notscb

There's another post on this forum of someone else who was on the same sailing who encountered the same 3 day problem. You might want to revisit your post and take out some of the accusatory language.

I'm curious what you mean by this when technically the cruise line filled their end of their contract of carriage. OP really wouldn't have a case for a charge-back. OP, you stayed in the Haven which is promoted to be a superior level and standard of service. You didn't get that (not NCL's fault directly, but it impacted your experience). You have to decide what you think is fair. To me, given the added cost of the Haven and having to use a public restroom in the middle of the night, I'd think a FCC in a percentage amount of this cruise would be reasonable.

You can get a nonstop to FLL from Buffalo as well via Jetblue and Frontier

Please, please do yourself a favor and go in and set a google flights tracker if you still have this much time. Fares right now are super high but have been dropping over the last two or so weeks. When I was looking at airfare to BCN from the states- it was about 1300 round trip (more than we paid for our cruise), but dropped a few times after we first saw that rate. Alternatively, you could purchase a refundable fare if you find a good one this early out and just have it refunded if you see something better (reminder that the refund process can take weeks)

Does Carnival staff not really monitor this? Just curious, as I haven't been on a Carnival ship since the early 2000's and don't remember it being that bad.

I've been looking around at different itineraries and my MIL made a comment about one of the cities I was hoping to visit being "the worst place for gay people to be" (turns out she was wrong). I wondered, though, given that the rights of LGBTQ+ people around the world aren't always guaranteed, how does that impact everyone in choosing itineraries, cruise lines, departure ports, etc? Are there any destinations you would downright avoid as a cruiser? Any destinations you found particularly friendly and/or overtly welcoming to us?

This seems to be the common thread here. A lot of folks have also recommended it. I'm wondering if you could comment on your experience on Celebrity as a gay couple? I've read good things about Celebrity and the atmosphere on board.

No. I just googles "royalup" and found the link through the RCL search result. Some cruise fares aren't eligible (from what I've read about it- YMMV). On my last cruise it wasn't open until about 30 days before. Again, YMMV.

I had no idea there were actually other options out there! I spent some time looking through Pied Piper's website and was surprised at the affordability of their cruise packages- even on newer ships (like the Apex). I would agree. I've read posts about how Atlantis Cruises are what you make of them, but honestly they are marketing as if they only want a certain type of (masc) queer person to join them and lack a sense of inclusivity in their branding.

Really, Really, Really Nice (you know, I was going to add in that extra one but thought it was too much)

And from what I've seen so far, the adults only areas on Wish are really, really nice.

I guess my question would be will your three year old do well with another transition after already being out of the "routine" for a week? If they were older, I'd think you would have an easier time, but a 3 year old might make an extended vacation challenging.

From the article you posted: "In the 1900s, there was also a strong belief in the ability of science and vaccines to solve medical problems." "Eliminating a disease requires unity of will and effort. We had enormous international consensus behind the smallpox eradication effort – in fact, the effort was first proposed by the Soviet Union. Somehow, I don’t think we could achieve such cooperation today" If we want to see a world where we don't have to even have these discussions about vaccines and covid when it comes to cruising, we would all need to abandon our propensity for individualism and work toward the collective good. The poster wasn't spreading misinformation, according to your own source.

Right, but if you read their post again, they aren't claiming that testing would be the way to stop everyone from getting covid on a cruise. The way I'm reading it is they're saying "Ideally, we would live in a world where nobody would get covid from cruising (their words), and until that is truly possible, continue testing." See the difference in how we're interpreting this?

Genuinely curious- how does a major cruise line simply change their ports when the shore excursion and tourism infrastructure for 4,000 people doesn't exist at many ports?

I don't think that's what they said.

Since my post got deleted, I'll revise my statement. Covid has been shown to not be like every other virus. It's more transmissible and more challenging given the long-covid symptoms we've been seeing and people have had to live with (beyond just a prolonged loss of smell). I think that while it's normal for us to want to get back to cruising as normal, we would do better to recognize that we aren't the only ones that we are placing at risk when getting onboard a ship. The crew is the most obvious, as they have lives and families to get back to and live in much, much more cramped spaces than the passengers do. Look at the amount of folks on this and other threads who say their cruise was great until they got home with covid. How many people did they encounter on the way from the ship to home? Did they fly while contagious? My point is that Covid isn't like every other virus. If we want our vacation experiences to feel "normal," we could be doing better to make sure everyone's vacation experience getting onboard with us can also be normal. Now is not the time for individualism.

The CDC has always been involved in setting guidelines and standards for the cruising industry. Covid wasn't the first and won't be the last time that the CDC and federal government get involved in the travel and tourism industry. This thread is full of folks prematurely celebrating something they haven't read and don't really understand.

Hi All! I figured I'd start a new thread to see if anyone had options for LGBTQ+ specific cruises that were not Atlantis? I'm interested in taking a cruise where (as they say) I'm part of the majority on the ship and don't have to feel out of place, but I'm not sure that Atlantis cruises are exactly right for myself or my husband. Does anyone have any recommendations for cruise lines or specific cruises (could be large, small or private ships) that cater to LGBTQ+ cruisers?

I think the time matters for sure. I was on Freedom (RCL) and the meetup was every night at 10pm at the wine bar. Also at 10pm was the second seating of the nightly entertainment and right after that would be the nightly party (silent disco, etc.). I never got a chance to attend the meetup because there were always other things going on that I wanted to do, and they didn't have any alternate meetup times or locations.

Can you expand on this? I'm genuinely curious about your pro/con list as someone who is really interested in doing Alaska next!

You're conveniently moving the goalposts. The data cited is straight from the source.

And this is huge. The Cruise industry has always had a PR issue when it comes to any spread of disease, especially now. Cruise lines want to portray safety and trust to earn that $$ from their passengers and potential passengers, any covid headlines puts that in jeopardy. I'll add 3) (from the other thread), cruise lines need healthy staff to continue sailing. If that means that passengers coming onboard need vaccines, so be it.

I'm not going to even engage with this comment. It's clearly a joke.

Do you need data on that? It's in the value systems. Do you remember when SARS was a huge thing and even major cities like Toronto had a people wearing masks? But here's an article about it, And a study about mask usage And another about attitudes about mask usage in Germany