coast2coast

On 12/27/2018 at 6:15 AM, Tapi said:

Dang, I thought I’d been away from Carnival for a long time, but your 34 years make me feel like it hasn’t been long at all! When we sail on Fantasy in February, it will be 8 years since our last Carnival Cruise.

 

The best secret or piece of advice that I can give you about sailing on these smaller and older Fantasy class ships is that you go with realistic expectations. That’s the key to having a fantastic time on these ships. 

 

The smaller size and simple amenities do mean that you’ll get to know the ship’s layout and offerings rather quickly. Even then, some passengers never find certain quiet spots, like the 2 outdoor sitting areas just aft of the buffet, as well as the Serenity deck. These are all great spots to enjoy the views and be away from the crowds. The overall atmosphere will be more casual and unpretentious, as these cruises from secondary ports of embarkation tend to attract a heavily local clientele.  

 

Ecstasy will be a throwback to the Joe Farcus era with its early 90’s decor. She doesn’t have the latest bells and whistles, so entertainment may feel a bit lacking at times, specially on sea days. But if you cruise for the basic pleasures of taking an ocean voyage, Ecstasy’s size and  offerings may provide exactly what you are looking for. 

 

 

Yes! I was 14 years old and went with my parents on the Tropicale right before Christmas. Didn't get DH hooked on cruising until our 8th anniversary back in '02 and took him on RCI's Explorer of the Seas. Since then, we've only done one other non-RCI cruise where we picked the ship (Princess back in 2012).  My parents have taken us on HAL and another Princess cruise as well.  So, this will be our first time "deviating" on our own in almost 7 years. Looking forward to trying one of the smaller ships and a different line. We're back on RCI in November on the Rhapsody (one of their older smaller ships), so this will give us a good taste for the "small ship" cruising.

Definitely looking forward to the Serenity area and like the fact that it's open and at the back of the ship with an AWESOME view!  Many of RCI's adult-only solariums are enclosed and seem to get stuffy over time.  

This cruise is one just for pure relaxation... we had a yucky few months after Hurricane Florence rolled through town and are glad to finally have all of that behind us.  Now we just need some time to unwind. 🙂

On 12/27/2018 at 7:05 AM, CRocks said:

The Fantasy class ships have a lot of open air deck space which I love. My favorite spot is out the back doors of the lido buffet (on both sides) is a little covered patio area that's great for watching the ship's wake.

The aft locations on ships are my favorite!  I've never had an aft cabin before, but I sure do like finding spots on the ship to watch the wake and take pictures!

12 hours ago, Bowman1 said:

We like the bar above the rear dinning room on the Fantasy Class ships (Gatsbys on Elation) - it has a small atrium open to the dinning room below and is a unique design (as far as I know) to the Fantasy Class

 

It does tend to be crowded during meal times though 

Yes! I think it's called the Alchemy Bar! Just saw a photo that one of my friends took on a cruise earlier this year.  Looks like a pretty place! She took a really nice photo with her husband there.

I've been watching a vlog by Josh Hocum (evidently a frequent Carnival cruiser) who went on the Ecstasy earlier this year.  I've seen many things in his videos of the ship that I'm looking forward to!

Sailing on Ecstasy out of Charleston in 10 days.  Booked the cruise since it was a good deal and it's only a 5 hour drive to the port.  What are some things I should make sure not to miss on the ship? Not really into specialty dining. We do enjoy nightly entertainment (live music, production shows in the theater, etc.). Any activities not to miss? Any neat spots for pictures of the two of us or cool views of the ship and venues? Any insider tips would be greatly appreciated. 🙂

Tropicale is the only other Carnival ship I've been on. December of 1984. I was 14 at the time and there were lots of teens on board, and I had a great time. My brother was 19 at the time and was at that awkward stage where he was too old for the teen club but not old enough to hang out at the bars. :p

The pirate museum! It’s great, we have taken our kids many times, first time they were 3. You can walk there, I would never put my kids in a taxi there if I can avoid it

 

 

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I second the pirate museum! Took our daughter there 14 years ago... her first cruise at age 4. We walked there. Also went to Queen's Staircase and a fort with cannons that had a nice view of the ships in port.

1979 on RCI's Song of Norway. The ship had been cut in half and lengthened the year before. I was 9, my brother was 14, and there were over 50 (yes, 50!) kids on the ship (week before Christmas), so they hired 2 children's cruise directors who actually took us OFF THE SHIP on our own tours of the islands (Puerto Plata (Dominican Republic), St. Thomas, and Puerto Rico). Could you imagine them doing that nowadays?!?! One of my favorite memories was building ice cream sundaes with my dad every afternoon and eating them on the pool deck while listening to the steel drum band. EVERYONE dressed up for dinner, cherries jubilee served table side and lit on fire by Maitre'd, waiters walking through dining room with flaming Baked Alaska, midnight buffets every night. Passengers were given a list of passenger names, addresses, etc. Dang- privacy laws sure have changed. ;p

 

P.S. UF or bust...kidding...maybe a little.

