five.

My mouth was hanging down when I read that. I've only ever saw $50 per person per day. That is amazing.

The other benefit to the elite package is unlimited non-alcoholic drinks. With signature those count against the drink package. With elite they do not.

It's a seven day cruise, so I'd be paying on top of HIA anyways for two of the restaurants. Which is why I don't really see the benefit. Never had internet before and like to get away from it all. So I'll probably stick to separate purchases. Just wondering if they will do anything for BF.

I was hoping that specialty dining would get some BF love, but thus far it's just regular pricing and HIA is still $50 per person per day. They do advertise that spa is 25% off, but weekly access to relaxation area is still $149 per person. Currently debating doing HIA. We will eat at all 3 (PG, Tamarind and Canaletto) and one or two drinks per day. Right now, I am still leaning towards separate purchases for everything.

I don't know why, but both of our Koningsdam cabins had orange extension power cords tucked away in the closets, so that would give you some leeway. I know they can be requested for c-paps, but we did not request them and both rooms had them. I can't say if they were 20 footers or what, but they were pretty long.

19" will fit through the door fine. Might have to tuck in arm rests or remove them. It's doable, just have to be careful. If you are on 8142 on koningsdam, there is a youtube video of that actual cabin. I think if the beds were together, you could possibly store the scooter beside the bed, back it in. It would be tight, but it might be doable. But it might be a situation where it's stored in the hallway somewhere. I am telling you that is completely normal, regardless of what they say beforehand. I've seen in on every cruise I've been on.

The other concern I would have about storing them out on the balcony, take a look at your room plans if you can, there are some rooms where you simply can't get by the bed without it being rotated, no room at the foot of the bed to squeeze by. In our 8143, I don't think you could get by. Here is a screenshot from 8135 walkthrough on youtube: (Oops, I scroll up in the thread and see that someone else has already posted this concern, with actual measurements. Oh well, I will go ahead and post since it's typed.) If you didn't already know, you can go to cruisedeckplans.com and choose your ship and floor and often times there will be pictures and youtube video walkthroughs that will get a good idea of what to expect. Definitely encourage you to check your ship and area.

That's always an option and for a walker, easily doable. For many balconies though, there will be a lip or step up, so for a scooter, it would have to be picked up. And of course, it'd be open to the elements. At one point I had my in-laws in a Ambulatory Accessible Cabin instead of Fully Accessible Cabin on a Carnival ship, with the understanding that the second scooter would stay out on the balcony. (As in that was the direction from the special needs team that called us to discuss our options for two scooters.) That cruise was canceled due to covid, so we never did it in practice. I believe that room did have a ramp on the balcony door, so that part would have been easier. I will say the ramp on the Koningsdam 8145 would have been fine for a walker or rollator, but it would have been rough for a scooter. And you probably would need to have them take the existing furniture or stack it out of the way in the corner. With the furniture out there, it wasn't really ideal for a scooter as well.

I had in my mind (from memory) you might could put it in the shower, but watched a video or two and it looks like there are step ups for both the bathroom door and the shower, so that wouldn't work. On our koningsdam cruise there were tons of scooters in the hallway. They say not to do that, but I've never been on a cruise where there were not scooters in the hallway. But no, in our verandah cabin (8143) it would not have fit. It would have fit in the door without armrests, but not anywhere to conveniently leave it. In our in-laws accessible cabin (8145) there was tons of space. They had two scooters and there was plenty of room. Another nice thing that 8145 had was a button to hit and the door would open automatically. They could theoretically hit the button once and both zoom in, but they had to be ready. Otherwise, they'd have to hit it a second time for the trailing person.

Is there any rhyme or reason to the pattern of the ships that do dock or is it completely random? Even with only one dock, they could tender guests in I guess. But yea, to the person that commented, why is Key West still on the web site as a choice if it's not really a destination anymore? That's the main issue I have with all of this. We would have definitely chosen something else. We are now Nassau, Amber Cove, Grand Turk, HMC.

We are going on a free cruise in March and are still excited. But the whole reason we picked the one we picked was Key West, because it was part of our honeymoon and haven't been back since 2010. The wife in particular was really looking forward to it. So I do understand your frustration. We got our email this morning and now going to Nassau. 👎 And that was after our whole itinerary got shifted away from the Saints to repeats with Royal and honestly we should have gotten some money back on that one or OBC since it's a more expensive cruise, when booking between the two itineraries. But no kind of compensation at all. So yea, itinerary changes are kind a bummer. I had not heard what is in this thread about Key West residents disliking cruise ships. So I let the wife know that we'd know to go land based in order to enjoy Key West in the future.

Kind of sounds like you are describing a Viking cruise. Edit: Oh well, was talking to a co-worker yesterday and it did sound exactly what you were saying. Everything cost wise was up front and no extra costs, but after checking on the cost of a Viking cruise, it is not just "a little extra." It's quiet a bit more, so yea it should definitely be better lol.

