RC Dancers

We have rented cars at FLL and dropped off at MIA then taken the shuttle to the port. It works out fine. The thing you have to consider is parking in Miami if you are staying overnight. Hotel valets can be pricey. I would recommend the Sun Pass add on for your rental car to use the Express lanes.

We have found that "rules" on the Divina are lightly enforced, but the on board shops are very reasonable if they choose to enforce this one.

We were very pleased that the flooring in the Le Sirene pool area was changed and is not as slippery as it used to be.

We chose the Divina for New Years Eve over the Getaway this past year, but strictly over price. Getaway would have been about 50% more for us.

We had been on the Divina and the Getaway's sister ship Breakaway previously. We love both ships.

There were many cruisers on Divina from other countries, but they made it clear at the beginning of the cruise that English is the primary language of the ship.

For our tastes, the diversity in guests was a plus. We met other cruisers from Brazil, Uruguay, Russia who were very interesting.

We were in a group last year and booked Aurea level and had the drink package without the whole group or even our table mates having the package.

I haven't used it, but I noticed a Metrorail station the last time I was at MIA.

I would try taking the Metromover to Bayside mall.

If you haven't been there, take an Uber or Lyft to South Beach.

If you are up for even a one day car rental, try driving up the A1A and coming back through Coral Gables, etc..

Okay, I guess it is just another difference between domestic and foreign based ships.

We were on the December 30 Divina Cruise and after midnight, a lot of teens and it looked like pre-teens would come into the Galaxy disco un-supervised, some appeared to have alcoholic beverages.

The other cruise lines we have been on, have pretty tight security and age limits on their night clubs.

Are we alone in experiencing this? Was their something going on that we weren't aware of?

We like the downtown area. Anything near the Metromover works for us.

Thank you, that is good to know.

Divina was in drydock in the Bahamas, but had to put out to sea early because of Hurricane Matthew. It went to Miami, but had to move again.

There may be some hull work that didn't get completed.

They line dance mostly latin songs like Danza Kuduro, but also pop songs with their own Choreography which is pretty simple. It's kind of like Zumba.

We were unable to print our e-docs due to booking our amenities later. The website said that we had an unpaid balance.

We had to give the porter our cabin number to get our bags checked in and security needed to use their passenger list to get us into the terminal. Otherwise, there was no difference to having the e-docs.

We had the social internet package. Many people had problems getting their devices online and there was no one in the Cyber Cafe to help. It seemed like about half of the people in the guest services line for the first couple of days were there to get their devices on line. Once you were online, only the original device would work. We could view Facebook posts, but we weren't able to upload any pictures due to lack of bandwidth.

Entertainment was probably the strongest offering, and the food was great too. The shows were incredible, and in the evenings there were always 3-4 venues playing a variety of music.

Of course tastes in entertainment vary, but we were disappointed with the lounge music compared to our past Divina cruise. La Luna was the folk music couple, Golden Jazz was the older style (40's-50's) jazz band and the band in Black and White mostly played Latin Jazz which was usually mellow in nature.

We would have preferred a more current band in at least one of the lounges.

The entertainment team on our previous cruise was much better at the line dances.

This is just our opinion though.

The crew always knows where the best free wifi is. But it will probably be pretty slow because they will be using skype to communicate with their families.

I think that your better option is to find a coffee shop or bar with wifi and order a drink or snack.

The Lions Gate Bridge has a ship clearance of 200 feet. I think the Breakaway class ships at 179 feet. Celebrity Reflection got a chop in order to fit under the bridge. I can't find what her height is above the waterline but it was a mast chop to fit. Explorer of the seas at 237 feet was not able to port in Vancouver so Victoria made some port enhancements to accommodate. FYI the Golden Gate Bridge has a clearance of 220 feet. Curious about the height of the Bliss above the water line.

I just looked up on Google and the Bridge of the Americas is 201'. So they need to be under that to do the Panama Canal crossing anyway.

We were on the New Years cruise, so that might be different but the shows were The Voice (singing) Mask, Motown (new show with three guys) Treasure Island (pirates) Witches, Michael Jackson tribute and a tribute show to the band Queen.

Themes were white party on formal night, Italian party, Fluo party (glow), Flower Glory (70-80's) and tropical.

It's too bad that MSC does not provide the information pre-cruise because most guests don't know about it.

Booze Cruise?

We had a car reserved through Thrifty and boarded their shuttle just outside the cruise terminal to pick up a car at the airport. I think most car rental companies have similar deals.

There is a luggage storage place in South Beach. You would have to taxi or uber to get there.

If you can store your luggage at the airport, or check it in early, there is a metrolink station to downtown.

The Florida departures board has a lot of information about this topic.

I am also not sure the LB could support a Dream class ship, booking wise.

I could never understand how Galveston can support so many large ships, but Southern California (and really the whole West Coast) cannot.

We bought the 10 photo package last May. We had them hold our pictures and selected the ones we like on the last day (very crowded at that time.)

The disc we received were some stock photos of the ship.

I agree that their internet site is pretty bad.

I wonder what will happen when the 5,000+ passenger Seaside gets here.

On our past Triumph cruise, there were buckets at the Blue Iguana bar, we got ice and glasses at the Sports bar.

If you look at the very fine print on the paper with the wine, it says to call guest services for the bucket and glasses.

Since Carnival is nearly doubling the size of the current facility in Long Beach I think they are planning to put a bigger ship there. Keep in mind the Splendor sailed out of that terminal with no problem and is slightly bigger than the Conquest class. Since Vista III will carry roughly 60% more passengers this only makes sense. The Mexican Riviera has been a solid market for Carnival and with the expansion of one or two ports it could reignite even more interest in the region.

i thought it is the current lease holders of the Long Beach terminal who are doing the upgrade. Maybe CCL has some financial participation. In any case, my guess is that West Coast bookings for the Splendor are not up to CCL's expectations.

We sailed on Splendor five times when it was on the West Coast and are looking forward to it short term return.

We purchased one of the photo packages online before the cruise ($59 for 10 pictures).

This package was not available on board during our cruise.