TexasJohn82

I always thought the brown ones were snickerdoodles at least the ones you get from the deli when they aren't chocolate chip

1 hour ago, PA Dutchman said:

well what will the price be /?, they were looking at a different WiFi system that must have died

They only had the regular premium price in the checkout for 21 a day but my sailing is in July (holding off now on wifi to see if they extend it).  If it is cheaper than buying for 4 people I will do it as we have 7 going so two of these hopefully are cheaper than buying internet for 7

Does anyone have any information on the multi device options showing up here?  My cruise is in July, do we know if it will still be around then or is this a trial?  Sorry didn't find anything else on it

9 hours ago, Mike45LC said:

Oh, sparkling water was NOT included in the Bubbles package.  Which is why I didn’t buy the package.

You can get Bubly on the bubbles package for sparkling/zero sugar water

I noticed on the Celebration last week that the staff is forced to use a tablet now for ordering and it makes it difficult to add additional items past the 1 app, 1 entree, 1 dessert as they have to do more steps so it was hit or miss if I got the more than 1 app I ordered through the week depending on the mood of the waiter.

1 hour ago, audcc77 said:

Is Carnival Wi-Fi secure if I use a VPN?

 

I need to connect to the server at work.  
 

I have heard that people do this. 
 

Anyone?  

Depends on your definition of secure.  The Wifi is an open join network so theoretically anyone can sit on the network and scan/snoop traffic just like any public wifi.  As others have pointed out VPN is the technology used to "secure" your connection to your work infrastructure/services but this is hit or miss.  If your company uses the traditional/legacy VPN types you probalby won't be able to connect, if you use a IPSec/HTTPS tunnel type connection (newer VPN) you probably will be able to connect as it is just a SSL/HTTPS connection. Also note that most sites that prompt for SSL your connection is "Safe" as well as your tunnelling your connection through the SSL mechanism so if you are just browsing and don't have a requirement to use VPN then I wouldn't worry about it as long as the site is HTTPS with a valid certificate as Carnival isn't snooping the HTTPS traffic.

11 minutes ago, MistyRo76 said:

When we took our girls cruise last fall, we decorated our cabin for my BFF's birthday which was earlier in the month. I bought some decorations on Amazon and brought them with us. We snuck back to the cabin while she was busy making some last minute calls to her family and decorated. It was not as easy or quick as I expected it to be. First - make sure you bring tape/double sided tape or some kind of sticky stuff to hang items on the walls/ceilings. Command hook type stuff can work as well. Alot of our decor needed to be assembled - banners had to have letters hung on the string, balloons have to be blown up, etc. It was fun to surprise her....but looking back, I wish I would have just paid for Carnival to hang their decorations up for us instead! Then I could have enjoyed another Fun Ship Special up on desk with the rest of our group! 🙂

Just note tape and anything sticky are against the rules from Carnival as it can damage the paint walls, better to use magnet hooks.  Also you should bring non flammable things to hang

I wonder if we will see a price drop on Wifi (will have to happen industry wide) as Starlink should be cheaper.

21 hours ago, lnm6170 said:

we are booked for our cruise in September 30 th cruise .  do you know how far  they are from port ?

TexasJohn82   are you  down the road from Dinwiddie va ?

I am not in VA sorry.

My wife usually plays each time, we have won $50 one time then a few bingo games

I am sure you will get moved soon to the port piece, but here is who I have booked for our cruise in September to Bimini

Bimini Golf Cart Rentals - Rent either a 4-seat or 6-seat Golf Cart Today! (rentbmb.com)

Thanks all, yes it will be a bummer for my wife!

Good day all,

Does anyone know if the Carnival Celebration Casino have the games that you load the quarters into and have the coins that spell out bonus, and if so is it on the non-smoking or smoking side.  It's my wife's favorite game so just trying to determine if they have it!

Thanks, in advance!

On the Vista no you are not

Thanks all, we will try on the ship!

Good day all, we are on the Celebration next month and I have been trying (unsuccessfully) every day to book the Green Eggs and Ham breakfast, they seem to only ever have an opening for one person.

Has anyone had any success with booking as soon as you board the ship?  Based on my booking it looks like there is a breakfast every day (I thought I had heard it was only once per sailing) so I was hoping there was some spare on-board capacity they don't book online.  Any tips would be appreciated!  Thanks in advance.

4 hours ago, Wattshout said:

They give you a phone that allow them to contact you.

They only give phones by default if under 5, if 5 or over you have to ask for the phone.  In a emergency situation they will call your name out over the ship speaker system (after trying your room).  

16 hours ago, BabyJacks17 said:

I was on the Celebration 8 day cruise a few weeks ago and as previously said it was business as usual.

 

The one thing I do remember is that the big "Circus" show that has the high flying aerialist was shown 3 different times during the week - and then a 4th date they had only the music from the show but were saying it was songs from the Greatest Showman - so with all this said, I have to assume one of the days this fell on would have been a port day for Aruba/Bonaire.

 

I will say that Aruba is the busier port with more actives that kept people off a bit longer but by 8pm it felt like a normal evening minus still being in port while at dinner.

 

They did open up the Casino earlier while still in port in both Aruba and Bonaire so that could also be a factor in why things felt semi-normal even though it was a long port day.

