Still Waiting To Board Dec 26th Breeze - 3:38 pm

[BallFour4]

They weren't drinking, in Texas it's illegal to drink in port. They actually can't start drink packages until day 2.

 

The second part of your post is true, but the first part needs a little clarity.

 

Texas laws (TABC) state any alcohol consumed in the state and domestic waters must have a tax paid. Carnival provisions enough alcohol for the estimated time spent in port for embarkation and the time to sail to international waters. They offer beer, wine and mixed drinks from a full bar service. Once in international waters they bars close for about ten minutes for the tax paid alcohol to be stored away and then they reopen will full bar service.

 

Texas also decided to enforce a decades old law of collecting tax on alcohol brought back from cruises. They have personnel in the terminal at the very last part as you walk out asking if you made a purchase. They are after US Customs and people just walk right by.

 

The Cheers package starts the first full day at sea. Carnival doesn't count that day as part of the package, and the price is adjusted accordingly.

 

Texas also prohibits liquor purchases on Sunday. Liquor is sold in free standing stores, not convenience or grocery stores up to 9pm on Saturday night. Beer and wine can be sold after noon on Sunday. Restaurants can serve alcohol as part of a meal after 11am on Sunday.

 

Based on your screen name, you and I are good after 11 :)

 

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Edited December 27, 2016 by BallFour4

[AHS123]

 

The second part of your post is true, but the first part is wrong.

 

Texas laws (TABC) state any alcohol consumed in the state and domestic waters must have a tax paid. Carnival provisions enough alcohol for the estimated time spent in port for embarkation and the time to sail to international waters. They offer beer, wine and mixed drinks from a full bar service. Once in international waters they bars close for about ten minutes for the tax paid alcohol to be stored away and then they reopen will full bar service.

 

Texas also decided to enforce a decades old law of collecting tax on alcohol brought back from cruises. They have personnel in the terminal at the very last part as you walk out asking if you made a purchase. They are after US Customs and people just walk right by.

 

The Cheers package starts the first full day at sea. Carnival doesn't count that day as part of the package, and the price is adjusted accordingly.

 

Texas also prohibits liquor purchases on Sunday. Liquor is sold in free standing stores, not convenience or grocery stores up to 9pm on Saturday night. Beer and wine can be sold after noon on Sunday. Restaurants can serve alcohol as part of a meal after 11am on Sunday.

 

Based on your screen name, you and I are good after 11 :)

 

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OM Gosh if I were living in Texas and drank I'd quit just to not have to keep up with that morass of alcohol legislation.

[BigLar1]

SO now that the breeze has sailed...what happens next? Do they lose a day at sea? Do they lose going to a port?

Edited December 27, 2016 by BigLar1

[cruise pup]

I was waiting to see if it had to return with a sick passenger. That happened on one of my cruises. But since we left on schedule we didn't have any schedule changes.

[jgh1204]

***** Gosh if I were livingu in Texas and drank I'd quit just to not have to keep up with that morass of alcohol legislation.

 

 

Dry counties are even worse. No alcohol sold in stores and you have to join a club to buy alcohol in a restaurant.

[beerman2]

Really time Texas gets into this era with their liquor laws. It is 2016 way past prohibition.

 

And I thought we have some things in Ohio that are antiquated!

[suebee53]

The Breeze has sailed! There were shouts and tears of joy as the captain announced we would be leaving. And then when he started sounding the horn we all went crazy cheering! What a crazy journey this has been already! Bon Voyage

 

LOVE THIS!!! I am reminded of what it was like to be on the first US-bound flight out of Frankfurt, Germany during the 2010 ash cloud that shut down air travel in Europe and stranded us for several days. I've never been on a plane that erupted in applause and hoots and hollers when we pulled away from the gate, and then again at takeoff.

 

Since we're on the January 1 sailing on the Breeze, I'm hoping for NO FOG. Not really longing to experience this morning's shouts and tears of joy! Once in a lifetime was enough, really. Especially since I've been out in the Gulf when the Galveston port was closed because of fog and we couldn't get OFF the ship.

 

But actually . . . #firstworldproblems

[2003Cruiser2017]

What happens to the cruises set for the 1st? Wonder if it will delay their boarding due to the late departure?

[crewsweeper]

What happens to the cruises set for the 1st? Wonder if it will delay their boarding due to the late departure?

 

Most likely you will board around normal time per your check-in time and boarding zone, barring a repeat of fog or other weather related delays in returning. The current cruise gets the short end in time away from the dock.

