Eli_6

My first three cruises were Royal, NCL, and Carnival in that order. So...those were my "starter" cruises. But I have no idea what makes a "starter" cruise line for the general public. It probably heavily depends on your location and age and what you are looking for. I doubt that many first time cruisers with young kids are hopping on Viking or Silver Seas. And I doubt too many 70 year old first time cruisers are getting on Disney...unless they are taking their grandkids.

The way I read what you posted, it seems to suggest that inflation is less in Europe that the US. Am I reading this wrong? Granted that is now a year old and before the Russian invasion... But if inflation is less than would not that mean that prices shouldn't be increasing as much in EU countries as what we are seeing in the US? At any rate, I am not arguing that inflation doesn't exist or isn't impacting prices. I completely agree that it is. I just suspect that some of the more dramatic increases (like the$149 to $199) is more about Carnival paying down their debt and less about what the cruise operators are charging. I doubt that the people on the ground driving the buses and conducting the tours are seeing a 33 percent increase in their wages. But I guess it is either increase the "extras" or increase the fares and they don't seem like they are increasing the fares much...

That's not a valid comparison and you are smart enough to know it isn't. Gas and groceries are always based on market price and airfare has always been variable based on demand. Airfare can even vary depending on the day you book it and certainly food prices vary based on market conditions and season. But many of these other items (CHEERS, steak house, gratuities, certain excursions that are always available on given sailings, etc.) have long had a "fixed" price on the carnival website. One of the excursions we regularly take out of Cozumel has been the same price for years...although, I am sure it has gone up now, too. And I strongly suspect that the tour companies aren't suddenly charging 30 or 40 percent more. Maybe in Alaska, but not in some of these more depressed countries. Heck, I don't even fault Carnival for raising the price, but if they were going to raise the prices so significantly and not just to account for inflation, some advanced notice would have been nice...like what they did with wifi, etc. And with respect to my specific situation (i.e. European countries), the dollar is stronger than ever in those countries so if anything the price should be going down for us. I paid less in tuition last fall than I had ever paid before because the dollar as compared to the GBP was so strong.

Try looking at Sandras cruise tours for Norway. She hasn't posted them for this year yet, but check in a couple of weeks. But, yeah, same here on the prices being ridiculous. If I booked all four of us on a Carnival excursion at every port of call we are going to for our 12 day cruise, I would be looking at an extra $4k+. The prices were already high and with these increases, I am definitely going to be looking at outside options in the ports-of-call that I don't already have booked. About half of the ports I went to last year on my Europe trip ended up having a bus or shuttle or something at the port to take you into the main town if the port wasn't located right there either for free or a very small charge...only they didn't tell us that was an option until literally right before we got off the ship.

That's my point exactly! Inflation is 8 percent. Not 20 to 40 percent. The mark ups were already crazy ridiculous considering how many people they stuff on a bus. One of the excursions is to a castle. The castle admission is $8.50. Train fare to the castle is $24 round trip They are pricing the excursion at $199. I am nearly positive it was $149 a few months ago which is already too high for something that you can do on your own and at your own pace for under $35 per person.

Carnival has announced many other price increases. They announced they were going up on wifi, bottled water, gratuities, CHEERS, steakhouse, etc. And, yes, when prices for either of the two businesses I have either owned or been involved in the management of were going to go up, we notified our customers rather than trying to sneak in a price increase.

I had purchased a couple of excursions for my self and my husband for our upcoming Europe cruise and then went back to add my sons when I confirmed they wanted to go...and now the price of a child's ticket is the same or more than I previously paid for an adult. I got to looking at other excursions and compared the price I paid a couple of months ago vs the price it was now. Sure enough, they had gone up, too. For example, I had booked the excursion "Rioja Alavesa" in Bilboa, Spain. I booked it for $150. It is now $170. I guess it isn't surprising that Carnival did this given that they are increasing the price of everything else, but I sort of thought they might announce it or something.

Thanks for posting this!

Anyone know how to get there from La Rochelle cruise ship terminal? How far is it? I am trying to decide whether to book the excursion with my cruise ($500 for 2 adults and 2 kids) or try to get there on my own. It appears admission is only $8.50 so the upcharge for a bus seems quite a bit unless it is a very long drive.

My guess is that "room ready when you board" is for suite guests only. On 2 of my last 3 cruises I had a suite and my cabin was ready when I boarded both times. On my last cruise, I had FTTF (but no suite) and my cabin was not ready.

I am seeing good signs it is a go. More excursions added on the Carnival website. There are now a variety of open rooms and you can actually book the cruise again. My anxiety that it would not sail has disappeared. I still don't believe (given the VAST number of rooms that are open for booking on the website) that it was ever a sold out cruise and that was the reason they took it off the website. I think there was some other issue they were concerned about and that concern has now been alleviated.

My husband and I only ever gambled a couple hundred dollars and during the "vax only" period we got some really good casino deals. They dried up, though, and now we aren't getting them. I even tried gambling more than I usually did in the casino (talking maybe $500) and still nothing. I cannot force myself to gamble thousands like some do. Losing money gives me anxiety. One lady on my Europe carnival cruise said she had LOST 13k in the casino and that is too rich for my blood. She deserves a free cruise after losing that much. I also 100 percent agree that sometimes it comes down to other issues. My Mom gets great deals and barely ever gambled with Carnival and has been on 1 cruise. However, she did used to regularly go to Vegas and the Louisiana casinos so I suspect this is why she gets good deals.

Me, too. I always miss things on the app. I know this is a bit of a waste of paper for people who don't use them...but the ship can always recycle that paper and I actually use my Funtimes. Maybe they will go back to paper menus soon, too.

