Lakufu

TWO agonizingly long days until I am aboard the splendor!

I have a kind of random question for experienced cruisers. If you order multiple dishes in any given course can you make the request for it all at once or do they only serve you one dish at a time. Example if I wanted shrimp cocktail and a crab cake, could they both come at the same time or would I have to eat one and wait for the next?

Just trying to figure out timing a bit as waiting for multiple dishes will obviously make the meal last longer versus if my husband and I got four appetizers between us to share and and they all came at once so we didn't have to wait.

I'm going to be on this cruise too but go no such email..

We leave on the carnival splendor in just one week yay!

However I have a question.

Are you allowed to carry on your full sized suitcase? We do have faster to the fun so know we will have access to the cabin right away, can we bypass the use of a porter and just bring out suitcase with us so we know it makes it to the cabin safe and sound and we have no delay in waiting for it?

Has anyone done this, would carnival give a fuss over it? I know I can bring on a small carry on bag. We will be cruising with one large suitcase and one small carry on size for two people.

13 days and we are so amped. Cannot wait, it is rounding out an extremely busy and stressful summer for us.

Our next cruise is at the end of August, after a really hard year, selling and buying a new home, my parent separating, sick relatives.. Finally we will get a break. So I am looking forward to the peace and rest.

And then the FOOD.

Sitting on my extended balcony with some cake and wine,

Swimming in gorgeous blue waters,

Coming home and my daughter starts preschool and then we sail again in October because we are really deserving after the year we have survived. I cannot wait!

Good story, but it really sounds like an excuse to avoid tipping anyone.

How am I avoiding tipping anyone if I leave on the "behind the scenes" portion, pay the assigned 18% that I don't have a choice about in the dining and also tip my room steward?

Avoiding tipping double, yeah, you bet!

I feel like there has to be a lot of dishonesty of what people actually do on threads like this, but I really feel no reason to put on airs at all or especially on an online forum.

Will I be reducing my service charges? Yes, absolutely.

I'm not paying double for restaurant service. We will eat in a specially restaurant every night, if I am being assessed an 18% tip, that covers those meals and I won't pay it over again.

"But then you rip off the servers in the regular restaurant!!"

They didn't serve me if I didn't eat there! I don't go across the street and tip a waitress at tgi Fridays if we ate at Applebee's that night. It's absurd thinking.

I will reduce the service charge to $50 left on the account and I will tip our meal servers directly and my room steward directly. They can apply the $50 to the behind the scenes folks as I will request them to do so.

If you don't like how I do it, too bad. But I felt I wanted to share because there is way too much chest thumping on this topic and if someone is more of my mindset, there's other people out there who don't like being raked over the coals either.

In planning our next trip I considered the dining package, however for us to eat where we want to paying on the ship versus paying for the package we would stand to save only $15. Not worth committing to anything in my opinion, this way if we change our minds and want to do just a buffet or mdr we don't feel like we wasted the package.

I refuse to go to ocean blue, it's already the largest up charge on the ship and then if you want to taste two appetizers it's another up charge on top of that? We like to sample lots of stuff on a cruise, this is a bit turn off to me and my husband. I'd be willing to try the counter service lunch items but the dinner isn't gonna happen, I suppose many people echo that feeling.

I got a couple of email offers to ungraded which I turned down because we selected our room carefully, unless they offered us a suite for nearly free we will stick with our bowling alley balcony.

Does anyone know what night the chefs table is generally held on? We are on an eight day cruise.

Really excited to read this review, as we are going to be on the splendor on August 29th in the very same stateroom! Yours are the best pictures I've seen yet of it, thank you!

For the first couple days we admittedly eat until we are sick, my husband and I, the roll us back to the room so we can die kind of eating. The excitement of that tends to wear off by day three and we reign it into eating a bit less so we don't feel constantly ill.

But we absolutely love food, are foodies, do chefs table, want to experience and taste everything, it's important and a big part of our trip is the enjoyment of the food. Maybe we are weird,I dunno, reading everyone else's routine makes me feel like a glutton, no wonder we are fat! LOL

We will be leaving from our home port in August and would be pretty agitated if sent such a letter and we would ignore it, as our day is planned to get us there for first on board after priority. That's a part of cruising I really enjoy, the first hour or so on an emptier ship. After paying the same fare as everyone else I wouldn't appreciate being told my vacation was set to be two or more hours shorter than everyone else's.. Just let it be first come first serve.

We will be on the same cruise as you. This is our first time on splendor however we have sailed at this same exact time of year before, it will still be quite warm from Florida onwards.. But not the crazy oppressive heat you'd have earlier in the summer. Weather should be quite pleasing to you, hope to see you aboard!

I know at some ports you can get off and wing it with various tour operators, does port canaveral have any of these standing by? We are interested in doing an airboat tour but see the price is greatly inflated for a short ride with what is included by carnival.. If anyone has experience with grabbing a last minute tour there please let me know, what was available and how the prices were.

I am considering taking my daughter on our cruise next year if we feel she is ready, so I'm doing some preliminary looks into it. Assuming we stay with carnival, I'm looking at the kids club hours and see scheduled activites are broken up into blocks throughout the day with gaps of 1-2 hours in between.

For example, 10-1, 2-5, 7-10. Does this mean that for the hours in between we would have to go retrieve our child?

Please don't think I want to dump her in there from sunup to sundown, but I'm curious about how this would work and it wouldn't lead to us stalking a clock all day to ensure we don't miss her pickup time. I understand they don't provide meals and we'd have to pick her up to feed her, and it seems like these time gaps are at typically mealtimes so is that their reasoning?

But, basically, I guess my question is, is the kids club closed for those hour gaps there or is that meaning it's open but there aren't structured activites at that time.

Your photos are absolutely spectacular.. If I wasn't already signed up to cruise this year, I'd be booking now. And I love your conversational style story telling. Really wonderful, thank you.