CruisingWalter

Virgin definitely has the most and best food options of any of the 8 cruise lines we've sailed. If you're not hip enough to enjoy a blues trio or a lounge singer for evening entertainment, then I'm not sure which ship you can cruise on. 😆 I have a full Scarlet Lady playlist including review, cabin tour and food tour on my YouTube channel, Where's Walter Travel. CC won't permit me to link to my own channel. 🙂 Carnival Mardi Gras has a ton of included food options. Not the best, but there is a lot of them. Again, a playlist and food tour on my YouTube channel. NCL Prima looks interesting because the Indulge Food Hall is included with their dining so you'll have the buffet, Food Hall and MDR at least included. Disney of course has the rotational dining and their food is excellent.

Mardi Gras was badly understaffed in March when we were there as well, really felt for the staff. They were still just as friendly and eager to please as ever, but they looked exhausted. Agree with the Simple Syrup, in fact adding Mint Simple Syrup makes a daquiri even better. I had no issues at the Fortune Teller bar on our cruise, could belly right up to the bar every time with 5500-5900 sailing on our cruise. That bar was so much better than I expected. ChiBang, they need to deep six the mexican side of the menu. Blue Iguana is much better. The Asian side is pretty good. Guys Pig and Anchor we had an amazing BBQ filet on night one, then three nights later one of the worst meals we've ever had on a cruise ship. The Grand Central is poorly designed as a bad imitation of Royal Caribbean's 270 lounge. the seating is just awful and you have to be there about 2 hours early if you want to see the show. But overall, we did actually enjoy the ship. Rudi's Seagrill is the big saving grace on that ship. One of the best restaurants at sea. Shaq's Big Chicken was amazing. Blue Iguana was great. Pizza del Capitano was great. So while the food was not the best, we did enjoy the ship, though we did have an extended balcony and ended up spending a lot of time there.

Correct. There are some ports that cannot handle the 5000+ passenger ships so the option is either to tender the guests in (if possible) or go to another port. Of course Carnival has plenty of ships throughout their other brands that can call into many ports with smaller ships. Princess, Holland America to name a few and actually Princess has some of the most unique itineraries of any cruise line out there. So if you want that small ship experience, you may have to look at one of their other brands and also Royal Caribbean with their smaller ships plus the Celebrity Millenium class.

we didn't do the brunch but we definitely enjoyed Sea Day lunch at Cucina Del Capitano. That was a lot of fun, basically make your own pasta bowls.

Go on Amazon and pick up a 4 to 12 port USB power hub. Anywhere from $12-$25. That's what I use for all my USB charging needs. (phone, gopro, kindle, camera batteries, etc...) Only takes up one plug for many devices. As others have noted, most power strips without surge protection should be good, though follow @chengkp75 advice on the power strips. They've shared a ton of great maritime advice across Cruise Critic and one of the best factual resources on these forums.

Carnival has been pushing 100%+ capacity since March at least. Depending on which announcement was correct we had 5500 or 5900 on the Mardi Gras in March so that would be 100%+. That's pretty much the goal for Carnival at this time so the days of 'quiet ships' are pretty much over with the Carnival brand. 🙂

Absolutely on the snacks so long as they are pre-packaged. I would bring any potential medications onboard with you. Cruise ships have a full hospital and medical center available, and they are quite impressive, but the costs are extremely high. You'll pay three to four times for any ear infection medication onboard than what you could pay at home. But if you absolutely need something from the ship, they should be able to help you in the medical center.

We went straight to Shaq's Big Chicken, addictively good. The buffet is very small on this ship, so I would skip that. Some other good choices: Street Eats, Blue Iguana, Pizza del Capitano. If it's open, the salad bar up in The Sanctuary. Not sure if that's open on turnaround day. Street Eats is my least favorite of those I mentioned, but they're all better than try to deal with the buffet.

So they squeezed in a few extra berths to add less than 100 people, most likely a few more interiors here and there. If it was 500 or more, than would be a big deal. But Celebration and Mardi Gras are for all intents and purposes the same size. Maximum capacity is still listed at 6500 for both ships and that's most likely due to the lifeboat and limitations there.

They have shown as "additional" on the Carnival website since the ship launched and they still say 'additional' on the website today. They were originally scheduled to be an additional fee, Cucina is an additional $10 I believe on all other Carnival ships. Not sure why they've never updated the site, but as noted by the previous poster, John Heald did say those venues would remain complimentary on the ship for the foreseeable future. I honestly can't see them charging for those venues ever if they want to manage the dinner crowds on those ships.

Where is that information about Celebration holding more passengers? Everything I can find shows the two ships being identical for passenger counts. Approx. 5280 double occupancy, 6500 completely full. Jubilee is showing similar numbers as of right now as well. As for the original question, I would fully expect ChiBang the Cucina del Capitano to be included the same as Mardi Gras in order to spread out the dinner crowds. The MDR would be overwhelmed if they didn't. As with Mardi Gras go with the anytime dining so you have first choice at those two restaurants starting at 5:30. I would suspect Pig and Anchor will also be included like Mardi Gras, again to spread out the dinner crowds. If ChiBang is like the Mardi Gras version, stick with the Asian side of the menu. Blue Iguana has better Mexican food than ChiBang if that's your hankering. Cucina is on par with Olive Garden, maybe a little better, though I will say the lunch during sea day was fun. Best restaurant on Mardi Gras is Rudi's Seagrill so if you're looking for an awesome night out, I highly recommend that restaurant. 555 is a good steakhouse, but Rudi's was the best meal onboard for us.

