dezertcruzer

On 1/26/2024 at 4:43 AM, JohninDC said:

Westshore is where I think you should look - close to TPA airport so most hotels will offer an airport shuttle, and there are lots of dining and shopping options.  Hopefully you can find the medical treatment you need close by.  Taxi from Westshore area hotels to the port should be about $25+, and Uber or Lyft should save you a few dollars.

 

Post cruise you can taxi/Uber/shuttle to TPA to pick up a rental car, or there are hotel locations for both Avis and Hertz near the port that may be able to help with a one-way rental or try the Enterprise in nearby Ybor City.

 

Have a great cruise!

Thank you so much for this very helpful information.

I'm having trouble finding information on hotels for a 2-night stay in Tampa before our Royal Caribbean cruise in November.  We will fly in, stay 2 nights, then board our cruise ship,  I will have dialysis on the day we are in Tampa, so I'll have to locate a dialysis clinic once the hotel is decided upon.  We'll Uber or Lyft for those days, then rent a car after the cruise to drive across the state to the Space Coast.  I have, of course, looked up hotels in Tampa but I'm not familiar with the areas of the airport and the cruise port and looking at maps can only help so much.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

---Jennifer

Just now, Saint Greg said:

 

That's good. Probably not as good as have 5* with both companies though.

I always new you were secretly a good guy!

Just now, Saint Greg said:

 

Both Uber and Lyft?

No uber.  They can't find my condo inside the complex.

On 1/21/2024 at 6:42 PM, Saint Greg said:

 

42 rides. That's good. It's not 49 rides with 5*...but it's pretty good.

Mine is 129 rides and a 5 star rating,  Not bad.

Sid, I have been reading your posts for a long time.  Your writing style is so easy to follow.  You make me feel as if I have known you for years.  I have never commented on your posts before, but I just wanted you to know how much I have enjoyed "cruising along" with you.  I will look for updates on your "journey" on the Tribe thread.  Wishing you many wonderful cruises to come, even if we're not there to follow along with you,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

    <Jennifer

6 hours ago, Hogladyrider said:

Any Tribe members here know what the "Magic Circle" is in Quartzsite?

Isn't it a sort of labrynth where the nudists like to campt?  Being from AZ, it seems to me that's what I remember hearing.

19 hours ago, mkcurran said:

Remote start is not optional in this heat.

My car is 18 years old, and that's not an option for me!

I am so tired of this heat!  Luckily I  only have to go out in it on dialysis days, but DAYUM, the car is so hot when I get out of dialysis at 5:00!.  They do these tests on the news at this time of year and it can be as hot as 165 degrees inside the car.  It's been over 110 degrees every day since June 30th. and we've had, I think the news said today, 16 days at 115 or above.  Enough is enough!

10 hours ago, mkcurran said:

Decided I wasn't going to spend money on anything big for a while. So the AC said hold my beer......

Hoping my ac guy can perform a small miracle. 

McKurran,  We can't afford to be without AC here in the AZ desert.  I hope they can fix it, but I found out a couple of years ago when I had to replace mine that they are much more efficient now than they were in the old days!

w

My first cruise, Fascination 1995, meeting my waiter Jose from Costa Rica and marrying him in 1997.  We're still going strong 26 years later!

On 2/2/2023 at 12:22 PM, Hogladyrider said:

Any Tribe members who are fellow cruisers do you purchase separate cruise insurance?  That research is a whole new world to me.

 

I've read all the entries on CC insurance boards as well.

 

Mostly thinking because we are now considered OLD.

We are huge proponents of travel insurance when cruising.  Even if you are in good health, most insurance, including Medicare, will not cover you in a foreign country, and if you had an accident in a foreign country, hospitalization and repatriation could be extremely expensive.  Hawaii would be an exception, of course, but what if you were hospitalized there and had to be flown home on a medical flight?  You may be able to get by without specific travel insurance for Hawaii, but, in general, I would never advocate cruising without it.

Allianz has come through for us in a big way twice, and I would never use any other company.  While most insurance companies seem to be your adversary in trying to get help and a claim opened and settled, Allianz truly becomes your advocate from the moment you first call them. 

They helped me when I was debarked from the Carnival Pride and hospitalized in Grand Turk.  They sent a medical jet and flew me and my husband to Cleveland Clinic in Fort Lauderdale and paid the entire 6-day stay at the hospital in Grand Turk.  I never had to worry about any of the expenses. or the arrangements for transportation and payment, involved in that whole ordeal, and someone from their customer care department called me daily for a week or so afterwards to inquire about my well-being.

The second time was when I went into kidney failure after a cruise while we were renting a condo in Cape Canaveral.  Medicare and my supplemental insurance paid for those medical expenses, but when I was ready to get out of the hospital Allianz took care of getting me a travel nurse and flying me back to Arizona with him at my side, checking my blood sugars, taking my blood pressure, and checking my oxygen levels every half hour during our first-class flight back to Arizona, all arranged and paid for by Allianz.  I will always get travel insurance, and only from Allianz.

2 hours ago, Hogladyrider said:

Just touching base fellow TRIBE members.  I will be absent starting Monday morning as I start my all day travel back to Yuma, AZ!

 

Not sure how the new knee is going to "handle" the travel day so it may take me a day or two to "settle in".  

