mommag3boys

We just booked a cruise in October on the Magic under Premier. We actually had a different one booked but switched because this offered more. We each have $500 funplay, $500 off rates and Free Drinks while in the casino. I've never seen the free drinks anywhere offered, that would be nice. However we usually hit free drinks in the casino so never purchase them. If we want drinks while walking around we just pop in the casino and flag a server down and get a drink and walk out.

The only downside is as we were booking they sold out of Ocean View. We've never sailed without a porthole or something but overall we're saving $800 more on the other cruise we booked. I'll admit I'm nervous about no window or porthole but I'm always told you don't really feel a difference but going to miss the sun.

5 minutes ago, ElCrappyTan said:

 

Me, not much, because I think the first night the pit or casino boss looks at my prior play history and knows I'm pretty much good for 25-30 hours minimum and that I tend to be a good tipper.

 

That could be it, never factors in play time. We pretty much live in the casino on our cruises.

I don't know the spending amount, just that I earned the points. It really all depends on how much you plan and win. Our last cruise I had only spent $200 in my casino money but hit 1500 points by day two. My husband plays differently then I do and he hit by day 4 I believe.

We get several offers constantly for premier casino cruise but naturally the dates don't match up with our next cruise. Anyone had any luck with calling in and being able to get free drinks pushed to a different date? I don't really care about getting the $500 casino cash part of the offer (or the early check in, cocktail parties, etc.) I just think it's dumb that we are not given free drinks right off the bat, especially since I usually earn them by mid day on day 2 of the cruise.

That is why you use 2-3 suitcases that fit inside one another.

These are the kind we have for this very purpose. I managed to get it down to one of the larger for myself plus a airline carryon and Hubby has a smaller luggage plus a small duffle carry on. I'm an overpacker so I just had for really narrow it down.

How many bags can you have? Not including a carry on.

I've gotten myself down to a carry on, a average size suitcase and a smaller size one, my husband has one other.

I've seen some say 2 and some say one. Does the 2 count the carry one? Do they enforce this rule?

I know Carnivals site says no flip flops in the main dining rooms but is it enforced? I swear years ago on a cruise you could wear flip flops.

My main concern is Hubby. I'd he wears pants he has dress shoes but if he's wearing shorts he generally just goes with flip flops. Is he going to need to keep it to pants or what?

3 days!!! :D:ship::cocktail::tropical-drink:

Hey cruisers. The hubby and I have a cruise in 8 days (woohoo) and I've come to realize I have no clue what to do in Cozumel. We have an excursion from 12 to 3 (Mayans Ruins for the hubby) and are at port till 8pm. Any suggestions on places to go? Wed love to stop and have some drinks somewhere and maybe a bite to eat. I've read about Mr Sanchos but it says online it closes at 5pm so I don't really think it's worth it.

Any suggestions? I was thinking Senior Frogs but that's because I know of nothing else!

13 days!!

I have acquired a few discounted E Gift Cards and was looking into purchasing a few more but wanted to double check some stuff; don't want to purchase more if we need the money itself.

We will be sailing on the Paradise in July. Pretty much all our money is for drinks & casino. We don't buy much on the boats, maybe a souvenir and that's all. I know you can put the e gift cards on your sail & sign card but I just want to confirm if we do that we can use the funds in the casino? Some places do not allow you to use gift card funds for the casino.

Do you give them your gift cards at the start of the cruise and it's just applied towards your sign and sail account basically as a budgeted amount or do you tie the sign and sail to the credit card and when you're done hand in the gift cards to pay on the balance you've accumulated during the cruise? I want to make sure a card is still tied to our account just in case we exceed our gift card balances.

Can I per-purchase Cheers with the e gift cards?

Thank you!

