cruzincat50

22 hours ago, trbarton said:

I have Carnivals “Hub” app & when I enter all of my information including my booking number I get a message “Unable to locate the booking with the information provided”. My cruise is not until September of next year. Does my cruise date make a difference?

Is it more than 7 days long?

Booked the last full week in August, 2022.  FL schools should still be in session, but our Grandkids in Maryland won't be.  

It would be easy for a company to move cruises around and jockey ships around like Carnival has done in this case, in order to force people to rebook on cruises that will cost them more money.  I hope that is not what Carnival is trying to do here.

The Pride and the Glory are waiting their turns to go into the Curacao port.  I am hoping they are there to pick up what was removed for Fantasy and Inspiration.  If you look around on tracking sites, the Caribbean Princess and Coral Princess have been steaming around the ABC islands for a little while now, too.  Probably waiting their turns.

Let your TA contact Carnival, if you have one.  Once on board, and toward the end of your first cruise, if you haven't heard anything, go to guest services.  The important thing is to enjoy your cruise and avoid worrying about it.

On 12/4/2019 at 6:05 PM, E@syPe@zy said:

I'm not going to give paypal my credit card number.  Sorry, it's just not something I do.

I'll check out Allstate.  I've been an Allstate customer for years.  Now if I can just do it on the PC and not on my cell phone.  I tried logging in to Allstate and they want me to download an app.  I'm old fashioned and old and just like to do things on my PC where I know I have a firewall for protection.

The only thing the app does is track your braking and speed.  You don't have to load up a credit card on the app for your phone.  Only to purchase cards from your PC on the Allstate site.

You are also limited to one Carnival Gift Card per month, and right now only the $100 card is available.  And, they are eGift Cards, which, from time to time, have issues of their own.  I won't risk it right now.

You can join Allstate Drivewise, without having to have Allstate insurance.  If you are new, you get enough points to purchase three $500 cards, just for joining.  You get more points for driving under 80 mph, and not doing any hard braking.  It monitors your GPS on your smart phone. So there are those privacy issues, but not an issue for me.

Allstate uses the same company, Deluxe, to run the program, that AARP used before the big switch.  They still sell the hard cards.  The only issue I had with Deluxe was requiring a signature to receive cards worth $500 or more, but not providing tracking numbers when they are shipped. They also still have the better cards for other things, such as restaurant discounts, with no limits on the number of cards you can purchase.

Does it make a difference if there is a cabin change between the legs?

12 hours ago, sunonfire said:

You can request that the extra keys don’t have charging privileges. We travel with my son and his family and I get him a key to access our cabin. We spend most of our time on our balcony and we cannot hear him knocking.  As a privacy thing, we always double lock the door.

I believe the extra key cards do not have a folio number on them.  That way nothing can be charged on them. I haven't gotten one before so I could be wrong about that.

I’ve tried, but my ears are not that good and on some ships, like the Pride, Guys is right next to where the bands play by the pool. I can speak as loud as I can with any special requests or questions but I never know if they got it right, especially considering the language/accent barrier.  So I just order the ringer and I am happy with it.

We’ve spent some time in the casino on our cruises, but the best offer we have been given is the chance to gamble on a cheaper deposit that is not refundable. We have yet to cancel a booked cruise and we are retired, so that’s not much of a gamble. I will let us jump on a cruise we would like and get a good cabin choice. The P1R offer code says “up to $138” discount, but it never seems to show up on cruises we would like.

2 minutes ago, Organized Chaos said:

 

The banner I see still says mid-September. And when I click on it to their informational page, I don't see anything that says Sept. 1st. They even mention mid-Sept. again. Where are you seeing 8/1 exactly, on the Rewards for Good site somewhere?

 

Here's the banner I see...

 

Note the thread is for the sweepstakes for the Carnival Gift Cards.  Look at upcoming sweepstakes on the Redeem points page.

