tw67

I loved the Horizon! I am curious about the area right near the port in La Romana. When I was there a few years ago they were doing construction on what looked like it would be a port area very similar to Amber Cove. I am curious if you could give me an update on it. 
 

I am looking forward to your review!

1 hour ago, Gladys Kravitz said:

Can someone with bad knees and who’s old and out of shape easily climb aboard one of the boats at Stingray City after interacting with them?  Asking for a friend. 

YES!  I promise you I am old, out of shape and not exactly skinny! I was a bit worried, but the people who work on these ships are great and really help you!

33 minutes ago, ninjacat123 said:

I was able to add my Carnival GC to my Apple Wallet.  Email appeared notifying that my purchase from AARP went through. Clicked on Get My Reward button.  I had to wait a couple seconds till the Add to Apple Wallet button appeared.  Clicked on it then clicked the Add button.

I hope it works out better for you in the future!

I will have to remember to put them in my Apple wallet. I have 3 more cruises this fall, so I will be buying cards almost every month now. I need to start making my specialty dining reservations and buying CHEERS.

1 hour ago, ab19902 said:

Cruises are paid with gift cards that I get at AARP. I usually have 2-3 cruises booked at a time, so if the GC is too much for one cruise, it goes to the next one. 

Great!!  Yes I keep a spreadsheet with my gift cards! 

2 hours ago, CruizinSusan70 said:

You can use the gift cards to pay everything cruise related.  You can also use the stock OBC to buy gift cards in Cherry on Top to use on a future cruise. 100 minimum purchase and even 136.42 or anything you'd like.  

I am well aware, I am one of those who has using gift cards down to a science. I was asking the person ab199002. They mentioned using their Obc, but didn’t discuss how they pay for the cruise. 

4 hours ago, ab19902 said:

Interesting. Funnily enough, I don't use the gift cards when I cruise. Here since the shutdown, I usually have a decent amount of OBC (plus DH and I both own Carnival stock, so that gives us more). This last cruise in February was an 8 day with 4 days at sea. We forgot cash, so DH charged the room for about $250 in the casino (actually more, but he won it back, so we put it back in to our account). Ended up leaving with $200 charged to my Carnival card to get points towards paying off a charge.

I also own stock. I like that extra OBC. How about paying for the cruise itself? 

2 hours ago, ChinaShrek said:

My theory is that people will spend more with gift cards then they would if paying with cash. With gift cards, they "think" they are saving 10% so they spend more. 

I understand that reasoning, but we cruise anywhere from 2-4 times a year. We know what we spend money on. The cost of the cruise is the cost of the cruise. I don’t say to myself I am saving 10% so I will do a balcony instead of an inside. We do at least one specialty dining. We get 10% off that. We will do CHEERS, so another 10% there. We don’t buy a lot on the ship, but we do gamble. Plus we can withdraw through a slot machine what we don’t use. I spent less on the NCL ship because we didn’t gamble much because we went with a large family group.

12 minutes ago, ULCajunCruiser said:

I'm venting more than asking a question.   But I am trying to buy some Carnival Gift Cards from AARP.  I've done this many times before, but for some reason it's not allowing the transaction to go through. Called them up and they say try this and try that, which I understand is procedure, but every time I try and it bombs, it's adding $1800 to my pending credit card bill!!   Tried 8 ties and boom that's nearly $15,000 in pending charges.  They can't remove them and my credit card company says they can't remove them.  I only hope that there's no emergency in the next 30 days cause my credit card is now all but useless!!!   More frustrated than anything, thanks for listening!!

Oh no!  Let us know what happens and if you know what caused it.

Champa Bay Limo we used in January. We had 14 people, but they have all sizes of transportation. I can’t recommend them enough!!  We couldn’t get into any of the hotels by the port, so we stayed at Holiday Inn Express Ybor City. They have a shuttle that will take you to dinner and I believe the port. But first come first served. I think their van held 8 or 9 people. We used it along with an Uber to go out to dinner. They had a decent breakfast that came with the room. There is a Wawa in the parking lot, so you can always pick up sandwiches, drinks or coffee.

4 minutes ago, figdu said:

We have sailed each twice.  The main difference to me is that Vista has the Red Frog Pug, where Horizon has the Pig and Anchor bar.  Love the Pub, Pig and Anchor, not so much. 

Awesome! I do love the Red Frog Pub on other ships, so that is good!!

Thanks!!

I buy my AARP gift cards then I buy cruise cash with them. This avoids me having to worry when on the ship that I need to apply the gift cards. If I am on a longer cruise I might have more digital cards to put on the cabin if I have gone through my cruise cash. I always keep an eye out before the last day to make sure that I have used up the cruise cash. If I hadn’t usually a quick trip to the casino takes care of it!  

On 1/26/2024 at 9:47 PM, TravelWith FunShips said:

Is Cruise Cash good for the casino slot machines

Yes

1 hour ago, SUESEABE said:

@tw67Thank you for the recommendation for Champa Bay Limo

I hope they work out for you! Honestly such a great family run company! 

