Pellaz

Heck, for all I know, they might have! 😄

No way of knowing how "deep" they go behind the doors, but yes, they seem small. I remember thinking the door to the brig was surprisingly narrow, too, at least on Horizon. As a fluffy cruiser, maybe I wouldn't fit through the doorway, so....wheee! I can act with carefree abandon onboard! 😄 (Nahh, I'd just be confined to quarters for the duration.)

Oh, absolutely. My mom and her hubby presumably got many years of enjoyment out of the artwork because they were hanging on the walls of the "great room," and the family-room downstairs. I doubt they were looking into them as an investment, either...and yes, calling those purchsers "suckers" is indeed a bit too harsh. I think the main focus here is not the quality or resale value, but the fact that Park West probably inflates the perceived value of the artwork.

No, but typically you walk by the two doors, unsurprisingly labeled "Brig" and "Morgue." On the Horizon BtF tour a few weeks ago, our tour guide prefaced the walk-through by telling us that we would be passing by a few places that were too small for our group to stop near. The crew laundry, crew gym, the morgue and the brig.

Against the dark background of soot-spill, I thought this was pretty nifty. I would never have expected slot machines to fare so well after a power outage.

On Horizon two weeks ago, the Serenity hot-tubs were kinda lukewarm (but the weather was HOT so we didn't mind too much), but the aft hot-tubs were quite warm-to-hot. --And I think those are the only two hot-tub areas on the Vista-class. There are none in the "main" Lido pool area.

Hmm, nope. OP, check your Hub app each day -- the "Captain's Pasta Bar" (Cucina at lunchtime) has generally been open every day in my experience, but it could vary by ship and staffing level. It's very similar on the Excel-class ships for lunch, except that we were heartbroken to find that, at least on the Mardi Gras in 2021, the Cucina was NOT open for lunch on embark day; I don't think Chibang! was either. 😞

They seem to be right next to echother on many ship classes. Vista class for sure, and also Dream and Conquest-class, as I hazily recall from Behind the Fun tours.

My mom and her husband were included in those "suckers." They bought a lot of art pieces aboard various cruise ships and lines. Personally, I thought most of them were garish and kinda jarring, but I don't collect "fine art," just fantasy and sci-fi prints and artist-proofs. Came time for the estate sale. The artwork was discounted pretty heavily...and still, NOT ONE piece sold. 😮

Seaday Brunch, anyone? Y'know, that thing that sounds like "lunch" because it includes lunch?

Oh, it was still pretty cool. Feel special! That machine surely isn't programmed to allow a winner in anything less than 5,000 tries, so the odds against you were at least 5,000 to 1. 🙂

As previously mentioned, the Serenity area on Fantasy-class ships is nice and quiet. Since it's located aft, it is blocked from all the noise on Lido Deck, and it's also nowhere near as windy as the forward-located Serenity areas on newer ships. AND you get a great view of the ship's wake. The Serenity areas on the older ships DO lack their own bar, but there is a bar right up the stairs on Lido Deck, next to those awesome outside "wing" seating areas above Serenity. OP, that was an emergency call and those are normally directed to the shipwide all-call system, including inside staterooms. 😮 Routine announcements are seldom directed to the all-call system, although after a certain hour on debark day they will do so, on the assumption that passengers REALLY need to be awake and preparing to vacate their staterooms. 🙂

I was able to swim underwater laps in Horizon's aft pool in the evenings after most of the folks had cleared out. It was deeper than 4 feet, close to 5 in fact. I really wish the pools onboard (but not the hot-tubs) were saline pools, instead of chlorinated, or full-content seawater. Saline pools DO have some salt content, but not as much as seawater. It's not as bad on your eyes (although I wear a mask or goggles) and not as injurious to swimsuits or swim jammers.

Wow, you must have been in the hillside cabana right next to ours (we would have been to your left from this view). We really liked the hillside cabanas -- cheaper than the others, with your own hot-tub, a really nice view, closer to the included zipline and body slide, and further away from the noisy pool-bar. Close to the Sky Bar and those restrooms, too. We felt those two mains should be on separate nights, not on the same night. 🙂 They served (softly) frozen fruit twice a day on the pool-deck back there, or at least they did last October. We had a Havana cabana room then, but had to settle for a regular balcony in 2023.

