Joehult

I was on Mardi Gras in the beginning of December and it was a similar experience. 6 hours to embark, 3 hours after being forced out the room to disembark. Lackluster main stage. Meh food, and overworked staff. So this is pretty much industry wide now. Pre Covid days are not returning any time soon, unfortunately.

How far is the drive? Checking other airlines this weekend, the cheapest flight to Florida was $1600 on American and nearly 3 grand on delta, but I’m 2000 miles away from Miami. So the other airlines are getting in on the gouging game. If it was me, I’d wait and see how they handle this weekend, if they’re still canceling most of the flights, hit the road on Monday. Stressing over a flight is not a great way to begin a vacation. There is also a good chance of another storm moving over the Rockies on Monday, that’ll mess things up in Denver and Chicago for the first half of next week.

Mardis gras isn’t a very good family ship. Entertainment is mostly adult oriented, the bolt is constantly shut down(only ran 8 hours over a 7 day cruise, a few weeks ago). And those ports suck, with grand Turks being the only one with a beach right off the ship. Also, for a being a good sized ship, carnival really botched the floor plans. Over half of the free roam space is being taken up by the center stage, which is the main hub of the entertainment on board. The central pool deck is about 60% the size of carnivals average ships. The water slide area, was also constantly shut down due to weather and waves. I don’t know, it’s a poor ship for those that just want to relax, and not a great ship for kids. 

I was on this ship in February, they honestly did you a favor. Covid staffing shortages + no usable Wi-Fi + no in room entertainment + a lackluster entertainment schedule = just get a hotel by the beach.

passengers can be monitored easily, both medically and making sure they behave. Less chance of passengers sneaking out either on to their balcony or roaming the halls. And if a passenger does roam while on the isolation deck, they’re only contaminating other sick passengers. 
 

Instead of a hundred room service staff being exposed while bringing you meals and supplies, only handful are being exposed, and they can be fully hazmat. Whether or not they are is another question. But if they are doing it right, they can mitigate infections.
 

out of sight, out of mind is another reason. Nothing says a good time like a big yellow sign posted on your neighbor’s door.

41 minutes ago, 13cheermom said:

Just curious what type of internet plan did you purchase that blocked wi-fi calls and which ship you were on?  We do rely on wi-fi calling using WhatsApp for emergencies back home. Thanks for any additional information!

Sunrise, premium plan. Both T-Mobile and AT&T Wi-Fi calling were blocked. FaceTime sort of worked. iMessages were 50/50. By the second day I caved and bought AT&T’s $100 cruise package. Had too many important calls that couldn’t wait for the two island stops.

The internet really pisses me off. No excuse for charging that much for something that barely, if ever works. Royal’s works just fine and they even bundle it with soft drinks. And you don’t have to go through a damn bar tender just to get barely 6 ounces of flat coke. I don’t know, the nickel and diming carnival does to lower their teaser rate versus royal, puts me in a sour mood. Like the last carnival cruise I was on this spring, they now block Wi-Fi calling. So that’s another $100 just to make a damn phone call on the ship. 

The internet on carnival is an illusion on its best days. You will just about give up on it and storm down to the cs desk for a refund, then it suddenly works for 5 minutes, before disappearing again. They’ve completely blocked WiFi calling, you can maybe get one or two very short YouTube videos to load, streaming is not happening ever, and unless you spam f5, even simple browsing has very high latency and will timeout fail 9/10. And it’s best to have AT&T postpaid as your provider, since a talk and text package is only $100 for unlimited, it also comes with a barely useable 500mb of lte data. T-Mobile wants $6 per minute for cell at sea service, Verizon wants $3. 

End of June and still waiting. 

How’s the internet? Last carnival ship I was on was severely gimped to the point streaming, YouTube, and WiFi calling was impossible. In fact, I had their highest tier package and it took about 30 tries just to get to my Gmail account.

Smoking on balconies is the hill I die on, especially now that everyone and their grandmothers are bringing pot aboard. You pay double for the damn room, and it seems like at least one guy up wind cannot go 5 minutes without lighting crappy skunk weed. 