4 minutes ago, NCTribeFan said:

Ah, thanks.  I did just order another 4 x $100 cards (because I'm not home to sign for $500 cards).  That leaves me with just under 5,000 remaining points.  I think my best option is to buy more GCs rather than use them for a Sweeps drawing.  At least I'm guaranteed of getting something for my points if I do that!

 

My October cruise final payment is due in about a month, but I then have a Med/TA B2B for October 2020, which isn't cheap, so I can keep a couple back to help pay for that eventually.

You can still acquire more points in a day than you can apply toward this one Sweepstakes.  Even enough to carry on through the end of the Sweepstakes. 

And now the site is saying it starts 8/1 again.  This may be a clue as to why they are changing things up.  They have a hard time keeping things straight!😃

11 hours ago, Diggerof4 said:

Bumping my question. I read on another board that effective 8/1 they are going to have new point system. If this is true, wasn't sure if the points already accumulated will transfer to new system. Does anyone know this to be a fact?  Can't find anything on their web site. 

Once on the RfG website, scroll to the bottom where you see Community mentioned.  Click on that.  Scroll down to Technology and expand it.  Click on Rewards For Good, and you will be in the forum for the program.  You will find the answer to your question somewhere in there.

I just looked at it again and now it says it starts on 7/31.

It doesn't cost anything.  Just points which are free.  See other threads about how to get on the AARP Rewards for Good site.

typically the cost is 98 points per day after logging in, which gives you 2 points.  The smaller value sweeps are 49 points.  The big ones are 2 points per entry, the smaller are 1/entry.

On August 1, you can start buying entries for one of two Carnival gift card sets worth $5000.00 each.  I plan on maxing my entries out!

Here is an option to consider.  it's just my idea that I came up with reading this thread.

If CCL gave you the option to join a new loyalty program across all lines, would you take a bump down to the next lower level?  In other words, if you are Platinum on Carnival, to go with the CCL brand loyalty, you would be the equivalent of Gold across all lines, including Carnival.

How many might consider such a move?  This might be one way to reduce the number of P/Ds.

On 6/26/2019 at 9:18 PM, jbethel11 said:

As others have mentioned earlier, you can always sign up for the free UPS service which allows you to change your delivery address to the local UPS Store. 

The only problem with this is that the company that sends the cards out never emails a tracking number.  According to the AARP community forum people that will change under the new program.

1 hour ago, chengkp75 said:

One of the glaring discrepancies with this spreadsheet, is that the Oasis class is well down the list.  A lot of this is because the Central Park and Boardwalk areas are not included in Gross Tonnage (not enclosed space), so this public space is discounted.  A quick measurement of these areas from deck plans shows that they amount to 23,000 units of 100 cubic feet (and Gross Tonnage, unlike Gross Registered Tonnage, which is no longer used, is not a direct measurement of 100 cubic feet).  But, lets say we figure on 21,000 GT if this space were enclosed.  That would move Oasis up to 44.5 or better on your spreadsheet.

 

Balancing this is the reason I hate to use a GT/pax ratio, because GT includes crew living space, machinery spaces, and tankage (fuel, water).  A more accurate measurement would be a NT/pax (Net Tonnage) ratio, since Net Tonnage only considers the enclosed space used by passengers.  But Oasis would still suffer there due to the large unenclosed spaces, and secondly, no one ever sees NT figures outside of the ship's plans.

Even the four Spirit Class ships would have variance from each other because of minor changes to the layouts via upgrades like the addition of restaurants on Lido, or the subtraction of other features.  GT/pax is alway going to be inaccurate, but somewhat accurate with ranking in large number differences.  

19 minutes ago, chengkp75 said:

The Dominion Cove Point LNG terminal is an offshore terminal about 2 miles into the Bay.  I am not sure the mooring arrangement could handle a cruise ship, even if they wanted to spend the time to divert there each trip.  They could, however, contract with someone to build an LNG bunker barge, in the US, to run back and forth to the Baltimore cruise terminal.  Without a lot of customers (only the one potential cruise ship), that would be a costly business for the cruise lines, as they would essentially be subsidizing the bunker company.  Also, I don't know the Maryland or Virginia laws regarding loading and unloading LNG in metropolitan areas, so there could be some legal delays.  And, the LNG export facility has only started about a year ago, and the export capacity has been sold to an Indian energy company for the next 20 years, and is scheduled to go to Japan, so I doubt they would look to provide the small amounts that one cruise ship would take.

