Blasian

FYI: I received notification of the change to my Western itinerary (Dec 2019) but my friend with the same itinerary did not receive a notification. There seems to be no rhyme or reason.

Not many details yet; sounds like fall occurred inside the ship

 

https://www.local10.com/news/local/miami/girl-falls-in-cruise-ship-at-port-of-miami-firefighters-say

Completely Heartbreaking :(

Thank you so much.

Or maybe direct me to right place?

**CARNIVAL VISTA** (typo in header)

Leaving in about three weeks for a seven day cruise on Oasis. When is it too early to start packing? I'm not talking about placing a few things back or making a packing list kind of packing. I'm talking get out the big bags and and start filling them up packing.

 

So when do you guys start serious packing for your cruise and is three weeks too early?

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We leave on our cruise in a little over 7 weeks and are about 85% packed.

For me, it is therapeutic and helps me relieve stress. :)

Those of you who are regular cruisers likely know this but hoping someone can learn from our mistake. We were booked for the 7 night Med cruise out of Barcelona. Booked in Jan through RC. 8 of us. For my parents 50th wedding anniversary.

 

Showed up at airport with boarding passes in hand, all 8 of us, 10 bags packed to the rim, and were informed 3 of our kids passports, while still valid another 77 days in US, needed to be 90 days from end of cruise valid.

 

We were crushed.

 

It's a long story and it gets more involved but ultimately were told by RC that even if we could get into Spain, they would not let us on boat, that the kids passports needed to be 6 mos past expiration.

 

We used RC as our travel agent. It would have been nice (though I realize I could have checked into it on my own) if they would have told us US travelers unfamiliar with European policies.

 

We did buy their travel insurance and our flights through them. Who knows how this will all play out. We had months to get it taken care of and had no idea.

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THANK YOU for turning your misfortune into a learning lesson for all of us. I hope you are able to redeem at least some of your loss. :-(

great idea

Setting Sail For Fun,

I became sick soon after returning home from a cruise in 2008. My Dr labeled it noro. She put me on antibiotics with instructions to drink a lot of liquids (mainly water). It was not a pleasant experience. I was confined to my house for a couple of days.

I am a bit of a 'germaphobe' as my husband calls it. I am a religious hand washer and open bathroom doors with paper towels after washing hands and exiting. Even my over the top diligence did not stop me from getting a little sick. STUFF (insert another word here if you'd like :)) HAPPENS!

These are some other thing I now do while cruising or vacationing since then: 1) I spray down all surfaces in the cabin or hotel room before getting settled with a disinfecting spray ( tabletops, phone, bathroom surfaces, toilet,... everything) 2) Even though there are studies that claim vitamins are useless, I still take them daily and especially while on vacation. 3) I try to get in some form of exercise daily that really gets the heart pumping as exercise strengthens the immune system 4) This one is obvious but I stay away from people that are coughing or exhibiting signs of illness. 5) Laugh and have as much fun as possible (another immune booster)

But, it did not diminish the fact that I had a blast during my vacation cruise that year.

I agree! Great video.

GREAT blah blah blah report! :-)

Subscribing

thank you

PompeySailor, I love detailed reviews! Thanks for sharing!

Another poster reported being able to get the promo on an existing booking.

We, too, were able to receive this promotion with an existing booking (this past summer).:D

I love your writing style SunshineCruiser24 and am enjoying your review so far.

Thanks for sharing.

When we went, you could also get the ice show tickets on the first sea day. :)

Thank you both.

Before this cruise I bought some new cruise luggage tag holders from Amazon. 8 tags for $20. This way I don't have to worry about stapling them together the morning of future cruises.

 

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Ohhhh Ahhhh!

Great idea.

Hi,

 

My family and i just got off the Navigator this morning. Overall, it was a great cruise on a nice ship. As a little background, my wife and I have been on about 20 cruises on a variety of lines including Royal, Carnival, Celebrity, Disney, HAL, and some others. We booked the Navigator 6 weeks ago when there were some incredibly low ($374pp) fares. Thus we had an inside cabin on deck 9 which was fine and certainly better than being down on deck 2. It was too cheap to pass up.

 

The ship- Over all she was in good shape. All the public areas were nice and it appears the carpeting and soft furnishings were redone in places. This was my firs time on a Voyager class ship and I found the Royal Promenade to be an amazing space. I can't imagine it on the larger ships. I also like that you can go up on the bow. There are great views there and the captain of the Navigator kept it open most of the time. Overall, i give the ship an A-

 

The food (dining room)- We ate in the main dining room every night. Overall, i found the food there to be very good, especially if you took the waiter's recommendation (not the chef's recommendation in the menu). Standouts were crab cakes (lot's of crab meat), seafood salad, lobster, and turkey. Too be honest, comparing Royal to the Celebrity Reflection last December, I didn't think Celebrity was any better. Grade A

 

The food (buffet)- Definitely a mixed bag. Some things were very good like steak and potatoes, pan fried fish with tomato sauce, etc. Other things were not so good. Breakfast was pretty much the same every day. Grade C

 

Other Food- We ate at Sabor, Royal's extra fee Mexican restaurant on the Navigator. It was very impressive with excellent food. Quacamole made tableside was incredible as were the ships and salsa. If you book for lunch, the menu is the same but it is $10pp cheaper. There was 24 hour food in a bar on the Promenade that had pizza (not great) and sandwiches (shrimp rolls were fantastic). Grade A+ for Sabor.

