moongal

Thank you crusingfamily for clearing this up for me!! I have booked a private snorkel excursion via the Cozumel cruise excursions . NET. I THOUGHT I was booking with the one I had read about on trip advisor which is the Cozumel cruise excursions . COM.

VERY CONFUSING!

Has anyone ever taken the private boat (we reserved the 43' Chriscraft) for the 4 hour snorkel tour with the Cozumel Cruise excursions . NET?? I haven't received my confirmation email yet as promised so now I am leery.

Would appreciate any info or experiences any one else has had with this company. They are apparently owned and operated by a larger company called "Island Marketing LTD"

We were on the Magic last June. My daughter was 13 and was so excited to try Circle C. Basically it was just a meeting place. If you want to do it you have to go the first night. This is when all the groups form. After this the kids just basically run the ship with their group. They never stayed in the Circle C club, it was more of a meeting place. You can give permission for your child to sign themselves out (which I don't think was ever even looked at, there didn't seem to be anyone checking)

There was a schedule given of all the activities, but it seemed nothing on the schedule ever happened. Basically the first night everyone makes friends and then the rest of the time they just hang out together.

For us, it didn't work out, I did not want my 13 yr old daughter just running loose on the ship day and night. The group she made friends with were all sneaking into the club 02 (older teens)

If you are ok with your child running the ship with no supervision then Circle C is great. The kids definitely think so! For me it was a little too much free rein.

Sorry for what may be a stupid question here....I too am looking for the best way to communicate onboard this ship as I will be traveling with teenagers. None of us has a Facebook, I'm too old and they are too young (I think Facebook is not cool with the new crop of teenagers) so do we have to sign up with Facebook to use this Facebook messenger? How does it work? Will all of us have to get a Facebook account?? Or can it just use our phone numbers? Would I have to buy a social media plan for everyone $5 a day x number of days on cruise x number of people in my family? Thanks for any help. I only know how to regular text and not Facebook message. Is it instant like iMessage? We all have iPhones. Could we text each other just using iMessage wo getting Facebooks?

Can someone explain all this to me? I've only been on one other cruise. What the heck is "cruise cash"? It doesn't sound like a good deal to me....use it or lose it? What is all this talk about gift cards etc for a sign and sail card? Am I missing something? I thought you just gave a credit card number and whatever you bought onboard got charged to your credit card. That's what I did anyway. What's all this cashing out referring to? Sorry if this is a stupid question! I just used my AmEX card and I didn't have to worry about running out of cash or anything, it all just went to my AmEx card. Am I missing something?

Oooooo a second basket of bread????? My daughter will flip! If man could live on bread alone it would be her!!! And no, she's not fat!! She is a cheerleader and I guess all that exercise burns the calories! She eats like a horse and never gains a pound. Unlike her jiggly mama!! [emoji4]

Thank you!

We will be sailing on the Liberty this July, we haven't had the American table menu ever before,

Do they still bring out bread for the table? Daughter absolutely loved the bread.

Can you order from the kid menu if you are a teen/adult? Son is 17, looks like he is much older since he is 6'0 about 225 lbs but he is not a fancy eater at all. I looked over a sample of the American table menu and not much there for him other than the kids menu. Hamburger French fries that sort of thing.

I know he could eat at the guys burgers or the lido but wanted the whole family (7 of us) to all eat together in the MDR.

Thanks

Why is it being tugged? Was it not fixed? When will it be permanently fixed? Doesn't sound like it was fixed at all if it has to be towed??? I'm booked on this ship in early July, which is why I am worrying about it being broken still.

We are booked on the Liberty out of Galveston with 7 people. (7 total including myself) we are in 3 different cabins with 3 different booking numbers. (Each family made their own booking) but we have linked our bookings together for dining purposes so we could be seated together for dinner.

We all signed up for "Anytime Dining" (or maybe it was called "Your Time") so I am confused why we needed to group our bookings together.....this was from the carnival rep who made the booking for me via phone.

My main question is, will we always all have to arrive to eat at the same time, since our bookings are linked for the dining room?? For the sea day brunch what if one cabin wants to sleep in and the others want to eat earlier, can we each go when ever we want or do we all have to arrive together? While our plan is to eat all together, there might be an activity or something that one of might want to do when the others want to eat, so can we go to anytime dining independently of the rest of the group, or must we all now eat every meal together the entire trip. I didn't think to ask this when I booked.

I really liked the tablecloths!!! I don't get to eat out but maybe once a year, and it is usually just to a Chilis.