Hahahaha!!! GO KNIGHTS! CHARGE ON!!! :D:D:D

Wow! Awesome review with absolutely amazing photography. Think my favorite is post #663 of Central Park with the sunlight just appearing above the ship. And 744... love the colors of the art structure and how it goes with your OOTD. You have an amazing eye for photography. Have you always had it or have you learned some tricks from Our2Suitcases? Royal should seriously just hire the three of you to do their marketing. O2S's video of Harmony was amazing, and I actually sent the link to my parents to watch as I'm hoping to get them on another family cruise in the near future... hopefully next year as DD is at UCF in Orlando, and Port Canaveral is just a hop, skip, jump away. My dad and brother are both engineers and I think they'd be in complete awe of it just from the engineering marvel aspect of it. :)

Have you walked the path to St. John's Castle (Castle of San Giovanni) in Kotor? We were there in 2013, and it was awesome. I had read about the alternate path up to the castle (actually an easier climb and way fewer people), so we did that and then took the regular trail back down. My daughter was 13 at the time and we were all worn out by the time we got back to the ship. We were on HAL's Nieuw Amsterdam (which has fewer "bells and whistles" than RCI's ships), but it was a beautiful ship and perfect for our very port intensive 24-day eastern and western Mediterranean cruise. Hope you enjoy your trip! Loved Santorini (rode donkey up, gyro for lunch, and walked back down) and Dubrovnik (walked the walls- amazing!) as well!

Enjoyed your review as always. I hope you love the Radiance... we were on the Serenade for our 10th anniversary back in '04 on an Alaskan cruise RT from Vancouver. I was surprised I was able to talk my shorts-loving t-shirt wearing hubby into going to Alaska, but it has remained one of our favorite trips. Went horseback riding near Emerald Lake from Skagway, took a helicopter tour and landed on a glacier in Juneau, and kayaked in Ketchikan. Also flew in a couple of days early to enjoy Vancouver... loved Stanley Park, and they had a fantastic fireworks display the night before we boarded the ship. The Radiance class is beautiful... lots of glass, and you won't forget you're on a ship. ;)

Oh, and yes, thanks for the W T Forecast app. It's now on my phone and has given some great descriptions of today's cruddy weather. ;p

Rick - is there a dinosaur in the Solarium waiting for a ride from you?

I know Rick is refraining, but a page later, and I'm surprised nobody else has commented on this!!! Guess I'll be the first. ;p:');p:')

We just did the Caribbean Princess British Isles with Kirkwall (May 1st). We were not able to dock in Kirkwall. The Captain reported high winds combined with the inability to have tug boat assistance from the port. Our private tour operator, Explore Orkney, refutes this and says our docking problems had to do with the ship's bow thrusters not working properly. I tend to believe the Captain. The lesson learned though is...for ports that have the reputation of being missed because of weather, it is better safe to opt for a ship sponsored excursion. Explore Orkney has refused to refund us any portion of our money for our missed tour.

We were on the Caribbean Princess in June of last year and missed Orkney due to weather (?). Our tour operator wasn't going to refund our tour either, but my dad had booked the tour with his Visa card and got the money back that way.

Double post 7 minutes later???

About what time were you able to get off the tender? Trying to figure out what kind of time we will have in both Guernsey and Edinburgh.

We were on the Caribbean Princess last summer. We had plenty of time to walk around St. Peter Port and see all we wanted to see. Didn't go to any of the museums, but plenty of time to stroll about. Getting back on the tender is when we had the huge wait.

We had a terrible wait trying to get on the tender in Edinburgh (S. Queensferry). About 2 1/2 hours waiting in one of the dining rooms for our number to be called. It was a very choppy day, rainy, and they had mechanical problems with getting the lifeboats off the ship. I definitely need to go back to Edinburgh some day (preferably a land tour this time) and give it another chance as I think my view of it was colored by the long wait at the beginning just to get off the ship. The castle was jam-packed with tourists and so were the surrounding streets in town. We had a much better experience at Stirling Castle earlier in the trip.

Make sure to leave yourself some time to walk around the Old Quarter. One of the little shops we visited was a chocolate shop

http://www.benleprevostchocolatier.com/come-visit-us/

where we bought some yummy sweets.

Very cute picturesque town and very walkable.