 

I am ready to go, backpack is packed.  My brother is taking me to the bus at 8 am which will take me into Logan Airport for my noon flight to Phoenix on AA.

 

I have an hour or so layover in Phoenix then board a puddle jumper hour flight to Yuma landing at 7 pm Yuma time which will be 9 pm Massachusetts time.

 

I am so emotional to get back to my own life, yet mom and I realize this may be our final time together without actually saying those words.  Life is sometimes complicated!

 

I will not miss this cold weather at all, 25 here today!

Hoglady, I have followed your entire knee replacement saga, and I am really happy that it has gone so well for you with all the work you have done.  Welcome back to Arizona.  With today's easy and inexpensive methods of communication you can stay in close contact with your mom and it's hardly like being apart.  (In some cases, even better!)

Hello Tribe members.  I hope you'll allow me to stop in and say happy new year to you all.  I have been a lurker since the original Ay Tee El thread, but never joined in because I never felt I had anything worthwhile to contribute, as well as wondering if one needed an invitation to become a member of this wonderful group of cruisers and friends.  I finally decided that a new year deserved venturing out and making an effort to join in.

My name is Jennifer, I live in Mesa, Arizona, and I met my husband on a cruise ship in 1995.  We haven't cruised since May of 2019 because as soon as we got back from that cruise I spent 20 days in hospital in Cape Canaveral with kidney failure and I have been on dialysis ever since.  There are cruising options with Dialysis at Sea, but they are expensive, so we haven't pulled the trigger.  We have been considering a shorter cruise where I would just miss one treatment, but haven't booked anything yet.

I do follow along and read every post, so if I am allowed to join the group I will start joining in.  Happy New Year, Tribe!

Virgin Voyages does a 4 night that stops in Key West, but not a 3 night.

1 hour ago, NancyC said:

I would think a Lyft or Uber would want a longer fare.  Will it be a problem getting transport for a short distance?  

I did this once in Miami, from a Carnival ship to a Royal Caribbean.  I got a taxi, asked him how much it would be to a hotel in downtown Miami, then offered to pay him that same amount to take me from one ship to the other.  Worked out for both of us.  I got where I wanted to go, and he got a decent fare for very little distance and time.

15 hours ago, TravelBluebird said:

 

Two medical emergencies while traveling only 2 years apart!  I can’t imagine; this is enough to last me a couple decades at least (I hope). Was the emergency at Cape Canaveral also part of a cruise?

No, the Cape Canaveral emergency was total kidney failure.  It was during a condo stay the week after a cruise,  They found that I had some kind of nasty blood infection.  Twelve weeks of heavy duty IV antibiotics and lifetime kidney dialysis were the result.  This was our last trip before the pandemic. 

We were finally able to travel again for Thanksgiving 2021 and we went back to Cape Canaveral for a do-over of all the things we didn't get to do in 2019 since we were doing hospital things instead.  My older brother lives in Rockledge, which is only 10 miles away, and his sons live nearby as well.  My younger brother and his wife also came from Arizona and we had a nice family get together for Thanksgiving.  We plan to go back for Thanksgiving again this year.

Good luck with your trip home and your rehabilitation in the months to come.

On 4/21/2022 at 1:04 PM, TravelBluebird said:

Allianz told my husband to get doctor names and notes.  We would not have thought yo do that.  
 

Dr said medically we should fly First Class but hubby not finding anything that really works for that.  Couple of 2 Stop routes with partial first class.  He’s having trouble finding any 1 stop routes at all.  Any ideas?  

 

 

When I had to be disembarked from Carnival Pride to the hospital in Grand Turk in 2017, Allianz flew me back to the US in a private medical evac jet.  When I became ill and hospitalized in Cape Canaveral in 2019,, Allianz arranged for a private nurse to accompany me in first class from Florida to Arizona.  In both cases, they were in constant contact with me and their service was of superior caliber.  I will never travel without their coverage again.

As people who have to fly across the country for a cruise, we stopped lugging all those heavy clothes along years ago when it got so expensive to do so.  No suit or sport coat for my husband, just khakis and a long sleeve shirt and tie.  For me just black pants and a pretty top.  That's about as fancy as we get in our old age!

3 minutes ago, modes said:

Disconnect your on vacation.

Not helpful, Modes.  Your opinion about cell phone use doesn't answer OP's question or help them in any way.

''When is this supposed to happen?  I love the Spirit class ships,

23 hours ago, Saint Greg said:

And the Big 10 has 14. The PAC-12 (formerly PAC-10) is really the only one that has changed their name to match their membership since this realignment mess started. 

I'm old enough to remember when we were the PAC 8!

I've looked at it, but at least right now, 3 of the ports aren't receiving cruise ships.  Who knows how that will be next September, but I'm not moved to book it right now.

I still have the Carnival Capers from my very first cruise in October 1995 on the brand new Carnival Fascination out of San Juan.  What a great introduction to cruising!  On that cruise I met the man who would become my husband.  We've been married almost 25 years!  Thank you Carnival!

We are going to fly across country to visit family from November 19th to November 30th.  This has been planned for MONTHS, long before all of the cancellations became the norm.  Now I am worried about our return flight on the 30th.  We  have to leave the rented condo on the 30th, and I need to get home for my dialysis treatment the next day.  However, I've lived enough years to know that worrying isn't going to change anything, so I'll just go with the flow.