[karajeboo]

I love and respect your positive attitude! Yes, sometimes these things happens and how you react to it makes all the difference.

 

We didn't sail until 2am last spring from Port Canaveral because our ship was late arriving due to a medical emergency that turned them around back to Grand Turk the day before. Nobody was really upset, our hotel stored our luggage and allowed us to stay on property even though we were out of our rooms. Everyone was very kind and took it in stride.... until. The very next day I saw so many people at guest services demanding compensation. We had already been given $25/stateroom OBC. They literally turned the Valor in 3 1/2 hours from when the ship arrived and guests began debarking until they started embarkation and our cabin was ready immediately. Not too shabby. The crew is who I felt sorry for! they'd been entertaining guests on a day that they should've been turning the ship and they still got everything clean in such a short time. But sadly I overhead so many people canceling gratuities because of the ship arriving late. It's terrible to punish the hard workers for something out of everyone's control.

 

Enjoy the rest of your cruise and keep the updates coming!

[5 in OK]

We are back from the Breeze! It turned out to be a wonderful cruise! They did cancel Belize (we were all hoping they would cancel Costa Maya instead as many had already been there). We will have to go back to go Cave Tubing. 😁 But our weather in Cozumel and Costa Maya was picture prefect. Woke up to fog again upon the return to Galveston but not thick enough to stop the ship from docking - thank goodness! I'll post review soon!

 

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[Sailawysan]

So glad it ended up being a good trip, we sail in two weeks on the breeze so I look forward to your review and any helpful comments. Hope we don't get the fog but if we do I think I will have your attitude. Glad your home safe and sound.:)

[BigDozer66]

We are back from the Breeze! It turned out to be a wonderful cruise! They did cancel Belize (we were all hoping they would cancel Costa Maya instead as many had already been there). We will have to go back to go Cave Tubing. 😁 But our weather in Cozumel and Costa Maya was picture prefect. Woke up to fog again upon the return to Galveston but not thick enough to stop the ship from docking - thank goodness! I'll post review soon!

 

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Glad to know you made it back and all (well almost all) went well! :)

 

Saturday night the fog here was so bad it was less than 1/4 mile and we are 2-1/2 hours North of Galveston! :eek:

[5 in OK]

Glad to know you made it back and all (well almost all) went well! :)

 

Saturday night the fog here was so bad it was less than 1/4 mile and we are 2-1/2 hours North of Galveston! :eek:

Yikes! I am so glad we didn't know that! We were hearing about Port closures all week - we had lots of people from the north onboard with flights going out! 😨

 

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[sue1138]

We are back from the Breeze! It turned out to be a wonderful cruise! They did cancel Belize (we were all hoping they would cancel Costa Maya instead as many had already been there). We will have to go back to go Cave Tubing. [emoji16] But our weather in Cozumel and Costa Maya was picture prefect. Woke up to fog again upon the return to Galveston but not thick enough to stop the ship from docking - thank goodness! I'll post review soon!

 

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Do you have a copy of the Fun Times? I'll be going in 2 weeks

 

 

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[5 in OK]

Do you have a copy of the Fun Times? I'll be going in 2 weeks

 

 

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Yes!!!! I think I have them all! I'll find them in the still packed suitcase and take pics and post them for you!

[5 in OK]

Okay – I’ll pick up where I left off just before we set sail. I have to compliment most of the passengers on our cruise – only a very few were grumbling – most people were just so happy that we were able to finally sail!!

 

We were sitting on the Serenity deck in the big clam shells and loungers when the announcement came on that we were leaving and everyone began cheering! We could also hear the cheers from the Lido deck – everyone was just pretty relieved not to spend another night on the ship connected to the dock in foggy Galveston. Then when the captain blew that horn and we began moving - mass celebration!! It was a good moment!

 

They had the casinos opened within about 30 minutes from sailing (we tried to estimate how much revenue Carnival lost by not being able to open the casino!!!) and then the shops opened not too long afterwards. We were running almost 24 hours late on leaving Galveston. We knew our itinerary would be altered – we just had no idea what it would look like. Most passengers we visited with were hoping Costa Maya would be cancelled as many had already been there (or close to it as most cruises go to Mexico).

