notyours75

My experience on our last cruise was that a little cash went a long, long ways to ensuring excellent service. Find a bar you like, find a bartender/server you like, find out if they work there everyday (i.e. they will be there next time you come back) give them a good solid tip to start off the relationship and they will ensure you receive nothing but excellent service the remainder of the cruise. You then follow that up at the end of the cruise with a thank you tip. I call this the embarkation and debarkation tip sandwich. (and yes I just completely made that up.)

And she's off.

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Wasn't she delayed last week as well?

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That should be plenty of time. I renewed ours earlier this year and was surprised how fast it was. I'd say about two weeks. Three with the holidays.

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Keep stalking it. Last cruise was 19 days before I snagged. Worth it. I agree with a previous poster, seems like early am is a popular time to see more.

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We are such a bunch of lushes... trying to turn 15 drinks into 30. [emoji23]

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Make friends with your local bartender and it will not be an issue. And by friends I don't mean tell him your life story and show him pictures of your dog. Introduce him to friends like George, Honest Abe, Alexander and Andrew. (Thomas makes good friends easily too.) I imagine ole Ben makes great friends but that's probably going overboard.

We've been to Progresso twice, the last time being in 2016. I both love and hate Progresso. It is certainly more "real" than most other cruise ship ports. That being said there was a lot of development that happened between our 14 & 16 visits and I hear that more and more cruise ships are stopping there. Basically the farther you walk down the beach the cheaper the prices get. It starts out wanting to charge you for a table and chairs on the beach to begging you to sit. As I recall we walked about 1/2 mile down the beach until we found a nice restaurant with some beach side table and chairs. We had a lovely afternoon of food and drinks for about $50 with tip. But I'm sure things have continued to develop.

Have you booked your air thru carnival? If so you can use cards to get 10% off the air then too

 

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No we live in Texas and cruise out of Galveston so no flying for us. Gift cards have saved us over $300 so far. I like how you can purchase them and they are delivered electronically and available for immediate use. Now I'm just trying to decide how much gift $ I should bring on board for our S&S account. We are doing the chef's table (3 of us) and Cheers doesn't work in Texas on embarkation day but we also have $75 OBC. Our one carnival excursion is paid for and the others are privately arranged. We don't usually do a lot of shopping or pictures on board so I need to bring just enough gift cards to save me the 10% but not to have any left over. My goal is always to leave the cruise with less than $50 on my S&S account.

I have bought and paid for everything on our Jan 18 Breeze cruise from the fare to the cheers to excursions with gift cards from the Allstate and I don't even have Allstate insurance.

We had a fantastic experience with Chef's table on the Freedom in Jan 2016. The menu has changed since then. It was one of the best meals I've ever had and truly the best one at sea. Our group was about a dozen people and DW and I had not met any of them before. But the food, atmosphere and the wine we all soon became cruise friends for the remainder of the cruise. Do it!

https://www.galveston.com/cruisevideocam/

Still in port.

We got offered an upgrade to one of the spa rooms on the Carnival Dream. Can you all tell me if that includes anything extra or what comes with the room please?

OP we have a spa cabin booked on the breeze in January. We have never had one before but our understanding is that the room decor is different and the room is stocked with some better shampoos and the like. Perhaps a fluffy robe or something. Of course the location in close proximity to the spa too. Perhaps someone with first hand knowledge will speak up.

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They dribble out a few more over time. Last cruise I got it 19 days before sailing. Its really random when it comes out, on our January 14th Breeze cruise its come out twice on Fridays after midnight and once on a Wednesday smack in the middle of the morning. No logic and only a few are available. So far I've been unlucky. But I'm hunting.

on the Carnival page, it lists a cost per day. Does that include boarding/disembarking days as well?

Cruises out of Galveston do not include Cheers on embarkation day. Something with Texas alcohol laws. So no cheers the first day, drinks are on you. (And you pay Texas alcohol taxes until your in international waters.)

I believe its the same deal sailing out of New York, otherwise most ports Cheers starts immediately.

