firefly333

I'd be more inclined to book, yes. I follow stocks. I dont trade while I'm cruising but hate being cut off but at those prices not worth buying either. 14 days x $XX. I'll be diamond my next cruise which is a journey cruise so not even priority embarkation. Before covid at least I was allowed early access to unpack, now its drop off my suitcase, cant unpack which is better than nothing but a downgrade of a perk. If you arent a gambler there is nothing calling me back. I get no offers. Most of my roll call seem to have the cruise thru a casino offer. Carnival seems to only be trying to appeal to gamblers. They need a hook, something worth getting it's worth it to push for points. Royal has people pushing for points. You never read that on carnival. I pushed last year to hit 340 pts on royal to get to the DP340 25% off the cruisefare solo rates. I do get 2 pts a night so it's not as hard on royal. I've seen others pushing for diamond to get that 4 free drinks a day at 80 pts on royal, not that high. I always read carnival pax here on cc say they dont care about perks. Give me free usefull stuff like free drinks I'm in. Discounts. Buy 1 get 1 free dinner. Etc.

Yes. Have to wait until you board. They said they are going to roll out where you can book ahead either the mean with icon, or after icon sails. .. but cant pre book at this time.

I still dont get why people here think the tiers need thinning out. If someone doesnt return then why are you even worried about them? I think carnival has no perks that keep me loyal. Sorry I dont cruise to get my laundry done. As a for instance the perk at pinnacle on royal I will push to get is free wifi the whole cruise. Right now I get 2 days, I want the whole cruise. It doesnt cost the line that much as most probably dont purchase it so few lost sales and isnt labor intensive for them.

I think the bahamas overall is flat and brown but also has lovely beaches if that's all you care about. Roatan to me is more like hawaii and green and mountains. ABC islands are also lovely beaches and water, aruba bonaire and curacao.

That would be my guess too. Add a level above diamond with more perks. Something worth attaining. Rcl top level is 700 pts but even at that level there are extras. A free cruise every so many additional pts for one.

Seems kinda dumb to me too. If they arent sailing it's not like printing their names on a list takes that much work on carnivals part. It's not like I'd miss a bunch of perks anyway. My upcoming cruise is a journey cruise so oh ..we dont do priority boarding for journey cruises. Nothing else I care about. I dont drink bottled water and dont need a luggage tag. First they need to add some perks besides laundry. Everyone here keeps saying oh I love laundry. Finally hitting diamond. Little incentive to me if I hit diamond or not. I dont cruise to get my laundry done. Give me a discount every cruise on a pay restaurant or something. Yes I've heard rumors they will change.

50% seems high though google agrees. Hard to believe. I dont think it's just rcl. I about fell over when I looked at my allstate car insurance bill. I was complaining last time but they got it close to $1k, though it says $1200. Got my new 6 months bill at $1487.xx. I went in, nothing can be done, that's the bill. Googled and got a quote from progressive for $659 exact same coverage. Imo allstate must be pushing those loyal on auto pay to see how high they can go. She had a long page of people to call... as of today I have a new insurance carrier. Didnt want to change but obviously allstate wanted to see how many would just pay it? That's up more than 50% in a year and I reported no accidents. 1 car, nothing unusual. Texas driver. I've been with allstate over 30 years. Royal is doing the same thing. Let's push the price and see how many still pay. In royals case there is a finite number of people that can board each cruise so maybe it's even easier to push prices hard.

The problem with this theory is rcl who owns royal and celebrity does behind the scenes group rates that are much lower than what's advertised. 2 of mine are not much over half what is advertised. VTG would show 5k but my TA price was $2700. Etc. Some arent as heavily discounted, I never know untill I ask. And the $2700 price was a refundable deposit vs the 5k price booking direct was nonrefundable. Your theory assumes all lines post their real prices. I do find carnival pricing very straight forward. Idk if other lines do this but making assumptions without facts doesnt make them true. Some hate rcl dynamic pricing. It for sure isnt apples to apples if you are using vtg. I wasnt aware of the difference myself until after covid when I used a TA. My wonder cruise I booked with nextcruise onboard about $3400. Transferred to TA and now it's just under $1600. Some are almost nothing off. I've had a few only like $30 less that a gty. Solo cant book a gty on royal, 99% usually. Not fair. On carnival I can book a gty and save some. Also refundable so not apples to apples but my dec 13 2024 adventure almost no savings. Carnival I booked direct. There arent 1000 rules and oddities. I agree msc is cheaper ... carnival not so much. I saw a post this morning someone shocked how much jubilee costs. Imo carnival lost its low cost reputation, though as a stock holder I'm ok with that. Ask a TA not what you see on VTG. Some lines play dynamic pricing games.

