ultrafighter

There are activities and open times listed in the Hub app.

There are videos on YouTube she could look up of ship tours and things, and a few actually get to peek inside the medical center which is pretty neat. That may help put her mind at ease also.

I found it buried in the FAQs, but it looks like there are 24 hour options once on board for the value and premium plans only.

I'm so glad that worked out!

We only drive in on the morning of sailing if we're cruising without our kids. When we do that, we opt for a later check-in time. I think psychologically it helps me not stress as much because we're not "rushing" to make a certain time frame. Plus I also hate lugging around carry-ons even if they roll. No matter how late we board, I still won't eat lunch ashore because my first meal has to be Mongolian Wok. It just does. 😆

Thanks for sharing the photo! Love it!

No, but final payment isn't until next September so I'm not rushing over to AARP to buy them today. I'm not worried about them going belly up anyway.

Did you book that once on board? My 3 year old would have loved that, but I assumed it wasn't an option since all the stuff online before the cruise was for adults (or a select couple of services listed for older teens).

Thanks for your input, everyone! We know there are better credit cards out there, but we don't want to open up any new lines of credit at this time. I took pencil to paper, crunched some actual numbers, and decided to go with the gift cards. We'll save a couple hundred bucks that way. What we would have spent to pay off the Carnival cc installments we'll just save up and use to buy the gift cards later.

The exchange rate isn't the greatest thing ever, but with enough of them I can use it for a small statement credit. Small.

It helps me see all sides of it when I have multiple people and their points of view. So which way of paying for my cruise makes the most financial sense? Option 1: smaller monthly payments billed to our Carnival credit card (for about the next 14 months) which offers 0% interest on cruises for 6 months plus double points, so to speak (so each installment essentially restarts the clock) or Option 2: buying fewer but larger gift cards from AARP ($450 for $500 cards) and using those

Pretty much, yeah. Unless I'm truly just wanting a snack, I order a whole one. It's not people taking whole pizzas that are the issue. It's that I've literally never seen more than two people working there at a time. On multiple ships. The vast majority of the time it's just one person flying solo.

When we sailed in February, there was a small enough number of kids that they put the 5-11 year olds together. I didn't hear of any issues (our kids were in there, too) the whole time. Since everything is still somewhat capacity controlled, at least for Camp Ocean, I would expect the same for a while until they open it back up to younger ages.

Thanks for this. We did this itinerary in February, and I wouldn't recommend that time of year for a cruise that stays so far north (we're used to the Caribbean). We would like to go back during a warmer time of year, but maybe not directly in the summer since you've mentioned the heat.

I would love for Carnival to move to a wristband.

I've used both routes just within the past month. Trying to maximize everything I can! I live in a little hick Texas town so the Carnival gc in the grocery store was a very pleasant surprise. I know they aren't everywhere.

I know what the OP said. I was suggesting a hold on the new room to keep it from getting booked by someone else until she can get a hold of someone to make the switch for her.

You could try putting it on a courtesy hold on the website. They give you 96-ish hours normally to book it or lose it.

The physical gift cards available at a grocery store (or similar) can definitely be loaded with a specific amount. And possibly give you extra gas points or something since many will give double points (or similar) for gift card purchases. Win win!

Yep, after the first session on our last cruise, my kids made sure I knew not to try to get them early. 😆

uh I did. And I don't feel bad about it.

Good grief. Enough with the attempts to guilt trip people who want/need a couple of hours apart from their children. It's actually HEALTHY to be able to turn off "mom mode" and recharge your own batteries every once in a while.

We had a similar experience in Galveston (semi) recently. Zero relief with the later arrival time.

Yeah, our kids participated with the reduced hours in February. Our youngest was too young for the vaccine (but still old enough for Camp Ocean if they were operating under pre-covid policies) so we had to keep her with us all the time anyway. That combined with some other stuff during the cruise left it a little.... underwhelming. Here's to hoping things are better by the time our next cruise with kids sails!!

Both cruises I've taken since the restart have looked like my info didn't save on the website. It has never caused an issue during boarding. I'm sorry for the unnecessary stress it causes. I really wish they'd fix the dang glitch that does this.