five.

@Dreamer115 The longest wait during the process was at the elevator to get on the ship. There was one group in front of us. Otherwise, we were continuously moving. I mean we did stop at the desk for documents to be presented and pictures to be taken, but that was an active task. I mean the only standing around waiting, was at the elevators.

@FlorenceItalyHowdy neighbor! If I didn't already have 3 vacations planned and coming off an expensive Alaska trip I would've opted for an upgrade, but I really had no gauge for the prices, so I just took the interior. I did consider the NS upgrade though. Probably the cheapest I'll ever have an opportunity for, lol. I guess $2800 + fees and taxes. I did specifically ask, if we could upgrade after the fact and they said no, it was an on-the-spot decision. I'll probably regret it later.

As promised here is the flyer they gave out with the upgrade prices and more details:

I was on with ship services yesterday about booking a retreat cabana - it took 39 minutes. Most of that on hold and then I forgot to switch my dining time. I tried an old email address I found on here for that, who knows if it'll work. No accent though, easy to understand. Last week in the middle of the night, I was on with Alaska Air for over an hour, but it was an American out of Seattle and she really bent over backwards to assist me. It was amazing service, just took forever to get her on the phone. I did go to the customer service desk 5 times on the 5/28 Koningsdam cruise, short wait entire time, but I did purposefully go when I thought it would be light. I will say the same guy helped me every time and one of the times it was 7AM and 10:30 PM the same day. I asked him what his shift hours were, but he just responded: "I work hard and show up when they need me."

In Vancouver, it was a big convention room and there were two lines with a person at the door, you went one direction if you had verifly and another if you did not. 80% were on the side that did not have it. It is very useful. Have it ready when you enter the room, ready to show the green checkbox that says "ready to sail." I'd go so far as to have a screenshot, in case the app logs you out or internet is overloaded. I actually do that with everything, if there is not an offline ios wallet option, then I take a screenshot. With arrivecan, they did not want to see the paper with the QR code, but that you had the app installed for some reason. Didn't have to be logged in, just on your phone. Very odd there. Never actually had to show it to anyone, but did have to write the code on a paper and turn in.

I actually had the offer on my phone, here is a copy of the one we received on-board. We had to turn it in, so I don't still have it.

On our 5/28 Koningsdam cruise, we got a complimentary interior offer left at our door. Me and the wife, thought it sounded too good to be true, but we went down there and sure enough it was just taxes and port fees. We have a Tropical Caribbean setup on NS for next March. There was the ability to upgrade to other categories, but we stuck with interior and opted to spend our money on spa and retreat cabana. As to who they are targeting? It very much seemed to be an age demographic. I went down there later to see about adding the retreat cabana and the line was filled with young couples holding the same letter that we received. I have done 7 carnival cruises in the past and this was my first HAL. I do have 100 shares in the company, we typically spend about $400 on the ship between drinks and bingo. But based on the line all being younger couples, it definitely seemed to be an age thing. We are M40 and F37 with no kids. I can post the card we received along with the amount they were charging for upgraded categories later when I get home.

I was on this cruise as well and traveled with two people on scooters. Glad to answer any particular questions. I had planned to do a little review myself, but one of my party could not fly back (covid positive) and we ended up driving back and that took a week. Now the cruise seems like a distant memory. If you are asking about embarkation with scooters, I can say that traveling with people with scooters does have a benefit here. We did have verifly, so that did expedite things as well - but yes, handicap has their own line (same one that suites, club orange and status people use, I believe). I did make some notes that embarkation with scooter took 24 minutes from the time that we entered the convention room, until we were on the ship. It was crazy fast and we bypassed so many people. But honestly verifly would have bypassed many of them as well, 80% of people were passed with verifly and maybe 15% were passed because of the scooter. We only had to wait for one person after the verifly check. I do not have any pictures from the conference room. When you have scooters, you go to a human for the face recognition picture with a webcam instead of a machine. There were only two humans and maybe 8-10 machines, so there could be a bit of delay if the two humans were tied up with others. I had been told that if you upload a picture before hand, you could skip that step, but all 4 of us had uploaded pictures using the navigator app and still had to go through that step.

I was on the 5/28 sailing on the walking track and felt like I was right below it for the 3 minute one. It was terrible. The following week I was in the Pan Pacific Vancouver hotel for the 11 minute one and it was crazy. The people in the hot tub at the hotel got pretty angry with them, not that I can blame them. If the 3 minute one was a malfunction, then they probably should have had the fuse puller near by in case of another one. Or abstain until it can be fixed. I did ask during the "ask the captain" if the 3 minute one was a malfunction, but sadly my question was not chosen.