Pellaz

I discovered what this mysterious thing called "bulgogi beef" was, all thanks to Street Eats. Yummm! (Also true of shawarma on the Mardi Gras. I'd heard OF it, never had it. I hath now been edumificated and it was great. 😄 )

After years of booking ourselves, we've switched to using a PVP (based on a friend's recommendation) and she's been wonderful. No waiting on the phone line from hell. Able to waive change fees in a single bound! And she's even called me back within ten minutes...on a Sunday. 😄

We had a lot of soot on our Havana patio ("cabana") on the Horizon a month ago. It wasn't a deal-breaker for me, but my friend John is leery about booking one of those again. We're currently booked in a right-off-Lido balcony on Horizon in the fall, and I'd love to shift to a Havana room if one becomes available. Not surprisingly, they are all sold out. My friends would prefer a patio; I'd be happy at this point with a Havana interior. Absolutely! The entire crew back there was awesome, and I remember Luis and Yoga were standouts. When a lady there lost an earring in the pool, one of the deck crew even went to grab goggles and donned a pair of shorts to help me look for them. Fantastic staff. ❤️

Same here, although I'm glad it's still only $15 on Celebration. I rode it on the Mardi Gras and enjoyed it -- did one lap at normal speed and one lap at "boost" speed, and got stuck on the final turn by the funnel. (Probably a track-block issue after discussing it with the awesome staff there.) So, they let me ride it again for free...but I'd still be happy paying $15 for just the standard two laps. I -do- like roller coasters (to a point 🙂 ) so it was great to try a self-powered coaster for the first time, and for those who don't like coasters, hey...it IS totally optional. I'm curious to see if the Celebration includes the subtle, but unique design element at the Bolt that the Mardi Gras has. Hint: when walking up the stairs to Bolt, look closely at the left side of the stairway. 😉

On the Horizon it definitely is the least busy bar, since the casino bar was entirely removed. 😮 However, the latest-open bar on the ship each night is at Pig & Anchor, and that's a short distance from the casino.

We really enjoyed our Havana Cabana room about a month ago on the Horizon, but be aware that the Havana areas on the Excel-class ships are significantly smaller, with a MUCH smaller pool. We really enjoyed the relatively empty pool and hot-tubs, the excellent bar service, the heavy pours from the bartenders, and the attentive service from the Havana deck crew, as well as the comfy chairs and loungers.

Great review! We're on a similar itinerary on Horizon next October, and we did a W. Caribbean sailing on her last October! Had to laugh at your "just bought a house" tale. Years ago I closed on my house the very day before I left for a SF/fantasy/cosplay convention in Atlanta, so I was walking around with two sets of house keys and no chance to visit my new home for a week! 🙂 So sad to hear that Aruba has suffered badly from the storms. The last time I visited, I did a snorkeling excursion right from the pier and didn't see much beyond the port area. You haven't REALLY visited Curacao unless you were stopped by the Swing Bridge at least once. We walked all the way to the government offices to get our passports stamped, and we got blocked twice. And yes, it is brutally hot there. Not too far from the Equator, really. 🙂 Sounds like that singles group was the bane of your existence...I'm just glad it wasn't 300 or 400 people. We noticed some "hot spots" on the ship back in early October, but it wasn't a major issue for us. As for your first-night dining service, that sounds terrible. We've had some lackluster service and some very slow service (Liberty), but never what I would call deliberately rude service. I'd have gotten a photo of their crew card (on the table as a "tent") and notified the maitre'd. We get photos of good serving crews so we know who to ask for...and who to mention in our post-cruise surveys. 😉

You can order appetizer portions of pasta entrees, but not, AFAIK, the other regular entrees. Although they might try to accommodate you if you ask.

True that it is not open on embark day...and neither is Chibang. We were disappointed. False, I think, that it differs from the pasta bar on other ships. I believe lunch at Cucina on the Mardi Gras is similar to other ships...when it's open.

Concur. Not only is Carnival's tour cheaper than Royal's, but you see more areas of the ship with it. I was really hoping it would return before our recent Horizon cruise, as I had done the tour on the Vista pre-COVID and the Engineering Control room on the Vista was worth the price of admission by itself. 🙂

They can change the assigned dining rooms for fixed and YTD for each sailing, based on passengers' selections during booking. We had YTD and were in Flamingo, but we noticed that the sailing right before ours was using the Palm for YTD.

Great question! I always got the ice first and then used the machine, so I'm not sure. I HOPE it was at least slightly chilled, as it is in most fountain machines. I dislike getting warm cans of soda over ice on Carnival. Had a bartender on the Horizon (at P&A) offer to get a can from the cooler behind the bar, and I promptly tipped him a dollar (instead of 50 cents) on my Cheers receipt for that courtesy.