Was it pretty easy to get off/on throughout the nighttime hours?  This will be our first Celebration cruise period so not sure if it is easy to get on off anyhow!

Good day folks,

We are on the 8 day ABC cruise for Celebration next month and I was wondering if anyone had any experience as to what happens in the late hours on the Aruba and Bonaire days.  The planner says they depart the port at 10PM, what is the normal time to be back onboard?  Do dinner services/shows/casino still operate as normal or do they wait until they depart?  Do most people stay off the entire time?

This will be our first with late ports so was looking for past experiences from others!

Thanks in advance!

2 hours ago, Sabalon said:

iMessage, like many other things, uses the apple push service.  Most notifications on your phone use that, like my garage door, and like the Carnival Hub app.    And since that whole stream is encrypted between your device and Apple, Carnival can't distinguish between an iMessage or their hub app letting you know your table is ready.   That's why it works (sometimes).    Now...why sending works, I'm not sure, but there is two way communication on the notifications to acknowledge receipt, register for receiving, etc... so perhaps that is how it sends.

 

Our last cruise (March, Elation) it worked pretty well between my wife and I onboard (airplane mode, wifi only for the hub app, nothing paid)   Nothing like being out at a sea and knowing when your garage door opens and closes, or when a network switch at work goes haywire...always 2am.   

Pictures would not send or be received, so we had to wait til we were in port with cellular or find free wifi.  I did have an issue on the last day where my phone decided to sign me out of iMessage for some reason so it all stopped working.     Also, as CruiserLucas said - I wouldn't rely to heavily on it.  Sometimes I'd get it way later.  But we had the same issue with the hub app where my wife got notified our table was ready, but we were halfway through eating when I got the notification.  

The way the services are designed is you keep a connection open for a period of time (it goes to sleep for lack of a better term) to help throttle connections.  So it may work for a period of time as you had a good connection before joining and Carnival is blocking internet access via a gateway (the screen you get to login) so existing connections will still work until they have to re authenticate or re connect at which point it stops working.  So that is why you are hit or miss or worked at the start and not the end.  Android (or at least iPhone to Android) is SMS so no service connection just an old school SMS hence why it won't work even with WifI as Carnival has blocked the call over wifi.  So the services like Ring, your garage door, and Messages are using a always connected service that doesn't require DNS authentication every time.  

I guess long story short there is no guarantee that iMessage will work without Wifi but it does work with Wifi!

We stayed in the Havana Cabana Suite in April 22 on Vista and the Cabana part was fantastic, you don't get a lot of foot traffic across the front so that wasn't an issue, and we really enjoyed the ability to walk from our room to the pool via the balcony.  The Havana area is great, several nights where we had had it to ourselves.

A few notes 

• There is no way to lock the balcony sliding door from the outside so you have to leave it unlocked when going back and forth (but again not a lot of traffic so not a big deal)
• You will hear the music from the Karaoke in the Havana club from your balcony (we didn't really hear it in the state room)
• The suite was nice (very large bathroom and large sitting area, the balcony is no different than the others) but I wouldn't do it again as it wasn't worth the price difference from just a regular Cabana

So a video call really only take 3-5Mbps in bandwidth which wouldn't be the problem on a ship, the problem would be latency (the round trip time it takes to make the connection) and back pressure (the amount of people on the ship wide network).  So while you may have a higher download speed than the 5Mbps you will have latency and back pressure so you may or may not have a good experience.  It will most likely depend on the time of day (during the day less people are on the internet and enjoying the activities on the ship) but people are still connected now.  So I would just be prepared for a potential bad experience regardless of internet plan (from what I read Carnival does not provide Quality of Service routing for Video calls as they do not want them to happen so there is no guarantee for it)

We usually bring an alarm clock that lights up at night and is battery operated for a night light/clock in the room

The app can be downloaded and used without paying, you pay $5 per person per cruise to chat the entire cruise, however note on Vista I have had problems the last two times with it not working at times so your mileage may vary (we had better lock with internet packages and then WhatsApp)

The shows usually started right at 7:30 or so (so with my kids we did early dining and usually missed the first show)

Hobby to Galveston Pier didn't start for us until Noon (even though they said 10AM) and it is a line up and wait.  I will tell you I usually find it easier to Uber to the port for about $60 total

Depending on traffic and the roads down to Galveston I think they usually start boarding around 10:30 AM (we had a suite last April and boarded that early) but there has been times the boat is late and that slows down the boarding (July last year this happened)

You get your boarding time when you check in 14 days (16 for suite or Diamond/Platinum) before your cruise, you will finish your paperwork and choose a boarding group with a time (tip is this is 14 days EST time Midnight so plan on staying up late to get the best time)

Haven't been in that specific room but we were in a Havana Suite last year on Vista and I can tell you the Havana area is fantastic, especially in the evening when everyone is out doing things we had the area to ourselves a few times.  It was also nice to walk from the balcony to the pools/hot tubs and bars but you won't get that on deck 7 only 5.

10 hours ago, blyle said:

Can anyone tell me if the Vista has wood veneer door or metal?  I'd like to decorate my door with magnetic decorations.  I know the older ships are magnetic but not sure about the vista.

We used the 22lb magnetic hooks on Vista twice last year and worked like a charm.

https://a.co/d/9ANZyUH