groundloop

If it was a lightning strike I'm assuming you got into some storms?

West of Atlanta. We spent about a week in Sydney doing things before the first cruise. Went to the Blue Mountains, did a private behind-the-scenes tour at Taranga Zoo, visited Manly and Watson's Bay (and got pretty good at navigating Sydney's ferry boat system), took a tour of the Opera House & saw a show there, photographed kangaroos & wombats in the wild, etc. etc. We didn't stay with the group of back-to-backers on the ship, instead we chose to take a walk and do some shopping.

Were you the medical emergency that came over the PA system on the last day? I did a B2B on those same two cruises. It's interesting to hear your take on Carnival vs. other cruise lines, I've done the majority of my cruises on Carnival (21) and only 2 so far on other lines. My daughter has kind of bought into the BS she sees online about Carnival, plus we did have a pretty bad experience with our Carnival cruise Thanksgiving of 2021, but that was the exception. AND, in my most humble opinion, our cruise on Splendor last month was one of our best.

ALSO, I've had it take a L-O-N-G time to get a new gift card when I've cancelled something on board.

It sounds like a great idea, but I wonder if this is possible in all cases. If there's not a ship leaving out of the second terminal on a particular day there's not going to be anyone there to let you into the parking garage, and if there is a cruise leaving they just automatically charge you for the length of the cruise that the ship at the second terminal will be on, which probably isn't the same as yours. Thanksgiving of '22 we were on Freedom out of Port Canaveral, we parked and boarded at Terminal 5 and midway through the cruise were informed that we'd be disembarking at Terminal 3 (somewhere around a 2 1/2 mile drive). The shuttle bus situation getting us back to Terminal 5 was a total mess, it added an hour and a half to when we could start driving home.

Just show up at 11:00 and you'll be fine. ALSO, you have to realize that this isn't your BOARDING time but rather your ARRIVAL APPOINTMET at the port. You may or may not be able to get on the ship after you go through the check-in process depending on whether or not the ship is ready. On our last couple of cruises we were able to get right on, but that's generally not the case and we've had to sit in the terminal and wait a while.

NO, you can definitely bring both 12 packs on board with you at the start of the first cruise. I just got off of a back to back and brought two per person on board at the start of the first cruise, all we had to do was explain to security that we were back to back.

in a bit of a twist on this, Carnival will not book two people into a cabin that's designated for three or four. For one cruise I was looking at there were over a dozen aft balcony cabins available which were listed as having a capacity of 3 or 4, but the handful of aft balconies with a capacity of two were already booked. I called my travel agent, PVP, Carnival customer service, messaged John Heald, and the answer was always the same, I couldn't put two people into a three person cabin. I was tempted to book with a phantom third person who would be a no-show, but decided against that.

DRSEL is absolutely correct. I just got off a back to back out of Sydney, the first leg of which was an 8 day cruise to New Caledonia. When checking in I was asked if I had travel insurance and showed them a printed copy of my travel insurance card.

I recently submitted a request via Carnival's website to not have my personal data shared with other companies, here's their response: In regards to your request to exercise your right, please note this request is applicable to residents of certain states or countries; since you are not listed as a resident in one of these areas within our system(s), we cannot fulfill this request. So in other words they're going to keep selling my personal information because it's not a law where I live that they honor my request. I don't know about anyone else but this just kind of leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

I assume you mean "galley"..... from everything I've heard I'd never book a cabin below the galley, they start working (and inevitably making noise) in the wee hours of the morning when most of us would prefer to be sleeping. If you could grab a cove balcony that's not below the galley it would be great, we've done cove balconies before and liked them.

Thanks for the information, that's exactly what I was looking for.

I'm spending a few days in Sydney before we get on our cruise..... Took the ferry from Circular Quay to Watson's Bay for lunch yesterday and I think I may have unknowingly overpaid (I didn't bother buying an Opal Card, I just paid with a credit card). Hopefully I can get this figured out before heading over to Taranga Zoo in two days. Before boarding the return ferry at Watson's Bay I paid with my credit card at the pier, but noticed that there weren't any gates to keep people honest. Upon getting off the ferry back at Circular Quay I had to pay again before leaving..... so am I correct in guessing I shouldn't have paid at Watson's Bay? Also, I tried tapping my credit card a second time for my wife and I got an error message that the card had already been used. Luckily I had my backup credit card handy (or else I'd have had to leave my wife behind 😁 ). Thanks in advance for educating me.