1 minute ago, BroadwayGirl said:

We’re on 7 for that cruise. Looking at terrazza for 2025

You must really like this ship!

1 hour ago, BroadwayGirl said:

We’ll be on that sailing with you to Bermuda! And we’re right down the road in Hamilton! 

So we live near each other and might be in cabins right near each other!!  

We have an inside Terrazza booked for a 7 day Bermuda Labor Day cruise. While we have booked inside cabins on shorter cruises, we decided to take the chance and book this hoping we will enjoy the Terrazza area. We love the Havana on Horizon, so I hope we will enjoy this. Thanks to all who responded to BroadwayGirl, it is great to hear that people were happy with their cabins.

2 hours ago, JohninDC said:

Thanks for the feedback.  Parts of Ybor can get a little rowdy on the weekends - glad everything worked out for you.

When planning this trip I didn’t see a lot of helpful information on Tampa and wanted to leave some. We were there on a Thursday night, and we were celebrating a 21st birthday. The birthday boy loved being with his older brother and cousins. We ate at The Bricks and the owner or manager Brian was really helpful on telling the kids where to head off to for the midnight celebration. They were all back to the hotel by 1:30. The “kids” all felt like places they went were filled with college aged kids. We had heard all the warnings about Ybor so they all knew to choose bars carefully. I can definitely see that you need to be careful around there!

I recently sailed out of Tampa, and I can say that it was so nice compared to the crazy traffic in Miami that we have had the last few cruises. There were 14 of us all flying in. The airport in Tampa was nice, we used a local limo company to take us from the airport to hotel, hotel to port, and then from the port to the airport. I totally recommend them to anyone needing the service, they were Champa Bay Limo. While staying the night in Tampa we all had a great dinner, the 20 something year olds, all went out after and we had a decent night's stay at the Holiday Inn and Suites in Ybor, and it didn't break the bank. While the area around the hotel didn't have a lot, having that Wawa right there in the parking lot was really convenient. 

I took an NCL cruise last weekend, and I missed gift cards! I missed knowing that I had gift cards already on my account! I also spent less money on board than I do on a Carnival ship. 

I don't have another cruise planned until Labor Day weekend, but I will be stocking up on my cards to pay down my three booked cruises!  

I have a transatlantic booked on Holland America for 2025. I just got off my first NCL, and we had the worse service experience on ship ever. While reading the reviews, especially from those who cruise NCL often, this was an unusual cruise. Food was cold, and service was very slow. Not getting water and specialty coffee with the drink package was something we really missed. I think one of the reasons we picked Holland America for our 2025 cruise was because it being a Carnival brand, it seemed much more like the ship experiences we are used to. I do have a Virgin planned for January of 2025, and I am really looking forward to trying them.

There are 14 of us from my family getting on Jade when you get off. Celebrating my son’s 21st birthday(he is the youngest of the cousins!), my mom’s 89th, and my husband’s 58th! Enjoy your cruise! 

I have sailed on Sunrise 3 times and booked myself again for December. I agree about shoulder season. We book on 5th deck. When this ship was Triumph, those cabins didn’t exist. They were new to Sunrise. When we do short cruises we do ocean view or inside. We have found the larger shaped insides to be a really nice, but we also did an ocean view on 5th. 
 

1 hour ago, sunshower9 said:

They're not that different, really.  Main differences are the addition of the hibachi restaurant and the extra Havana cabins on Horizon.  Otherwise the layout is almost exactly the same.  I was first on Vista in 2017 and absolutely loved it.  My second time was a few weeks ago.  It wasn't the same because Vista is having a lot of maintenance issues right now, but it will be going into dry dock after the current sailing ends so I expect that my next time on it in April will be much better.

 

You can't go wrong in the Havana area on either ship.  Even though it seemed like there were more people in Havana on Horizon, it still wasn't crowded.  It was just harder to find an open round bed in the shade (I prefer shade to sun).  And on that note, I was in a deck 9 Havana balcony on Horizon and having entire balcony covered was great.  

I don’t think I could go on any Vista Class ship and not stay in the Havana area. Like you I love the round beds for shade. I am really looking forward to Vista, but it isn’t until this fall.

2 hours ago, sunshower9 said:

Yes, that has always been the case.  I've been on Horizon once and Vista twice, and I did feel like the Havana area on Vista had less people than on Horizon.  

Please tell me more about the differences. I loved Horizon so much, so I hope Vista lives up to my love for Horizon!

44 minutes ago, cruisewiththekids said:

I wanted to try deck 9 so it had the coverage overhead for shade.    It did get hot in the daytime on those lower balconies with no covering.   But I will have to decide if that is more valuable than Havana.    We are not lay by the pool people though, so we didn't use Havana all that much.    We will probably just stick with deck 9.

Because we are pool and hot tub people I couldn’t sit there and watch everyone having a good time! I did like being on Horizon on the 9th deck. It was great to watch the ocean.