Eli_6

So, I was looking at this one sailing very, very tentatively. Carnival has a rule that I can book my kids in an inside room directly across the hall from my husband and I. (Don't worry, my kids won't be running amuck as: 1) we probably won't sleep like that, and 2) they are way better behaved and more polite than I am so if you are going to worry about someone, worry about me.) They also have a rule you have to be 12 and up to be in a Havana room. If I booked this sailing I would want to be in a Havana room because it has lots of sea days. There is not a Havana balcony room directly across the hall from inside rooms...only catty-cornered (look at 8467and 8465 on Pan to see what I mean). So, I have two questions: 1) If my son turns 12 DURING the voyage, can he be booked in a Havana room? In other words, do they determine age at start of sailing or on the last day of sailing? I know for pregnancy purposes, it is last day of sailing. 2) What do they consider across the hall? I would assume 8467 and 8465 wouldn't fly, but I am not sure...

I don't think you can get on it, but I may be wrong. It is parked next to a shopping mall, I think.

This is not how it worked on the Pride last summer on my sailing. They were checking all of our room keys to make sure we were either platinum, diamond, or a suite guest for the priority debark and you had to be there in person an hour or two before they even docked to get the ticket. Platinum, diamond, suites got the early group numbered tickets and then they started the rest at whatever number. So, if you were not priority, even if you were down there at 4 am and stood in line for a ticket (which people were) you still weren't getting off until an hour or two after they started the tender process since about 1/4 of the ship was priority and then they also debarked the excursions first. They way they did it was actually really annoying because we had to get our kids up and out of bed at about 6 am or so to get our "priority" suite ticket and then go back a couple of hours later to actually catch the tender. One morning we waited towards the end of the period and the people in the lobby were already gone and we couldn't even get a "priority" ticket. They also would not give you a tender ticket to a person who came down with multiple S&S cards even if all S&S cards were eligible. You had to be physically present and have your eligible S&S card. People could not just take a large group of non-priority people off with them. Nor could someone go down there with all the priority S&S cards and get a bunch of tickets. Granted, like everything else, this probably depends on the ship, person in charge, etc. as to how they actually handle this. The way it was handled on the Pride for the British Isles and Iceland July sailings were a complete mess.

The May 28th cruise is back on the website with quite a few rooms available. They have also added a bunch more excursions. So, I feel confident that it is a "go." I have not heard what they are doing, but I am hoping for some cabin updates. They need to at least fix some of the plumbing/hot water issues. It would be cool if they added a non-smoking casino, too, like they did on the Breeze, Dream, etc.

Interesting regarding the world cruise. That would be pretty cool if they did that.

Good to know. So, basically, in European tender ports, if you want to do an excursion: Book with the cruise company or you may run the risk of missing your independently booked excursion. Probably true for any other place that doesn't have massive number of ships regularly coming through sufficient to support independent tender companies.

Not on entering the building. There is a separate line for the final check in where you go up to the desk with the carnival employees at the very end once you get through security, but security was so back logged there was hardly anyone in any of the lines. I was annoyed that I paid extra for FTTF because it basically didn't get me to the fun any faster.

The lesson I have learned is that if they have one of those little count down things, stock up on gift cards. Anyone know how long they "stayed off" last time they disappeared?

Same thing for me as others experienced. I tried to log on today to buy Carnival gift cards to pay for an excursion and they are gone. I literally bought some to pay off the cruise earlier in the week.

Don't feel bad. I absolutely left my Kid's in Camp Ocean while we were on our Europe cruise and so di MANY other parents. That's a big part of the reason why I cruise Carnival because they have the option of safe, fun child care. I was able to ask my kids which excursions they wanted to go on and which ones they didn't. No point in dragging my kids on a multi-hour bus ride to see some historical site they don't care anything about and making them miserable and having to subject the other passengers to their complaining. Yet, at the same time, I am not leaving them at home while we are in Europe for 3 weeks when there are still many sites that they can see and experience. My kids actually do really well at most of them...castles, henges, anything surrounding medieval times, etc. A vineyard where we are doing wine tasting or a gondola ride through a Galician mussels farm? Not so much.

Which would you recommend for a tour through the cruise line or going out on my own from the cruise port of Zeebrugge? I am really into medieval history and so that is why I want to do go to Ghent rather than Brugges.

I think one was Stornoway and the other was Kirkwall, but now I am not sure... The reason I am not completely sure is they changed the itinerary shortly before the cruise. One of these ports was a dock and one was a tender. In the one that was a dock, there was a bus that went into town where there was lots to do. In the other (that was a tender), the tender boat dropped you off in a little town where there were things to do and see. Some of the excursions didn't show up last year until only a month before the cruise so they may still show up. Like I said, in all situations you could go out on your own with no problem...once you got off the boat.

This is entirely dependent on who reviews your OBC request. Some people get it, others don't.

@EngIceDave I admit that the reason I was hanging out on my balcony was that I was hoping to see someone make a mad dash to the ship...

Never mind about my entire post. I just realized people are saying the bookings being linked lets you check in everyone together. I guess the one time I could not do that, my bookings probably weren't linked.