I'm not sure but the way I read it was the key word was NEW debt. Which would have different conditions. Perhaps wouldn't say cant pay dividends until paid off or whatever terms they borrowed under the older debt getting paid off. Cant believe how strong the stock has been. Since I got off harmony only one day it didnt set a new high since covid. ..today might be the 2nd time.

Yes they will hold them until the end of your b2b. They held mine. If buying onboard, buy the last day so you can take back to your cabin. I dont like to worry it will be delivered.

Why are there so many threads complaining about icon pricing but I've never seen any complaints about star pricing. Is star pricing better than icon? I have really looked, I was on harmony for 3 weeks when the star pricing came out, so maybe I missed it.

I got A06. 10 am. I was wondering if I could have checked in at midnight eastern time. I'm used to rcl who checks in at midnight whatever time zone the ship leaves from. Seems like before I would get A02. Maybe I checked in a hour late? I dont think the A02 or A06 affects anything does it?

Let's not forget more kids. More cabins that hold 3 or 4 pax so they can book more families and kids. ..

I've heard there are plans to put playmakers there where the old diamond lounge is and move it down to 4. Dont hold your breath. I was just on harmony and people were talking.

7 pools. I saw on the thread icon blocks are in the house the infinity pool was filled. First one ever built on a cruise ship.

I'm booked on wonder and utopia and neither is what I'd call inexpensive. Utopia is doing 3 and 4 day cruises so they are less expensive but fewer days. Wonder is currently the newest and imo didnt escape the new high prices for a new ship. Look at star pricing .. As far as wishing and hoping prices come down, I'd say I dont see signs that rcl is lowering prices, mostly they go up not down. I wouldn't hold my breath any time soon prices will come down. I doubt icon is 2 to 3 X higher than wonder, maybe you didnt look at the other new ship prices as closely? And star certainly wouldnt be less, its icon II class.

This cruise I plan on enjoying. It's been a very tough year. Both parents passed and everything fell to me to do. My sister is mentally and physically HC and I tell myself if her husband was normal he wouldnt have married her. I was faced with piles and piles of bills and figuring out trust documents. No one else to help with paperwork which i finally got thru end of oct. So I plan this time on relaxing and enjoying myself. I'll follow along on your review.

I just remember the ant eater and signs saying dont feed the ant eater. Lol I had done another excursion, something about emeralds that went into the old part of the city. Dont care about emeralds but enjoyed the journey. Had to pee so i just got back on the ship. This time I'll make sure i spend more time looking at the birds. I remember the flamingos too, lots of them. Glad to hear you enjoyed the ostriches. My family is into bird watching big time so I decided on that. New ports for me will be costa Rica, aruba and curacao. I did book southern on adventure april 2025 in my signature that does all 3 of the ABC as we are missing bonaire this cruise. This will be my 2nd journey cruise. My alaska was classified as a journey cruise way back when and we had a naturalist onboard. This will also be my first cruise as a diamond on carnival. So I too will hopefully be checking in tonight. Hotel booked. Adding stuff to my suitcase as I think of it. Just today added bug spray for the jungle train. Says bring raingear, but nothing about mosquito repellent but I'm bringing some if we are really riding into the jungle. It shows a regular train but description says the train is open air, so idk. I have some tiny binoculars I got from carnival as a logo gift i might bring too. Reviews seem good enough. Every cruise i seem to miss some port .. like this time I'd have expected bonaire not jamaica as our 6th port lol. After almost 20 years with carnival finally turning diamond. I'll probably stay onboard for jamaica. Just the other 5 I'm interested in seeing. When I did the emerald museum excursion we passed a big fort which I thought the hop on hop off bus did, and maybe still does, but reviews said they had to stay together as a group. Cheap kinda cute hats there vendors were selling. I kinda wanted to shop around a little more this time. Maybe buy some coffee. A vendor came onto our tour bus there selling coffee and I didnt buy then but been thinking about it. The straw hats some got as cheap as $5. We stopped at the fort but just for pictures. So i toured there recently but wanted to stop more on my own this time. The wall there was interesting. We didnt do costa Rica though so that's new to me this time. We went to some really boring city palm sunday this year. I about starved. 7 hours and only a cupcake and it was tiny and whatever I got from a snack machine at the welcome place to the locks. Worst ever excursion lol. Supposed to be 5.5 hours I think and our guide decided to show us extra. We went across some big bridge near the locks to look back at the locks and some monkeys came out but I was on the wrong side of the bus. My excursion this last april. This is the fort in columbia we saw too. In panama I might have gone to a town named portabella. It was supposed to be closer than Panama city is why I picked it. Panama city excursion was 7 hours but they at least got a sandwich. It was soooooo hot that day. The last is the santa clara welcome center for the Panama locks.

