BlazinSunsets

Ask two people about the entertainment and you'll get two different answers, not everybody likes everything. I was on this same cruise as the OP. I enjoyed most of the entertainment, including the shows. They were your usual corny carnival shows, but I wasn't expecting anything more. The only show I didn't like was the one where they sang love songs, as they didn't dance or put on any type of real show, it was just the entertainers sitting or walking around the stage singing love songs.

I remember I read a story like this a few years back. Mom/dad in one cabin, kids in the other. The mom comes in the cabin next to last day of cruise and notices a piece of luggage stuffed under the bed or something like that. Asks whose it is, the kids just shrugged and said we don't know we just stuck it there on the first day. I'm sure this happens enough that it isn't a unique situation. Someone just pushes the luggage aside to deal with it later or forgets about it. Makes ya wonder about people sometimes.

If you add a 4th when you know he can go, they will rebook your cruise under current prices. Any deal prices you're using right now will not be available. This may or may not affect the price that much but we tried to add my sister late once and it was going to cost us $1500 more to do it, on a cruise we were only paying $700 for 2, so we nixed that.

I would book for 4 and would talk with the mom of friend and make sure she doesn't have plans for that week. I wouldn't tell the girl yet because you hate to get her hopes up of going just to have your son go like you planned to.

If you enjoy the beach and looking for beach days I would 100% go with the Eastern cruise. HMC is beautiful and it's hard not to have a good time there. Grand Turk is the same, clear blue water and beaches right off the boat. Then Nassau is meh imo, find a good excursion and it can be fun though. Can't comment on paradise, but I have been on conquest ships and they are pretty good.

Took my 5 year old a few years back on a very similar itinerary, she loved it. Had a blast on the beaches and she really liked the kids club but she was in the 3-5 year old one and they just did daycare like activities all day. Not sure how the next age group up one is but if she is outgoing she'll probably enjoy it.

Or... maybe they are doing it as a courtesy.... they aren't taking the cap off and throwing it away.....

Exactly! It's a service thing. Some caps on bottles are super tight. They don't want to hand an older guest, who might have arthritis, a bottle that they can't possibly open. I bet they wouldn't open it if you just asked them to not open the powerade for you, sometimes it's that simple.

Someone I cruise with will inevitably buy some packages of bottles water, as it is cheap enough. I will ask for 2-3 bottles and after I drink them I fill them up from the sink in the cabin and stick em in the fridge. Then I always have cold water and it doesn't taste any different to me than the actual bottled water.

When I added it to my cart on the website, in fine print it stated " must be consumed in room or cabin or something like that", so I didnt buy them. I just bought cruise cash instead...lol. I better go back and make sure that is indeed what I read.

It does indeed say that, I usually buy a bottle of vodka and it says the same thing. But it's not like they're ever going to question you where you got your beer from. Even with the vodka I order, I fill up a carnival mug with OJ or lemonade and add some vodka and carry it around with me.

They only put that you have to consume it in your room for liability reasons, it's so if you get hammered from the drinks you bought in the room and do something dumb/bad, you can't claim that they served you enough to get you that drunk and sue them for it.

My swim trunks once ripped pretty badly in the crotch area on a cruise and of course it was my only pair. Now while Carnival does have some lovely $50 trunks in their stores I decided to pass on those. Luckily it was Puerto Rico the next day and I found me a really nice pair for all of $10.

I now always pack a 2nd swimsuit and after reading horror stories like this I always pack enough in my carryon to make it through the cruise if need be.

I know I worry too much about flights, but I'm worried about making my 3pm flight out of Fort Lauderdale from Miami cruise port. I think 1pm would be my earliest time I would ever get a flight. I'm sure many have made the 11am flights and had nothing go wrong, but every debarkation is a little different.

Last cruise they didn't call self-assist debark until around 9:30am. I imagine people had a hard time catching any flights before 11am.

Great little review! I will be sailing the Glory in less than a month and will have to check out that alchemy bar ;)

I am getting cheers as well and was worried about drink service times. Were the other bars better? Like the lido deck ones, are they pretty fast? I know the comedy club one gets stampeded before the shows and the dining room is always slow. Sad to hear the casino one wasn't very fast though.

If I buy Cheers I certainly did buy up to 15 drinks and I should be able to use them how I see fit.

Well it's like sharing a buffet. If I go into a buffet with friend who don't pay and the buffet told me I could eat up to 15 steaks. I know I won't be eating that, but they aren't going to let me just hand them out to my friends that didn't pay.

Also, Carnival banks on you not getting to 15 drinks a day. If everybody did hit the 15 I would assume they would lower it, because I'm sure they aren't making much if you hit 15. They assume you'll drink 6-7 a day and probably less.

Their policy of everybody in the cabin having to get it is dumb though and that's why I normally buy a bottle and smuggle in the rest of my booze, otherwise I gladly pay the Cheers cost every cruise I take. I will be trying cheers this next cruise because of the updated coffee/milkshake/misc. upgrades because my wife, who drinks maybe 2-3 cocktails a day, will actually drink some of that other stuff too as she loves her coffee all day long.

