kelkel2

Oh I’ll be following along. I’ve always wanted to do an Alaskan cruise. And I LOVE the Amtrak!

We did it with that guava juice mix. It’s delish with vodka!

I was just going to say this. I know I’ve seen ocean spray in cans at the grocery store! If nothing else you could get juice at breakfast and bring it back and put it in the fridge in the cabin.

I suppose if you really prefer to move your luggage yourself you can, but you’d have to haul it around with you until your new cabin is available. Sounds like a major pain to me. I’d just let the steward do it, but I would tip him nicely for his time.

I guess we really don’t have a true tradition. Other than getting a drink, usually a fun ship, and then lunch.

This is a great review. I haven’t been to NYC since high school. I’m loving reading this!

I am so excited for this one! Thanks for taking us along!

I’m looking forward to more!! Enjoy your cruise!

I love cruising in January, but now that we have kids it’s not really feasible. I’m sure a lot of others have the same issue. With higher demand goes higher prices. If you have the ability to cruise in January do it!

Honestly, anything that saves me time on the check in process is fine with me. I think as Carnival started building bigger and bigger ships they probably had to look at other cruise lines and see what they were doing and how they made check in efficient with that many people. I’m sure several tests and studies were done before they implemented it fleet-wide. But honestly, it may seem insignificant to have someone go grab your cards and come back but like stated above, even if it’s just 1 minute, multiply that 1 minute by every family in line and you’ve got a serious delay.

Are the airlines still canceling crazy amounts of flights and are people still having issues with luggage arriving? I keep seeing stories on social media about flying disasters but is it still widespread? We fly Delta in January and we will have a connecting flight there and back. Leaving the day before our cruise. We did say if something crazy happened we would be willing to drive to get there, but really don’t want to with young kids. Should we have a major back up plan? Our flight leaves 6:05 am Friday for a Saturday cruise. Unfortunately we can’t move it earlier. Well, we maybe could but it would take a LOT of finagling.

That’s the hard thing. I’m sure there’s several people cleaning and I can easily see how it would be difficult to know what has been left behind and what was just brought in. So, we are in a suite. Does that mean I can just open the doors and walk right past the signs that day don’t enter? I really don’t mind waiting either, but this is our children’s first cruise and I would love to drop stuff off if I could.

This is exactly what I was wondering. You don’t have to be vaccinated to get on the ship, but what about getting off the ship in ports?? I assume Carnival can’t force countries to allow people off, should be interesting to see how that plays out.

You can absolutely go to guest services and request the early luggage tags or just choose to do self disembarkation. I don’t think I’ve ever put in my flight information.

That’s a bummer about the no oat milk, that’s my preference in my iced coffee too, Do you have the kind of cold brew maker that isn’t electric and just steeps in the fridge? I would totally bring that!

Can you just put in that you are giving to the port just to skip that part and move on? Maybe you can edit it later if you want.

Thanks for doing this wonderful review. I’ll be following along!

That’s exactly what I was looking at. I didn’t know it wasn’t accurate. Thanks for the info!

I noticed Grand Turk has 3 ships scheduled to be in port the day we’re supposed to dock there in January. It’s the Mardi Gras, a Costa ship and a NCL ship. I thought Grand Turk only could accommodate 2 ships? Or am I remembering wrong? What happens if all 3 are scheduled for the same day and how does it get decided what ship gets the boot? I’m just curious as I love this port. It won’t ruin the cruise, but I would be sad.

I think it’s totally do-able just make sure you walk off with your luggage and have transportation arranged to pick you up.

Honestly, the old decor isn’t my favorite either, but we really have a great time on Carnival. Like you said the food options, especially for lunch, are yummy and the drinks are excellent too. The decor is just kind of meh on the old ships but we can’t wait to sail the Mardi Gras, it looks absolutely beautiful!

What airline are you traveling with? My vote is Atlanta. I wouldn’t want to do O’Hare unless you have a decently long layover, rit’s huge and isn’t the easiest to navigate quickly if need be. Edited to add: sorry I just read it’s delta. I would do Atlanta as that’s Delta’s hub. I feel like they do connections, luggage moving etc really well there, maybe they do well in general…but I feel like if you had any issues there’s plenty of other delta flights to get on in Atlanta just in case.

174 for our first cruise in several years!!

It’s kind of up to you. Usually people are pretty anxious to get on the ship. But also there’s the I have to check out of a hotel aspect, which is us. We usually wouldn’t have anywhere to go other than the port after check out. I have no ncl experience but generally cabins aren’t ready until 1pm. So anyone who boards earlier than that has to keep their carry on luggage with them until their room is ready. If you don’t mind doing that, then I always say earlier is better. Then you can grab lunch as soon as you board the ship.

Our first cruise was on the Ecstasy for our honeymoon too in 2010!!