carnival bookings are casino rates. I will post a few thoughts about that part of the trip here, but not a full live. I may try one on the Cunard board Wi-Fi willing. The internet reviews on the ship are terrible, but they just got Starlink installed so maybe it will be working by then. After that cruise I immediately embark on the Freedom on October 23 for her return to the states with a shiny new whale tail. I again hope to live review the crossing Wi-Fi willing. I hope you will follow along with me and if you have any questions about the ship, Transatlantics, or anything you think I might know or be able to find out please feel free to ask and I will do my best to help out.

Hello everybody. It will have been 137 days since my last cruise but finally a gangway is in my near future. And oh what an adventure this is going to be. It will span a total of 56 days, five different cruises over two cruise lines and two continents, plus five days in Barcelona. The first two segments are your basic five day Caribbean cruises on Carnival Freedom starting on September 11. Grand Turk, Amber Cove, and some stops in the Bahamas. It will be my first time in Nassau since the opening of the new port area so I plan to check that out. It will also be my first time in Princess Cay so I may check that out as well but will probably not do anything but wander in either of those ports. I am traveling with my mom on this trip and we have separate rooms for these first two legs. I have purchased Cheers! for the first five days and hope to get good use of it. I'm not a big drinker but it is my first vacation in a while so hope to let loose. If I make it to 15 drinks, you probably won't hear about it because I'll be to intoxicated to post about it 🙂 . During the second leg I will probably still enjoy a few nights of cocktails but will use my carryon bottles of wine, free casino drinks, maybe buy a small wine package at dinner, and purchase the rest as I go. I have $500 OBC on each of these first two legs but for the second leg I want to use it on some casino time. Cheers! and Wi-Fi ate almost the whole $500 for the first trip. Ouch. But at least it was house money, it is the only way I could justify the cost to myself. After that, the cruise, and review, will transition to a much slower pace as we move from short cruises to my first Transatlantic experience on September 21. A wonderful 13 day crossing to Barcelona with a stop in Bermuda along the way as well as a few stops in Portugal and Spain. I made an itinerary of the trip to print out to give to my mom for a nice visual. If I can find a way to post it on here I will do so since it will be easier than listing all the places we will be going. I will not have my own room for the remainder of the trip and my mom is an early riser so I will be turning in early most likely from here out. I suspect the whole ship will be shutting down earlier at this point 🙂 . I hope to continue the live for the crossing, but if Wi-Fi is inadequate I am going to have to request a refund and unplug. I truly hope that is not the case but when I was on this ship in January, it wasn't great. Fingers crossed. My mom has some mobility challenges so while I would like to do some exploring in Bermuda and Europe, we have nothing planned and will play it by ear on a day by day basis. I have researched each port and have many ideas in mind for some easy excursions and I may go off on my own in a couple ports I'm most excited about, like Florence and Rome, but we will see.