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Pepsi does have much stronger nautical credentials: https://www.businessinsider.com/how-pepsi-briefly-became-the-6th-largest-military-in-the-world-2018-7?op=1 But I prefer mixed drinks with Coke.

I think they just assumed you knew what was being discussed and you were talking about the same thing as everyone else.

I once actually suggested to Carnival that they produce a show that would be a cross between The Love Boat and Fawlty Towers. That was the result of a cruise in 2016 on the Triumph. So many things went wrong that it ended up being one of our more enjoyable cruises because it was so bad it was funny. Here's a few snips from my letter to them with the first being the Ice Bucket incident and the second the Bedside Table incident with many others left out because it would take pages: Ice Bucket: …End of day one and start of day two, after having visited guest services, we wanted some ice water. Then we noticed there was no ice bucket in the room. I called the room steward number and as usual was told to call someone else; in this case room service. So I call room service and ask for an ice bucket and ice. A few minutes later my wife answers the door and finds a young man from room service bearing a ziploc bag of ice. She said we had asked for a bucket also. The young man said they were very busy and were out of buckets… …Also on day four we decided to ice down and drink the bottle of sparkling wine the Player's Club had delivered to our room. We tried to use the metal ice bucket but the bottle was almost as big around as the bucket. That wasn't going to work. The note that came with the bottle said to get a bucket and ice from your room steward or room service. We knew the response if we called the room steward number would be to call room service. So I called room service and explained that the Player's Club had sent wine to our room and we needed a bucket big enough to ice it down and ice. A few minutes later there was a knock at the door. I answered to find a young man... with a ziploc bag of ice. Of course I asked about the bucket and he explained that they were very busy and didn't have any buckets… …Late on day five the dining room experience convinced us we had to try for a bucket and ice for the bottle of wine again or risk never drinking it as we were at our customs limit for alcohol and couldn't take it home. A little before midnight I again called room service and explained we had this bottle of wine and needed a big bucket and ice to ice it down. Our plan was to ice it overnight and then my wife (the wine drinker of the family) could drink it throughout the next day. A few minutes after the call I answered the door and found a young man, with a ziploc bag of ice. Now, I am not proud of the following couple of minutes. It was kind of like an interaction between Basil Fawlty and Manuel, but not long afterward we had a big bucket full of ice. Bedside Table: On day four as we were leaving the room we again ran into the steward so we asked him to come in and asked why there were no bedside tables. He said there was a bedside table. We asked where while pointing to the empty sides of the bed. He pointed to the kneehole of the counter on the opposite wall. What we had assumed was one of those room refrigerator bars that you dare not open on penalty of paying ten dollars for a Coke was actually a bedside table. So we asked why it wasn't beside the bed. He explained that if it were beside the bed he could not make the bed.

I don't know when they started, but I have one in my hand right now from our July 2001 cruise on the Inspiration.

For those sailing out of Galveston note that Texas has, unless things have changed post covid, a "stupid tax." When we debarked they had a table in the walkway where you were supposed to stop and pay Texas tax on any cigarettes or booze you were bringing in. Texas, unlike U.S. customs and Boarder Patrol, has no special authority to stop and search you at a port of entry. The result is that only the stupid pay the tax. The informed just walk on by.

I'm pretty sure you are wrong. The top two reasons they have not filed for bankruptcy of any form are: 1. They don't want to, and 2. They don't need to. They don't want to since management is getting paid nicely if the line makes money or not and having been on the management team that took a firm into bankruptcy does not look good on the resume. They don't need to as long as they can service the debt and pay the bills. When that changes it means they scramble for any other alternative to bankruptcy first, then go bankruptcy if there is no other option. Remember, corporate managers work for themselves first, then for the corporation. They all want to be on a gravy train with the opportunity to move up to a bigger gravy train. A resume that says you drove a company into bankruptcy kind of spoils the party.

We encountered the same thing once. Nothing was different at the terminal.

Like you I don't read those emails closely. I can only hope the fact they are now saying it means there is hope they will act on it. We are on the edge with Carnival after our last couple of cruises in the winter/spring. No price is cheap enough if we don't feel safe.

Most likely what you said. It happens on a regular basis. The email goes out before the web page is updated.

I would just not use VeriFly if I were her.

I could never get past one of the first steps which is taking your picture; and photography is one of my hobbies! The VeriFly app just kept directing me to move the camera (closer, back, etc.) After twenty minutes of trying everything under the sun I realized I had just wasted more time than VeriFly would save me in my lifetime. I deleted it and cursed the idiots who came up with it.

