Pellaz

Or -- and here's a thought -- video and audio surveillance of the baggage collection area recorded by the terminal (i.e., the cruise line, or sometimes the municipality). 1. I don't think any such system is in place; I don't remember seeing any "cameras in use" signs in Miami in the arrivals area, and 2. I also suspect that such recording would be vigorously opposed by ILA and, on the West coast, ILWU. 😉 I believe this differs from what CruiseCritic's resident expert and retired Chief Engineer @chengkp75 has told us in the past. Trust me, the "tipping the porters" topic has come up numerous times here on CC. In any event, though, the longshoremen in the "back of the house" (facing the ship, not us happy-tipping folks) doing all that work do not get tipped. The customer-facing porters are the most senior union members and get the best job. Ever notice that seldom, if ever, will your luggage get taken by anyone who looks younger than 40? 😄 Yes, thanks, "lol," as it happens I have some small experience with individual income taxes. What I meant was that IRS does not consider longshoremen or stevedores to be customarily tipped employees -- and indeed, the vast majority are not -- so those who DO get tipped could easily fly under the radar and underreport their income without much fear of detection or oversight...whereas restaurant servers, bell staff, delivery drivers aren't so lucky. -- signed, an IRS employee (1989- )

Umm, okay. When I've visited Jiji's (or Chibang) for lunch they seat you, bring you a card and a pencil and then you fill in what you want. They stir-fry it and bring it out to your table. Awesome...and "free." Are you saying you no longer get to choose what you want them to stir-fry? Or are you referring to the Mongolian Wok (walk-up area on Lido) where YOU put the items on your plate*, hand it over and they wok it right there? Also awesome, and also "free." ---- * except the proteins; those were always crew-portioned in the past

BINGO! Tip the porters or not...but what that ILA supervisor did was extortion, plain and simple. This is incorrect. The porters you drop your luggage with at the pier do NOT ever enter the ship; that is handled by ship's personnel. All the porters do is put your luggage into the baggage cages and get it to the ocean-side of the terminal; on the way, some pieces will be X-rayed and some not. Ship's personnel take the luggage onboard the ship and into the "marshalling area." No reason why the OP shouldn't have posted the photos here, though. Why not? What would be even better if the exchange had been recorded, either audio or video. As I mentioned, it's extortion. As others have correctly stated, these are ILA union longshoremen. Their average salary is north of $80,000...not including your tips. But yeah, Royal probably wouldn't want to touch it. Not from any aversion to improving our guest experience, but because there is diddly-squat they can do about it. It's not as if PortMiami (or any other cruise port) can suddenly decide "Hey, let's become a non-union right-to-work port." It ain't happening. Again, this is incorrect. The union longshoremen have nothing to do with onboard cabins or delivering your luggage to your stateroom; that is all handled by overworked ships' personnel. Turnover day is always hectic for the crew. Correct. While some longshoremen DO receive tips (from us), the majority do not, and the guys in the back of the terminal don't either. It is not an industry "where tips are customary" as IRS defines it, whereas restaurant servers, etc. are.

In other words, pretty much the way it's always been on Freedom-class ships. The "free"/included venues only include the WJ, the MDR, Sorrentos, and Promenade Café; the latter had the same limited selection of bite-sized sandwiches every day on the Freedom recently: salmon and egg. Meh. Everything else* costs extra: Giovanni's, Chops, Johnny Rockets, etc. ----- * Freedom DID have a new "free" Mexican walk-up kiosk that was okayyyy, but the others don't have it.

On the Horizon last October, it was a mix. Some "in the front" items were guest-served, and items along the back were crew-served. Didn't matter at all to me and the number of selections far exceeded the Lido buffet salad bar's. I haven't experienced any closures of Fresh Creations for high winds (thankfully), but I can definitely see where it might be a good idea; on the Mardi Gras pre-pandemic, the winds were whipping the lettuce up out of the buffet and over into the Serenity pool. 😄 The Serenity bartenders had it worse, though. The winds would whip drink receipts right off the counter before patrons could sign them. Those guys truly need some mini-clipboards for the receipts to keep them from flying away. 😉

Beg pardon? This is the first I've heard that they've dropped the "free"/included stir-fry at lunch in Jiji's. I had it on the Horizon back in October and it was great (as usual). Is this gone now? Umm, now I'm confused, because they've always had "stir-fry" free at lunch, similar to the Mongolian Wok but with no waiting in lines required. Have they dropped this option?