You should never, ever purchase travel insurance through a cruise line, any cruise line, always purchase it independently. We get far better coverage for either the same amount as the cruise lines or less going third party. We've been cruising since 2006, we purchase insurance for every single cruise, but never with the cruise line. If you cruise enough, definitely look into a yearly policy vs. the per cruise policies. Usually that works if you cruise 28 days or more in a single year or four 7-night cruises.

She worked 9 months straight. The typical captain contract is 3 months on, 3 months off. She IS getting a much needed break right now.

Nope, I had the premium package. No WiFi enabled calls directly with my phone. It could have been done with WhatsApp, FB or other app. But not direct "Calls over WiFi"

I was just more amused by his teaser. Obviously that space has something to do with whatever entertainment Nick is designing for that ship. 🙂

The head of Royal Caribbean's Entertainment, Nick Weir with a little teaser this morning...His official title is SVP, Creator in Chief at RCI Entertainment. In other words, he's responsible for all the original shows on RCI. 🙂

I will eat most anything once. I think live bugs are the only thing I have passed on so far. But most things I'll at least try it.... It doesn't always go well. 🤣

We've taken three cruises so far since the restart. NCL Escape, Carnival Mardi Gras and Virgin Scarlet Lady. If anything we're more excited than ever to keep cruising. I think one thing that happened while we were all 'away for two years' is our recollections of the onboard experiences might have grown the more we were away. We might have all remembered things 'just a little better than they really were.' On top of that, everyone is dealing with staff shortages and supply chain issues are still a thing in the culinary world. So it's entirely possible the meals they're serving us right now might not be the same ingredients we used to have pre-pandemic. I will say the NCL Escape specialty restaurants were absolutely on point, the MDR is usually 'meh' so we don't go there. Scarlet Lady was amazeballs with food at every single venue. Carnival Mardi Gras was pretty good at most venue but Rudi's Seagrill was one of the best meals we've ever had at sea. We have been going on these cruises accepting that things are not fully back up to normal yet and we're just happy to be back on the ships. I've been filming and posting long cruise relaxation videos (up to 2 hours) on my YouTube channel of ocean scenes from the cruise ships 'just in case' anything happens again. I told my wife I missed those views more than anything and I was not going to miss them again. 🙂

Yeah she left Equinox years ago to go to the Edge and then about 10 months ago she joined Beyond as she was under construction. After a 9 month run on the Beyond, she and Bug are taking a well deserved vacation. You should follow her on TikTok, fabulous feed and you can also follow BugNaked for her feed as well. 🙂

Wooooooo, 14 days out of Athens sounds lovely!!

I was wondering how the ship would work at capacity. I think we had 1100 ish when we sailed.

The only time I saw them standing around chatting was during the slow times. Didn't really notice how quickly they were bussing tables as we were just there to grab breakfast and get back to our balcony. That took over 25 minutes to get our food because of the wait to flag down someone, but I really didn't pay much attention to what was happening in the greater Galley area.

We were on a Princess cruise where one couple ordered, caesar salad, roast chicken for the wife, steak for the husband, and vanilla ice cream. Every. Single. Night. They said everything else on the MDR menu was 'too adventurous.' Nevermind going to an Indian, Thai, Hibachi or other cuisine. That's what I mean when I say it's all subjective. Some folks think anything beyond "steak and potatoes" is terrible. Two tablemates tried my escargot on my last cruise and hated it, while I love it. I find the mexican side of the menu at Carnival's ChiBang terrible, the food was so bland it was almost flavorless, but I see glowing reviews of it here on Cruise Critic. So when you see people saying "this restaurant was just terrible" you have to see exactly what their complaint is and possibly read it with a grain of salt. Was the food really bad, or do they just not like what they were served. So food is really really subjective. 🙂

In the restaurants it's just like any other restaurant, you place your order and they serve you. In the Galley if it's slow you can go self order. If it's busy you need to flag down a server and have them place your order and get your food. It's not a great system in The Galley at the moment.

I would not show up any earlier than 3 unless you want to take advantage of the shuttle over to the Bayside Marketplace, which is not a bad place to kill a few hours. We showed up at 11:15am because checkout at the Miami hotel was 11am. So we dropped off the checked bags with the porter, locked our carry ons in the car and took the shuttle over to Bayside. But be aware, when we did this in July, the shuttle disappeared after 1:30. We waited until 2:30 and it never came back so six of us ended up ordering a Lyft to get back to the terminal. The check-in hosts at VV were not happy at all that the shuttle left us stranded at Bayside. It was only a $15 fare and guest services gave us a $15 OBC on the ship so it was a wash. Just frustrating at the beginning of our cruise so if you do opt for that, make sure you get the contact info for the driver and ensure they are coming back at 2:30/3:00pm to pick you up.