One time (and one time only) I was able to somehow check in both of our rooms literally at once on the Carnival website. The two rooms were booked with a travel agent and were adjoining rooms. However, we have cruised other times and had to log in separately even when I *thought* the bookings were linked. (Although, the cruise I couldn't do it was also one where they had changed boats and rooms and put my young children on the opposite side of the boat from us so maybe the bookings where we couldn't do it weren't linked.) So, there is a way to do it...but I don't know how. If you have a travel agent, I would ask them as ours worked some magic. The only other thing I can think of is the "other room" involved my listed travel companions (husband and son) so maybe that is why it allowed me to do it. On the Carnival website, there is a way to actually add travel companions to your profile. It also saves their information in your profile with your own so you don't have to reenter all of their information every time you book a room. I do know they will let a family with young kids board together regardless of time, but that just makes sense because they aren't going to send my 8 and 10 year old to the back of the line by themself.

When we were on our last Carnival cruise a couple of weeks ago, the ship waited an hour past debark time for two people. I know because I was sitting on my balcony during the time. I was actually surprised the ship was waiting because I always hear about pier runners and have heard stories about people being left. We were in Cozumel in this instance. It seems like if the two people were on a Carnival excursion, there would have been more than two late people... It made me wonder if some of these stories were cruise line folklore. Admittedly, I have never actually known anyone who was left. Then, I saw on another cruise line's board that a ship had waited 2.5 hours past sail time for a passenger. The suggestion was made when someone asked the question of "Why didn't the ship just leave?" that the ship could not leave because the port the country was in (in that case, St. Maarten) had a law that a ship could not leave a passenger in that country unless the person's passport was left with port officials. Thus, the ship waited until they found the person. Anyone know?

Yeah, a 14 percent increase is more in line with inflation. But the prices jumping up by a third or more is what is crazy to me. But I guess everyone else is right. Cars, property, eggs, gas...the world we live in now. Sigh. Frankly, I am starting to feel like sometimes (not always, but sometimes) this is just businesses taking advantage and increasing profit margins. My husband and I own a small business and our expenses have gone up, too...but not to the tune of 33-50 percent. In Carnival's instance, I suspect that they feel like they cannot raise their cruise prices because they need to try to get people (in particular, new cruisers) on the boat, so they are trying to pay off debt by raising the prices of other things. For example, I was double-checking the price of the cruise we are going on since we have price protection and the current price of the cruise I am going on is within $100-200 of the price I paid when I booked it about 15 months ago. Considering this is a 12 day European cruise to about 9 or so ports that doesn't even have very much availability left, I was surprised the price wasn't higher.

Sorry. I made a typo. It was an increase of $350 to $500. It was 37.5 percent. The price went up by more than a third. The $400 should have been $500. And the other example I gave was an increase of $149 to $199 which is also a 33 percent increase in a short period of time.

@Carnival Cheerleader Relax. It was just a descriptive term. Picture the dudes from the movie "Grumpy Old Men" or "Statler and Waldorf"" from the Muppets and you have the men in my experiences. I guess I could have said: "The trouble-makers were old enough to know better." Or "They were in the AARP crowd." (I am in AARP so that isn't an insult.) My point was that they weren't a bunch of drunken college kids or former frat boys at a bachelor party.

I have never noticed the prices fluctuating before on excursions with Carnival. I also rarely see sales on them. Only sale I have ever seen was you can book three excursions for 10 percent off shortly after booking if you book all ports with them...and it is usually only available for select excursions. With that said, I am not at all surprised they raised their prices. My shock is more at how much they raised their prices on some of the excursions. Some aren't that bad - like the $150 to $170 example I gave is tolerable imho. But others have gone up 40-50 percent like the $350 to $500 example the poster above gave.

I don't know about those ports. I was on the British Isles cruise last year. We went to Edinburgh, two islands that were north of Scotland (I think they were in the Orkney Islands), Northern Ireland, Ireland, and Wales. However, there was not a problem getting to where you wanted to go once you were off the ship. The problem was getting off the ship. All the ports were tender ports except 2 and it was a huge mess. They unloaded the whole boat (2600 person guest capacity) with only 2 or 3 tenders. It took hours. They had the same problem in Iceland, too, from what I heard from other guests.

Also, when I was on a Europe cruise last year, there were MAJOR problems getting on shore in most of the ports because all but two were tender ports and they didn't have tender companies. They were only using two or three life boats that held about 40 people each to unload the Carnival Pride which has a guest capacity of 2680 people. It was taking some people 4 to 5 hours to get off the ship. They literally only had two or three life boats unloading the entire ship. And they were unloading the "Carnival excursions" first...followed by the platinums, diamonds and suites which was at least a quarter of the ship. Then you have the fact that a large number of the people cruising in Europe are older and mobility impaired and take a long time to get load/unload on the tenders. I am going to have to make sure the port isn't a tender port before I book an excursion or go out on my own. If it is a tender port, I feel like my option (after my horrible cruise last year) is to either take a Carnival excursion or just stay on the boat...which is not what I want to do considering I am flying my family of 4 across an ocean to go on a European cruise.

I actually know several people who have been enticed to take a cruise for the first time by the new Celebrity ships (Apex, Beyond, etc.) who previously would have called themselves "not cruise people." They are all 30s-40s professionals who either don't have kids yet or have kids that are older (teens/college) and they are leaving behind. My husband's aunt took her first cruise on a smaller, "luxury" line ...but she is late 60s and it was booked through one of the college alumni groups that travels together. My friends with young kids (jr high, elementary and younger) are almost universally cruising Royal, Carnival or Disney for their first cruise regardless of income.

As an aside, I likely never would have gone on a Carnival cruise on my own accord, but I went with a group of people who were like "this is the cruise our group is going on"...so I went and I had a blast. I had so much fun that I booked a Havana room on the Vista for my husband and I. It was great. The Vista was almost new then and it went right out of our home port...and from there on out, I was hooked.