Eli_6

Pros: Great lay out. Small. Never feels crowded. Love the laundry rooms on most decks. Love the deck 4 aft balconies and aft wrap balconies that are close to the water and have a full cover. They used to have nudey art and this would offend people. Cons: It is an older ship. Some things show their age. She is having a dry dock so maybe some of this will be fixed...we shall see. Carnival covered up the nudey art because people are easily offended.

Again the title of this thread should read instead of what it reads: DON'T BOOK WITH A TA THEN PAY FOR EXCURSIONS WITH A GIFT CARD AND CANCEL. If you do, just call the fun shops to cancel rather than canceling online because you will never see your refund if you simply cancel online no matter how long you wait.

This is what I was told this time as well. Apparently, the magical combination to not receive your refund and have to call is the combo of: Booked cruise with TA + used gift card to pay for excursion/fun shop purchase + then canceled. Last time, I was not told that, but I didn't ask either. I simply wasn't told anything. They just filled out the form and I got the gift card...and I was happy.

The only exception with lugging on alcohol *might* be the Norwegian Fjords cruises...not because they won't let you do it, but my understanding is that alcohol is pricey there. With that said and in the interest of full disclosure, I have not been on a Norwegian Fjords cruise. I was supposed to go twice and both got canceled during Covid. I only "heard" this was from "researching" ahead of the cruise.

I did book with a Travel Agent. I won't be doing so again. I tried to modify my post to read: Don't book with a TA and then buy an excursion with a gift card...but could no longer modify. Apparently, that is what the problem is. Live and learn. Now I know. I feel like I even though I have been doing this for awhile, I keep learning these *new* things that I should and shouldn't do. And if I ever book with another cruise line (like I will have to do if I ever want to cruise to Egypt) it is going to be like starting over. I have done NCL and RCL, but it has been awhile.

I did not notice any difference. However, I wouldn't buy cheers if that is what you are thinking of. In my experience, you can walk on with whatever you want in terms of alcohol, wine, beer, etc.

This is the last time I using a TA so hopefully won't fight this again. 🙂

Darn it! Now I am on ThankYou dot com and there does not appear to be any Carnival cards. SIgh. I see Princess and HAL, but no Carnival.

If you don't mind my asking, how many thank you points did you have to get that many cards? My husband has about 11k thank you points on a card he hasn't used in years and I am trying to now figure out how to get on the Citi website to see about redeeming them, but the billing statement we have doesn't have the complete credit card number and we can't find the credit card either. I don't think they ever got used because TY points don't convert to British Airways Avios and that is usually who we fly with.

After 35 minutes on the phone a second time, they are filling out a form for me to get new gift cards and they said I should have an email with the GCs in 5-7 business days. Fingers crossed it works.

It is probably fine for that. Only reason I am canceling the excursions is because I booked excursions for Europe early and then after I had booked (with gift cards), Carnival released better excursions. For whatever reason, Carnival's releases the European excursions at a slow drip seemingly one by one spread out over months rather than just turning on the faucet and releasing them all.

I would advise against using gift cards on shore excursions. If you have to cancel, creates big headache.

I have always gotten a cancellation email when I cancelled an excursion before. Only time I didn't was when I never got a refund...waited a month before before calling. Not doing that again.

Guess what? Same thing is happening again. Even though I just had a problem with this when canceling another excursion booked with gift cards, I decided to cancel my "Paris On Your Own" excursion (costing $600 for 4 of us) because I wanted to book the Mt St. Michel excursion. (I literally waited from September to March to book the Mt St. Michel excursion because I have been wanting to take it since my 2021 cruise was canceled and I had it booked as an excursion, but when it never showed up on Carnival's booking, I eventually decided to book the Paris excursion because we were getting so close to the cruise and I assumed Carnival simply wasn't going to offer MSM again. Sure enough, the MSM excursion showed up about a month later.) I canceled POYO yesterday. No email confirming cancellation. No email about a refund. Nothing. Just disappeared from my booking details. So, I wait until today at noon hoping for at least the confirmation email saying I will get a refund. Nothing. So, I call the the fun shops. On the line about ten minutes with her working on getting me my refund. Then, without warning, I am put on hold. Then the phone rings and someone in a different department answers. This time, a man. And it isn't the fun shops. He recommends I hang up and call the fun shops back. So, here we go again...about to call back. Why does this have to be so difficult? Yet again I am learning the lesson of don't pay for excursions with gift cards. It isn't worth the ten percent savings!

