Sabalon

With no tender ports, the benefits for you would be

- priority boarding

- room available on boarding

- priority guest services

- choice of debarkation time

- priority luggage (sometimes doesn't happen)

- dining reservations - a boost in priority if you want to change from early to late or vice-versa.

The debarkation may be a non-issue depending on deck. Our last trip, we were self-debark on main. It would have slowed us down to go FTTF for debark.

To me, the first three are what make it worthwhile, in particular the room being available.

The app uses the ship wifi and does not touch your data plan. The only access they have is to the online funtimes and the messaging built into the app. Any iPod should even work for this.

We did walkie-talkies on the Fantasy a few years ago. That was a smaller ship and they still didn't work that well with all the metal. If you were on the same deck or same end of the ship they may work.

Regular texting is not available unless you plan to have an international plan with your cell phone carrier.

Also, while technically not regular texting - ie SMS - if you leave cellular off and have wifi on, iPhone users who use iMessage with other iPhone users, those come through with no extra charge (aside from whatever ship wifi you have).

Depends on if the people you text on a regular basis use iPhones or not, but for my family it worked great.

I read the dress code and see that jeans are OK as long as it's not elegant night. Do many people wear them on causal nights?

Don't know if I saw any jeans last time - shorts due to the heat. But I would not be surprised to see them in the MDR.

Last, but definitely not least!... I am bringing my ID and birth certificate. I'm married so the name between the two will not match, but my ID and booking do match. That should be ok, right? I do not need to show anything else? I've had abut 5 dreams where I get to the port and they do not let me on the boat!

My wife had her ID, certificate and our marriage license. At check-in, she tried to hand the marriage license to them and they said "we don't need that." I guess as long as most of the name matches and the birthdate matches on the license that's good enough. Can't hurt to bring it - just leave it in the safe.

Policy - can't find anything other than embarkation on their site.

Experience - as long as you're not bringing on a full bottle of liquor, I've not seen them flinch. I had an empty beer bottle I put the cap back on - could have been full just by looking at it. Brought water and powerade bottles back on - partially full - could have been anything. Wife brought her metal thermos thing - full of water, but liquid looks like liquid on the x-ray. They didn't care. Didn't see anyone else being checked either.

I want 4 Pacifico's now!

It's 30miles/45km roughly. We passed it going to the ruins and I think it was about 45 minutes from the port.

No idea on the taxi, but one guy at the pool said they rented scooters and rode them out there...someone ran out of gas on the way back too. Based on the trip to that area, yikes...don't think I'd want to do that...people pass each other like crazy.

Just to be contrary :) When we booked our July trip in April, 10am was the earliest time I saw as an option.

FWIW, boarding started around 11:45 that day.

Albeit limited experience, but on our first cruise, in Nassau we did our own thing and did a private excursion in Freeport - guess we jumped in with both feet there!

Second one we did our own thing in Nassau, got bored and hung out on the empty waterworks onboard. We did a Carnival excursion at Half-Moon Cay - no choice.

Last trip we did our own thing in Cozumel, did Carnival ones in Belize and Roatan, and was supposed to do a Carnival one in Grand Cayman, but had the time wrong, missed it so we did the same one ourselves with a local operator.

From the little research I've done, the Carnival ones look to be about 10% higher than if you booked them yourselves. This last cruise, right after we booked, we had a Carnival offer to save 10%. One was a 7 hour one - too risky to do privately. One only booked through the cruise lines (mostly), so in the end it made sense, plus the "buy within the next 72hours for 10%" helped equalize the costs.

I agree with what others said - these operators know very well about Cruise Critic, Trip Advisor, etc. They are not gonna shoot themselves in the foot. They know local traffic patterns, tender times, etc and know how to get you back.

So you have a choice of going with Carnival, going with a third party operator/excursion, or doing your own thing. The doing your own thing obviously puts a little more on you. Most of the locations have their economy based on tourism, so you're not gonna have too much trouble, but the "here's $30 - take me around the island" taxi tours worry me. I know people have seen some neat stuff, but I'd be worried you'd get half way around and hit up for more.

Do tons of research!!!

I learned a lesson about baggage in Galveston. The porter put a special orange sticker on one of our bags and it got to the cabin by 1pm. The other bag did not have the sticker and it didn't show up until 5pm. The printed luggage tag is not the key to fast delivery, the orange sticker is.

We had the orange stickers on our bags - read about that ahead of time - and a few of them still didn't show up until after we set sail. A bag from down the hall arrived at our room pretty early though :) Delivered it for them.

The big payoff for FTTF was disembarkation. It was by far the best organized one we have ever experienced. We were through customs by 7:30 which was less than 15 minutes after the first person left the ship. There were 23 members of our family on this cruise and we all agreed that the $60 per cabin was will worth it just for the ease and speed of getting off the ship so we could start the 8 hour drive home.

 

We were in the steerage class, er..., on the main deck, so there was no line for self disembark, and it would have been longer for us to go to the FTTF disembark area than to just get off the ship. However, if you're on an upper deck, this would help. Same reason we had it, except a 10 hour drive.

 

FTTF could be improved by have a way to expedite get off the ship at non tendered ports. The current system is chaos.

 

I agree, but I can live with it as it usually moves pretty fast. What I would love to see would be a Faster Back to the Fun - priority getting back on board at non-tender ports. (though I was impressed with how well Carnival handled it - the fellow guests left something to be desired...I didn't realize the lines don't matter for some people.)

