chrislaurn

Thanks all!

Thank you!

I'm supposed to be turning platinum on my next cruise. I hope! It's a 7 day cruise and I should be 7 days until platinum after my most recent cruise is posted. How long does it normally take before it shows up there? Thanks!

I will have my 75th day on debarkation day on my cruise at the end of May. Assuming the rules don't change between now and then (and with my luck they absolutely will) will I be Platinum for the whole cruise even though day 75 is the last day?

Sorry you had a bad experience with traffic in Mobile. The terminal is located near the start of the downtown parades. Next time, consider staying downtown in one of the hotels. There are some great and historic hotels downtown all within walking distance of restaurants and entertainment. If you're looking to save a little money, staying across Mobile Bay is also an option. Spanish Fort has several hotels that are newer and the pricing would be comparable to the hotels by the airport. It's an easy 15-20 minute ride to the port from there.

Yes. That’s what we were told and what we ordered. It was one of each at the Italian restaurant.

A little bit about us. We are from South Alabama and were cruising with a group of 14 family members. My family of four includes my husband, myself and our two boys (17 and 14). This was our 9th Carnival Cruise, but probably somewhere around my 16th overall. We are pretty experienced family cruisers. My husband and I had our first ever suite and were in room 7252 and the boys were across the hall in interior room 7254. I should also mention that my husband and oldest son are both scuba divers and were planning to dive in Grand Turk. Pre-cruise: Before we even left home we had to get COVID tests for all four of us. We were all vaccinated and boosted and were able to test three days before the cruise. I can tell you with absolute conviction that this was BY FAR the most stressful part of the entire cruise experience. I was super paranoid that something was going to go wrong with the tests so I had a contingency plan for my contingency plan and I'm so very glad that I did. I had booked all of us for testing at CVS. We learned when my husband showed up for his test that they had messed up our reservations and none of us could get tested. This is at noon on Thursday and we were leaving at 6 am on Friday. Fortunately, our local Urgent Care was able to get us in and -- thank you sweet baby Jesus -- we all tested negative. (And had to pay $95 per test. Grr... I'm looking at you CVS!!) The rest of my family that was also traveling with us spent the day texting each other with our various negative test results. One long day and 14 negative test results later, we were all ready to cruise! For the first time ever, we used VeriFly. I highly recommend that you do it. We uploaded our info, a picture of our vaccine cards (our area doesn't do the online one), the test results and then answered the health questionnaire. Once that info is confirmed by them, they issue you a sail pass. Really very easy. We drove down two days before the cruise at spent the night at the Loew's Royal Pacific at Universal. We arrived around 3:30, checked in and dropped bags and headed to the park for the evening. Unfortunately, the park closed at 6 pm for GradBash, but we still got in for a couple of hours. We ate that night at Vivo in City Walk. I highly recommend it. The squid ink pasta is amazing!!! We went to the park the next day and got stuck in a torrential downpour. It was a real Forrest Gump moment. "There was tiny biting rain, big 'ole fat drops of rain, rained sideways and felt like it was raining from the ground up." We checked out of the Royal Pacific and drove to the Cocoa Beach area to spend the night before the cruise. It was a little slow going because of the weather, and it took us about an hour to get to Cocoa Beach from Universal. We ate dinner at Grills Seafood Deck and Tiki Bar in Cocoa Beach port area. It 's right across the water and has a great deck with views of the port. Unfortunately, it was still raining and kind of cold, so we ate inside. The food is decently priced with a good selection. We stayed at the Home2Suites Cape Canaveral Cruise Port. It's located less than 5 minutes from the port. It's a newer hotel and is actually connected with a Hampton Inn. It included a free breakfast and the room was very spacious with 2 queen beds, a pullout sofa and a kitchenette. We were able to do a load of laundry (post-deluge and Universal) and the laundry was about $2.50 per load. There was plenty of room in our room for the four of us and each of the boys got to have their own bed. We will definitely stay there again when/if we sail out of Port Canaveral. I do suggest you book it early. The rates right before the cruise were upwards of $400/night. I think we booked it about 8 months out and paid around $225. This cruise was kind of snake-bitten for some people travelling by air. That downpour that I mentioned was part of a massive storm system that had a TON of flights to Florida cancelled the day and evening before the cruise. This cruise had a very active FB group page so we were able to keep up with other folks travel adventures. There were a lot of people that did not make it in at all. One lady named Beth chronicled her journey and we were all routing for her. She got to the terminal right before the ship sailed and they would not let her on. Beth, if you're reading this, I don't know you, but I was praying for you. Glad you got on another cruise! Next up Embarkation.