I think that the very first time your cruise or play in the casino on a cruise, you can get offers without spending much at all--as in, maybe $20. But I think that to continue to qualify for them, you have to spend more. I also think that when they were requiring the shot, some people were getting offers who might not have otherwise gotten them. I got offers during this time and have not recently. May also have to do with how many cruises you have booked.

I googled and didn't see anything. I stalked JH's page thinking I might see an update, but nothing. Albeit, I realize I might be a couple of days, too early...but since I am sailing on her on May 28th and this was a 1 month dry dock, I thought there might be some news or some pics coming out today.

They will allow your children to come with you if your children are minors. But I am assuming a child old enough to have a girlfriend he stays in a cabin with is not a minor...

Because they are having fun on the ship and not when they have to go back home. Post-vacation depression. Makes you irritable.

This is great info! Thanks so much. I am working on a couple of SUBS (sign up bonuses) right now on cards. I am trying to get us a bunch of points to fly us all to Europe business in 2024. I had already had the points/miles accumulated but looks like I am going to be using everything I had to go to Edinburgh for our entire family in November. I was planning on just flying out my husband and I (and paying for it) for my graduation in November but they won't tell me the date (only a date range of ten days) and it is so close to Thanksgiving that I can't see leaving my young kids. They said dates will be out in September or October...well, by then tickets will be absurd! And what if the date falls ON Thanksgiving or the day before/after? (Obviously the UK doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving.) I can't leave my kids on Thanksgiving so just decided to bite the bullet and have us all go and work on getting more miles for our cruise next summer by getting more cards and hitting the sign up bonuses. Just hit one by paying for taxes with a cc with only a 1.85 percent fee...well worth the 115k miles I got on that one. I plan to pay property taxes at the end of the year the same way. Since we have two houses and an office building, that will hit several subs. (Texas doesn't have a state income tax and instead taxes properties at anywhere from 1.5-4 percent of value every year.)

Does anyone know if Chase credit cards provide points for these gift card purchases? I read somewhere that credit cards don't give points for gift cards.

I have left my kids on the ship before and will do it again when there is an excursion that clearly isn't appropriate for them. Sometimes in these European ports there are no excursions that are appropriate for them (or that they want to go on) and, in those instances, they stay on the boat in Camp Ocean. And they aren't the only ones in Camp Ocean either. Many people leave their kids in Camp Ocean on port days. They stayed on the boat in Camp Ocean twice on our UK cruise last year. It isn't my favorite thing to do and I don't usually enjoy the excursion quite as much as I otherwise would, but I find that preferable to having kids who don't want to be there or having to stay on the ship myself and missing out on a port I may only go to once in my life. But when something pops up that is appropriate for ALL of us and that my kids want to do, I book that. That is exactly what I did here. Originally there were no tours that seemed appropriate for kids or that my kids wanted to go on so I booked the wine tour because it was something I wanted to do. Later on, a tour that is basically just a bus ride to a nearby city with "free time" on your own popped up. The city has a beach and is known for its tapas. Guess what? My kids love the beach and they love to eat. What you are accusing me of doesn't even make sense. Why would I even book an excursion that I had no intention of going on??? What would be the point of doing that or the advantage of doing that? There isn't any.

That is 100 percent correct. We would have taken the excursion without them had one we not wanted to do come open. We took two excursions off the ship last year on our UK cruise and left the kids on the ship. We didn't take them on one of the excursions because it involved a really long bus. We didn't take them on the other because they told me they didn't care about going on that excursion and wanted to stay in Camp Ocean. It isn't my favorite thing to do, but I have done it before and would do it again.

😂🤣 Touche, touche. Although, I think crotch/butt sniffing is actually a thing a lot of dogs do. We had a Great Dane we really had to work with on this because he would do this every time he met a stranger and people are really intimidated by such a large dog doing that to them.

Sorry. Thought they took the earliest one.

My guess is that you have a sailing with a lot of diamonds, suite guests, etc.