Playhouse05

We just booked the Luminosa inside obstructed view to Alaska July 18th! We’ve never done anything but a balcony, but after reading this thread I think we’ll be ok. Our 13 yr old daughter is the one who really pushed me to book this since she’s always wanted to go to Alaska, but now I think I’m more excited than her! I just hope there’s a few kids her age on our cruise.

Is Jerlynn (sp?) still working in the Havana area this week? We did a B2B 2 weeks ago in Havana and Kishore and her were our favorites! Jerlynn is constantly mopping, removing the cushions during rain and checking wrist bands. Them and all the “aquatic attendants” were incredibly friendly and made our cruise so awesome. 

Thank you for the attempted live and yes, Go Lions!!!!

We just booked this for our March Vista cruise. Can’t wait! I’ve always wanted to do this but it’s always sold out when I check the excursion desk right when we board. Thanks for the heads up that it’s available.

8 hours ago, Knights on the Beach said:

Ditto!!

Us too! Although we'll be just before you, doing B2B March 23rd and 30th. Thanks for bringing us along WhaleTailFLCruiser!

I’ve been waiting for this Jeff, can’t wait and thank you!

Our April cruise on the Mardi Gras had the Circle C meet up at 8 pm the first night. You will go with them earlier in the day, we went at 1 pm, to check them in but the meet n greet you just drop them and go. Can’t help with the Rudi’s dinner as we didn’t get a chance to dine there. Enjoy your cruise, Mardi Gras has been our favorite ship so far!

We’ve been looking for Jäegermeister in the funshops as well, have ordered it every cruise. My husband finally called Carnival and they said it’s not coming back. We plan on carrying on Red Bull (not Rockstar fans)  and hopefully find Jager at one of the bars since we have Cheers.

We did not need tender stickers when we took our time getting off the ship in Belize last month.

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We just returned from a B2B on the Magic, and experienced what we were told is a new drink policy. In the afternoon, my husband and I like to sit on our balcony with a drink. We had cheers and we usually take turns running down to the Blue Iguana bar, getting drinks for both of us. The second day, the bartender asks where I am? My husband tells them I’m on the balcony. He was told I had to be there to get a drink. Ok then. So he tried the Red Frog and they gave him both our drinks. From then on, we would go to any other bar and they would give us each a drink on our cards with only one of us present. Our friends even tried the Blue Iguana later in the week and the next week and were told both people had to be there. I asked a bar waiter about it and they said it’s a new policy. Anyone else experience this?

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I’m glad someone asked this. We will be with you on the Magic for Easter.

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We received a phone for the kids club to call us during the cruise when our daughter was 3, but since then we haven’t. She’s six now, and we just drop her off and come back to check on her every hour or so. Sometimes she’s ready to leave, other times she begging to stay a while longer.

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We love Melbourne. Small and easy to get through when we did our B2B on the Magic in February.

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Thank you!!! I've been trying to figure out the name of the song I heard constantly on my last cruise. It was Danza Kuduro!

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We just did a B2B February 25th and March 4th and we had the best time ever! There were some things I noticed about cleanliness but I didn't let them bother me. There was a used q-tip on the floor in the forward stairway on day 4 that was still there during our second cruise. My husband even pointed it out to me and I laughed since I had noticed it too. I walked by an ice cream machine and someone (probably a kid) had left the lever pulled down so ice cream was just pouring out onto the floor. I quickly pulled the lever up and when I walked by later the pile of ice cream was melted all over the floor. The sewage smell is real but I never smelled it indoors and only smelled it a few days on our second leg. Deck 11 aft and up by the ropes course is where I found it the worst. I even asked the guys running the ropes course about it and they didn't know what is was but agreed it was pretty terrible. But after all these examples, I can tell you we can't wait to book the Magic again. FYI we had staterooms 11264 and 10282. If anyone has any questions specific to those rooms.

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Our daughters first cruise was when she was 3 years old on the Glory. She absolutely loved it! Since she had never been in daycare or anything, I was nervous about Camp Carnival. But she loved that too. They have a special section in the buffet at dinner where all the kids can eat together while the parents go to the dining room. She wanted to do this almost every night! Pre-register your child online and go to the open house the first night. You'll get a schedule for camp activities for the week. She made a t-shirt (for free), won a dance contest, did all sorts of art crafts and one night we picked her up and she was dressed up like a pirate. They also gave us a cell phone to call us in case she wanted us to pick her up. They only called us once the whole cruise because she wanted us to pick her up and go to the room and order room service. Let me know if you have any specific camp questions. I'll do my best to answer them, our experience was in spring 2015.

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We always put

"Party on future selves!"

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If you normally fly out of Detroit, you may want to look at Southwest out of Flint. They're usually less than Detroit and fly direct to MCO.

We did the Glory for the third time this past March and couldn't agree more, my favorite ship! We're doing the Breeze next February, I really hope it lives up to its reputation.

We just did this at the end of February. We flew into FLL (much cheaper than Miami) and stayed in Ft Lauderdale at the Best Western Plus Dania Beach. The hotel was ok but I mainly chose it because it had free airport pickup and our Miami transport would pick us up there. We used QLS and it was around $72 for 6 of us. They also picked us up from the port in Miami and brought us to the FLL airport for around $75. It all worked out very well and we were extremely satisfied.