Make sure you have a hat/sunscreen or maybe even an umbrella for shade. We waited in line for over an hour to get back on the ship's tender.

Jay's walks can be found on the Internet Archive, there a links on my page at http://sturnidae.com/cruises/WT.php

Oh my! This is wonderful! We are taking our first TA, but not until November of 2019... over 600 days away! Being the planner that I am, I'm already doing a ton of research and came across this! Our TA leaves out of Barcelona, but DH and I plan to fly to Amsterdam for a short visit, train to Paris for a day or 2, and then finally to Barcelona. Haven't been to Amsterdam since 1988, so I'm loving this link. Using it along with street-view of Google maps, and it's almost as good as being there! (Not quite, but you know what I mean. ;)) Thank you to whoever put this together first and then thank you to the person who archived it!!! :hearteyes:

We stayed at the Country Inn & Suites in January for 1 night and it was great. We had an awesome lunch at http://blvdseafood.com. Also went next door for some great beers at https://beerfootbrewery.com. Spent a couple of hours walking up and down the strand. It was a bit cold and very hazy with lots of fog the next morning, but we had a great visit!

We just cruised out of Galveston on the Liberty back in January. We flew to Hobby, plane landed early, our luggage was the first off the plane, and we were in an Uber heading to Galveston at the time our plane was supposed to land. Stayed at Country Inn & Suites in Galveston, enjoyed walking along the Strand, had an awesome lunch at Blvd. Seafood, and great beers at Beerfoot Brewery, literally right next to the hotel. Easily caught an Uber from the hotel to the port.

The way back was a bit of a different story. Our ship didn't get into port until 10 a.m. due to fog (definitely not as bad as this last weekend's cruise), and we didn't get off the ship until 11:30 even though we were the 4th group called, I believe. Getting an Uber this time around was not as easy as our driver evidently didn't have a pass to pick people up at the port, so we had to walk a ways to meet up with him waaaaaay down the street from the port. We missed our flight, had to rebook super expensive ones, but then made up for that by accepting vouchers from Delta as our connecting flight from ATL to our home airport was overbooked. Actually came out ahead on that one.

So, would I cruise out of Galveston again? Probably not, but really only because if I'm going to the Caribbean, I'm going to cruise out of FL from now on as our DD goes to college in Orlando, and we'd probably drive down there and include a visit with her. The one thing I recommended on our post-cruise survey was for RCI to put a disclaimer somewhere on the page when you go to book a cruise out of Galveston about the possibility of delays due to fog during the winter so that people can plan their flights accordingly (i.e. early evening as even early afternoon wouldn't have helped the Liberty cruisers this last weekend). I should have known better since I frequent CC a bit, but not every cruiser knows about CC, especially newbies.

Hi!

Possibly looking at an interior deck 3 stateroom on Rhapsody. Looking at the deck plans, the rooms seem to be under the entrance of the dining room. Wondering how much noise we might hear (if any) late at night/early morning with breakfast set-up. Does anyone have any experience with this area? (In particular, looking at rooms 3613, 3813, 3815, 3817, or 3617.)

Thanks for any possible help, info, recommendations, etc.

***Nancy***

We just got the Citi Double Cash card and figure we'll use what we accrue as vacation $$$. Got it this last fall and stopped using our RCI card that we'd had since 2003. We used the card to go on 5 free Caribbean cruises during the 15 years, but figured we'll actually get more bang for our buck by switching to the other card.

Is this it?

• "SEXY OCEAN" (Belvedere, peach schnapps, midori, orange and pineapple juices)
  

Found it here... other drinks listed as well:

http://www.cruisemapper.com/wiki/708-royal-caribbean-alcohol-policy-drink-prices

Actually, if you sign up for My Time Dining (MTD), you technically don't need a reservation at the main dining room, correct? If you don't, you'll just have to wait in line, right?

3 days until we fly, 4 days until we board! Liberty, here we come!:D

I have done 5 of the 7:

Oasis (Allure)

Voyager (Mariner x2, Navigator x2, Explorer, Voyager)

Freedom (Freedom x2, Liberty (boarding this Sunday!)

Vision (Enchantment)

Radiance (Serenade x2)

and Royal's oldest ship, Song of Norway back in 1979. ;p (Ship was retired back in '97)

I'd have to say Voyager class is my favorite, but mostly from the memories made... Explorer was DH's first cruise in 2002 (and my first RCI cruise since the Song of Norway), Mariner was DD's first cruise in 2004, cruised on Voyager with friends in '05, and Mariner again in '07 with my parents and brother. I do want to return to the Oasis class at some point as I'm trying to talk my parents and brother into going on that one as well. :)