Guess what, I'm on this cruise too. I have the 250, stock obc plus $92.xx from another cruise. I booked during the 35 years or whatever it was birthday sale. I was between this and jubilee and clicked hold on a cabin on this one and then it wouldnt let me look at other stuff so I just said ok, I'll take it. I recently docked at colon Panama on the radiance OTS. April this year, was supposed to go jan 30th but my mom passed and funeral friday and cruise was supposed to leave monday and I couldn't leave the house as my bil is a idiot and was stealing stuff from the house. So i no showed to do a similar cruise and did the march 30th and here I am. I was booked 3 excursions but cancelled the hop on hop off bus in columbia. Someone elsewhere said she was worried about the reviews which just today I read. They didnt allow any hopping on and off lol. Cancelled it. I'm still booked for the jungle train in costa rico and the ostrich farm in aruba. Columbia has a bird sanctuary in the port area quite large I didnt really see much last time. Maybe we will meet up on the ship.

I just have the one 2 week booked and went back to royal. Royal has much cheaper group rates and what you see in public isnt what I ever pay. Carnival doesnt do crazy low group rates and dont do perks for less money. Also excursions I have never seen them on sale so I only booked 2 and think they are high priced. Rcl does black friday excursion and other deals. 30% off most excursions. Was 35% off the year before. Nothing from carnival and many are the exact same excursions. Unusual ports or I wouldn't book the 2 i booked. Rcl had all but 1 lunch 40% off during their sales. I booked the cheapest lol Jamie's multiple ships. We did it with friends dec 10th on harmony and they ordered almost every entree and all were brought to them. 14.99 plus tips on harmony 12.99 on older smaller ships so booked it then too at that price. I wish carnival would occasionally do sales. I'm willing to watch. If I could beat royals prices I'd be booking carnival too but carnival has gone nuts. Rcl I get group rates, minus $250 balcony then 25% off the entire fare (solo discount), though it also reduces my balcony discount. I'm at about half the published rates on a couple on rcl. Carnival what you see seems to be the price. I keep looking but carnival is more expensive for me as a solo. I guess if carnival can fill a cabin with a family they dont want us solos. ..of course they had record revenue lol. No surprise to me. Mardi gras still on my bucket list.

Yes Cory's family lives in texas so that's why he gets to stay in texas. So he can see them more often. Hes a decent CD. He gets the newest ships out of texas.

There is a link where you can specify bed arrangement or medical needs. I dont have it saved. Idk if calling actually helps as notes dont seem to get thru. Maybe someone has the link.

I have heard a few crew members saying oh I will be on icon next or wonder. Cant wait. So evidently it is somewhat true. Good crew members do get to ask to be moved to the newest ships if they request it. on the other hand I was told CD cory who is now on harmony has it written in his contract he always gets to work out of texas. good employees I'm sure can make requests.

I keep reading to get "some" euros from my bank before I go. I'm doing 2 legs, a 13 day TA and a 10 day port intensive 2nd leg. Ends in rome where I'm thinking 4 days, more or less, depends on excursions and availability. Im solo so enough for 1 person. Im currently with chase bank but moving, hoping there is a chase there. I will ask before I go about atm charges using my card to get more euros. I doubt I'll book a rcl excursion for every port ahead of time. Some ports I'll walk off and wander. Food is going to be expensive in rome? Tips for excursions in euros not dollars. If you have never been to europe how do you decide how many euros to bring? Bring some ... some is nebulous. 200, 300 .. mostly food or tips I'd think but might be excursions too. Solo I doubt I'd go to some fancy restaurant but I would like to see rome too. How much do you budget a day to eat?

I have dec 13 and dec 21 booked and dec 13 2024 had everything I could buy but dec 21, excursions just dropped within the last month. None in 2025 have stuff to buy. I wait for black friday to buy excursions. I got a TA and a 2nd leg in europe booked 2025, need excursions. Long wait until next black friday. There isnt a set date is what people are telling you.