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CruisefromNY

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    OFFICIAL "Team Sunshine" in NOLA - Jan 5, 2014 ~ Are YOU Ready For A Little Sunshine?

    in Carnival Cruise Lines

    Posted

    Thanks Deni! I've never heard anything negative about them either but just curious. I'm trying to see if it's worth the additional cost. ;)

     

    Randy - Not sure if I gave you our names for your running list of folks but I'm Tammy and hubby is Dave! Thanks!

     

    Tammy, we always travel AFT;)!

    We used to book the wraps but no more, we did not use the balcony enough to justify the extra $$.

    Spirit 15 Days~Hawaii: A Review

    in Carnival Cruise Lines

    Posted · Edited by CruisefromNY

    Continued…..

    Ok, so since we are talking about the captain, I did want to mention that Captain Volpi is simply adorable. He’s just this amazing man who doesn’t seem to take the world very seriously and seems to just be full of life and humor. I literally looked forward to his noon announcement every day and listened with rapt attention as I was trying to make out what he was saying in his broken English. I imagine that a LOT of people looked forward to his announcements because every day when I was at the pool, while he was speaking, if he cracked a joke or said something cute (which was often), everyone would crack up…so I know he had the attention of most everyone seated around me. The Captain did mention that he was retiring in Sept and it’s a loss to Carnival for sure.

     

     

     

    Being Platinum:

    Achieving a certain status on any cruise line has never been a priority of mine as you can tell by my history. I will say that the CCL Platinum perks that are quite nice in my eyes are the priority embark, debark and tendering. If they gave me just those 3 things I would be more than content. I don’t need the chocolate covered strawberries *have a comment about those that I will mention later* or the gift (this time it was the backpack. My DH and I both received one each and I gave them to my SIL for her grandchildren). There is also supposed to be priority restaurant seating but that is hit and miss. All these are nice tokens of appreciation however and you shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth…

     

    We embarked on this ship in record time so I was loving my ‘status’ when we boarded. I had taken my platinum perk into consideration when I was investigating/booking my excursions for this cruise. Knowing you have priority tendering gives you major flexibility when booking things at ports where you must tender.

    We were very fortunate in that we only needed to tender in one port and that was in Kona.

    We were supposed to dock in Kona at 8 am. When I found the excursion that we wanted to do, the tour started at 8 am. This was a wild dolphin snorkel tour and we were very excited about it. I had emailed and called the operator of this tour (Captain Ron) several times explaining that we were not docking until 8. He assured me it was a short tender (and it was...maybe 10 minutes??) and he would hold off the excursion until 8:30. I figured this would be pretty much OK as we had priority tendering. He understood that if the ship got in late, then I would also get there late.

     

    We docked pretty much on schedule but it seems that for whatever reason we were not cleared right away. I had asked how the priority tendering worked and was told by the CS rep to just come down to the area in front of the CS desk and sit with the other platinum guests and we’d be taken right off the ship, so that is what we did. I didn’t count the number of ‘platinum’ people down there but there weren’t too many of us…maybe 50 or 60 of us???…We waited and waited. Finally at about 8:15, I called Captain Ron from my cell phone to tell him we hadn’t been cleared. He told me not to worry, he’d wait. That made me feel good, but the other issue is that on Kona (at least where we were to snorkel) the weather is sunny every morning, but then as noon approaches…EVERY DAY, the clouds start to roll over, like clockwork. Anyone who snorkels will tell you that clouds make for lousy visibility so I was anxious to get ON my little boat and get into the water. I did feel relieved that Ron was going to wait and that is because we were fortunate enough to be the only 3 people on his boat that day…so thank goodness for that.

    Anyway a CCL crew member finally came over and told us that she ship still was not cleared and that she would allow us to use the phone to call our tour operators. It seems that everyone had already done that with the exception of one family and the CCL crew member seemed to take these people under her wing so to speak and make the call for them….I am assuming this is what she did as she had them gathered around her and was using her phone.

    When she was done with that call is when things got a little ugly. She basically told us that she was going to take 10 of us at a time, down to a tender and that she was going to leave for a minute and she wanted us to figure out which 10 were going first.

    You GOTTA be kidding me. :eek:

    　

    Right away you could see people stiffen. You have maybe 50-60 people….not even 1/2 the capacity of a single tender boat, waiting to just get on that first tender and now you’re not only telling us that you are only going to stick 10 on that tender, but you want us to gather around and figure out who gets to go??

    We all just looked at her like she had 3 heads.

     

    Never mind, now she chose the group she had made the call for to go first…

    Never checking with anyone to see what time their excursions were…never attempting to figure out if there were some people that needed to get off earlier than others and never mind that there weren’t THAT many of us and there was no reason not to get us all off the ship at once.

     

    The natives started to get restless and my DH was one of these restless natives. He said to the woman, “Does this card mean nothing??” (he shows her his room key…I start to cringe because I dislike tossing the platinum thing, but hey, we were ALL platinum)

    She tells him that yes it does mean something….he told her, well obviously it doesn’t. She said, “I am not making a choice.”

    He said, “I think you just did.”

    Then things got a little more restless and suddenly within a few minutes we were all being lead off because she wanted to take only 10, but everyone just went. So now, the CCL woman as upset…I was not happy with my DH (even though he was right) and it all was for nothing because we all got on that boat along with a bunch of other people with no problem. I do not know what the hang-up was.

     

    Considering that there may likely be more platinum guests on each cruise as years go by and they know when you board how many platinum guests are aboard so they should know what to expect, I think it would be beneficial to CCL to come up with some sort of ‘plan’ for priority tendering…what we experienced was in no way shape or form a bonus. If you are going to tell me that taking 10 CCL cruises will yield me a certain perk, then you should stick to that and not try to take people in shifts of 10 on to 6 different tender boats. Not acceptable. If you don’t want to offer this perk fine, but if you do offer it then give it to me because I planned according to this.

    　

    That ends all negatives and complaints. The rest is all good stuff. I have to download some photos and have a ton of stuff to do today so I will get to ports and excursions as soon as I can.

     

    Fair and unbiased as far as I can see and I was right there with you on this cruise;) And I do know that Italian salute...have used it a few times myself. :)

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