 

Finally, around 4:00 p.m. the captain came on the public address system and told everyone that due to the time constraints and how far Belize was that we were not going to be able to go to Belize. That was harsh news – we kind of all knew big changes were coming but that was just so sad. Our family went on this cruise specifically for Belize - but we were determined to make the best of it! Then – the captain really shocked everyone. He said, “we are also making some additional changes – we will have to change Cozumel from Friday to Thursday and we will be visiting Costa Maya on Friday instead of Thursday.” (Basically he dropped Belize and then flipped the other two ports as well.) (He also announced that we would just have a Sea Day on Wednesday instead of a port visit.) This TOTALLY threw everyone into a tail spin and the excursions desk line went from 1-2 people to about 500 instantly. Cruise Director Leigh came over the intercom and asked for everyone to give the excursions desk a while to contact all of the vendors in Cozumel and Costa Maya and see if everything could be changed around. Those of us who had excursions that were not ship sponsored excursions immediately went into panic mode and rushed to the nearest computers – paid the $25.00 for 24 hours of internet service (Carnival definitely recouped some of the Casino loss for all the internet plans that were sold within minutes of that announcement) and emailed our vendors to see if we could be switched to the new days. The key here was something we did not know – how many ships were in the ports on the new days we were visiting now. Turns out there were 6 ships in port at Cozumel now (compared to 7 that were originally scheduled) and we would be the only ship in Costa Maya that day (can’t recall how many were going to be there on our original day). We were lucky as both of our vendors (Maya Chan in Costa Maya – MUCH more on them later – they were AMAZING!!! – and Nachi Cocom in Cozumel) were able to accommodate us and move our reservations and deposits to the new day. We heard many say their vendors could not accommodate due to so many ships already in port on the day we moved to in Cozumel. So sad. It was a very, very stressful 2 hours trying to get everything changed over and waiting to hear back. You should never have to incur that much stress on a cruise ship. Probably wouldn’t have been as bad had we not had such a crazy 24 hours trying to get on the boat and then getting fogged in and then waking up to even more fog and then finally getting to sail away. Just a lot of stress. We were joking that the spa filled many massage spots due to so much stress!!

 

The excursions desk put out a publication (it was a blue sheet of paper) that indicated all of the excursions that were able to transfer over to the new date and all of the ones that were not said “CANCELLED” next to them. Those are the people that had to go back to the excursions desk and line up to make changes as they were not taking any phone calls – someone from your party had to go down and get in line if changes were needed. That was sad too.

 

By now all of the shops were opened as well as the casino. Drink packages were being honored and there was a much more “normal” feel to the cruise. Except for the fog. We still couldn’t see much – the fog was so thick. The captain was blowing the horn every four minutes or so and it was starting to get dark. We were all – 100% of us praying to not have any fog when we woke up the next day. The temperature was getting warmer – we were optimistic that things were starting to take a positive turn.

 

We had My Time Dining so we got dressed at 5:15 and went down to get in line at 5:30 for the 5:45 opening of the Sapphire Dining Room. It was absolutely lovely – beautifully decorated – lots of window tables. Very nice. We were the 2nd group in line and when they opened (5:45) they happily honored our request and seated us next to a large window. (We had 6 in our group.) We sat at tables 14 and 16 (they pushed them together for us) and had Maya and her team. She was wonderful – we had 5 adult children with us ranging in ages from 20 – 24 and she totally catered to them! They LOVED her so much! Just made our cruise so much fun and made everyone want to show up to dinner each night (my only request of a mandatory activity was that we had dinner together each evening!) . The food was good – not awesome but good – lots of choices! We were completely finished with everything including dessert (Carnival Molten Lava Chocolate Cake with ice cream) in about an hour and were on our way to a fun evening on the ship.

 

We went up at 7:00 for the Dive in Movie (the guys went to the bar to watch football) – it was “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children” – a bit strange but pretty good. Then we went to the comedy club with our group – funny stuff – we were off to a great start! Us older ones hit the sack early on that second night – it had been a very stressful day – we were ready for some relaxation!

 

I’ll write more soon! Day 3 – Sea Day

[sue1138]

Yes!!!! I think I have them all! I'll find them in the still packed suitcase and take pics and post them for you!

 

 

Ok great!! There are a few of us that have been looking for the Funtimes for the Breeze.

Thank you very much!!

 

 

 

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[crusinpsychRN]

Wow, what a messed up itinerary. Glad you had a good time.

[leen50]

Do you remember the Maitre D's name?

[5 in OK]

Do you remember the Maitre D's name?

 

I do not remember his name - would that be on any of my paperwork?

[leen50]

I do not remember his name - would that be on any of my paperwork?

If you find your Funtimes it should be there. Thanks for the reply.

[5 in OK]

 

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[5 in OK]

 

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[5 in OK]

 

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