 

Service- Overall, good. There was a misstep with our dining room request. We asked fro a late seating table for 4. We got My Time Dining. So they gave us a table for 4 the first night and assigned another table for the next day. What a disaster. The next day, we were placed at a table for 10 with a couple that said nothing and a mother and daughter. The daughter was completely drunk and loud and obnoxius. After the longest dinner on record, i caught the head waiter on the way out and requested another change. The next (3rd) night, we finally got our requested table for 4 permanently. The waiter and assistant were fantastic. Our room steward was great too. Grade A.

 

Cabin- it was an inside on deck nine. It was fine, although the bathroom could stand some refurb. There were cigarette burns on the counter and the paint on the door frame was chipped and rusty. The hose for the shower head was leaking quite a bit too, but i guess not bad enough for me to complain. Grade B-

 

Entertainment- The orchestra was quite good and performed in both the Royal Promenade and the shows. I saw one of the production shows and while the singers and dancers were really tallented, I didn't care for the material. It wasn't "bad", just not my taste. There was also a mini show in the Promenade one night that was very popular. The Ice Dancin show was fantastic. Even my teenage son liked it. They also had comedians and a juggler. I thought they were good. Grade B+

 

Overall- a great cruise. The crew seemed happy and always greeted you. The weakest thing in my opinion was the photography. They were 100% digital with monitors that had card readers. You swiped your Seapass card and your pics would come up in theory. For the first half of the cruise, a lot of our pics would never show. When we'd ask, we were repeatedly told "check tomorrow because we are having server problems". There is the ability to look at all the pics of everyone, so we finally did that and found our pics. That seemed to be the answer for every question: "come back tomorrow". The quality wasn't great either. We usually buy one formal and maybe another pic or two. For the formal, they cut off our legs in every shot.

 

Let me know know if you have any questions.

 

Dave

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THANKS for the review.

How far in advance did you book the entertainment shows (i.e ice show)?

They must have had one heck of a honeymoon! lol!

RE:

On the way back to our cabin after lunch we noticed our neighbor's door had not changed a bit during the whole cruise. There was a "Just Married" sign on the door and a "Do Not Disturb" sign in the slot. That has been like that since day 1! Stayed like that for the whole cruise. On the last day, a crew came in and replaced the carpet in that cabin!! Never saw anyone coming or going!

Thanks for the great review! Are taxi stands available near Palm Beach?

RE:All too soon, it was time to get back to the ship. There were a few other ship folks at the beach today, so we hitched a ride back with them as their driver came back for them. We told their driver that ours wouldn't come back for us and he told us that was against the law. Anyway.....we got back without any trouble at all....and the folks from the ship happened to be from North Carolina as well!!

Great review! Thanks for sharing.

Our final flight was on a puddle jumper;

 

Carnival Breeze post cruise by paulmedik, on Flickr

 

 

Safely back in WV;

 

Carnival Breeze post cruise by paulmedik, on Flickr

 

 

Carnival Breeze post cruise by paulmedik, on Flickr

 

 

Baggage claim;

 

Carnival Breeze post cruise by paulmedik, on Flickr

 

 

 

 

We've been home now for nearly one month and the relaxation bestowed upon me by Carnival Breeze still lingers. I can't wait to sail her again!

 

We also still don't have our next cruise booked yet. We're planning for the ship to be Carnival Breeze, but the time frame is up in the air; B2B on Breeze in Summer 2015 is being planned, but surely we'll find something before then!

 

 

Thank you all for the kind comments and I hope I didn't leave too much out....:p

 

For those of you who are tired of reading my rambling and suffering thru all the pictures, please be advised that this is

THE END

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THANK YOU so much for this review. We sail the Breeze August 31st. This review has made me even more exited!

I did this one June of 2010 (before the ship upgrades). It was, BY FAR, one of my most favorite cruises to date. I loved the Spirit even before the upgrades.

Loving your review so far...makes me want to go again! :-)

AWESOME elegant night family portrait! Thanks for taking time to write your review.

Where is the "like" button!

Thanks for writing this great review. I will be sailing on this beautiful ship in August 2013...ONLY 359 more days to go... :-/