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Raysgirl

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About Me

  • Location
    Connecticut
  • Favorite Cruise Line(s)
    Carnival

Raysgirl's Achievements

Cool Cruiser

Cool Cruiser (2/15)

  1. We use to cruise Carnival exclusively. We did 3 post covid cruises and were so disappointed that we cancelled our last remaining cruise booked with NCL. At this point we do not plan on going back on a Carnival ship. We found that the food was better on NCL along with the service and atmosphere. Everybody is different and some still love the party atmosphere on Carnival, but things have just gotten out of control on the ships we were on. At this point we will stick with NCL.
  2. Back to school, I filed the complaint with the BBB on 9/28 and had a reply from them on 10/5 that Virgin agreed to give me the balance that was due on the cruise they cancelled. 4 days later that credit was applied to my credit card. They certainly helped me with my issue with Virgin.
  3. When they cancelled my cruise, I received a my refund minus $590 within 3 days. (I had booked the cruise and then cancelled and rebooked the exact cruise to receive a better promo so they put the deposit on as a future cruise credit and used it within minutes to rebook the exact same cruise) I contacted them regarding the $590 which they told me they were holding as a future voyage credit because I had cancelled and rebooked which was stupid because it was the exact same cruise which THEY cancelled I contacted the BBB and filed a complaint. Within 1 week I received a call from Virgin stating they were making an exception and processing an additional refund of the $590 which I received 4 days later. It seems if you file a complaint you get to a different department that takes care of things right away. Hope you get your refund soon!
  4. I do not blame you one bit for your frustration. I did request a refund and received a partial one a little over a week ago, but they still owe me over $560. I had paid this cruise in full when booked. Their email said that they are giving me a future cruise credit for the deposit because it was over the full refund period which is bs, I am not the one who cancelled the cruise, they did so I should be receiving a full refund. I do have a TA working on it, but so far I am still out $560. This would have been my first cruise on Virgin and as of right now I will never be setting foot on one of their ships if this is the way they treat their customers.
  5. Trey I didn't pay anymore for the cruise on NCL that I would have on Carnival with the drink package. I priced out both. You may have been getting some good deals from Carnival, but it seems that the longer you had been cruising with them the less deals they were offering. There were plenty of new cruisers on our last Carnival cruise that paid $100 pp for their cabin, but yet I paid in the thousands. I was a faithful Carnival cruiser. As I stated in my first post I had been on 15 of them prior to "jumping ship". The crew on Carnival was always friendly and did their best, but there is no reason to wait almost 30 minutes at a bar to get a drink on sea days. You can not have only 2 bar tenders serving with the amount of people at the pools. This is not the employees fault, it is managements. On NCL there was always at least 5 bar tenders at the bars around the pool areas and 2 or 3 at the other bars, only had to wait a few minutes for service. As far as food, the quality in the main dining rooms on NCL is 100% better than on Carnival currently. A steak for example, on Carnival it is now what I call a dollar store steak. You are lucky if it is a quarter of inch thick. The steak on the regular menu in the dining room on NCL is at least an inch thick NY strip steak that was cook to perfection and served hot. As far as the entertainment I have been seeing the same shows on Carnival for the last 6 years (prior covid and post covid), at least on NCL each ship has it own shows so there is a variety. All and all when you compare apples to apples, the pricing is about the same on both cruise lines. We just found that since the restart since covid, the cruising experience on Carnival is not as enjoyable for the money you spend.
  6. Vagabond Knight, I agree I have seen lots of posts, but since my original post we had sailed on the NCL Encore. It was a full ship and did not experience any of the issues we had on our last 3 Carnival cruises. No long lines for drinks. Plenty of staff providing great service. Food was 100% better in quality. NCL may have made some cut backs, but we didn't notice them being our first cruise with them. But even with their cutbacks they surpassed Carnival when it comes to service, food and entertainment.
  7. I know this is an old post, but I was asked to give an update when I went on my cruise on NCL, being my first on a cruise line other than Carnival. Well I have to say that I had a wonderful time. We sailed on the Encore at full capacity. There was no shortage of staff. I never waited more than a few minutes at any of the bars for a drink. There were always clean tables to be found to sit and have a cup of tea or have something to eat. It was nice to have sit down free restaurants where you are served, other than just the buffet or counter service. The food portions are normal size, like going to dinner on land. My New York strip in the main dining room was an inch to inch and half thick, not 1/2 inch thick like on Carnival. Our stateroom was clean and comfortable. For having 4500 passengers, it never felt crowded. I do have one more cruise on Carnival in September on the Celebration, but moving forward I think NCL will be our cruise line of choice.