To me the tablecloths gave the illusion of grandeur and "fine dining". While I know the fare was buffet quality, I still found the tablecloths added a bit of an elegant feel which made the experience seem more than what it was.

I do like that it is better for the environment to not have all that washing, but will miss the little bit of the "old days" elegance the tablecloths provided.

We tried them. Found them to be extremely noisy and disturbing to other passengers. A lot of squawking and beeping. Then I could never hear my daughter very good over all the normal din of the ship. ( music, voices etc). Would end up screaming into the thing and still not able to hear each other. Worked great while in our cabin testing the things where it was quiet, not so much while actually out and about. Gave up trying to use them very quick!! This was a $70 pair I bought on the ship. Maybe there is a better one that isn't so loud and intrusive that you can purchase before getting on the ship.

We booked our excursion with carnival, but the photos were done by the vendor, some dolphin place in Grand Cayman, so there was no prepaying. We paid by credit card, and we split our payment. I paid half, my mother paid half. There wasn't any problem paying with a cc. We felt more comfortable toting 1 cc rather than big wads of cash. Although we did bring a small amt of cash.

If you are going to pay with a CC out of the country, it is recommended that you call whichever cc you will be using and advise them that you will be using said card out of the country and where you intend to visit. This way your purchases won't have a chance to be declined as being possibly fraudulent.

Also I would not pay for your CD until you have viewed/verified that all your pics are on the CD. We were given the opportunity to view what was on our disc before we made payment. I would definitely ask just to make sure. Even if no bad intent, there could be an error so always a good idea to check. Hope you have a great time. We thoroughly enjoyed our dolphin visit! I am so glad we bought the pics. Very much worth it.

We bought the entire CD, there were 3 of us. We were in Grand Cayman, and originally they quoted us close to $200 for all of our pics on the CD, but we just kept saying "no, too expensive" and eventually the price went down to $140 which we split between my mother and I. I felt like that was reasonable and we now have all the pics on CD which we can print off of at home.

I think probably haggling would be the norm.

I had budgeted to spend $200 onboard for 2 of us. We had prepaid our shore excursions so I figured with the gratuities and 1 or 2 other little things $200 would be plenty!!

Lol, our bill was around $750, and neither of us drink! I couldn't believe how it all added up so fast! We played bingo only once, only put $10 in a slot machine once but we did buy TONS of pictures and I bought my daughter a bracelet (cheap crap- on sale for $19.99 regularly $79!!) we visited the cherry on top store a few times and bought some walkie talkies (bad idea!! They were too noisy) and Internet. Somehow it all added up to $750! I thought I was being pretty careful too! Oh well....we had a blast!!

Just curious, am a little new to this message boards but why did they lock or close the other thread that was regarding this incident by the same op?

Does everyone realize that the Carnival vacation guarantee is only able to be invoked within 24 hours of your departure? I keep reading about how you always just invoke the guarantee and Carnival will fly you home from the nearest port. There is a caveat to that. You MUST let guest services know WITHIN 24 hours of your departure that you are invoking the guarantee. If something happens after the 24 hour mark you are out of luck.

I would imagine this would apply to people who were not happy with their stateroom, or found some issue with the food or something along those lines.

The guarantee would have probably been able to be activated this time since the op said it happened early in the am on their first full day. Perhaps they were not aware of the guarantee.

If it had been me I would have wanted off the ship ASAP. But I just wonder if people actually read the entire guarantee. It is only available to use within 24 hours of departure. Not just because someone gets hurt down the road. (Unless as in this case it did happen within the 24 hr mark I presume)

On our trip on the Magic, there was a spotter on the bottom with a walkie talkie looking device. There was a person up at the top of the slide with a walkie talkie device. I assumed they were communicating with each other because as soon as the person exited the slide at the bottom he would indicate into the walkie talkie that it was clear.

I would also imagine it would have to do with what is considered standard practice. Is it standard practice to have 2 people manning the slide? A top person and a bottom spotter?? I don't frequent these types of parks but I think they would have a case if it is standard practice to have the 2 spotters and only had 1 on the day of the accident.

I have a question if anyone knows the answer.... Why do they drain the hot tubs so early every night? It would have been nice to enjoy a nice soak in the evening but it seems they drained them and ropes them off quite early in the evening. I would think they should be open till at least midnight or even 11 pm would be better than 9 or 10 or whenever they close. I'm not really sure what time but I looked out one nite at 9 pm and it was drained and closed off already.

