CruizinSusan70

So, did you enjoy your lunch on Ocean Cay at A) Yacht Club restaurant B) the included buffet for those Aurea, Fantastica and Bella cruisers or C) the food trucks?

Whether NOLA has an international airport or not, they have in the past, are currently and will be in the future a secondary embarkation port which is skewed towards people that drive there. When you cruise on NCL you can sometimes get perks free fares and even if you do have to pay a higher fare that includes the perks, you are not forced to pay the gratuities if you wish to decline the perk for their drinks package. If you actually cruised on them in the past, which I will infer you never have, you would have known this.

Overpriced is debatable. For the slight increase in price compared to the Liberty, you do get the "perks" from NCL. But then, you need to sail from NOLA, which like Galveston is primarily a drive to port.

But it's a moot point since the guy is no longer with Princess and it seems like none of the other ships in the fleet are currently doing things with the high standards that he brought day in and day out.

The OP was comparing the Liberty out of NOLA vs the MG out of PC. In NOLA for that time frame, there are 3 options for 7 day cruises. Carnival Liberty, NCL Getaway and RCI Brilliance OTS. In PC, there are 5 options. RCI Wonder OTS, Mardi Gras & NCL Epic all doing 7 day cruises and the Vista and RCI Adventure OTS doing 6/8's. Plus there are more 3/4 day options out of PC as well, so it does come down to supply and demand as usual.

Here's two different available options at the top and at the bottom. The bottom would be a Cove Balcony on deck two, category 7C. There's 9 available such as 2373. Another option is at the top, in a Cloud 9 Spa balcony on deck 14, category 8T. There's 10 cabins available.

As the OP mentioned in the initial post, it's a Kroger Supermarket promotion. If you have no Krogers in your area, it would be a moot point. The best promotion as pointed out by Ninjacat123 in post #3 is by purchasing the cards through AARP or Allstate (when available), you get them at a 10% discount. This is good for 100% of your purchases including cruise fare, excursions, Cheers, gratuities, on board purchases and air fare if booked through Carnival. Have saved thousands of dollars over the past close to 10 years that the program has been around. The same deal is good on Princess cards with all expenses covered at a 10% discount. A two week Alaska cruise that's 8000-9000 saves you 800-900 bucks.

Have you been to Maya Chan before? It's one of the better all inclusive day stops and it includes transportation, unlike the popular ones in Cozumel like Nachi Cocum. We've cruised the Caribbean over 40 times, so we stay on the ship the overwhelming majority of the time, but our bottom two port stops would be Freeport and Nassau.

Mods can do that. Which ship is your sailing embarking on 1/13/24?

Jaime...you did not lead the horse to water, you dropped multiple buckets worth over the OP's head. It's their own fault for not turning their head and taking a sip or two. SMH

The way I described it was how the elevators were on our lone MSC Yacht Club sailing back in January of 2018 on the Seaside. The band worked in the bank of elevators adjacent to YC, but anybody could have used them and other non YC people were miffed on two different occasions when the elevator whisked us to our floor, bypassing the floor that they had wanted to stop at.

And the bands gave you priority over others that were traveling in the elevator with you. So, for example, if you get on the elevator at deck 8 with another couple and they press deck 12 and you swipe the band for deck 16, the elevator takes you to 16 first, upsetting the other couple when the elevator bypasses their floor. This "perk" was only for those booked in Yacht Club.

I would look into the Havana area since you're going to be on the Horizon. If you're not familiar with it, it's on deck 5 aft and it's a private area that only those sailing in a Havana cabin have access to. You also need to be 12+ in order to stay there. Stayed in this area for two separate 8 night bookings and they were great. There are inside, aft balcony, patio balcony and suites available. Since you rarely use your balcony, an inside would do the trick and you can use the savings towards Cheers if you imbibe or excursions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MwlzIuY4B4

You have YTD right now. You can always check in as soon as bookings open up on the app. This should be around 520 when seatings start at 530. On some ships, the two elegant nights may start at 500 because of more people wanting the lobster tails and upgraded options. If you get a good waiter & team on the first night, you can request them for subsequent nights. The flexibility of YTD is nice.

Very true, but there is still a propensity to see more kids on Carnival vs Celebrity during the fall when kids are back in school. Many parents these days think nothing of taking their precious little darlings out of school to go on vacation. And then some of these parents take a vacation from parenting and let the kids run wild and create kaos. After all, the kids can't get lost, they're stuck on a ship.

We're planning on going there two different days for lunch combined with three lunches in the MDR and two in the buffet. We'll probably go there on embarkation day since the buffet will be swamped.

I will infer their names were not Harry & Sally.

Deck 6 is of course one deck above deck 5, which is a busy noisy deck. Decks 7 & 8 have cabins above and below, so your buffered. If you can get deck 6 aft above the Havana area cabins, you're buffered as well

Have to fully agree with Kwokpot. Celebrity vs the Valor is an apple vs orange comparison. The Valor is a 19 year old ship that was refurbished 7 years ago. She will be showing her age. If you go into it with low expectations, you'll have a good time. If you think it'll be close to what you experienced on Celebrity, you'll be disappointed. There are only two things that Carnival does better than Celebrity. Comedy and more included free lunch options. If you're looking for an experience on Carnival that would come closest to X, you need to sail on one of the three Excel Class ships. The Mardi Gras out of Port Canaveral, the Celebration out of Miami and the Jubilee out of Galveston.

Have never purchased internet a la carte on any cruise we have ever taken. If it's part of a package on Princess or Celebrity, we'll use it. Or if we get 250 minutes with NCL, we'll use it, but it's only to clean up emails and surf cruise critic. So we can do without for a week if need be and just leave the cell phone in the safe or on airplane mode.

No, not planning on doing specialty. I don't do seafood, teppanyaki is not worth it because of the upcharge and limited choice. And Butchers Cut is limited as well. Their policy is the worst compared to the US based cruise lines when it comes to specialties.

We don't drink wine, but the majority of our drinks are at Good Spirits with their specialty menu at night. So breaking the 45 per person is a walk in the park.

At 10 bucks a drink, that's 4 for me and 5 for DH. Any more plus soda, coffee, San Pellegrino etc is all gravy.

This is our first time to Alaska and we like the newer modern ships so those facts combined with this itinerary were the primary reasons we chose it. The middle of this cruise starting with Skagway with the train into Canada through the second time to Glacier Bay is what we're looking forward to.