DallasGuy75219

Or call to order from room service on embarkation day once the ship is in international waters and is no longer charging sales tax. Except out of New Orleans where you'll still be paying state sales tax unti roughly midnight when the ship reaches the Gulf from the mouth of the Mississippi River.

With so many people having Cheers or Drinks On Us, saying they don't have or can't get Crown is just a way to get people to trade down to cheaper liquor if the distributor(s) won't negotiate lower prices... reducing expenses against the fixed revenue those programs without the optics of raising the Cheers price and/or lowering the maximum drink price under Cheers.

OP probably has casino offers.

Weren't the chips really thick though, almost like they had fried tortillas that weren't meant to make chips with? I can remember not caring for the chips when what's now Guy's was a generic grill. But I did like the cheese dip (calling it queso is giving it a bit too much credit) with the fries from the grill.

Order the mac and cheese off the kids' menu and a side of bacon?

The kind of test(s) accepted, whether the testing time is measured in hours or days, and how many hours/days before embarkation you can get tested vary by your port of embarkation, the ports on your itinerary, and your vaccination status (unvaccinated, fully vaccinated, or up-to-date). People are oversimplifying on these boards and giving one-size-fits-all advice that is not correct in every situation. Please stop posting the requirements for your cruise and your particular situation as if it's the Gospel truth. Yes you're trying to be helpful but it's not so helpful when your advice is wrong for other people's situations and they get denied boarding for not having the correct test and/or having been tested too soon before embarkation.

When Carnival used to give $5 match play coupons for buying the $10ish cocktails, I'd save all mine up until the last day and bet $5 and a match play coupon on both red and black or even and odd or high and low. People looked at me like I was crazy but it almost guaranteed turning each coupon into $2.50 (unless 0 or 00 came up). In this case I would have put $25 on opposite bets on different spins to at least guarantee walking away with some cash (redeemable chips). But the $100 wasn't your cash to begin with so nothing lost.

I was on Freedom in February. I'm inclined to say they paid my Diamond play and FunPlay for slots in cash, but I could be remembering wrong. I need to take pictures on my next cruises to show the difference in card readers that I'm talking about.

Reminds me of the lightweights who order a fishbowl because it's half price then need help stumbling back to their room😀

Whether it's $25 in lieu of the BOGO tournament entry or free FunPlay included with a casino offer, the cage only pays out promotional credit in cash if they can't avoid it. Generally they'll ask if you play tables or slots. If tables, you'll usually get promotional chips that can't be cashed in. So you're forced to play with those chips, but any winnings are paid out in regular redeemable chips. If you say you play slots, the ships with the newer LCD touch-screen card readers on the slots can support a separate promotional slot bank. Same concept as the FunPlay chips... you can only gamble (not cash in) with the credits in that bank but any winnings cash be cashed out to your regular cash slot bank and then cashed out with the cashier. On ships with the older card readers with physical push buttons, they can't support a separate promotional bank so if you say you play slots the cage will pay out promotional play in cash. That's why some people get promotional play in cash, others get promotional chips, and others get promotional slot credit.

Probably folks who took lots of bargain cruises post-restart when the cruiselines were practically giving cabins away, to get people onboard and when new cruisers were too cautious to take their first cruise. I don't blame them; I did it my on Royal to go from barely Diamond to Diamond Plus in 4 cruises. Expect another devaluation of cruise days/elite status post-restart... a decrease in benefits, increase in the number of days to reach elite tiers, and/or a new tier. IMO most likely a new tier between Gold and Platinum at 75 days (Titanium? lol), then Platinum becomes something in the 125-150 day range. Existing Platinums who don't meet the new threshold may be grandfathered in or may get bumped down to the new tier like some Golds got bumped down to Red after the last change.

CC is not letting me post screenshots, but the ship tracker at https://www.vesselfinder.com is showing Radiance is still enroute to dock at Ensenada at 6:30 local time Sunday morning, which would indicate it never made port since it's now 8:00 pm Sunday evening there. Based on the actual path over almost the last 24 hours they stayed off the coast of Mexico and turned back north towards LA about 2:00 am Sunday morning and are slowly cruising back to LA.

Keys words being "used to". My post was in the present tense.

The tradeoff is that vaccinated no longer need pre-cruise testing on most itineraries. Show proof of something you've already done regardless of the cruise (getting vaccinated) or get tested specifically for the cruise... your choice of "burdens". But the latter is definitely more of a "burden" than the former.

You need to be more specific about itinerary, length of cruise, and whether you're talking about vaccinated or unvaccinated passengers. There are multiple scenarios under which testing will still be required, so no absolute yes or no answer to this overly simplified question is going to be accurate in every situation.

Not always quite that simple. Some ships only offer priority tendering for the first 1-2 hours of tendering operations. After that you're stuck getting a tender pass like any non-status passenger or waiting until there's no longer any wait and general tendering is announced (i.e., the number of people waiting to tender off the ship has decreased such that you no longer need a tender pass).

It's washed in hot water with who knows how many other passengers' clothes, so make sure it's not somethiing you'd be upset with if it came back shrunken or with a tint from the other clothes it was washed with. Personally, I only send out underwear, socks, undershirts, and t-shirts, never any shirt with a collar, jeans, or dress pants.

Cruises to nowhere are no longer permitted on foreign-flagged ships, those not built in the US, and/or crewed with foreign nationals who do not have visas to work in the US. The government was letting this slide until a mom-and-pop gambling ship tried to run regularly scheduled day cruises to nowhere from Florida with foreign crew, a foreign-flagged ship, and/or no foreign port stops. Cabo is doable on a 4-day from southern California.... a sea day to get to Cabo, a port day in Cabo and a sea day to get back to California. But not on a 3-day. Different issue with regard to PVSA compliance. If they could make it to Mazatlan, they could also make it to Ensenada (at the time), Cabo, and/or Puerto Vallarta to hit at least one foreign port and maintain compliance with the PVSA. Cruises to nowhere are no longer permitted on foreign-flagged ships, those not built in the US, and/or crewed with foreign nationals who do not have visas to work in the US. The government was letting this slide until a mom-and-pop gambling ship tried to run regularly scheduled day cruises to nowhere from Florida with foreign crew, a foreign-flagged ship, and/or no foreign port stops.

According to the protocols on Carnival's website, you only need the positive test results from a certified lab.

Catalina Island doesn't really come into play here since it's in California. A foreign-flagged ship has to call at a foreign port on a round-trip sailing from a US port (and passengers have to be given the opportunity to get off the ship--Norwegian sued for enforcement of that when another cruise line tried scheduling round-trip Hawaii sailings from southern California with a technical stop in Ensenada where passengers could not disembark). Ensenada is pretty much the only option for a foreign port on the 3-day sailings from southern California. The 4-day sailings could make it to Cabo and back but that would burn a whole lot more fuel than the cruiselines want when they could go to the much closer Ensenada and Cataline Island instead.

🙄 I've never seen a cruise/travel insurance policy with "Acts of Rodents" coverage for personal possessions.

Carnival's definition of a Document of Recovery is: a paper or electronic copy of the positive viral test result from a certified laboratory (dated no more than 90 days prior to the sailing date). Depending on the whims of the check-in staff (i.e., whether they're following the letter of Carnival's policy on any particular day) your doctor's letter alone may not be sufficient.

The steakhouse sommelier? That's a crock that there's a legitimate sommelier onboard any Carnival ship, with staffing increasingly cut to the bone.

Longer cruises have an earlier final payment date than shorter cruises.

Even if something's not on the menu anymore, in my experience the bartenders will still make it on request if they know how and have the ingredients.