Booking the two drinking adults in the room and switching them afterwards on the cruise is the EXACT same thing as splitting it like the OP's couples did. You're still 'tricking' Carnival either way you do it. I have no problems doing it either way, but people need to stop thinking they're on a higher morale ground because they trick them a different way.

But to the OP I agree with the others in the thread. Lots of people do the bait and switch technique with buying cheers. Guest services will move people and give out extra keys to rooms, so it's really simple to do most of the times.

Perhaps they get nowhere because the guest that found it did not turn it in to guest services.

Yup and like an earlier post said, security came in and wanted to look in a safe. If the current person found it and wanted to keep it by putting it somewhere else, security would just tell that person, 'we looked in the safe and it wasn't there, you must have misplaced it'.

In OP's situation I think I would have just turned into carnival because it's their problem, not mine and I would just hope for the best. If it was possible I would try to get phone number of previous person in the room, after I turned the item in, so that I could check in to see if he/she got their item but I don't even know if they could/would do that.

Fridge could be ship by ship basis. All the ones I have sailed have had one and ice is given if you ask for it, otherwise they aren't going to give it to you.

I agree with you on the beer. Mine wasn't totally flat but they wasted a lot of it when pouring it.

All the old room service stuff is still free. The NEW stuff does have a cost, it's mainly the hot items. But I was still able to enjoy my grilled cheese and cheesecake for free.

This one has some of the bar menus. It seems fairly accurate. Beers are gonna run $5-6 and cocktails $9-10.

http://www.zydecocruiser.net/Carnival-Bar-Menu/CarnivalCruiseBarMenu.htm

I love sea days too, but them adding a port is a plus to over 90% of the people cruising that date. So you just gotta tough it out and enjoy a less crowded day at port on the boat if you don't want to do anything in Freeport.

Only been on 2 conquest ships and 1spirit class. And I only ever feel like there's a crowd on sea days when i'm looking for a chair at 11/noonish. But it was the same on all the boats. While I knew the spirit class had less people, the adult area was still packed to the brim and the ideal lounge chairs were still all taken/towel reserved. So as far as both those class of ships go I never really felt that much of a difference in how crowded they were.

Maybe more cruises and I would begin to notice the difference but I doubt it.

We are not morning people so having to check out by 8:30 or so is ROUGH! We always say we're not gonna stay up late the last night but then always do. lol

its the only type of vacation we take where we check out before 11am.

I agree, being forced out early is a pain. We did not know we had to be out of the cabin by 9:30 on last cruise because that info was hidden amongst the 2 full pages of debarkation info they gave. Me and the wife missed it. So we were in there till 10:40 (our zone hadn't been called yet) and the steward came in and I saw an annoyed look as she left. So that's when I looked again because I was pretty sure they didn't kick you out of the room, but there it was buried mid paragraph somewhere in there. Dunno how we missed it, I looked over that thing a few times beforehand. So we apologized and got on our way out of the cabin. I felt bad afterwards but it really was buried in the info on the sheet we got.

I don't think it will change anything either. A comedian booking a cruise as a gig isn't going to suddenly think 'oh no it's not George Lopez's comedy club anymore, so I won't do it', they usually just appreciate the work and the unique opportunity to do a cruise ship. As long as they don't drop their pay to the comedians then they will still get quality talent. Last few comedians I have seen have been really funny, at least for the late adult shows.

Haha good post. I've only ever had good experiences with calling Carnival.

But it reminds me of times when I call bill/credit card/cable people and I'm pumped up, ready for an argument, but then out of the blue they actually help me out and don't screw things up. It takes you by surprise.

The hub app does chime. Just not very loud. So for someone like me who pulls out my phone every 5 minutes it works good. I also had the internet package and was using facebook messenger a lot too.

But I used the hub app on my last cruise I took with my parents and it didn't work that well. Trying to text my mom on a regular phone its hard to get her to hear/feel it. With this app it was for the most part relegated to just a sticky note type system because she would check her phone every couple hours and see I sent her something 2 hours ago. And at least we had a general idea where everybody was.

All in all it was still worth $5 for the cruise though as between shows someone would inevitably go back to the room for a few mins and we could text each other where we found seats at in the theaters. But that was when she was expecting a text so she checked phone better.

I couldn't get mine to change once I booked mine either and I tried everything. I had to call carnival to get them to put it in for me. Makes no sense but whatever, only took a few minutes.

Just tell him to make a quick facebook account. No need to fill it up or anything. I used the facebook messenger on last cruise and it worked wonderfully.

It won't drive much business away and even if it does, they just lower the prices a bit and those same people who thought it was too much jump back on the cruise vacation. As long as they are filling their boats (and in turn selling alcohol) they don't really care if you or I can afford it.

I love guy's burgers. I would eat there everyday but I don't like to miss the other options for lunch. It is a shame they close at 6 though, as we would have to go up to eat at 5:50 if we wanted them for dinner and weren't going to the MDR that evening. They are greasy, but it's just the right amount of greasy for me. Plus they have jalepenos and I load that burger up with those and it's so yummy!

Interesting note, the Cruise Director said they served around 2100 patties on JUST the first day of my recent 8day Pride cruise :eek: That's a lot of burgers!