I'll disappoint everyone now and say that this is going to be a pretty short review i.e no pics or day by day analysis. I absolutely love those kind of reviews, but I didn't take nearly enough pics and I'm not sure what we did every day. I will touch on Camp Carnival, some food (of course), ports and service in general. So here it goes.

It was my DH (48), myself (35) our DD (4) and another couple with their DD (16). This was my DH and I's third year in a row on the Glory, first cruise for our DD. We flew in the day prior from Grand Rapids on Southwest to FLL. We stayed at the Best Western Plus in Dania Beach. The hotel was fine for what it was. It had an airport shuttle and we had a decent nights sleep. I don't know if I can recommend this hotel, it gets pretty terrible reviews, but we were stuck with it since we booked with Hotwire. Booked a shuttle to the Port of Miami through QLS and everything went fine there.

We arrived to the port around 9:45. I knew we'd be way too early, but we had F2F and my DH was itching to get onboard. We checked in and the wait began. We didn't end up getting on board until about 12:45. That was the latest we'd ever boarded in the past 3 cruises. Carnival stated they were having some issues with 6 passengers clearing customs. We didn't get upset, we were on vacation.

We had room 8360 and our friends had 8374. No problems with either stateroom, typical balconies. Our steward was Alexander and he was awesome! We gave him a nice tip at the beginning and requested that our cooler always have ice. He did everything we asked and always left lots of chocolates and towel animals for our DD every night.

One complaint we did have with our room situation was that the people in the room next to us smoked on their balcony all the time! They would smoke with their balcony door propped open so our whole hallway reeked of smoke. I thought that wasn't allowed anymore? My DH called guest services 3 times to tell them about it and who it was. Two times GS said some people are allowed to smoke on their balcony. What? The third time they sent up the floor supervisor and someone from security. The floor supervisor thought they were allowed to smoke, but security told him not anymore. They left and said they would handle it. Our neighbors and about 5 other balconies around us continued to smoke throughout the week. A few times we even smelled marijuana. At this point we decided to just let it go. We even befriended our neighbors and asked if anyone said anything to them about the smoking and they said no one said a thing to them!

Now onto the food! We felt everything was as good as usual. We actually ate dinner in the MDR 4 times. I usually can only drag DH there once during the week. The servers were awesome with our DD, making her animals with the napkins and doing magic tricks. The food was pretty great too. We had the lasagna, prime rib, cornmeal crusted chicken, onion soup, stuffed mushrooms, shrimp cocktail, flat iron steak, Italian wedding soup, mushroom cream soup, beef brisket, roast chicken, baked meatballs, and caprese salad. Our friends always ordered from the vegetarian menu and said the food was fantastic. One night I upgraded to the steakhouse filet. It was decent, but not as good as I'd had in the actual steakhouse. I probably wouldn't pay the $20 again for it.

We also ate at Fish N Chips, the buffet, Guy's Burgers, Blue Iguana, Pizza Pirate and the deli. They changed the hours for the deli. Most days it was only open from 11-2 and that was it. I was disappointed since my DD loves hot dogs and that was the only place to get them. Oh well, probably better for her.

Before the trip I was so worried my DD wouldn't like Camp Carnival. I didn't plan on her being there all day and night or anything. I just wanted 2 hours a day for the Serenity Deck. Well, my DD loved it! She went the first night and they gave us the cell phone for the week. She lasted about 1 1/2 hrs the first night before they called and said she wanted her mom. We soon realized that if we got Dd to take a late afternoon nap, she was much happier at camp. She even ate dinner with camp a few nights. They meet at the fish n chips (it's closed off) and the camp counsellors serve the kids a special menu. She also did the Night Owls one night until 11:30. It was DH's birthday and our Dd loved it! We went to the towel animal theater on the last sea day, it was pretty cute. DD begged to go to camp right after that so I got to enjoy my last sea day in Serenity!

Our ports were Cozumel, Belize, Mahogany Bay and Grand Cayman. In Cozumel we went into San Miguel and shopped around, then went to Paradise Beach. In Belize, we just tendered into town and walked around the port area. There were a lot more shops and restaurants in the port area than I'd expected. Lots of live music, we had a great time. We just stayed in the port area at Mahogany Bay too. The beach was crazy crowded though, so we just went back to the ship and had it to ourselves. I really wanted to go to Little French Key, but we had to be back onboard by 2:30, and that didn't seem like enough time to really enjoy it. In Grand Cayman we went to the Royal Palms at seven mile beach, then some more shopping and lunch at Guy Harvey's Restaurant. Sadly, no excursions for us this year. I was a little nervous with a 4 year old first time cruiser.

Well, that's about all I have. It was a great cruise as usual. Seas were quite a bit rougher than usual, but no one got sick or anything. If anyone has any questions, I will do my best to answer. Thanks for reading.

Thank you all for your responses. I never thought about our luggage getting wet! Great tip about the plastic bags

So I just looked at the forecast for Saturday in Miami and there's 90% chance for rain and thunderstorms. Anyone experience a storm during sail away? I'm a little bummed because we're cruising with a few first timers and I wanted them to have the fun party atmosphere at the lido sail away party. Do they move the party if it's raining? Or do we just make the best of it and dance in the rain?

Thanks so much for the reply, I think we'll check it out!

We are avid boaters and my husband was looking at possibly having lunch at the Georgetown Yacht Club while we're in Grand Cayman next week. Are the restaurant and bar open to the public? I've looked at their website but can't seem to find this info. Anyone ever been there?