We'll be arriving in Sydney at the International Terminal around 7 AM on a Saturday. After however long it takes to get through Customs we'll be heading up to the Tank Stream Hotel in the Central Business District. Will the train be a better option than Uber? (I assume it's not going to be crowded on a Saturday morning.) It looks like we'll have a 3 or 4 block walk to the hotel from the train station, that shouldn't be a big deal. Likewise, for departing. Our Flight back home is at 11 AM on a Thursday, since I'm anal about always getting to the airport plenty early I imagine we'll be leaving the hotel around 7 AM or so. Same question, will the train to the Airport from Central Business District be crowded (we'll have backpacks and suitcases so fighting through a crowd with all of that could be tough)?

Here's the website where you can look into cabin specific questions like this. https://help.goccl.com

NO, at least not according to Carnival's official policy. Something might slip through the cracks from time to time, but I wouldn't count on it.

We're doing a B2B out of Sydney in a few weeks (I'm assuming that B2B procedure there will be similar to the US). I've read that once we're issued our new Sail and Sign card we can leave the ship if we want to - if we chose to do this how difficult is it getting back on the ship? I'm thinking that we might want to do a bit of shopping and maybe restock our supply of soft drinks (if it's not going to be a big hassle). Would we simply flash our new Sail and Sign Cards to the folks in port, go through security, and then waltz right onto the ship?

On our most recent journeys cruise I totally forgot about checking in at midnight, and in fact didn't get around to it until 12 days prior. I wound up with a later check-in time and to be honest I'm glad it worked out that way. When we got to the port the huge early rush had died down and we were able to walk right onto the ship with no wait. And as far as checking in for non-journeys cruises, the times I've waited until mid-morning to check in I still got the first time slot.

We're doing our first Back To Back in a few weeks and there's one little question I haven't found the answer to yet...... Do I need to print out boarding passes for the second leg? (This might be an issue because we'll be travelling by the time I can check in for the second leg.)

Carnival does a very poor job of moving people and badly needs to put some thought into this issue, especially now that they're sailing with packed ships. In addition to badly disorganized debarkation they have issues with water shuttle ports as well. On our Greenland cruise last August, for instance, there were LONG waits to get back on the ship at two of the water shuttle ports. One was an hour and 15 minutes for us, and the line was even longer by the time we got on the shuttle. In this case if they could have been running a couple of extra life boats at the peak times and it would have greatly alleviated the problem. I'm convinced that a good industrial engineer on their staff could help immensely, I have to wonder why Carnival doesn't seem to realize that they have a problem in this area.

Once on board you'll be able to pull up the menu for each night on the Carnival Hub app on your phone. After looking that over you can book the Steakhouse directly from the Hub app.

That's doubtful, it would slow things down for the cabin stewards to make a round preparing all priority cabins and then make a second round doing all the others. I kind of like the way Holland America handled this when I sailed with them. THEY assigned an arrival appointment and once you got through check-in you had full access to your cabin.

I've been on around 20 Carnival cruises and the vast majority have been great. The least favorite was on Freedom last November. One issue was a smell of sewage in the hallway, hopefully they fixed whatever was causing that in drydock. Something else we didn't know about ahead of time was that for debarkation Freedom docked at a different terminal than what we departed from, so we had to be bussed over to the original terminal to pick up our cars. That was a total mess and added over an hour before we could start driving home. I'd check the cruise terminal schedules for Port Canaveral and see if that's the case for your cruise.

In addition to the answers already given (call your travel agent or fix online if you booked directly with Carnival) your other option is to visit the MaitreD in the dining room the afternoon of embarkation. He/she will get you taken car of if at all possible.

And yet they still keep raising prices on everything.