This. The first time we got Cheers! I just felt so much better on that cruise (and not from the drinks:cool:). We prepaid for it and that was it. There was no worrying how many we had that day and if we were still in our "booze budget". It gave me piece of mind knowing it was already paid for. It also made my wife a little more willing to try drinks she otherwise might not have. If I pay $10 for a drink, you better believe I'm going to drink it, whether I liked it or not. But if I got a drink as part of an all-inclusive package and didn't like it, I'd just order something else. I agree 100% that even if we came out a little in the red, I'd still do it for convenience, piece of mind, and the "ya never know" factor.

This is exactly what I really like about the Cheers program. We had it for the first time on our last cruise in 2016. DW is not a huge drinker, if she had 3 or 4 a day she's doing well. I on the other hand will make a go of it. But the peace of mind in being able to try new things without feel remorse about it was wonderful. Not having to constantly check my S&S account to see what we were going to owe at the end, felt like a truly all inclusive vacation. I loved trying all the drinks at Alchemy bar. (Not all were good ones either) And generally just being able to try new things was great. Now that they have removed the $10/drink limit and added all the non-alcoholic drinks to it will make it even more appealing. I'm looking forward to trying some more of their nicer tequilas and whiskeys.

Last cruise we met our bar server in the MDR the first night. She was very pleasant and chatty. We told her what we liked to drink and I gave her a $20. She then told us what bars she would be working at during the next day and when. We would then go to where she was working, it didn't matter if there were 20 people line, once she saw us she'd ask if we wanted the usual and make our drinks immediately. She memorized our folio numbers and we would just go sit down and she would bring the ticket by later with another round and we would tip her a small amount. Every night at the MDR she would have our drinks waiting on our table when we got there and tell us her schedule again for the next day. She received another large tip at the end of the cruise. I've also done this with our cabin steward at the beginning and end of the cruise. But I don't always do it with every steward/waiter/bartender I come across. I talk to them a bit and see how personal they are and what kind of personality they are. I only do it if I feel that we will see them often and it will enhance the service we receive. Sounds kinda crass I know, but I've already paid for the drinks, I'm really just looking to pay for the excellent service at that point.

That being said with Cheers I usually only tip if its a server we're going to see a lot or a bar we were going to hang out at it and needed follow up service.

Do you choose your wine? Do they charge for it or is it part of the PKG? Tia

Both the table wine and the champagne are included in the PP charge. You could chose between red and white wine (or both), I do not recall what the label was but I do vaguely recall them opening the bottles. We are not real big into wine but we found it quite agreeable. The chef would suggest we drink the white or red wine with a particular course and the waitstaff kept your wine glasses full the entire time. I don't think the vintage changed during the meal. They would also take specific orders for cocktails or specific wines and charge them to your S&S account. (We had Cheers which worked as well.) I recall the dressed up gentlemen was a wine aficionado and ordered some specific wines. He was also a great conversationalist and we had a lot of fun talking to him. I do not recall the champagne label either but I drank several glasses of it before they switched to wine for the main courses. I think I may have ordered a cocktail from the bar then just drank wine the remainder of the time. It flowed freely all you can drink wine and champagne.

We have pleasant memories of this event. It was the "perfect" cruise day. We had gone on a fabulous Uxmal tour in Progresso, come back to the ship and had a few drinks then had this marvelous chef's table experience. Afterwards was, admittingly, a bit of a blur. This day was the reason you cruise. Like an addict I've been searching for it everyday since then. In fact DW, who is not a cruise addict all, asked if I had booked the chef's table again for our upcoming Breeze cruise in January and was quite pleased when I told her I did about 5 minutes after booking the cruise nearly a year in advance.

We have never done a Chef's Table.. not because we aren't adventurous eaters, but because we have been concerned about the atmosphere of the evening. Meaning... we are very casual people (not so casual that we would wear shorts or tank tops to the dining room), but we don't like to get super dressed up either (more like slacks/polo for DH and a sundress for me). We are on vacation and want to be comfy. :)

 

Please don't flame me on this, but we were concerned about the other passengers at the table, as we don't like to be around shall we say "stuffy" people. When we are on vacation we want to relax and not have any pretenses or awkwardness at dinner.

 

Can anyone share their experiences with the other passengers at the Chef's Table?

 

Is there set menu on each ship or does it vary? Is wine included in the dinner? Does anyone have any recent menus that that can share?

