wo5m

Here is my story about FTTF labels on our last cruise. When carnival changed to the new boarding pass for a few hours they had a bug in their code that printed FTTF labels for those who didn't have it and normal labels for those who did. I was one of those that got the FTTF labels without paying for it. Later that day carnival acknowledged the mistake said they would have terminal workers with a list of FTTF passengers so people wouldn't take advantage. Fast forward to our cruise on the Freedom, when I checked in the terminal. I first got in the regular line only to be redirect to the VIP line when she saw my FTTF logo. Even when I got to the the counter the lady checking us in even saw the logo and said "oh your FTTF, your cabins will be ready when you get on board"(it wasn't).

Any ideas yet where the 1st XL ship will be home-ported??

 

 

Karen

My guess in Galveston or they will eventually get one of them. I say that only because I remember reading an article a while about the Port of Galveston getting regulatory approval for infrastructure to support CNG ships. The article didn't mention cruising directly, but renovations were slated to be in place prior around the time the first CNG carnival ship is delivered. Sorry I can't find the article now.

Its possible there are too many diamond and platinum members already booked so they cannot accommodate FTTF perks.

This is exactly right. We are going on a Journey cruise(Breeze in September) and I posted a poll in a very active FB group for our cruise asking what level they will be on the upcoming cruise. The number that replied either diamond & platinum out numbered the the others combined. Keep in mind the FB group is only small fraction(~600 members) of the total cruise and the number of diamond & platinum passengers is already several time more than a normal cruise(based on the numbers JH posts on various cruises)

Here are the number I got from my poll

81 Platinums

51 Gold

20 Diamond

3 Red

2 Blue

1 Milestone

Sometimes you can find out the Dive-In movies on Carnival's FB page, but not always. The Thrill Theater shows several short movies, you can buy a one-time ticket or you can buy a pass that lets you go to any showing thru the entire cruise. We bought those on our last Breeze cruise and quite enjoyed the 4-5 different little movies they showed. The chairs do rock, but not very hard and you do get a little mist when it's a water scene. But we didn't get wet wet, it was just a light mist. We enjoyed them enough that we went and saw a couple of them more than once. I do not remember a Build-a-Bear being onboard, but it has been a couple of years since we were on the Breeze, maybe it's since been added.

 

Have a great cruise!!:cool:

What was the price difference between the one-time ticker vs the pass?

We were on the Carnival Freedom in February and attended what we were told was probably one of the last future cruise seminars. The person giving the presentation essentially told us his position was being eliminated and everything would be taken over by the excursion desk. I was already upset as it was a week or two before that they did away with sleeper cruises(I had planed on booking one). I also miss the future cruise certificate you could get several years ago.

Now a days I skim the internet for gift card deals and grab them in bulk if I can. So far the ebay is was the best deals paying only $80 for a $100 gift card. I snagged 6 of them before they sold out.

Hurricanes wreaked havoc last year in Galveston, but that is not the norm.

From what I understand Galveston island rally didn't have much problems. It was getting to Galveston though Houston that was the problem. While it did get a lot a rain, it just ran into the gulf unlike in Houston were it flooded when the water ran out of places to go.

I prefer to dock there but I've only been lucky enough to do it twice. We were ported until 10pm once and it was fantastic being right downtown for such a late port visit!

I almost forgot about that. We also have a late departure, it wasn't 10pm, but it was well past sunset. I wonder if that has anything to do with it. I will say I loved see all the island lights after dark.

For the last few weeks the Carnival Freedom has been docking downtown in Cozumel (punta Langosta) instead of Puerta May the Carnival owned dock. Anybody know why or if it will continue? Porting there Monday and trying to make a decision on restaurants within walking distance.

We were on the Carnival Freedom back in February and we also docked in downtown. No idea why, they did announce over the ships PA just before we docked that we were not docking at the usual port. I actually liked it better than the normal dock. I felt we didn't have to walk as far down the pier and I like the shops a lot more. Maybe is was the newness/differentness after all I've been to the over dock 4-5 times now.

Anyone have a favorite itinerary cruising from Galveston? Do's and don'ts?

1. 7-Day Cozumel Belize Honduras is my favorite.