THIS. I was surprised at the nickel-and-diming I experienced on a Royal cruise in February. Excursion pricing was 50-70% higher than an equivalent excursion on Carnival. Drink prices onboard were a few bucks higher, each. The number of "free"/included dining choices was remarkably small -- and this was on the Freedom, not the biggest anymore by any stretch but the biggest cruise-ship in the world when she was launched...and she's bigger than the majority of Carnival's ships to this day. Royal DID add a new "free" eatery to the Freedom, a Mexican place, and while it was a welcome distraction from the usual limited choices, it wasn't anywhere near as good as Blue Iguana Cantina.

Yep, which is why, even if someone who didn't know that about the photo showing up on the point-of-sale register swiped the cards, their spending spree would end pretty quickly. And hopefully, with a call to Security. I was on a Royal cruise in February and I noticed that, as far as I could tell, your photo does NOT show on their sales registers when you make a purchase. 😮

The Vista and the Horizon have the IMAX Theater, but Carnival reconsidered and did NOT include it on the Panorama...I suspect because paying nearly the full land-side price for a movie, even an IMAX experience, just didn't "take off."

I noticed this in February when I sailed on RCI. Their Italian specialty restaurant was $30+. Carnival's (Cucina del Capitano) is $15. Steakhouse prices are closer together nowadays, but Carnival is still a bit less expensive.

I'm not certain, but I'm fairly sure they do. They'd be silly not to, considering the themed area. 🙂

We didn't have any problems like that with the bar, but our dinner visit to Guy's P&A was a once-and-done. Service was slow, items were mis-plated, and my friend John's order of ribs was so overcooked you couldn't put a fork into them...and the maître'd took a photo of them with his cellphone so he could "shame the chef." We DID like the lunch BBQ buffet outside, though...but we're used to it from other ships. We went to the Watering Hole bar pretty often, since it seemed underutilized and seldom busy. Windy too, while underway, but not as windy as the Serenity bar. 😄

$10 in the Cash Crane (failed), and $10 in the Cash Vault machine (amazingly did not fail). And that was it. I'm pretty sure my original $35/pp fare offer was NOT a casino rate, just one of those cheap deals CCL was offering to get bodies into staterooms. Pro tip: the $2,500 "cube of cash" is actually only $1,000 in singles. You have to go to the cage to "cash it in." Which took 45 minutes since they had to review the security footage, etc. Since the cube wouldn't have fit in my backpack anyway, I was happy to get 25 $100 bills instead. And, of course, a tax "hit" now. 🙂

We actually opted to skip Chibang for dinner due to lackluster reviews here on Cruise Critic, and I wish we hadn't, just so we could have formed our own impressions. As I mentioned, my stir-fry bowl was great...but I'm a Mongolian/hibachi FIEND. They also have a separate lunch menu there, free/included, aside from the stir-fry bowl option. Enjoy!

The Asian restaurant is Chibang! (also includes Mexican choices) and they offer complimentary Mongolian Wok-style stir-fry at lunch...except that you don't have to stand in line. Like the ships with Jiji's Asian Kitchen, you sit down, fill out a card and they make it and bring it to you. On my Mardi Gras cruise, it was one of the best lunches I had...and that's sayin' something because the "free"/included lunch options on the Mardi Gras were dizzying, there were so many.