(FWIW, the reason these threads irritate me so much is that I *write* books, and I love writing them on my cruises. I can always find a quiet nook with a view of the water to write, but I'm sure some of these same posters are clutching their pearls and judging me when they see me with my laptop open. The hypocrisy irks me--technology is bad, but the number one pastime on cruises, getting hammered, is totally fine.)

There is only so much activity you can take before you need downtime. Each person has their own downtime - be it reading, writing, programming, drawing, knitting, etc. With the exception of the knitting, most of that can be done digitally now.

Some still have the computer=facebook junkie attitude. Don't judge me for my likes and I won't outwardly judge you for being a 58 yo guy who thought the cornrow braids in port would be a good idea :)

You can set limits at the kiosk, but don't know if you can do cash to the card there or not.

My girls used all theirs in the arcade as well. One of them won a spongebob card (With a mag stripe on it) She had no idea what it was for so she asked guest services. She said the guy at guest services had no idea and had never been in the arcade. He called the casino (who is over the arcade) and found out that it had a ticket value on the card. He then followed up with "so...what are the tickets use for?" All new to him and my daughter found that quite funny the interest he took in the whole process. At they end I can't remember what piece of junk they got with all the tickets. Though on the way home, we stopped at a rest stop and one of the stuffed animals they probably spent an unholy amount of money trying to win was for sale for $4 at the rest stop.

Well, technically everyone in the same cabin over 21 :)

Didn't have bubbles or cheers, but whenever I got a soda at a bar they gave me the can and a glass of ice - for what it's worth.

Given the server issues they've had with it and how easily a slow network connection can kill the app, with the ship connection it may be more frustrating for them.

Wonder if they could put a bunch of eggs and incubators and use the ship movement as if they are walking. Could hatch tons of eggs on a ship!

(My daughter likes this game so that's how I know what I know...amazing seeing 100+ people at a local park doing this)

We had a number of early excursions, and the meeting time in the theater was typically 15 minutes before scheduled arrival time, and the excursion depart time about 15 minutes after docking. Though most of them involved a bit of hurry up and wait once you got off the ship as well.

We did the Xunantunich Mayan ruins which was amazing. Great lunch but not enough food, IMO, one piece of chicken, rice and salad, I think. Everyone in our group said the same thing. People were hungry after all the walking and climbing.

The secret is I have picky daughters who did not like the rice or chicken (or plantains), so the wife and I had extra. We also shared some of the rice with a person at our table so they could try the different hot sauces.

Pizza Pirate was the girls first stop back on board!

Just got off the western Glory trip last weekend. Loved it. Loved the stops much more than Bahamas (though haven't been to Grand Turk and Amber Cove).

Don't know when you're going, but the Cruise Director and staff on Glory were awesome - I know there is a change with the CD coming up in the future, but don't remember how far out that was.

Congrats on the wedding as well!

No lunch? I had rice and beans w/ chicken on my Xunantunich tour. Loved the view from the top of the highest structure.

 

I see Carnival now has a Lamanai tour as well.

Yes...we had lunch - about 30-45 minutes. Same as you - good food! And the view was amazing...just a very long trip!

I would love to go see Lamanai. That place looks amazing!

Yes it's true!!! If you grew up enjoying the North Atlantic, anything from Florida down is considered warm any time of year.

Wife used to go on family vacations to Maine. To her, Bahamas in February was warm water.

We did the Xunatumich ruins tour. While the ruins were amazing, and the tour guide gave great info, it was too much sitting on a bus getting to and from. So unless you're really into doing that, wouldn't recommend based on the fact 70% of your excursion is riding.

Why didn't you address this when dropping off your checked bags ?

Obviously you were aware of the scale reading 79 lbs.

The 79lbs was a combined weight of both bags. Based on what she said, her bag was 35lbs and hubbys was 44lbs. So he should have been charged at most $25 for being over the 40lbs max. Though if it's all about fuel costs, they both combined weighed less than 80lbs allowed for two bags, but we know it's harder to get your extra money if you're nice to the consumer :)

How do you purchase a plan? Can you use the plan on a lap top?

You connect to the wifi on the ship and then try to go to a web page. You'll be redirected to a page where you can purchase.

Should work on any device that can get on wifi and pull up a web browser.

Does the unlimited cover more than one device? I have an iPad, and my son and I each have iPhones, can we share one package? I normally wouldn't care to connect while cruising, but we are booked on the 27NOV cruise, and that is smack dab in the middle of hockey season.

Not sure how well that would work if you want to stream the games. May be disappointed. Could at least get updates.

You sign into the package with your folio number. So you sign in with the iPad. Then if you sign in with the iPhone, the iPad is signed out.

At least that's what I saw everywhere.

Do you have to pay to use the beach, or can you just show up and chill on the sand without getting a chair and food?

I don't know. I don't think you can just walk in and go to the beach. Don't know if you do the chair rental what you can do. Maybe the pool. They go by wristbands.

We went to Paradise Beach and loved it. The cost was

• $3 per chair
  
• $18 per person who wants the Fun Pass to play on all the water toys
  
• $10 min food/drink order per person - food was real good
  

$15 taxi ride for a family of four each way. Approx 6 miles away.

Some ideas:

• List 5 countries to find a staff member from (as someone suggested)
  
• The ship's bell
  
• Something from Fincanarti or whoever built the ship you're on (Glory has a neat mural on the wall on Lido
  
• Pic with a member of the fun staff or the cruise director
  
• Depending on time of day and ship, someone with a Guy burger or something like that
  
• The funnel
  
• This one may be hard, but someone with a diamond status card - don't want them bugging everyone. Platinum may be better
  

Some ideas I could think of that are more Carnival related. Had some other ideas but don't want them getting in trouble - like pic of deck 0 or something.