2. Don't park a the Cruise terminal. Many hotels offer complementary cruise parking. Some hotels even offer shuttle to the terminal , but we always use Uber so we can be first on the ship.

Been out of Galveston 4 times and we are scheduled for the 14 day prepossessing cruise on the Breeze in September.

Well cursing with Carnival is risky. In my experience the greatest risks include.

1. Gaining too much weight.

2. Getting a bad sun burn for staying it the sun too long.

3. Becoming so addicted cruises its the only vacation you take

4. The post cruise depression starts when you disembark at the end of the cruise.

I think I must of gotten the last three or very close to it yesterday. Right after I purchased them they showed they were sold out. They were immediately delivered to my mail box and then promptly redeemed them on three different excursions I'm doing on our upcoming 14 day cruise on the Breeze. From initial purchase to use on carnival's website was no longer than 15min.

First, I want to commend Carnival for trying to do something environmentally friendly. However, this is something they clearly didn't think through.

Let me ask you, the last time you ordered a drink from a Carnival bar do you know how many sail and sign cards the bartender handled since he last sanitized his hands? Now if just one of those passengers had a norovirus infection the every glass the bartenders touches potentially an infection point. That is how the norovirus spreads and its a big issue for cruise lines.

I know I will still be able to request a plastic straw and I will always do so, but its the other passengers I am worried about. The more infections you have the easier is in to spreed in highly confined spaces.

How many news headline have you seen over the years were a large numbers passengers getting sick.

We just has one two months ago.

http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2018/02/09/royal-caribbean-cruise-arrives-in-san-diego-after-24-people-sickened-with-gastrointestinal-virus.html

Please help me in letting Carnival know this is a very bad idea.

First thing a the sick bay. It is fully equipped with everything you would expect to find in a top notch ER. Most people only see the waiting/triage/nurses station and never see the actual infirmary that has about 5 or 6 bed

While on the Carnival Magic, my dad came up with an upper-respiratory infection and when we were docked at Roatan, he visited the doctor who proscribed steroid and three days of breathing treatments. For the first treatment, the crew were doing emergency drills and the doctor put us in the infirmary so we wouldn't be in the way of the medical part of the drill. In the infirmary, every medical equipment I could think of was there(and a lot stuff I couldn't identify). Some of the items include, monitors of every type, multiple crash carts, ventilators. rapid infuser, dialysis machine and must more. That have their own mini lab for blond work.

While we were in there another woman came in with a broken leg. They took her to the room across from the infirmary for x-rays and the placing of a cast.

Back to my dad's doctor visit, the consolation, steroids and three days of breathing treatment only ran us $175. We had travel insurance, but we didn't want to mess with hassle get filing a claim. We were very happy with the price because in the US the consolation alone would have been much more than that without insurance.

Did the standard calls still work through facebook messenger? We are leaving our 2 year old at home and was hoping to use the facebook messenger calling to communicate back home with his grandparents.

No, I was unable to place any VOIP calles using the social plan. It may be different with one of the other plans, but I only tested with the Social package.

Quick question, does anyone know if you can create a group chat with the Hub app for multiple people? I have never used the chat functionality with the Hub app before. We have a large group going and I thought it would be a great way to communicate with everyone at once. Also how does it work finding the people you want to chat with? Do you create a username or is it based on room numbers etc? Thanks!

 

Camden

Yes, while I was on the freedom, I was in a massive group chat with Malcolm our cruise director and he would send updates thought it. You can now message anyone on the ship, just look them up by name on their boarding pass. If they haven't bought the chat option it will tell you when you try to add them as a friend. Also they have to accept you friend request before you can chat with them.

$5 per day isn't expensive. But is it worth it? Anyone done it?

I just got off the Freedom Saturday and just posted something about this earlier today. It was worth it for me. I never had a problem accessing Facebook. I posted several pictures from the ship. The only thing I wasn't able to do was post videos. This is the first cruise I have used the social plan. I would doit again especially to just get my news fix(see link to my other post)

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2607601- My previous post

Likely because the OP was downloading a 300mb video!:') :')

It actually didn't take long to download it I like to say 5-10 mins tops. None of google service seemed to lag.