The problem is the cruise ships that would require LNG are too big to get to Baltimore. The offshore terminal is about 1.1 miles off shore at its closest point. A cruise terminal built north or south of the facility could get fuel via a new pipeline from the storage facility on shore (Visible on Google Earth).  The LNG gets there by pipeline already. Not sure of the path it takes getting there.  

I would be pretty sure that any cruise ships wanting a relatively small amount of the total output could make arrangements with whatever entity has claim to it.  

Parking for the cruise terminal could be inland a ways, with some sort of shuttle service or light rail option to move the passengers to the terminal, so as to alleviate some of the local’s concerns. 

Given the choice between paying to replace existing bridges with higher ones through tax dollars, or letting a cruise organization foot the bill for a new cruise terminal south of the bridges, which choice would you make if you lived in Maryland?

14 minutes ago, PhillyFan33579 said:

 

I don’t think it is going to happen any time soon, but at some point ports like Baltimore and Tampa with bridge height limits are going to be shut out from the cruise industry if they don’t address their bridge issue sooner or later. 

Maryland has an LNG shipping port below the first bridge coming up the bay. It would be a good area to build a new cruise port if it comes to that.  Then the new ships fueled by LNG, could come up from Port Canaveral, closer to a larger population.  

Only problem with that will be the wealthy nimby types that live on the bay not wanting to see all the traffic it would bring, as well as the docks and noise they would bring.  

Also, Maryland has been considering adding a third span somewhere on the bay to take the pressure off the roads and bridges that are there now.  They have been studying that for decades and can’t even make up their minds where to put it.  Raising the existing bridges just for cruise ships won’t happen in my lifetime if ever.  

37 minutes ago, TEXSUN46 said:

My perception of crowded depends on how they spread the popular spots. On the Conquest class there seems to be plenty of places that you can go and not see anyone because there is no popular venues in those areas. The popular spots were in same area so anytime you were in those areas it felt crowded and because of how some of the levels don't go through you had to pass through crowded areas to get anywhere. Comparing that class to the Magic I found that it seemed there was less crowding on the Magic even though there was less spaces that seemed empty there was better dispersal of the crowd and more ease going one end to another without having to pass through a mob. I will be on the Vista in October and am curious to see how it flows in comparison.

And I will be on the Conquest for the first time in October, so I will see first hand what you are talking about.

1 hour ago, jimbo5544 said:

You can call it whatever you like...  opinions count all the way I around.  I will not disparage you for yours...😎  If you want to debate who adds more value here, I am up for that, start a thread and we can.  Oh....the indicator for open space still stinks.

Even debating value comes down to a differing of opinions as to what constitutes value. Pointless to fight that fight. It’s like arguing politics from the two extremes.  A waste of time.

5 minutes ago, crewsweeper said:

While this is enlightening, it's still tonnage versus passenger count.  Not open public space versus passenger count.  Or total sq footage devoted to cabins versus ship size.  However, I'm doubting the rankings would change all that much. maybe around the margins. The push for/ cost of bigger ships is a push/need for more passengers and passenger generated revenues.  More cabins fit that model.

I haven't found much if any information on public space.  Basically the comparison is just a tool that someone, especially if they have been on several different size ships in the past, to compare other ships to what their experience was. I feel very lucky that we live within 20 minutes of the Port of Baltimore.  The Pride has a very nice layout and never feels crowded.  The bridges that a cruise ship has to get under to get to Baltimore means that the mega ships will never be able to come here, effectively meaning Carnival may have to keep the Spirit class of ships around for longer than they otherwise would.   The market for cruises out of Baltimore is very good.