 

Thanks,

Angie

We did the Chef's table on the Freedom in January of 2016 with the outgoing menu. There were I believe 13 people including my wife and I. None of us knew each other prior to the experience. There was a range of people there from 3 ladies on like girls cruise, some couples and some singles. Ages from 20s to 60s. The dress was all over the place from casual to one guy who dressed all the way up. Everyone felt comfortable. I wore a button up shirt with a tie but no coat. We met in the lobby bar and an crew member checked us off the list and started pouring champagne while we kinda made small talk. We then went to the dinning room annex which housed a large banquet table that we all sat around. They plied us with champagne as they gave us a tour of the galley in operation and Hors d'oeuvres then kept the wine flowing the entire time. The dinner itself is laid out in courses and encourages you to converse with your table mates with breaks between the courses as various chefs and senior crew and the magician all come by. We all became fast "cruise friends" and spoke with each other as we saw one another the remainder of the cruise. (This was the night of the first port of call.) They took our picture and sent it to our room the next day as a gift. I will admit that I'm kind of an introvert and not real outgoing and friendly in strange groups but the whole experience was so polished and well orchestrated that everyone had the grandest of times. (Except for that one guy who's wife made him come and all he wanted was a cheeseburger. You can just look our our group photo and know who I'm talking about.) There is one waitress/waiter who kinda heads up the service and ensures your wine glass never goes empty. I do not recall what I tipped her, but it was significant and well earned. Do it!

It was the best meal I'd ever had at sea and in the top 5 of all the meals and experiences I've ever had. Already booked it again for our Breeze cruise in January.

Please keep in mind that in some ports the Cheers program does not start until the next day. Our homeport, Texas for instance. You aren't charged Cheers for embarkation day so you do have to pay for your first day's drinks. The other restricted port is New York. This has something to do with the state alcohol laws in both states. All others start the moment you embark.

I like the convenience both on the ship and for budgeting purposes. We pre-purchase cheers using gift cards we get from Allstate Drivewise at a 10% discount and using a credit card we get cash back on so it lowers our overall cost. I will more than break even and DW may or may not drink much. We haven't cruised since they changed it up to include the coffees and other specialty drinks and I think she will use that even more.

Overall its budgeted and paid for, drink what you want when you want it, no counting the cost and it gives us the freedom to try new drinks and not feel bad if we don't like them. Really like this program with the Alchemy bar. Last cruise we sat down and drink ourselves through the menu. Would not have tried many of those drinks without Cheers.

We consider the gratuities part of the cruise fare and pre-pay them along with the taxes and everything else. I think the industry has kinda backed itself into a corner with gratuities as the staff derive a large % of their income from tips but the cruise industry wants to keep the "advertised" fares as low as possible. John Heald wrote about this some time ago. If every cruise line did away with the gratuities and then included that in their fares then everyone would be fine. But if only one line, say Carnival, does this then all of a sudden their fares are roughly 10% higher than their competitors and us price sensitive consumers will go there. We see the same thing in the US with restaurants trying to include tips in the food prices much like those in Europe do but people complain that their food is expensive.

As for me if you are going to charge me a set gratuity then unless the service is exceptional that's probably all you going to get. When we started cruising 20 years ago it was still the cash system and we probably tipped better then but it was a pain to hold onto that cash the whole cruise so I do prefer this system. In a sense the cruise line has picked the gratuity for their crew. I would never,ever dream of removing my pre-paid gratuities.

We did Cheers our last cruise and will be doing it again on our next cruise. I also have mixed feelings about paying additional gratuities on a per drink basis so here is what we did. On our first night we found a bar and server that we really liked. We asked when and where she would be working all week and I tipped her $20 and told her we would be on the Cheers program starting the next day. After that she memorized our folio numbers and what we liked to drink. Whenever she saw us, in line, sitting on a lounge chair, in the MDR she immediately got us our drinks and kept them coming regardless of who else was in line before us, etc. She got another good tip at the end of the cruise and everyone was happy with the arrangements.

Have used FTTF on our last two cruises and absolutely loved it. Show up anytime you want, go straight to the front of line, straight on board and straight to your cabin. At that point I was sold, not having to trudge luggage around for those couple of hours was worth it!