iria64

We would catch a whiff every once in a while while sitting out on the balcony. The biggest problem I had with these people was not the smell but the fact that smoking is specifically prohibited is most areas of the ship. That mean ALL smoking... tobacco and marijuana. All this time and effort has been spent to educate smokers on where they can smoke and for the most part they comply. Pot smokers, OTOH, seem to think 'no smoking' rules do not seem to apply. Edit to add.. Vaping users seem to fall in the same category (IMO) as pot smokers in terms of following no smoking rules.

Nope, mid teens.

You should have been on the Mardi Gras last month... some woman lost it in Rudi's because someone dared to sit at a table with their baseball cap on. Oh, the horrors. We felt sorry for the staff because the woman was almost full blown Karen.

Just a word of warning for those without bottom bubble/drink package. Be careful when using the soda machines. Many of the dispensers do not work properly. There were many times we would go to get soda and the dispenser would either be out of syrup or be very weak soda. My first time trying for Mtn dew I got green soda water. I would be upset if I had to pay for each cup of soda and 20% of the time I got plain soda water. As an aside... this seem to be one area where maintenance is just not keeping up. On out first day there were dispensers ate each station that did not work and were not fixed for the whole week.

A lot will depend on what happens in port on the day you arrive. A pp said they were at MCO by 9:15. On our trip last month they did not start debark until shortly after 8am (this ship actually got back to canaveral around 2:15am)... at 8:30am they were still calling priority/suite passengers and hadn't even gotten to calling self debark. We decided to get in line at that time and were pulling out of parking lot at 9:15. Also, If you want to ensure the quickest debark time make sure you bring your passport. The passport line leaving the terminal was mostly non existent while the line for those that did alternate id (birth certificate) was extremely long. I am guessing it was at least 30 minutes in not more.

I am in the camp of I just don't care what they carry although I do prefer Coke to Pepsi. We had bottomless bubbles last month and I stuck with Mountain Dew. Next cruise will be out of Galveston and it will be Dr Pepper for me.

Most balconies I have seen can be opened by the passenger. Should you do it... probably not. The 'key' for the dividers seems to be a 1/4"-3/8" square. You just need something sturdy enough. We have used a clothes pin and a car key to open the divider. I have not seen any dividers that would block the windows. The moveable part is about half the total divider and folds back to be secured against the other half of the divider. I have not been on as many ships as some people here so there may be exceptions.

FTTF is probably a little overrated. I was able to snag a 10:30 port arrival time... this was after the systems were down for an upgrade. I didn't do check in until about 7am and all time slots from 10:30 on were available. We did sit in the terminal for a while but so did all those diamond/platinums who got 10:00 am appointments. Boarding started shortly after 11 and we were on the ship a little after 11:30.

This was on the Mardi Gras. I chalked it up to a sanitary thing. If they do not handle the cards there is less a chance of spreading something.

I am not sure the bar code has the correct info in it. What they did for us is they wrote your folio number on the boarding pass. That was one think I could not understand on the ship... with all the electronic gadgets available, no matter where we go a drink... at a bar, in a restaurant... they always wrote the folio number down and had to manually enter it their POS terminal.

Bacon was available on the Mardi Gras buffet every other day although they did have someone serving the bacon to try to limit how much you could take at any one time.

Was on the Mardi Gras a couple of weeks ago. There some free movies and some pay movies. It seemed that most of the pay movies were those that were being shown by the pool at night. It wasn't a bad selection and was better than the options you get in a hotel. Hotels you are stuck with HBO or whatever movie channel they provide. Any other movies that might be available are PPV. What I usually do when going on vacation is use the download option from my streaming service and then I will have something that I know I will want to watch.

From what I have heard both NY and TX have some rules where you cannot purchase and unlimited drink package. However, if unlimited drinks are included in the cruise fare you can have the drink package while in port. If you want to have some fun, do a search on some of the idiotic liquor laws that are in place around the country.

I agree service at Pig & Anchor is slow. After we were seated we got the ordering slip within 5 minutes or so but it was at least 10 minutes later before they were picked up. We waited at least 10 minutes for our drink order to be taken and at least another 10 minutes to receive our drinks. I would say it took 20 minutes to actually get our food. Once we were done eating it was another 10-15 minutes before they realized we were waiting on out desert. Overall, a meal that should be at most 30 minutes took well over an hour.

There shouldn't be a problem getting parking since the day you are arriving the same amount of people, give or take, will be leaving.

I saw a video on the keyhole game once... this game may be rigged even more than the claw game. Basically, the machine is programmed to let 1 win per so many tries and no matter how good you are stopping the key you are always going to just miss. There is no chance to these machines, if it is not ready to payout you will not win.

On this last cruise about 1/2 hour before sailing they made an announcement that 9% of passengers had still not checked in at their muster station. 20 minutes later that was down to 4%. No other announcements were made after that so I assume that 4% showed up in the last 10 minutes or so.

We just got off the Mardi Gras... they did not show us how to don the life vest. At most they just said the life vests are at the muster station and not in the rooms. There were 4 of us in the group, they scanned 1 boarding pass, the rest of the party came up on their device where they just tapped each person to check us in. The whole process was done in less than a minute.

So yes, as others have said... Cuccina, Chibang, and MDR are able to be booked through the the Hub app. Pig and Anchor you need to go down and get on a list... still only about 10-15 minutes. Emeril's the only thing we ordered was the bengets.

The only one we had any extended wait before seating was Cuccina. If you check in by about 6pm or so the wait was typically under 10 minutes. The 1st time we did Cuccina we wanted to eat around 6:30. At 6 the wait was 10-20 minutes. When we finally checked in at about 6:10 the wait had jumped to 20-30 minutes.

Same here... we got the free bottle at the steakhouse on the 2nd night.

I tried again on the website and was able to change the DoB. 1st time I got some sort of error. The next problem was I had to redo Verifly since I could not see any way on the app to remove one person and add another. I had to remove the whole trip and readd it. Luckily I had only entered info to 2 out 4 people.

We are sailing out this coming Saturday. For one of our guests has the incorrect DoB. Can this be edited on the Carnival website? I tried to make the change but it does not seem to be allowing me to do this.

They were sent to a different cabin. There were 8 or 9 cabins in the quarantined area with somebody stationed there so ensure you could not leave the room.

Yes and no... this was a B2B and they were quarantined on the 2nd leg. I don't know if they had to test at some point during the first leg. Testing may not be useless but it is close to it. The biggest reason is that many (most?) people are traveling a decent distance to get to the port and quite a few of them are flying. So, you test 3 days out. 2 days out you are doing last minute errands for the trip. The day before you fly in, stay at a local hotel, eat out at a local restaurant, maybe see some sites. There is plenty of opportunity for exposure from the time you test until the time you board the ship.