Honolulu Blue

Thanks for the kind words. I'm sure Celebrity is thrilled to have this repositioning cruise chartered. Traditionally, across cruise lines, cabins on repositioning cruises tend to be sluggish sellers that only sell out at giveaway prices. They might have passed along a discount for the charter to Jazz Cruises, which if true, then I'm happy for them. I like win-wins. 😃

I received my e-mail a few hours ago announcing the opening of bookings for the Journey of Jazz Cruise to the general public. A few details caught my eye - all the suites and some other top-end non-suite cabins are already sold out, as are the allocated solo inside and balcony cabins. Overall they say the ship is almost 50% booked. That's a pretty good start, IMHO.

This intrigues me... trivia as in going down to the local pub and competing with the locals, or staying at home and breaking out the box of Trivial Pursuit? Either way, I think I'll give you a wide berth if I see you on my ship. Then again, I'm only good at trivia in a few categories. 🙂

They LOVE Mr. Heald and they LOVE Carnival. Rare is the unkind word said about either.

To bend this topic around a bit, I use an Amazon Fire and don't have the Carnival app loaded on it. It's easy to switch the WiFi from my phone to it - just do the Silk thing and go to login.com . That will ask you if you want to login to this device and log off of the other device. Two clicks and done. I can't ask to be much easier than that.

Thanks everyone. A few quickie comments on your comments and lessons learned: Perhaps "scream at me" is an exaggeration. The polished MDR employees are unlikely to scream at their passengers, even me. They're more likely to scream at the chef when he rebuffs my request, which doesn't make me feel much better. Or they're likely to put me on the crew dartboard for the week as the most unreasonable passenger they've had to deal with. That doesn't make me feel any better either. It doesn't seem to be popular among this veteran group, but perhaps that was just the weekend crowd. Why ask about what is apparently such a radical thing? The stomach wants what it wants. I'm sure many of you have food cravings and/or memories of meals from the recent past. I wondered about how flexible MDR menus actually are. It turns out that they're not too flexible. Flowers are red. Green leaves are green. There's no need to see MDR menus any other way than the way they always have been seen. The "proper" procedure for this seems to be similar to the special needs menus - ask beforehand and maybe I'll get what I want. It sounds like too much hassle for all involved for me to try it (even on luxury lines), so I don't think I'll be doing this any time soon. Some of you, I'm sure are breathing a sigh of relief. I briefly forgot about MDR pre-plating. I'm sure regular restaurants at sea and land do the same (especially with popular meals/entrees), but not to the same degree as everyone's favorite MDRs. Thanks again, and I look forward to continued replies with more wisdom.

Two things come to mind quickly - economies of scale and a group of co-workers - where being together is about efficiency and not about enjoyment. I'm glad you have a clan that you like to travel with. Sometimes I wish I had one. 🙂

I'm bumping this because John Heald mentioned Journeys cruises in one of his FB posts this morning. He says it's "important for the beards" to find out how many we've experienced, what we liked about them, and how they can improve them. I found it interesting to note that hardly anyone had an unkind word to say in the comments on this post about Journeys cruises - even considering the bias of the group it's pretty overwhelming. Feel free to take a look and what was said and comment in your spare time.

I mostly cruise on mainstream cruise lines for... reasons, but your answer in re: premium/luxury lines and their ability to whip up special orders is enlightening. Thank you for it.

The above is what i would do - fill out the survey honestly and send a separate communication to the executives. OP, I hope you get what you want out of this. I've always believed that honesty is the best policy - no matter where it leads.

Here's something I always wanted to ask, but didn't want to get screamed at by the waiters and/or Maitre'd - if an item is on the MDR menu on one day during a cruise, can I order it and get it on some future day on that cruise? Or if it's due to be on the menu later in the cruise, can I have it today? Let's assume that it's an item that's not on the "every day" menu, if the cruise line has such. I assume a lot of the answers here will be some variation of "it depends". And that's fine. Perhaps the best answers will be what happened when you did it, and where you did it. Thanks in advance!