When I went, there was a brown sticker that said "Havana" on it. However, others have posted they didn't get it so IDK...maybe this is dependent on the ship.

John Heald announced on his Facebook page today that they will start providing "a printed version of the Funtimes in the cabin mail box the night before." This makes me very happy.

I suspect the cruisers who are staying on the Pride in Europe for b2b2b sailings for several months at a time are paying well in excess of 20k per cabin for the entirety of their voyages.

I would like to point out that the Greenland and Europe cruises aren't exactly cheap. Balconies on the Greenland were running 5k+ for two weeks. If someone is staying on a cruise ship for 3-5 months, they are probably paying more on a leg-to-leg basis than what the price of the world cruises are on Princess or HAL or even Cunard...unless they have casino rates. But I rarely see the casino rates for Europe cruises unless it is a particular sailing that hasn't sold well or a TA or a non-summer sailing. I have never gotten casino rates on the summer Europe cruises on Carnival that I have priced out (i.e. the cruises when my kids are out of school). I looked at the Princess world cruise that goes during the summer time and I actually thought it was surprisingly affordable if you just do a regular balcony and not a suite. With that said, I was only looking at 2 or 3 segments (basically half of the circumnavigation) and not the entire cruise. Ultimately my husband poo-pooed a world cruise because he said the internet wasn't yet good enough to allow him to be able to keep in touch with his office...but I have high hopes in the future once starlink is implemented. Additionally, after being in Europe with my kids for only 3.5 weeks last summer, I was MORE than ready to get home so while my mind WANTS to do a 45+ day cruise, I think I would probably get on it and become very cranky after awhile. Surprisingly, I think my husband and I started getting crankier than our kids.

When I recently had FTTF, I didn't get access to my cabin early. When I had a suite, I did. However, I don't know what the official "rules" are. May have been happenstance.

As an aside, on our Europe Carnival cruise, we met MANY people who were on the boat for anywhere from a month to the entire season...which was May to October. MANY. In fact, I would dare say that probably at least a third of the people we talked to were there for multiple B2B2B voyages. @MJSailorsCarnival does not just attract lower income cruisers looking to party. Anyone with young kids who is cruising with those kids is pretty much choosing between Carnival, RCCL and Disney. Many of the upper end cruise lines (like Viking) don't even allow kids--and even the ones that do allow them don't cater to them like Carnival, Royal and Disney. And Disney simply doesn't have as many boats or routes as Carnival or Royal.

I would be very interested in this if it was during the summer so my kids could go. Princess has ONE world cruise in the summer. They are the only one I am aware of that does a summer world cruise.

Maybe the wife and husband want to have "adult" time alone without kids around. And by adult time, I mean R-rated adult time. My husband and I prefer to have two cabins when cruising with our kids...even if it is an adjoining cabin with a door that we can close after they go to sleep. Additionally, if the kids are over 12 but under 15, you may not be able to book the kids across the hall from the adults in the Havana cabin so you may HAVE to put an adult in the other cabin. Swap the kids wristband out for the husband. Why does it matter whether a 12 year old kid uses the band or the husband who is booked in another room uses the band? It doesn't take away from your experience in the least. In fact, I would think your experience would probably be better sharing a hot tub with another couple than a Mom and a kid...

Some of yall act like this is admittance to the White House or something... I have stayed in a Havana cabin three times and I somehow missed all of these multiple check points in place because when I sailed they were just little rubber bands you can take on and off. In one instance, they even put 4 bands in our cabin even though there were only two of us. They do change the band colors (although, I don't know if it is every week) so I wouldn't attempt to buy off of Ebay. There are stickers on the S&S cards, but no one is scanning them as you enter. They would only notice if you ordered a drink. I frankly think that you could probably switch out bands without a problem so long as the guest who isn't in the room doesn't order a drink while they are there. Like others, I don't personally see the problem as long as there are not more in the area at one time than the room occupancy of the Havana room. When I have stayed in the area in the past, the Havana area has never been very busy anyway...even during a Christmas cruise where the ship was at capacity, it wasn't busy. There was more than one time where my husband and I were the only people in the area...which, frankly, I would rather have other people around to converse with because if I just wanted to sit by a pool by myself I would just stay home and sit by the pool in my backyard.

I have not encountered the marijuana smoking everyone else has (maybe the cruises I have gone on), but I have encountered plenty of VERY rude people. Blatantly cutting in line, making nasty/rude comments out-of-the-blue, rushing to the elevator to cut off the elderly/mobility impaired who had been waiting longer than them, etc. I could go on and on. I have a hard time not saying something when I witness these behaviors, but I have learned (the hard way) that the sort of people who behave in these ways are also the sort of people who get very aggressive and nasty if called out so it is best just to ignore. I also feel like these bad behaviors have been substantially worse since the restart. It seems like people forgot how to act and be respectful during the shutdown. Or maybe everyone is just extra stressed out in this world we live in.

As an aside, I have a funny and psuedo scary story about Ring cameras. We were gone for several weeks this summer in Europe and no one was home at our house for several weeks. Even our animals were with friends or boarded. After we came back, I kept hearing strange noises at night. My husband told me I was crazy. I finally put cameras underneath my house (it is ten feet off the ground with a garage/crawl space underneath that we use for storage) and caught a homeless man who was sleeping under there at night. I guess he basically moved in while we were gone. We then set up an alarm and scared him off. I felt bad for him, but I have young kids and can't have a stranger sleeping under my house.

You can yell at them through the camera that you are calling the cops and to get out of your house. They don't know you are in the middle of the ocean. You could also Facebook message one of your neighbors to call the cops...or come over and check it out if someone is just loitering about outside your house.