NebraskaSatellite

The Vista and Boka Vanguard are out of the port at the anchorage now.  Probably getting ready to refloat her.

And the Vista has arrived in the Bahamas right on schedule.  

Here's the NOLA port status, which also indicates Valor is diverting to Mobile.

https://www.portnola.com/info/storm-update

CRUISE OPERATIONS:

The Carnival Valor, which was scheduled to sail a 4-day cruise to Mexico on Thursday, June 11, 2019 from New Orleans, is diverting to Mobile, Ala. Carnival guests may call 1 (800) 764-7419 for the latest information on their itineraries.

ETA in Freeport is the afternoon of the 12th.  Looks like she will round Key West before the potential tropical system winds up in the northern Gulf this week.

I use these at work and for a cruise:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01AO5L7Z2

Card pulls out sideways, but is securely held in place otherwise.  Easy to remove one-handed when necessary.

14 minutes ago, chengkp75 said:

Not really.  I'm assuming they have the materials arriving in Freeport in time, but a complete swap of an azipod, or even just motor windings, should not take more than the 3 weeks (I think is what is blocked out), and its only about 2 days from Freeport to Galveston.

chengkp75 - I really appreciate your posts in this forum as I like learning about all the "under the hood" stuff that goes into operating a cruise ship........

If they hold to the current schedule, Vista gets back to Galveston on the 9th, so that would put them in Freeport on the 11th or 12th.  Given a two-day transit back to Galveston, it looks like they'd have to depart Freeport on the 25th to make the 27th's sailing.  Is 13-14 days for this repair realistic?  The reason I ask is that we're booked for the 27th's sailing and am wondering about the chances of having a shortened or cancelled cruise.  

(tbh, I'd almost prefer the credit and not take this one for work reasons)

Here's a graph of the Vista's speed over the past 24 hours, showing a drop to less than 2 knots around 0140 UTC (8:40 pm CDT).

According to a ship tracking site, the Vista was in Costa Maya from 8:30am to 7pm on Wednesday and from about 7am to 7pm Thursday.  It was running at about 14 knots yesterday, but has recently slowed to 9 knots as it approaches Galveston.  Expected to arrive in Galveston about 4:15am tomorrow.

We're booked on the first cruise after drydock (July 27).  I'm kinda torn on whether to wish for a cancellation, because free cruise and I could use the time for a work project right now.  Kids are already angling for a Christmas cruise if we do get cancelled.

I wonder if they know the problem will take X days to fix, and that they will run 8-day cruises for a while, take the ship out of service the X days to fix the problem, then get back on to their normal 7-day Sat-Sat rotation.  At some point they will have to completely erase one cruise.

Can you reserve a table with the app with a specific headwaiter?   We liked being able to have the same staff serve us on our cruise last year, and would like to replicate that with the app, rather than going to Deck 5 on the Vista first (or just showing up at the door).

Ditto for Leo and Tours Plaza.  We had half an idea what we wanted to do for the day and Leo suggested some tweaks that were right on the money.  Couldn't have asked for a better driver.  Learned a lot about Cozumel and had a great time.

3 minutes ago, Sizzlechest said:

 

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vista-class_cruise_ship_(Carnival)

According to this, there are four other Vista ships in various stages of building/planning that are intended for the China market (2 for Costa, 2 for a Chinese corporation).  These are besides the Carnival Vista/Horizon/Panorama.

If your kids have phones that are expensive, you could repurpose an old phone just to use for the HUB app during the cruise.  The phone doesn't need to be activated on a wireless carrier, you just need to be able to log into the ship's wifi.  

I would bring one rather than depend on getting one from your steward on board.  I'd hate to go without my CPAP for the week just because I was #31 to ask for one of their 30 extension cords (or whatever the #s are).

There is a limit of two per order.  Ordered at 3pm yesterday, arrived today about 10am.  I'm not sure if you can submit multiple orders separated by a period of time or not.  I ordered two more just now, we'll see if it goes through for the second pair.  

Update:  No you can't make a second order that is sent to the same account or address within 48 hours.  Nuts.

So I did a WAG based on the deck plans and length of the ship and came up with a bit over 3 miles of walking.  Depends on how you want to traverse the larger spaces like dining rooms - walk every open spot between tables, or one pass on the major "thoroughfares".  Your mileage may vary.  I'd say 2-3 decks per day in your spare time is doable.

Ditto on the Cuchina lunch lasagna being "odd".  I had the lasagna in the MDR one evening and really enjoyed it, so I had it in Cuchina for lunch a couple days later, thinking it would be the same.  Bleh.  The MDR lasagna had ground beef, while at Cuchina is was almost like a roast cut of beef.  Maybe that's a more common style of lasagna than I think it is, but I had never encountered it before.  

If you're looking for something lighter than a Guy's Meat Bolus for lunch, the pasta dishes are pretty good.

Reflections appears to only be on deck 3.  Deck 4 above Reflections is the casino.

Horizons DR is on both 3 and 4 aft.

Carnival Breeze - Western Caribbean, June 2018

We just booked on the Carnival Vista for the July 27 cruise and are starting to look at excursions.  The Vista arrives at 7 and departs at 3.  My daughter wants to do both Stingray City and the turtle farm.  I think we could do this one of two ways:

1) Go to the turtle farm early by bus, then take a bus to Captain Marvin's for their 11:15 Stingray City excursion, then return to port.

2) Take Captain Marvin's 8:30 excursion, then hop the bus to the turtle farm, then back to the ship by bus

One thing I worry about is having full buses.  Does this happen often?  There will be 4 ships in port with about 12,000 passengers on the day we'll be there.  This makes option 2 more attractive, as there will be more or less dedicated transport back to the cruise port.  

There is a Carnival excursion that will do both, but the reviews indicated the time at the turtle farm can be pretty short.  

We ordered a 12pk of bottled water and a gallon of distilled water for our CPAPs pre-cruise for a very reasonable price.   It was in our room before 5 on embarkation day.  However, distilled water isn't available on the website, you have to call Carnival to order it.  

We got the bottled water mostly to take with us on excursions, the tap water on the ship was fine otherwise.

Greg - you should probably get a referral bonus from Carnival.  I've been poking around on the Costco website pricing cruises for a couple of months.  Then I followed your live Vista review and I was almost as bummed at the end of your cruise as I was at the end of ours.  A couple nights ago my daughter asked if we were going on one.  I said if we did it'd be on the Vista out of Galveston, and we'd probably do Jamaica/GC/Cozumel because we did Roatan/Belize/Coz last year.  She found the July 27 cruise and wanted to go on it because she'll have her birthday while we're at sea.  That was the one I was thinking about anyway, and when I checked Costco they had a deal for a cove balcony that was $300 cheaper than a month ago and another $200 in shipboard credit on top of Costco gift cards, making it almost $400 less than last year's cruise.  So with your review fresh in my mind and this kind of deal, we booked it with about 15 minutes' discussion.  My daughter has been snatching the printouts of your FunTimes photos as fast as I hit the button and already making plans.

On the Breeze last summer, it was hit and miss.  Some messages were never delivered, some delivered 2-3 hours later.  Other times it ran 100%.

If Carnival wanted to help its passengers out, it'd provide a "delivered" flag back to the originator (like my Verizon messaging app) so you knew the message got to the other end.  If.

I think you have to meet with one of the staff and get a sticker which lets him into the club (substitutes for scanning the card for age verification).  However, he may have trouble breaking into a group who already have had a night or two together.  If he likes hanging out with a group, it'll be much harder to do so if he's not there that first night.  Much easier to go and then decide to never go again if it's not his thing.