Cherries Jubilee

I’m so excited for you! I would definitely have trouble packing for your itinerary.

My apologies my last cruise with them was 11 days so that was probably the reason. When I sailed a 7 day there were 3 in my room. I usually pay between $250-$300 for Carnival bookings so everything else sounds expensive to me. It know it shouldn’t actually matter since we have to pay it sooner or later. Right now I’d put down just about anything for a great 2025 rate lol.

What cruise line has the lowest down payment? I always book Carnival during a sale so I didn’t realize it’s usually higher than some of the other lines. Royal usually wants $700 for a 2 person balcony.

Are you a minimalist packer or an over packer? Sadly I am the latter lol.

I’m glad to hear you enjoyed it for the most part. I wish people would relax and stop taking their vacations for granted. Everyone would have more fun if they just left their bad attitudes at home. I have 2 trips booked on Venezia and they’re both 12 days. Most people think the longer sailings usually have a more laid back crowd. I hope they’re right for both of our sakes!

I haven’t been on Venezia yet. I’ll be on the October 28th sailing. There is just something special about being on a cruise!

I can’t wait for your review! We need more Venezia around here!

Thanks, I look forward to your review!

How was your cruise?

For some reason they don’t work for me. They kind of delay the process but they give me gas and then a day or so later I get painful explosive diarrhea. My body is very weird. I can eat cheese and yogurt but milk/cream/ice cream cause major issues. I was diagnosed with IBS but that doesn’t explain why some things are triggers and others aren’t. I appreciate you trying to help though ❤️

I’d been thinking about this myself. I wish they made the small ones in the oat milk versions. I can’t drink any lactose. edit: turns out they do make travel oat creamer. It’s ridiculously overpriced but I might have to try it and see if the taste is worth it!

Thanks I was wondering this myself. There are 3 of us in a room so we run through quite a bit of water but it’s not the best use of space having several cases of water in the room at a time.

Thank you for the review!

Thank you for the review!

Woohoo I’m so excited for this!

Sounds like a serious design flaw. Maybe they should use a few of the unopened unstaffed spaces to hold plates and cutlery and encourage people to restart the line after each plate station. There has to be a way to put in a few breaks for restarts to stop people getting angry when someone who doesn’t want anything from the salad station gets in front of them to get to the next station. It’s a shame that the staff has to know that complaints about lines are tainting people’s experience and also their reviews of Venezia and they probably aren’t even brainstorming ways to alleviate the problem. In today’s world of ships with 5000 passengers, no buffet should have just one line!

Yes cruising has many advantages over land vacations for me too and I’m not loyal to any of the cruise lines but I still feel like too many changes are going to tarnish the experience at some point. It’s not at that point right now but some lines are going to eliminate themselves from my consideration and soon the price won’t feel like a value at all to me.

I wish I found land vacations as easygoing and entertaining as cruising. I’m not enjoying the changes on ANY of the cruise lines right now. They’re all trying to recoup their losses while offering us a product that is noticeably inferior to what it once was. I’m not willing to pay for Sorrentos. It’s not a deal breaker on its own but all of the changes are adding up. It’s slowly sucking the fun out of cruising.

The AT&T plan only worked for us two or three of the times we tried to make phone calls at sea. We were on Royal for 12 days. They also billed us for those phone calls and we had to complain to get them removed. Next time we will just get the wifi package.

I think Carnival marketing themselves as the fun ships for years is the reason the more unruly people choose them instead of the other cruise lines. Carnival didn’t mean it was a free for all, but young people think it’s going to be one big raucous party and they take that energy with them and create that environment for themselves. Then all of the other people who want a wild loud time join into that party. Alcohol is involved and suddenly some probably very minor misunderstandings turn into brawls. I’m going to be honest and say that I think the only logical way to single out the people most likely to behave that way is to price them out. Unfortunately pricing them out would probably price me out too. I also think dramatically raising prices would turn off a lot of the cruisers they want to keep because the quality of the cruise experience right now doesn’t warrant higher prices. So the only other option is to put everyone who fights on house arrest, put them off at the first US port, ban them from all future cruising, and aggressively advertise that all of those things will happen so that sooner or later they will stop coming or start behaving. Every new story about a fight needs to have the details on how those people were punished for their crimes. They might even want to put some people on the internet to exaggerate the punishment. Tell everyone they have to pay fines and go to court. It’s worth a try because right now they are in danger of losing a lot of their fans.

Thank you!!!

Really appreciate your review! My first Venezia cruise is in 85 days! I know everyone’s experience and tolerance is different. It’s probably better to expect some bumps and be pleasantly surprised when they are not an issue. I can’t wait! @Jamman54 are you taking us with you on your Venezia trip?

Hey everyone! I’m Jamie and I’ll be on this cruise with my Mom, 2 sisters, and my niece! I can’t believe we’re down to 90 days.

In my opinion the Uber/Lyft pickup is the iffy part of your plan. We were delayed getting off the ship the last time we sailed but even that delay was nothing like how long it took us to get a Uber/Lyft. The app kept losing connection because there were so many of us out there and then the wait for a car was really long. It didn’t matter if we wanted an XL or were even willing to spring for a Luxury car. It was slow when we sailed Oasis in May and even slower when we sailed Anthem in January. In fact we eventually gave up in January and called a family member to pick us up because it was too cold. We also live incredibly close. If you try it, definitely do self assist and get out of there as fast as you can so you can avoid the outdoor rush.

I’ve sailed Carnival 3 times (Horizon x2, and Mardi Gras). I’ve sailed MSC twice (Divina and Seaside). I think I strongly prefer Carnival. I haven’t had a real issue that required major interaction with customer service on either so I have been lucky and my reviews only focus on the cruising experience. MSC ships are beautiful but I had 2 vastly different experiences sailing with them. Divina was almost too laid back. There wasn’t enough entertainment for me so I spent most of the time relaxing. The food in the dining room was good but the buffet didn’t have enough variety. The staff was slow but friendly. Seaside was incredibly high energy. There was a lot of entertainment. They put a lot of effort into little things like the trivia had a musical chairs element. The parties were long and they really kept the energy high. The food in the dining room was really not good and the buffet served literally the exact same thing every day. The staff in the dining room were not very friendly but it was obvious that they were spread really thin and very overworked. It took hours for dinner to be done and the servers were running around like madmen, they simply didn’t have enough of them. Those sailings were both before Covid so they can’t blame that for the staff shortages. The times I have sailed Carnival have not been perfect either. I always do My Time dining and we usually had quite a wait but the food was significantly better to me. There was also more variety so I never had to eat something that I really didn’t enjoy. The Carnival cruises were always entertaining. One of my Carnival cruises was post Covid so I did notice that the staff was stressed but it still wasn’t as bad as my last MSC. I am a slightly picky eater so I’m going to pick Carnival over MSC until they add some variety. I actually made this choice recently when choosing next year’s February cruise. I couldn’t even imagine spending 11 days on MSC so I went with 12 days on Carnival. I would still cruise MSC again but only if the price was much lower than all of the competition. I’ve only cruised Norwegian once and I have cruised Royal 4 times. They all beat MSC if the price is close.