Carnival vs. Celebrity

[celbercrz333]

First of all my new song...........
On the Atlantic Cruisin', cause Nassau took a bruising...
Jeanne altered our trip, so we had to stay on the ship!

So much for that. I am glad that we were kept safe on board Fascination. I am sad that those who live in Nassau or any of the islands had to pick up their lives again and start over. We are the lucky ones visiting these islands, those who live there have to deal with hurricanes. Now for my opinion on Carnival vs. Celebrity. Carnival has a nice looking ship in Fascination, but their system of doing things can leave a lot to be desired. Of course we have only done one other cruise, last year around this time on Celebrity Zenith. Carnival does not have your account on your tv to be viewed at any time. I think they hope you overspend and then wonder how your account got that high. And speaking of accounts, we didn't realize that they added $30 per person for the weekend cruise onto our account until we went down to the information booth to ask questions. They did give us $25 each person credit for not stopping in Nassau. So big deal! We expected our account to be around $50 and we got there and it was $110. Then they took off the $50 and it was back to about $60. Celebrity asks you to fill in an amount for gratuities according to what you think they should be. A new friend of mine on the ship said her cabin must have had either bedbugs or some kind of insect because they got itching that created welts. They said their cabin was not clean when they came in and that they stayed out of the cabin most of the trip. This does not sound like the room steward earned his regular pay plus the gratuity. Our room had no bathroom cups. We had to "steal" some from the Coconut grill so we had something to use when brusshing our teeth. We hid that in the medicine cabinet so it wouldn't go back to the kitchen. We only had a towel "elephant" one night, which was cute, but nothing on the other 2 nights. The room wasn't cleaned out as quickly as we thought it would be. But at least it was cleaned daily. Celebrity was not only clean, but quick. They moved around the ship almost out of sight and yet you could see their work. We only got our Cruise Caper twice. We had no idea we wouldn't be in Nassau on Sunday (altered itinerary) until Sunday morning when we went down to the Information Booth to pick up a Caper for ourselves. All in all, I'd do another Celebrity cruise in a heartbeat. As for Carnival, not sure. I'm glad we added onto our vacation with a golf package. Instead of flying from Baltimore down to Miami and just doing the cruise, we did a package including hotel and golf and we got a great rate on the car rental online. So the week did turn out well after all.
--Jo

[Cruising89143]

Actually Carnival does have Funvision on their newer ships so that you can check your on board balance, order shore excurisons, etc.

The adding of the gratuities to your sail n sign card is listed in your "Welcome Aboard" information that comes with your tickets explaining how the system works.