I cruised on an Alaska HAL Koningsdam cruise back in May for the first time and my main complaints was that the lido lunch, though very good was the same everyday. And I also did not care for music walk, having the four venues right on top of each other. My wife is fair skinned and HAS to have shade, non-negotiable, so I coughed up the money for a cabana for our next cruise, since it's a warm weather one. Your description of the cabanas sounds terrible lol. But the cruise in this coming March was free, which was also amazing. So we did the spa access and cabana as our cost items. And I might try to bump up to a balcony, we are currently in an interior. At the time of the free interior offer, it would have been $1260 to upgrade to a balcony, no idea if we will have an opportunity to get it cheaper later. I plan to call when we get closer to departure. Your point about no specialty dining, we also went on our first RC cruise and I will say that the non-specialty dining on there was not good. Specialty dining was amazing, but having to paid to get good food really rubbed me the wrong way. I am more likely to cruise with HAL than RC at this point. And we are early 40's.

Most of my Carnival cruises in my signature and the Royal cruise. The Royal one in Sept/22 was super easy, the tv swung out on a bracket and was designed with easy access in mind. I did not actually try on HAL, so I can't comment. We will be on HAL again in March/23 and I can make a point to verify that it still works.

If you take your own universal remote, it usually works. I had taken everything on the Koningsdam and then the built-in on-demand system was good enough, we didn't need to use it. Sometimes you do have to get creative, in order to get to the ports though.

Just curious, did you enjoy the horizontal shower? I did not try that one. It looked like voluntary waterboarding, so I skipped that one. But I enjoyed everything else, including the bucket. Though, I'll be honest, the buttons inside the big shower where the thalassotherapy pool was didn't seem to do anything for me. Just seemed like random things would happen. I couldn't ever get that one to work correctly or very long.

Not sure, it's the same promotion. But on our May sailing on K'dam, we got an onboard offer for a free interior. There was a cost associated with upgrading. We did not do the upgrade and will be in an interior, though we have booked the spa access and a cabana. Here is the letter and associated cost: Also of note, you cannot combine the Shareholders Credit with this offer. That was rejected when I submitted it as I usually do: "The CCL SBC promotion does not combine with the discounted Onboard Insider Deal (YGB) and we are unable to apply the shipboard credit to the booking. We apologize for any inconvenience."

Can confirm it still shows up for me. We probably will not get it, but this is the url: https://www.hollandamerica.com/en_US/deals/have-it-all/have-it-all-upgrade.html I first login to hollandamerica, and then I go to that url and it would be $700 for us.

The quote and article, in case anyone else is interested in the source: https://www.cruiseindustrynews.com/cruise-news/28402-carnival-ceo-high-expectations-for-all-9-brands.html

We will be on this ship out of FLL in March. Exciting stuff. Bummer of a trip thus far, but at least you got your luggage before you left. And depending on the hdd caddy, I've had good luck with a stack of business cards working well to wedge a drive in a broken caddy before.

https://issuu.com/hochmania/docs People will send royalcarribeanblog compass and they upload them here. Sounds like they may not have your itinerary, but this is a good resource to bookmark.

Those pictures look amazing!

Yep, all cruise ships / lines have their positives and negatives and any day at sea is better than being at work...

Fair point and well laid out argument. Our wanting to try non Oasis class ships has more to do with wanting to try some of the smaller ships with less people and find some layouts that are more suited to quiet relaxation. I hated that Solarium did not have the multi level pool and our favorite spot to lounge ended up being on the secluded areas of deck 5. We were cruising during Fiona and the weather that week made the Solarium very hot. At one point I was like "never another oasis class" thinking that it was all the glass keeping the heat in with no breeze. But luckily an old-timer was complaining and said that it had more to do with Fiona than the class of ship. She said other cruise ships in the area were having the same issue. The last day or two were more normal feeling with some breeze. I had never really experienced a cruise with no air flow like that, it was a bit unsettling to be full underway and be dead calm. I will say one of the reasons we did choose Harmony was Sabor because we love Mexican food. It was so good. All of the specialty places we tried were excellent.

All the Carnival hate in this thread, but we just had our first RC cruise a few weeks ago and I've had 7 Carnival ones. After watching all the YT videos, I expected for RC to blow Carnival out of the water. Both the ships, food, clientele. I was a bit letdown on food and clientele. Really enjoyed the shows and ship in general though. I even commented to my wife late on the cruise, "things I never saw on Carnival, that I've seen this week:" 1) used tampon in the middle of the walkway 2) multiple bathrooms that people had peed all over the place (in one, the urine was an inch deep) 3) woman in front of us puked 4) a grown man had poop running down his leg, coming from the pool area I know all those things have probably happened on the big C, but I've never witnessed anything like that. The paid food on RC is amazing, but the good stuff is hidden behind a paywall. The free food in MDR, wind jammer, and various small places were only ok. We will be back on RC, but not Oasis class.