The main problem with eliminating self service, is if the server is sick(with corona, noro, rhino, influenza) he is now spreading that illness to nearly every guest that takes food from him. If a sick passenger gets his fingers on an ice cream cone, or serving utensils, only a few people that come in direct contact after will become sick. So instead of hundreds of people getting sick from grabbing ice cream, maybe three get sick that day. Also you’re increasing the the chances of crew members getting sick, since they are now coming in direct contact with at least 1 tenth of the ship.

Dec 3rd 2022 had a “flash sale” today, so I jumped on it. 2 grand for three with a balcony seemed like a good price for a one week.

54 minutes ago, smokeybandit said:

Why stop selling cruises then?

 

Cruise lines know that this latest round of "guidance" sets back return to cruising even more than they ever thought.

They might be cutting staff to barely a skeleton and no longer have the manpower to continuously shift reservations every 2 to three months, or take phone calls. 

Could also mean they’re running out of cash to operate. 

I bring a mini can of Lysol, hand sanitizer, foam anti bacterial dial, ass wipes, and Clorox or Lysol wipes.

Feb 11, I was on the mariner, plus the navigator was also there. The only thing not running was the balloon ride. Otherwise it didn’t feel too packed. 

I’m just glad my family got their midwinter cruise vacation in for the year, two weeks ago, before this really hit the fans. For the most part we came out fine. I wouldn’t call it diarrhea, but definitely a bit of discomfort for two of us, and I developed a sore throat and cough that lasted about a week. Flight home was scarier with every one hacking up a lung and one passenger vomiting. 

You’ll be lucky to get google to load 90% of the time. Kind of ruined my trip this past week. I was trying to follow a race at Daytona on Thursday, and I couldn’t access any websites, including twitter. Only positive, carnival didn’t put up any fuss and refunded the cost. So they know it’s trash.

Was on victory last week, the value internet was unusable, so I upgraded to premium thinking maybe it gives a person higher priority, and nothing changed. 1 out of a 100 tries it will trickle at maybe 20kb/s, but pretty much every website and email will timeout before fully loading. On the last day I went down to the customer service desk and told them the internet never worked, and the guy just refunded the money with zero fuss. They know their internet is trash. You pretty much will have to plan work around port days and make sure you have an international plan that works, for example I couldn’t get my Tmobile phone to work in Mexico, but AT&T worked flawlessly.

The noise is similar to living in an apartment, or college dorm, and the guy down the hall figures 1 in the morning is the perfect time to crank up the bass. You don't actually hear his music, you just get a low frequency thumping noise in your ear that even ear plugs cannot block out. Central Park is where all this noise converges. Obviously everyone has different levels of hearing, and most of the state rooms are likely better insulated than the one I was in, but it doesn't change the fact of why do they have a band on every deck, at all hours, and the few corners you think would be peaceful(like the schooner or champagne bar), they pipe in music and have speakers directly over every single table?

As far as the ports, Haiti and Jamaica are walled gardens, but Haiti is the only stop where you don't have to spend money getting on a beach. Once you leave the cruiseport, Jamaica is just dirty, and finding sand is a half hour or more drive. They really could not have found a worst location for that port. But for whatever reason we had a lot of fun in Cozumel and playa del Carmen.

Sorry for being negative, it's just the heat was nearly unbearable, and I didn't get a lot of sleep. Besides this cruise, I usually take carribean cruises in January and February, and this was my first experience with a ship this size, and I just have no desire to ever book another mega ship during the summer.

This is the last night of a 7 night cruise, and the third night where sleep is likely not happening. Ended up with a front room on the eighth deck, and every other night the solarium has some private party and the bass guitars and drums just rattle the windows of the room. So I figured I'd stroll around the ship. The pool is obviously non stop noise, the casino is a casino, and the promenade is a constant party. All the noise then meets in Central Park in a union of chaos. So far the only area that is a little tolerable is the aqua theater thanks to the movies. You would think a ship this big there could at least be one place, preferably your own stateroom, a person could go to relax.

Other than that, the cruise has been fine, Haiti and Jamaica I don't ever have to see again, but the Cozumel stop was probably the best stop I've ever experienced while on a cruise ship.