  8. This is the exact experience we had since the restart. Long lines for drinks, smaller portions of food and overall quality of it went down hill. We normally didn't get the drink package, but 2 of these 3 we did due to price and it seemed like since they already got your money, lets not worry about service. It was so hard to get a drink anywhere. We are trying NCL in March and hoping for a better experience.
  9. We are in total agreement with you. I had posted a couple months ago saying "I thought I would never say it", but we have booked a cruise with another cruise line. We are platinum on Carnival and never cruise on any other line and have decided to try NCL. We cruised on Carnival 3 times since the restart and were disappointed with all 3. The service and food have gone down hill. They differently seem to focus on getting new people on the ship with cheap fares that have no idea what is was like before. I do have 2 more cruises booked on Carnival that we will be taking and hopefully will have a good time (it is what you make of it), but after that we are going to try a few other lines to see what they have to offer. Hope you enjoy your cruise on Celebrity!!
  10. We are doing the exact same thing on Norwegian Encore in March. Figured this would be the way to go to try something new. The price was reasonable if you compare it to Carnival and add the extra cost of the drink package, and wifi to Carnivals rate. Looking forward to it
  11. Our last cruise was on the Spirit in October when we had the worse issue with bar lines, this is when we decided to cancel our cruise in March on the Sunrise and try someone new. We do have a cruise booked on the Celebration next September and hopefully we will enjoy that ship.
  12. I am going to the bar at either the serenity pool or aft bar by the adult pool depending on what ship we were on at the time because there were no waitpersons walking around. On all 3 cruises since the restart, they were very crowded areas and the wait time to get drinks was insane because there normally was 1 bartender.
  13. I am not trying to hit my 15 drink limit in per day, Honestly I barely can drink 5 a day, but I also drink water and soda. My point is there is not enough staff for the amount of people on the ship. In years passed you were constantly saying "no thank you " to the numerous amount of bar staff trying to get you a drink, now you can barely find any. It is not enjoyable to get out of the pool to stand in line at a bar for 30 minutes to get a drink. The drink can be a water, soda or alcohol, it doesn't matter, they are just under staffed. Enough time has passed that they should be fully up and running. If they do not have enough employees, then should not have not put a ship or 2 in service and spread those staff members over the fleet. This is not just me noticing it. Ask your room stewards, most have twice as many cabins to service, same with the dining staff, they have more tables in their section than prior to covi which puts a lot of stress on them. Carnival will not increase the number of employees back to precovid if passengers do not speak up that there is issue with services. This is just another way for them to increase revenue.
  14. I appreciate everyone's response and opinions! I noticed that most are focusing on the changes with the food I mentioned when actually our biggest reason to try another line is service. I agree the staff is wonderful, always friendly, but there is not enough of them which causes service to be very slow. The last 3 cruises we had the cheers package (only because we had a great offer) and we usually hang out at the adult pool or serenity pool depending on the ship. If there was 1 person walking the area offering bar service that was a lot. Same was happening at the shows and casino. If we got out of the pool ourselves to get a drink the lines at the bar was huge, taking almost a half an hour to get a drink. We were lucky if we had 2 bartenders, but normally there was just 1. Just wondering since so many people purchase the cheers package they feel they already got our money and gratuity so it is ok to have slow service. Again I have not given up on Carnival. I have 2 future cruises booked with them, It is just time for us to explore out cruise lines to see if they are experiencing the same issues with services or if it is just cut backs on Carnival.
  15. This is my own opinion. I have numerous times decided to try something new while cruising and found it was not my cup of tea so I would order a good old standby like chicken, but when it comes it is dried out and cold, so should I be entitled to a third choice, absolutely. The current portion sizes they serve are not even close to what you would get in a restaurant on land. You may stuff yourself during the day, I don't. I save my appetite for dinner. You can also look at the additional charge for the 3rd item this way. If I elected to eat at the buffet, which normally has the same dinner items I can load my plate up with as much as I want as many times as I want and there is no additional charge.
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