I also forgot to add that my google maps apps appeared to work as well.

Where did you get this info?

By testing it out myself on the Carnival Freedom, just got off the ship last Saturday and this is the HUB App, not The WiFI plan. I did discover you can be logged into to the Hub App on one device and a wifi plan on another. They are NOT linked together .

This was the second cruise I have had a chance to use the hub app. I asked questions about m multiple devices and read other posts prior to this cruise only to get a lot of incorrect information. So after testing it out myself I wanted to set record straight.

1. The hub app can only be used on once device at a time. If you login to a new device the old device will be logged out. I went back and forth several times between my phone and my tablet before using my tablet exclusively(unless the battery was dead).

2. For the chat feature, you only pay the $5 once, it is NOT per device. When you login to a new device the chat feature follows you including your chat history.

3. While Carnival says tablets are not supported I actually found it worked better on my 10” Galaxy Tab 3. The app is locked in portrait mode, but I found having it on a tablet made the ship maps was much easier to use. I found the dining room menus felt more like reading the actual menu.

Just got off the Carnival Freedom and I can confirm that you can still get a complementary plastic lanyard from Casino cashier. I always tell them I want one for the slots(no I don't play the slots). I've been doing it for years. Its not as nice and the once they sell, but it works well.

LOLOL - we were on the same exact cruise as you and noticed the same things! We only had the social WiFi plan and still received push notifications from GMail and Microsoft Outlook! Wasn't able to send/receive/read emails, though.

 

I will say that after the third or fourth day - the entire internet became unusable except for posting text-only.....and even that was amazingly slow. It took me 48 hrs to post three pictures to Facebook after that. :'):')

I just saw your other post, I'm sure we ran into each other.

I didn't have too much trouble posting pictures. I was constantly posting still picture from my dives in Belize and Roatan since none of my videos would go. I never really noticed a slow down unless I was in a portion of the ship that had poor WiFi Coverage.

Just curious, was your phone in airplane mode?

I did testing primarily with two devices my windows 10 laptop and galaxy tab 3, both are wifi only.

Also I forgot to add any videos I tried to upload to facebook failed even small ones. Pictures posted just fine.

We recently got off the Carnival Freedom last Saturday as we had the social wifi package. On the first day at sea I noticed I was still receiving e-mail on my phone(I have my domain tied to a google apps account) so I decide to explore what other resources(that are not included in carnival official list of sites) I could use with it. Here is what I found(mostly google resources)

What worked:

1. Gmail - app on my phone allowing me to send a receive mail the entire cruise

2. Google voice- both using the android app and using the website. I was able to send and receive text messages and listen to voicemail, but voip calls didn’t work

3. News.google.com – using this website I was able to get my news fix the only drawback is I was limited to the summaries displayed on the page. Any time I click a link to view the full story(on a non-google site) I got the carnival page saying I needed to upgrade. Still I got much more news than from CNN using stateroom tv (trump and guns where the only two topics covered when I did have it on)

4. Google hangouts – I wasn’t too surprised by this as I think it has been reported before. I could message other people, but again VOIP was a no go.

5. Google Drive – I was able to access the contents of my google drive and was even able to download a 300mb dive video from my last cruise.

6. Google photos – Not only was I able to access my library of millions of photos, I was able to access and view videos I had on there as well.

7. Google Search – I could search just about anything, you just couldn’t access anything outside of google. I didn’t think about trying to use google cached pages until after I was off the ship, but I suspect that probably would have worked also.

Sort of worked:

1. Cruise Critic website – I was stunned it worked at all, it was not formatted correctly(probably due to blocked elements), but it did pull it up. It was painful to read, and I only tried it once.

2. YouTube – I could view the entire website and search for videos, but every video I attempted to play failed to start.

What didn’t work:

1. Voip calls on Facebook messenger, google handouts, and google voice

2. Everything else I tried!

I believe this video is of a cabin of the same shape

So I just got a lovely e-mail from Carnival saying they canceled my scuba excursion for next months cruise. Anyone have recommendations of a dive shop they have used while docked there. I know there are several to choose from, but I figured I would ask.