While it is "okay" to print tags in B&W or grayscale, printing them in color helps the luggage porters sort them by deck...because YES, as you and others have surmised, the luggage tags ARE color-coded by deck, and not by area of the ship. Case in point: on one cruise we found an extra "bonus" item of luggage outside our cabin door on the first day. Sure enough, it was for the same room as ours...but on a different deck, and those folks had printed their tags in B&W. 😮 We just brought it upstairs and left it for them outside the correct stateroom. 🙂

Actually, based on recent posts here on CruiseCrtic, NO, it didn't. Or at least, not on all ships and not all the time. Some posters here have reported the "original" good/hand-cut fries WERE available, particularly toward the beginning of the cruise.

I'm curious to know how many PVPs you've had, out of the total number of Carnival PVPs, to make this blanket statement about "most" PVPs being unreachable and taking forever to call back. Really want to see your math on that. In my case, my PVP has called me back within ten minutes...on a Sunday. She's awesome. ❤️ Lol, that's a pretty good example of Fake News right there. Our PVP has gotten change fees waived, and I'm pretty sure Joe Average CallCenter employee can't do that. Plus, our PVP knows what we want and has found sailings and deals that the callcenter folks wouldn't be able to...and, of course, she's so much more easily accessible.

I was offered a $35/pp cruise on the Sunrise, 4-night, interior, for last February. I upgraded to a balcony for not that much (less than $200) and went on my first-ever solo cruise. Then I won $2,500 on the "Cash Vault" machine in the casino on the last night...which paid for the cruise, my airfare, pre-cruise hotel and all about three times over. I spent $20 total in the casino. 🙂 Came home to find $0 offers for cruises with DOU in the casino, including an 8-day cruise to the ABC Islands...and I hated to pass it up, but it departed just 3 days after I had just returned. Oh, well. 😐

You can indeed. My friends wanted the pasta and I wanted Mongolian Wok. I brought my bowl up from the Wok to the Cucina and joined them without any problems at all.

Cucina is also open on embark day and is yet another alternative to Embark Day Buffet Madness (tm). We almost felt guilty up there relaxing, no problem finding a table, etc. (I made a beeline for Mongolian Wok as soon as we boarded and beat the rush...and the long line. I'm an Asian stir-fry FIEND. 🙂 ) There's a spot on the "secret" decks forward where you can stand behind the forward "riding light" and be in near-TOTAL darkness. On a clear night without much of a moon, haze or nearby city lights, let your eyes adjust...and behold the Majesty of the Night Sky, including the disc of our Milky Way galaxy arching up and over you. We were in awe; I hadn't seen the Milky Way like THAT since I was a kid. Also of note: above each bridge "wing" on Deck 9 forward you'll find an electronic gyrocompass. They are protected by Velcro coverings but you can take a look at them. Please replace the Velcro cover when done.

They DO have a half-portion pasta option on the menu card. However, I suspect if you ask them to leave the pasta out, they'll be happy to comply with that request.

Oh, yes. On our cruise last October on Horizon, there was a group of four kids who tried to enter the Havana area "illegally." On the first instance they tried to get past the "door guard" and were repulsed. On the second instance they slipped past the "door guard" while he was away briefly and got into one of the hot-tubs. I knew they were there improperly but didn't speak up as they weren't being disruptive, but when the "guard" saw them he politely but firmly told them to leave. At that point, claiming ignorance of the rules wouldn't have worked. Later they tried to cut in line at Pizzeria del Capitano as a group, people rightly complained, and they were escorted away by ships' security. I never saw them afterward and assumed they had been forced to walk the plank. 😄 It's just a brown sticker saying "Havana." In practice the "door guard" will look for the wristband first, and the sticker second, if needed. The computer system should be automatically aware of your purchase of Bottomless Bubbles or Cheers, and charges (or doesn't charge) accordingly. Sharp contrast to Royal Caribbean three weeks ago, where I had pre-purchased the soda package before sailing. When I went to a bar to get my cruise-specific chipped soda cup, to my astonishment they had to look up my pre-purchase on a long, paper list. How retro! 😮

I was trying to remember when the infamous "Funnel Decks" went away. It was a bit "before my time" on Carnival, alas.

Sadly, the Cucina and Chibang! are not open on embark day like they are on every other non-Excel ship, but don't overlook them for complimentary lunch on other days. Yummmmm.