Knights on the Beach

Our son & DIL had a 9:30 check in for Liberty last weekend - I'd never seen it that early before either. We dropped them off at the port and they breezed through the check in process then sat and waited an hour and a half before boarding started. But then walked right on after suites and were soon eating Funfetti cheesecake. 🙂

And several smaller TVs by the bar and tables in P&A. We watched football there a couple times in December.

Thanks! I was using Discover but if I can't get it to work, I'll try another card. So frustrating - I can see the pending charges on my Discover account but the AARP site says I can still order 5 cards this month so I know it didn't go through. 😞

So all this talk about gift cards has made me see the light. I logged into AARP and tried to order a $500 gift card to use for our deposit on a cruise I just put on hold but can't it to go through - it keeps saying something went wrong with the payment, try again. This is the same thing that was happening a few weeks ago when many were trying to buy Cheers, etc on the Carnival site before the prices went up. For that, I just waited a few hours and tried it again and it went through. Has anyone ever had this issue on the AARP site? There is nothing wrong with my CC, in fact I got a text from them asking if the charge was legit and when I confirmed, got another text saying it was approved.

And I think the chicken tenders are the best thing they have there for breakfast. 😍

You do need your boarding passes printed out or they'll have to print one for you and that just holds up your boarding process. I'm with Tom - do your muster station check in (super quick) first then head to Shaq's Big Chicken. BEFORE your cruise - select Your Time Dining for the best flexibility so you may have dinner at Chibang and Cucina. With a set dining time, you wouldn't be able to check in for those two until 7:30 or later.

We've been on 3 Carnival cruises in the past 9 months and have 2 more booked. Cheers has never been on the invoice, only in the booking & order details and we always have Cheers. I didn't pay for it with OBC either so that shouldn't make any difference. Our OBC does appear on the invoice, not on the booking & order page.

I think it depends on how many platinum/diamond cruisers are on the cruise and if they all checked in early. We're platinum and I did our check in at midnight and got the first time available for our Freedom cruise - 10:00 am, A1 boarding zone. But our son (gold) and DIL (red) were on Liberty last weekend and had 9:30 with A1 boarding. Our two previous cruises were on Mardi Gras and we had 10:00 am with A1 once and A3 the other time. Others cruising with us (blue/gold) had 11:00 and 11:30 check in times.

Yes, I love it! We like to sit out on the balcony in the mornings and can hear the announcements on the ships. lol

You were docked right in front of our timeshare.

So can you use gift cards to buy cruise cash prior to a cruise? If so, wouldn't that eliminate the need to deal with it once on board and are there any drawbacks to doing it that way? We've never used gift cards on Carnival so I have no idea.

We went the first night on Mardi Gras and the boys wore nice shorts and short sleeved button down shirts, my DIL wore a sundress and I wore capris. Pretty much everyone else I saw around us were dressed similarly.

Love the sunrise pictures!

Excellent, fair review! We've been on Mardi Gras twice and are booked again for December. We'll avoid Spring Break in the future but absolutely love the ship. Too bad you didn't get to go to Red Frog Tiki, it was our favorite daytime bar. At night, it was Fortune Teller, Alchemy, Bar Della Rosa (and coffee in the mornings). I really liked Brass Magnolia but as it worked out, we only went once each cruise. We like the Pig & Anchor space a lot and loved the bartenders there. The food is just so inconsistent. We had a couple good meals and one not so good.

We didn't request an outside table at Cucina in March but were seated out there anyway. The only problem was the sun was right in our eyes so they moved us to another outside table which was fine.

We bought a bunch of it when it was a little over $8 so we're still ahead. Not that the rest of our portfolio is though.