This is exactly the same boat as me, we have 2 sea days and 2 port days. On port days I could see us going over the $50 because my husband would probably drink 6-7 beer and I would def drink a few beer with a few mixed drinks. On days we are on port I don't see us having more than maybe 2 drinks, especially since their back to back days so we'll be up early. I do however know that if we had the Cheers programs we would take advantage of the specialty coffees, soda, etc. and probably drink a little more than normal. I keep going back and forth because the thought of not worrying about the price of drinks and how much we are spending makes cheers worth it but at the same time if we purchase it and don't break even we could have used that money for other things while on our cruise. $550 is a lot of money out of our spending budget for our trip but I can guarantee that we'll be at least at $350-400 and we'll be sticking to water, tea and plain coffee.

I'm playing the waiting game. My husband is not for purchasing Cheers because of the price but he's not the one that will be worrying about how much our drink total is adding up to while on the vacation! I figured start putting a little extra aside now and 2 weeks before our cruse in July if I've managed to add in what we need for Cheers I'll purchase it. I may shoot myself though if we don't break even in the end!

We are looking to book a cruise on Paradise in July. Does anyone know what side of the ship will face land? Also, do you have to book excursions through the cruise ship since you are required to have the person to person contact? We typically do not book ship excursions because they are so expensive. I am trying to gather what our "true" cost will be. I know that there is a $75 pp visa fee charged to the ship account, but it does not show (that I can find) that excursions are required to be booked through the ship in order to disembark. TIA for any help/insight! :)

We were originally booked to go to Cuba on RC and these questions came up for us too. I was told you can get off if you have the PVP requirements. I also have a personal friend from Cuba and she said she would not advise doing something on your own. You are not allowed to just walk around there and be a tourist and it's very dangerous to do so there. If you book an excursion through Carnival you don't have to go back on the ship right afterwards because you met the PVP requirements but as stated, it's not the best idea to be wandering on your own there. Not to mention if you miss the ship well, that would not be fun in Cuba.

We ended up switching and not doing a Cuba one because it was going to cost an extra $400 between getting my husbands passport expedited and having to get VISAs also. Would rather spend that money in the casino!!

So hubby wants bring our alotted amount of wine on board and purchase a bottle or 2 of Vodka and mixers to have in the room..... I hate the idea of having to go back to the room for refills, so I wanna just get the drink package... Mr. Frugal doesn't wanna spend the extra money on the package thoughts?

You are not alone in this! My hubby is completely against the Cheers package because he thinks spending $500+ for drinks its outrageous and insist we won't go over that amount. Normally we wouldn't but I want to relax and maybe let loose since we're away from our kids for 5 whole days celebrating our 10 year anniversary. We are still at an impulse, he says there's no way we'll spend it and if we go over our drink budget he will continue to purchase whatever drinks I want with his own cruise funds (yes, we have our own funds and joint funds for the cruise). <--this temps me to make sure I go all out on drinking!!;p;)

We booked ahead with the 30% just because it's our 10 year and we wanted a couples massage already planned and out of the way. I do have planned however to wait until we are on board to book some other treatments.

I have noticed, ( just in the last couple cruises) that the bartenders typically give us 2-4 (between the 2 of us) free drinks a day. I'm not sure why......the only thing I can think of is I am a very good tipper!

I'd love to know the secret to this one! Do you tip good?

I've heard about when you hit like 1500 points in the casino you can get free drinks there. I honesty could easily see one of hitting that before the cruise is up but I've also heard it's not always the easiest thing to get someone to bring you those free drinks.

Amaretto, OJ and cream (or a shot or two of half and half). You can get it frozen or on the rocks which is the way I like it.

This is my favorite sweet drink and it's actually called a Creamsicle. I believe I had it first time like 14 years ago and I asked how it was made. Sometimes I put a shot of grenadine in there too.

Another way to make it is orange vodka, triple sec, oj & creme but for some reason I like it better with just Amaretto.

Woo hoo! I keep missing the AARP ones and I finally figured out how to do this one without an Allstate policy. I downloaded the APP then logged into the website and purchased a $500 one. Now I just have to figure out how to get more points to purchase more. This may be what allows me to give in and purchase Cheers since I'll be saving $57.50 on our package for it.