I was on this sailing also. Overall we had a good time, but for the first time in a while, we never had "outstanding" service in the MDR causing us to ask for a particular crew again. OTOH, we never had a bad experience there either. 🙂 After this incident, they should simply have the room stewards place extra name-cards in the slot permanently. Cardboard business cards work as well as credit cards. It's not as if power is THAT much of a problem onboard; the ship's diesel generators produce upward of 70 megawatts of power. Carnival REALLY should make the "tutorial" video available to everyone before the cruise, maybe in an email. The system works well, EXCEPT when people don't follow directions and overload a car with a large group that the system isn't "expecting." Yep! I did the catamaran snorkeling in Aruba -- second time -- and it was fine. The cat is surprisingly well-equipped; it even had a soda gun at the bar. We all did the Private Van With Driver for Bonaire and it was the highlight of the entire cruise. Great driver/guide and we saw a huge part of the island, which was great since it was our first time there! We six rented a Hillside Cabana -- it was the LAST cabana of any kind available when I snagged it -- and we were very happy with it. Our own hot-tub, A/C, close proximity to the Sky Bar, slide and zipline (those were included free), and gorgeous views. We paid less for it since the hilltops are regarded as the least desirable of the three cabana-types, but we thought it was great. Oh, it was a mess. It didn't help that the escalator failed at one point, clogging up the gangway. Our hot water never went out, but our friend Jay's did. Our other cruise-friends had no issues. We felt the same way. We really enjoyed the cruise, even though there were a few bumps and hiccups here and there, and we're looking forward to next year on the Celebration.

Same here; my $35 cruise on the Sunrise just after COVID was fine, A/C-wise. Not so on the Liberty about ten years ago; our oceanview wasn't being "conditioned" (i.e., it was moist air, not dry). Only after invoking the Carnival Vacation Guarantee (r.i.p.) did we get moved to a balcony that had opened up due to folks who'd missed the sailing. On our just-completed Horizon cruise, we thought the room started out fine but began getting moist and stuffy. A guest services officer came up with a digital thermometer, shrogged and said, "well, it's showing 71 degrees" and we thought that'd be the end of it..but we noticed that the problem went away and the room seemed "fresher" afterward. Maybe Engineering reset a damper elsewhere or something.

As a followup, I can now confirm that the more limited menu is now in effect aboard the Horizon at Jiji's, with certain preselected ingredients for each choice of bowl or broth. I'll append a photo of the menu below. I liked both the beef and the chicken options (I don't care for shrimp); I thought the beef bowl was slightly better. I was leery of it at first because of the Sichuan peppercorns ("Sichuan" means "hot and spicy" to me, and I prefer milder food), but the server said it wasn't TOO spicy and she was correct. 🙂

Regarding getting a burger without the bun and potentially extra messiness, I noticed on the Horizon this last cruise that they were no longer providing utensils at Guy's Burgers. Previously they'd have silverware wrapped in those red "washcloth" towels, but not any more. They likely dropped the silverware because very few people actually used or needed them for handling burgers or fries. When I asked a Guy's employee out at the condiments bar, he kindly dashed across to Blue Iguana and got me a "standard" set wrapped in the usual blue cloth napkin.

As a followup, we departed on Horizon from Terminal F...but we returned to Terminal D eight days later. 😮 Embarkation was delayed because even at 10:30 am or so, there were still 800 people from the prior sailing still on board due to only one gangway being available. Debarkation was also a cluster due to a few factors, including failure of the down-escalator from the gangway level. "The escalator is out of service and has become...stairs." 🙂 (In fact, they were closed off due to repairs in-progress.)

We boarded Horizon at Miami's Terminal F earlier today; I am now Platinum. We arrived at 10:10, before our arrival time of 10:30, and were whisked through the Priority line as soon as we arrived. Upstairs there is a separate area for Platinum, Diamonds and Suites and we were handed a placard saying "Priority O." We were boarded in order from Priority A thru P, then general boarding commenced. Priority A-C appeared to be for Diamond cruisers. Every port is different, but this is what we experienced today.

On ships with the "secret decks" in front, stand behind the forward riding light. You should then be in an area with almost no incident light and on a clear night without too much haze, you should see the stars jump out at you. We saw the arch of the Milky Way (the Galactic disc) for the first time in YEARS. @ctlyf to answer your query, the Panorama has these "secret" decks in front.

As well-hidden as those staterooms are, I'm surprised they could FIND them. 🙂

Yeah, the Excel class is so completely similar to those other ships that I'm sure everything is pretty much exactly the same..... ...NOT. It all depends on how much you actually care about the behind-the-scenes stuff, of course, but the class is so much bigger and more complex than those others, there's bound to be all sorts of new stuff. For one thing, Excel ships are LNG-powered, which is vastly different from any other class of ship Carnival has -- or, for that matter, most other lines.

In fairness to Carnival, service does not completely stop. Many servers will still be circulating and bringing out orders. Service DOES slow a bit, but it isn't the end of the world as so many people seem to think.

This is also open on embark day, but isn't often mentioned as a Lido Buffet alternative so it's usually uncrowded.