It's a rainy Sunday here in Michigan. I'm two weeks off from my latest music cruise adventure. The next one is in several months, though I do have a concert in about four weeks. Let's hand out some silly, meaningless awards around here with pictures. BEST CONCERT BY CRUISE TEC honorable mentions - Stephen Pearcy, Debbie Gibson Winner - SHEENA EASTON. This surprised me too. I didn't expect her to hit me as hard as she did. And she didn't even play her GOOD songs - not many of them, anyway. R&R honorable mentions - Pablo Cruise, Bella Donna, Lez Zeppelin, Ambrosia & Friends Winner - GENERATION RADIO. I did say that the more Chicago they played, the better I would like it. They played lots of Chicago, so I liked the show a lot. They even played "Along Comes a Woman", which is my favorite Chicago tune. And that wasn't even the best song they played. I'll get to that one shortly. McDonald LaBelle Cruise winner - Well, I only attended two concerts here. No surprise who I picked as the better of the two. BEST SONG PLAYED LIVE BY CRUISE TEC honorable mentions - "Telefone" (Sheena), "Lay It Down" (Stephen Pearcy), "Teacher, Teacher" (38 Special) TEC winner - "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic". 80s era tribute band Jessie's Girl did this one. It's a nice surprise; they didn't do this on the show I saw last year. It was a good version, though the Stinger and the boys in blue can/would do it better. R&R honorable mentions - "Love Will Find a Way" (Pablo Cruise), "Waiting for a Girl Like You" (Foreigner), "Baby Come Back" (Peter Beckett with Ambrosia) Winner - "Danger Zone" (Generation Radio). I didn't expect them to play this one. Well played sirs. Forgive me for not using another picture of the Radio stars; let's do Pablo Cruise this time. McDonald LaBelle Cruise winner - "Sweet Freedom". Yes he played it. I wasn't sure he was going to. Let's show the entire band this time; he had quite a few people around to make him sound good. SONGS THAT I LIKE MORE NOW THAT I'VE HEARD THEM PERFORMED LIVE TEC - "Over the Wall" (Debbie Gibson). Cute song near the end of the "Electric Youth" album. She played it second at this concert. R&R - "Kashmir". Lez Zeppelin did the honors. A 10 1/2 minute song that captivated me throughout. Do I really need to say more? BEST SURPRISES (NOT CONCERT RELATED) TEC - Who knew Ray Parker, Jr. liked us so much until he told us? Also, he mentioned my podunk little town in one of his stories. R&R - Who knew I'd like the tribute artists (like Bella Donna) very nearly as much as the bigger names? McDonald LaBelle - Who knew that George Wallace deemed me worthy to take a selfie with him? Sorry this isn't it. 😞 Also, I didn't find Nassau to be the horrible place that some cruisers had mentioned it would be. The port area seemed quite nice to me. I wouldn't mind coming back sometime. OK, enough silliness for one day. Thanks for indulging me. 🙂

Whenever I see ribs on the MDR menu.my interest is piqued. I like prime rib, short ribs, and the BBQ ribs. 👍

You speak the truth, not only about cruise info, but ALL information. Since the rise of the Internet and the movement of much data there, there has been a TREMENDOUS rise in the amount of available information, but also a rise in the amount of opinions that are sometimes disguised as information, and a rise in outright untruths. It can be hard to tell which is which.

I can imagine some new cruisers not paying attention to the app, the newsletter, or the TV screen and relying on the CD to tell them what's going on each day. I think I understand better why Carnival makes so many announcements - especially since they have a large percentage of new cruisers on most of their ships. I've been cruising for a decade. I'm pretty sure there were doors decorated on that first cruise. I don't know when the practice started. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if a few of the cabins on the Titanic were decorated. I definitely started cruising before ducks were a thing on cruise ships. I hope it's a fad that will fade in time. That's all I'll say about it.

Southwest has opened up flight bookings through early March. I used this window to book several of my flights to/from my 2025 cruise cities. This ate into my current stack of miles, though I'll make up much of it with spending over the next year. One leg I left open because I didn't like SWA's available flights, and one leg won't be available to be booked on Southwest until early August.

FYI - StarVista Live's YouTube site has posted full All Access Passes (interviews) with several of its artists from Rock & Romance and Flower Power. The videos include Randy Bachman (twice, for both R&R and FP), Bad Company, Dave Mason, Generation Radio, and WAR. I'll have to remember to catch up with them when I get time.

No, I scanned that from the postcard I bought in town. Just kidding. OF COURSE I've been up there.

You mean like this? Photo from 2014, my first visit to St. Kitts.

This post reminds me of why I don't do laundry onboard. Thanks for sharing. I apologize for bumping this, but I wanted to note your concerns about Princess and the Emerald in my records, and this is the best tool I have to do this.

Hey, I remember you! I've followed some of your adventures on Celebrity, NCL, and MSC. Alas, I seem to have missed the posts on your Emerald Princess cruise. I'll go through it later. I'm sorry for what you went through. I've done three cruises on Princess since 2021. They were relatively short (5, 7, and 5 days). They were quite fun, especially the 80s themed ones. I didn't notice too many problems. And I received a pre cruise cabin upgrade each time. I'll be on the Emerald in August. I hope I'll have a.better experience than you did. 🙏 Anyway, I'm following along, so I'll give the microphone back to you. 🎤

Thank you for sharing your experiences. I can't say that I've ever had a fire situation on a cruise that involved me as a passenger. I've heard drills for fires and announcements that may have involved fires, but none of those involved any action from me.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announced their newest inductees last night. Not in any order, but Cher, Kool and the Gang, Foreigner, and Dionne Warwick made the cut - among others. I saw the former lead singer for Foreigner, Lou Gramm, on The 80s Cruise last year. And I saw the band itself on the 70s Rock and Romance Cruise this year. Kool and the Gang I saw on the 2022 and 2023 editions of the UDC. They're scheduled for the 2025 edition. This photo is from last year: Cara Lee did a convincing job of looking like and sounding like Cher on the UDC last year: One of Dionne's biggest hits, "Then Came You", was with The Spinners. They did this song without her in 2022 on the UDC. They'll probably do the same in 2025, also on the UDC.

I've never had a true muster call, but I had the opposite happen a few months ago - passengers and crew were sent to our cabins and told to stay there for a couple of hours. Here's that thread:

I too miss sailing from SJ on Carnival. I've partially scratched that itch by cruising with other cruise lines from there. The last year or two before the pandemic had the Fascination leaving San Juan at 6 PM. I don't know why.