Two things that haven't been mentioned yet. On our last cruise we definitely got our money's worth on sea days and were pretty darn close if not on point during port days, especially considering specialty coffee's, pop and water bottles! But even if we didn't quite drink enough to break even it was nice to know that we didn't have to worry about how much we drank - we would not have bar bill to pay at the end!! And even though we are both pretty much beer drinkers, not having to worry about wasting money gave us an incentive to try new drinks. If we didn't like them we just ordered something else. I can't remember what it was called but we found some short of chocolate drink that was to die for!!!

My words to my husband exactly! If we don't get it I'll be putting us on a budget and be paying attention to what we drink which will put a damper in the whole trip for me. However, it's not refundable and being that we are a may advantage from it or may not the thought of spending the $575 and consuming way lower drives me bonkers. I work in accounting for a living so I pay attention to where the $$ goes ;p

I guess I should have also mentioned I'm not really concerned about the drinks other than alcoholic drinks. I can live off water and tea. My husband needs soda so instead of purchasing the bubbles package I just had a 12 pack set up for our state room so he'd have a soda or two each day. I've heard it's worth it for the coffee but we're both plain coffee drinkers with a shot of creamer.

Based on your suggested drinking pattern at home, I would guess CHEERS will either not be worth it, or it will be really close.

That is my opinion too. My guess is the 2 days at see we will exceed the $50 but the two days we have ports we won't. The day we set sail we may come close or even hit the $50. We are not heavy drinkers but I do want to enjoy myself (hey it's the first vaca for more than an overnight without kids for us).

I can put back way more than my husband can but I'm a social drinker and he's not so if the crowd and moods night right I won't drink as much. I just can't fathom that we will spend more than $575.

If you buy it the second day, all the drinks up to 15 from day one will be changed to CHEERS drinks. and you wont be charged for them.

I didn't know this. I thought the drinks from the prior days didn't count? If they do count then this is what we may very well do. Our cruise is 4rth of July and our 10 year anniversary (both of those days at sea) so I think it's really going to all depend on if my husband wants to be social or not ;)

I always miss this. I checked this morning too and they weren't on there then :(

I hate to the person who asks again or even brings up Cheers because just from my search results I know it comes up alllllllll the time but it also comes up with 325807520 results and it's hard to find the right answer.

Hubby and I are going on a 5 day cruise in July. I'm trying to decide to if Cheers is worth it or not for us. My husband is mostly a beer drinker and on an average afternoon can drink 3-4 beers while doing yard work.. I tend to drink beers also but if I'm in a drinking mood I average 4-5 beers and a few mixed drinks (and shots if I'm making a night of it). Someone told me that unless you each exceed 12 beers in a day it's not worth it and unless you exceed 9 mixed drinks (not top shelf) it's not worth it. The great to get or not get Cheers debate is going on. Any opinions on this matter? I just don't see how we'll spend $575 on drinks!?

I guess I should add that I'm only expecting 2 days that we may actually drink more on our higher end (him max 10, me maybe 4 beer and 3-4 mixed drinks). Our excursion days we would probably just have a few when we get back because we enjoy a beer at dinner but we are not heavy drinkers.

We are sailing in July on the Paradise for our 10 year anniversary - WITH NO KIDS:D:D:D. We currently are signed up for the late dinning option as my thought was we don't have to worry about getting back from the islands and rushing to get ready for dinner; if we get hungry before than just get a snack. However, after reviewing some information I'm more concerned about missing shows & not getting good seats so I'm thinking of switching it. Few Questions for experienced cruisers:

1. If we do the early dinning will we miss watching the sun set?

2. What exactly does this waitlist thing mean? Could we end up with a horrible time or is it still generally around 6:30ish?

3. How horrible is the wait for the YTD? We do not want to be waiting 45 minutes on a cruise, on our anniversary.

4. Since it's our anniversary and we have no kids we'd love to avoid having the dinner times that most families go to (just because we never get that). Is early, YTD or late better for that?

5. Will we really put ourselves at risk of missing shows with decent seats with late?

Not sure if this makes a difference or not but we do have the FTTF passes.

2,113 hours!!!

It sounds better as 3 months. ;)