You made me laugh! Not because I disagree with anything you said but because it reminds me of something that happened to my wife. Before each cruise my wife would go to Amazon and buy a few books. On the cruise she would read them. Before a 14 day Panama Canal cruise she went to Amazon and bought a few books but a day into the cruise when she went to read one she could see the title in her library but that was it. It was the same for all the books she had bought. Later she found out that Amazon changed how the kindle worked and these days you have to take an extra step to actually download the book to your Kindle. In the old days when you bought a book it sent the whole book, not just the title, to your Kindle. So there she was on a 14 day cruise with no books to read and no internet to get them. But she actually found something good in the ship's library.

I don't think anyone knows how it works these days. Pre-covid we went on ultras fairly often but never got an invite to an Elite. Upon reopening we got a number of Elite offers with free balcony rooms and casino cash. Lately we get Elite offers with the balcony room but no casino cash. So I think we are not in normal times and the offers have more to do with what they have to offer to who to get the rooms filled. And it would appear they are starting to offer a bit less lately. If there was any normal progression I think covid has thrown that out. When it is once again "normal" we may find we never get another Elite offer. Who knows.

I found the folks there quite friendly. Whenever I left my hotel at night there were always at least a couple of times a young lady would ask if I wanted to have a good time or wanted to party.

Enjoy Saint Greg. (Just posting so I get notifications of new posts on this thread )

It won't make much difference, but I am a bit surprised you got B03 for a 10:30 - 11 arrival time. I took a quick look at our last four Glory cruises and what we had: December 2021 10:30 -11 A01 January 2022 10:30 - 11 B01 February 2022 10:30 - 11 B01 April 2022 10 - 10:30 A01 We usually don't pick the earliest time since we drive a bit over an hour to the terminal and I sleep as late as my wife will allow (I wish she would let me sleep till 10). We have found very little difference in when we got on the ship from A01 to B01. They generally start boarding at about 11. Also, how many are in any given group and how many numbers are within each alphabet letter seems to vary a lot. On one of those cruises we were B01 but they only had A01 and A02 before they called B01.

I'm looking forward to following your cruise. We start our cruising season with a cruise on the Glory in September and were last on the Glory in April - so we will be interested in the current Glory vibe. We have always found the crews on the Glory to be wonderful and helpful folks (except for the customer service desk folks who, as with any folks in such a job, hate to see you coming - I feel for those guys). I think you are in for a great time.

I honestly don't know the state of demand for cruising. But I don't put much faith in headlines about increased bookings. If you do a search for "cruise ship bookings up" you will find articles proclaiming the huge increase in bookings from the time cruising reopened and regularly ever since. The cruise lines have PR departments whose job is to make people think there is a huge demand and cruising is the popular thing to do not matter what the truth is. Most news outlets don't do their own reporting for "space filler" stories, they just publish what PR folks send them. That is why all these stories will reference what the media outlet was told and not what the outlet found. I would think that demand is increasing, but is it increasing enough that the average cruiser who does not get special deals will pay more or is it only increasing enough that the cruise lines will not have to give away as many free berths to those getting special deals? Who knows? Only time and our wallets will tell.

Yes, increased demand will result in increased prices. Some of that is already happening. We only cruise on casino deals (though we are definitely not big league gamblers) so I don't know about "regular" rates. Pre-covid we never got an Elite offer, just Ultra and Premier and usually not a free room. Just after covid we were getting Elite offers with free balcony and $300 - $500 casino cash. Lately we have been getting Elite with free balcony but no casino cash. The premier and Ultra offers have been similarly less attractive recently with smaller casino cash amounts than before. The one we have used most is a "plan now, pay later" offer that we consider better than any of the others (free balcony, free drinks everywhere for one, and $1,000 casino cash). The last offer we have for that is "book before August 31" and I expect if we get that offer again it will also be downsized. We have six cruises booked on that deal for September 2022 through March 2023 (getting while the getting is good). As others have noted, Carnival has already downsized amenities which is another way of raising prices, AKA shrinkflation. We would prefer to pay more and have the old amenities, but when they are paying you to cruise it makes sense to take the deal. But when we start having to pay (no more free balcony) we will move on to another line for the amenities we used to get on Carnival.

Thanks! I think you did a great job on the venues you covered.