Yes, indeed. A "flat" of 35 canned sodas at Sam's or Costco was around $11 two years ago. They are now $17+. Not quite doubling the price, but a steep increase. 2-liter bottles of Pepsi or Coke products were regularly $1 - $1.50 two years ago at Walmart or Kroger (on sale). They were $2.99 at Kroger last I checked 😮 , but if you got 3 at once they were "only" $2.49, which was now also the shelf price at Walmart.

There are persistent rumors of red velvet cake on the buffet at lunch, which our friend Ashley says is amazing. It might also be an embark-day only item, since she haunted the buffet the rest of the week and never saw it. 🙂 Carnival feeds their crews well. I've been told during more than one BtF Tour that, while the passenger MDR menu repeats every 8 days, the crew-mess menu repeats every 28 days.

Short ribs Mongolian Wok (or Jiji's stir-fry bowl) Prime Rib Shawarma (MG) Bulgogi Beef (MG) Burritos from Blue Iguana Guy's Burgers, and pulled pork at lunch Lasagna bolognese Cucina pasta bowls at lunch Shaq's Big Chicken (MG)

--And flu this season has been pretty widespread. I have a friend whose flu symptoms are far worse than either time he had COVID. 😮 As of October 28th, "CDC estimates that, so far this season, there have been at least 880,000 flu illnesses, 6,900 hospitalizations, and 360 deaths from flu." (source: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm )

Here are a few from me. Sadly, I've gotten more into the habit of posting photos on, err, VisageTome and not cobbling up full reviews of late. https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2808216-mardi-gras-1009-1016-lots-of-good-some-bad-and-some-of-the-quirky/ https://www.cruisecritic.com/memberreviews/memberreview.cfm?EntryID=595101 https://www.cruisecritic.com/memberreviews/memberreview.cfm?EntryID=551239 https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/1856751-victory-1014-review-with-pics/ https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/1650534-liberty-929-review-good-but-alas-not-great/ https://www.cruisecritic.com/memberreviews/memberreview.cfm?EntryID=96886

I spoke to a guy on the Horizon last cruise who did a 50-day cruise on the Conquest back in 2020. --It was one of the Havana pool-deck staff. 🙂 When the industry was shut down due to COVID, Carnival had to get 40,000 crew members back to their home countries and flights were nonexistent or hard to come by. So, they simply designated certain ships to sail to certain countries and divvy'd up the crews between them. His description of the experience was fascinating, including seeing nearly every Carnival ship all coming together in one spot for the big meet-up to exchange crews. Today, if you ask a crew-member and they were part of that massive diaspora, you'll probably get a smile and a good story.

As I recall, it's a 20-second timer. So yes, get your glass pre-prepped with ice first, then do the card. When you use the card, do it firmly and only once, because the system interprets a second accidental swipe as a new request and blocks it for 5? 15? minutes, as per its programming. Blech. The taste from bar soda guns is often....less than optimal. That being said, I remember seeing a soda gun at the aft pool bar on the Conquest, but that was years ago. There's also one in Summers Landing, portside. It's around a slight corner so easy to miss unless you're looking for it.

After all the discussion here about the "cutback" fries at Guy's (oh my), I was dreading getting them on the Horizon a few weeks ago. AND....they weren't anywhere near as bad as I was fearing. I mean, I'm sure the fresh-cut fries were objectively better, but this is not a hill I'm prepared to die on.

You answered your own question. CDC dropped all reporting requirements for cruise lines quite a while ago for precisely that reason.

Yes I did! And I made a mental note as to where it was located...and I've forgotten where it was. 😮 But there IS a giant chess-set.

Same here; I tip on the receipt. Unless some busybody is peering at every receipt I sign, there would be no obvious way for them to see that I was, in fact, tipping. $1 per alcoholic drink, 50 cents for a soda, $2 if they make my Miami Vice the "proper" way. 🙂 And as I mentioned before, the bartender or server DOES get that tip directly. The way I see it, the day I can't afford to tip a little extra here and there is the day I have no business going on a cruise in the first place.

In our experience last October, lunch was good, served buffet-style as on other ships and always complimentary. Dinner, while also complimentary and with no reservation required, was a different story. Despite our completed check-sheets, several of us had mis-plated items. My friend John's babyback ribs were so burnt that you couldn't put a fork into them, and when we notified the chap at the podium, he took photos of the ribs to shame the chef. We didn't darken that threshold the rest of the cruise...for dinner, anyway. We DID return for lunch. I'll also add that, with bands performing on the stage there, it CAN be kinda loud. We opted to sit on the other side of the room in the Heroes Lounge, and that may have affected our service. Hope your experience is better than ours was!

We were just on the Horizon two weeks ago. I think every room likely gets a mini-fridge; we had a Havana patio room. The mini-fridges work best if you "gap" the cabinet door open a bit so it's not "stewing in its own juices," i.e., trying to cool in an unvented, warm environment. We used a washcloth to "jam" the door open...just a little, not too much, but it did the job.