I've been really researching and reading reviews (not just on CC but every where on the Internet) and what I have been able to glean from all I have read and found is that Carnival has awesome fun ships, you can have the time of your life on them and the majority of people do, BUT from what I have been reading, it seems that Carnival is woefully inept at dealing with legitimate complaints. They are also terrible with regards to rendering appropriate aid in a medical emergency. The few times that they have stepped up to the plate was when the media has gotten involved.

This doesn't mean that I will not sail Carnival, only that I understand the risks involved should I or a family member need medical care. I will always purchase the most comprehensive travel ins available. Also if there is an issue with my room or any other truly legitimate complaint I will if possible invoke the trip guarantee. Otherwise I will not expect any other form of compensation for any other issue than medical (like issues with stateroom) because unless the guarantee is invoked Carnival is also inept at handling those kinds of complaints also. If what I have read is true.

I do know that on my own trip with them I was less than impressed with their medical team. On Lobster night my daughter took maybe 2 bites of her lobster (it was her first time to ever eat lobster or shrimp) and her lips started swelling, and then she was complaining that her throat was itching and felt funny, so I whisked her down to the med office as I was afraid she would go full blown anaphylaxis (allergic reaction where you can't breathe). When I got there we only could see a nurse and this nurse could barely speak any English, had never heard of anaphylaxis, and told me there was no way it could be an allergic reaction. I asked for some Benedryl anyway (I had some packed in bags, but was afraid her swelling was getting worse and didn't want to wait to get all the way back to my room to get some down her)

This nurse reluctantly sold me 5 Benedryl pills for $10 and I gave 2 to my daughter. After a bit her symptoms began to subside. I had her tested since back home and she definitely has shellfish allergy.

I was glad our medical issue was just a small one.

But I now know what risk there is if I do go on another cruise.

My point of all this is to say don't expect to get anything out of Carnival unless you go to the media, and for future sailings it is buyer beware. You will know the risks involved if you sail with them.

You can have a great time just as I did and they do provide the fun!!! Just hope you don't have any real issues come up when you sail with them. In that case you are SOL.

We had a balcony room (Magic, mid June sailing) that looked directly down on a hot tub. We were on deck 8 midship and I can recall quite a few times when I looked down and saw it empty or with very few people. (We were starboard side). I never really noticed any kids in it except for one time and they were accompanied by a parent who seemed to have tight control. Of course I didn't monitor the hot tub situation 24/7 but was surprised at how often it was empty or sparsely populated.

It's weird but I lost weight on my cruise. It seems like I was much more busy on the boat, walking and doing things. At home it's just easier to be a couch potato. I did eat whatever I wanted on the cruise also. Guess I didn't realize what a piggy snacker I am at home.

Since carnival doesn't have a notification policy in place to notify people that any particular cruise will be "themed" does anyone have any ideas or suggestions on how to go about checking to see if a potential booking will be a themed one? Or how to monitor and check for a "theme/group" that might have taken over the already booked cruise?

I've only been on one cruise and am contemplating another but would be extremely upset if my trip were taken over by any particular theme/group especially since vacations are very rare for me. The next cruise I am considering will likely be my last for several years and would hate for it to be not as anticipated due to the ship being overrun with a specialty group. Seems like it would only be fun if you were in the specialty group. Everyone else not so much.

Personally I don't care what the theme might be....Tejano, Soul, 80's girl band, Martian etc.... I don't think it's right for the cruise line to not make it clear to anyone booking a cruise that a themed event will be taking place. If an entire group wants to take over a cruise after so many people have booked I think everyone who has booked already should immediately be made aware that they will now be on a themed cruise. This person had to find out in a roundabout way via word of mouth and Facebook.

I personally wouldn't really want to be on a themed cruise unless it was my own particular group. Otherwise I would just feel like an outsider.

It doesn't sound like fun to have any particular theme in your face an entire cruise unless of course it is your group/theme that you are a member/adherent of.

We brought protein bars to take with us on our shore excursions. We are food chickens and were not very trusting of the local food in ports. We were also so busy having fun on one of our excursions that we didn't want to stop for lunch so we ate the protein bars.

Since it was our first cruise and I still had the horror story of the Triumph fire (poop cruise) fresh in my memory, I figured it wouldn't hurt to bring some food items on board in the event of some emergency. But that is because I was traveling with my daughter who tends to get wobbly with low blood sugar and my mother who is also hypoglycemic.