I guess it is a question of what is considered a BIG problem. Get stuck on Roatan and see if you consider it a small problem or a big problem. You have to get to the embassy in Tegucigalpa about 170 miles away. Luckily there are one or two flights a day from Roatan to Tegucigalpa for $250 - $300 per person. Then when you get to Tegucigalpa you have to get to the embassy. They require appointments, but you can probably sweet talk them past that in an emergency. Then you need to know the rules of the embassy. For example you can't take cell phones or other electronic devices, bags or luggage or purses and other things they have prohibited and no storage is provided to drop those things at the door. Go with a prohibited item and you are sent away. So with needing a place to store things and just plain time considerations you are on the hook for a hotel in addition to cab fairs. With a passport you avoid all that and can fly from Roatan to Miami on American Airlines for about $250. And for some reason flights from Tegucigalpa to Miami begin at $700 (probably difference in airport gate fees charged by the airports). So in addition to the language problems involved, your cost of not having a passport is $250 per person to get to Tegucigalpa plus hotel and cab costs plus whatever the passport costs plus an additional $450 per person to get to Miami. Financially it is not minor but not a deal breaker; but my time is worth something and I would rather avoid the stress and just hop a flight from the airport a couple of miles from the dock in Roatan. To me the expense and time of getting a passport is the better deal. A problem doesn't have to be the end of the world for me to want to avoid it if it is easy to avoid. Of course a passport does you no good if you don't take it with you when you leave the ship. So most folks with a passport who miss the ship will be going through all the hassle anyway😁

I recall reading a post quite a while back where someone said they tipped their steward $20 or $30 the first day of each cruise and got great service as a result. My thought was "you paid them to think you thought so little of them that they could be bribed and they gave you good service anyhow." I agree, over-tipping up front when you have no experience with their level of service is crass. Save the expressions of gratitude to near then end when you know who deserves special appreciation. Though when I get free drinks I do tip a couple of bucks like I would have been automatically charged if I paid for the drink. I could be misinformed but I was told years back that the waiter gets only a token amount on free drinks.

I understand what you are saying and it is a valid point of view. I also appreciate the change from the virtue signaling that usually pops up when the subject of tips comes up. So I have no problem with what you have said and it is possible we would be thinking the same if we didn't cruise often or cruised often but on different ships. However that is not our situation. We live near New Orleans, don't like to be treated like cattle by the airlines and TSA, and consider a cruise to be the equivalent of our neighbors going to their fishing camp in Grand Isle for a week every now and then. So we only sail out of New Orleans on the Glory and to keep away from the college drunks don't sail in the summer months or on spring break. So we will have five or six cruises on the Glory within eight months or so. This last year we had the same steward on all but one cruise (we always book a room on our favorite hallway and once our steward was out with covid) and our favorite drinks waiter in the casino was on all our cruises. I guarantee you they remember us. When the first time you walk down the hallway where your room is located the steward runs up, greets you by name and gives you a hug or when the drinks waiter in the casino sees you passing through the casino before it opens and asks for your folio number so he'll have it when the casino opens you kind of know those folks will be treating you well. And I don't think it is really because of the tips. We feel no need to pump up our egos with huge tips. A couple of dollars on free drinks and ten dollars from each of us on the last day lets them know you appreciate them. Of course they like folks who appreciate them and of course we like those who go out of their way to make our cruise nice. The tips are to show appreciation to those who have gone out of their way for us and the recipients correctly take it as a signal that we appreciate them and naturally think those who appreciate them are special.

There are many possible deal breakers for us. No food, no drink, no air conditioning and the like. But the thing that is actually approaching deal breaker for us is safety. We're in our late 60s with over 30 cruises. On our last couple of cruises for the first time we felt unsafe at times. The problem is people who have no regard for rules and can not speak a sentence without the "F" word. Carrying around the modern equivalent of a boom box shoving their music down every one else's throat, smoking pot, coming up after you have been sitting for ten minutes and telling you that is their chair... In short, people who don't know how to behave in public, don't care about rules and rather than ask threaten. We suspect the cheap cruises are the cause and hope that as prices go back up the problem will disappear, but we keep getting free cruise offers. We have a few cruises booked but are not booking any more until we see if the problem continues. If it does we will have to go with luxury lines just to feel safe. They can't pay us enough to take a cruise where we don't feel safe.

Ah! Back in the true days of cruising when ships were still used for transportation. I remember something like 50 years ago my parents and I accompanied my uncle's family when they moved from Trinidad back to England. Yes, it was tipping in those days. You tipped those who provided you service. But these days it is a bit different. The so-called tips these days go not only to those who provide you service, but also to to "those behind the scenes." That's another reason it is not really a tip. The problem with doing it the way it was done when it was actually a tip is that part of the pay of "those behind the scenes" is the "tip" money. The cruise lines essentially hold a gun to your head saying "tip our way or else the Filipino guy gets it." It is no fault of that "guy behind the scenes" that part of his pay is this so-called tip and we don't want to hurt those guys so we do it their way.