Eli_6

Thanks. What a bummer!

I was looking on a website (prof cruise) that purported to have the 2023 menus for all of the Carnival eateries. We went to the Steakhouse on 2 of our last 3 cruises in 2022 and I could have sworn that I got a wagyu beef steak but that is no longer on the menu. Additionally, my husband and I ordered the dessert as art and it also is no longer on the menu. Is the 3rd party website wrong or has the menu changed?

But they do have Dr. Pepper! Which is more than I can say for some parts of the US.

You just described how my family and I like to travel exactly to a T. The only thing for us that keeps us with Carnival is our kids are still young that the kid's club and slides are a must. I think my kids would be devastated if we got on a cruise ship and they didn't have slides. We also really enjoy the Carnival comedy club.

I have no idea because we always take our kids to eat dinner with us if they are cruising with us.

Celebrity is nicer, but there will more likely be more people her age on Carnival. On a 4 day Carnival cruise near Spring Break, you will get a lot of drunk college kids.

I was in an aft corner excel suite on the Mardi Gras. I loved the suite and the huge balcony with a hot tub, but would not have paid extra for the Loft 19 if it had not been included in the price of the Excel suite. But that's just me. The spa was not very deep in the area. However, I thought the Serenity area looked really nice. With that said, we live in Houston and have a pool at home (that came with the house when we bought it) and barely use it so it may just be that we aren't really pool people.

It is going back to Europe before it goes into dry dock and then will dry dock in Europe.

Yup! Maybe the Dr. Pepper lets them know I am a Texan and they leave me alone, lol.

What ship/date is this cruise? Is it part of the world cruise? I have been shopping various lines for a cruise to Egypt and have not seen much except Celebrity and MSC.

Wow. Re-read this post and I must give off a "non-alcohol sneaker" vibe because I have never once had my Dr Pepper cartons opened or inspected and have never had my wine inspected. Once I even walked on with the alcohol for our entire party (6 or 7 adults) in one carry on suitcase and didn't get inspected. Our party got split up and I was concerned about it, but they didn't say anything.

I was also wondering if Firenze might do a transatlantic or even around the tip of South america or if they will sail her empty to Long Beach. She has to get there somehow...

1. I don't think this will work. 2. Yes, you can buy a bottle for your room even if you have Cheers. If you buy a bucket of beer or bottle of wine before you hit your 15-drink limit (you can't pay for them with Cheers), I don't think it goes against your drink limit. If you do it after hitting your drink limit, they won't sell it to you.

O'Hare would be going out of the way. I fly from Houston. The only US airport it would make sense to fly through that would be both closer and also have more flights than IAH would be Atlanta...maybe MCO or Miami. I think even JFK would be out of the way because I recently tried to take a flight through NY to get to Scotland and it was going to add 3 hours to my travel time and was more expensive to go IAH-JFK-EDI than IAH-LHR-EDI. There were fewer flight options, too. Having flown out of Atlanta before, it is a complete cluster and I would prefer to avoid it. More passengers go through the Atlanta airport every year than any other US airport. Plus, I often fly on British Airways Avios rewards flights and the majority of their flights go through Heathrow if you are flying from the US. You can probably find a few direct flights, but not many. Pre-pandemic, London Heathrow was the second busiest airport in the world in terms of international passengers and flights so it is going to be hard to beat in terms of availability of flights.

Personally, I would prefer more sailings from England (although, I wish they would switch to Southampton) as we can fly direct to London. Layovers following an international flight are always a huge PITA. I don't know if it is the airport I fly out of (IAH) or what, but I have quite literally never once had a long-haul international flight depart on time. This isn't even a post-pandemic issue as I had it happen before the pandemic, too. Therefore, I always feel like I have to schedule a long layover at Heathrow between flights to account for the fact that we may land an hour or two late...which isn't fun with two kids coming off of an often overnight long-haul flight. I would imagine there are more flights directly to London for most US cities than there are to Rome, Barcelona, etc.

True. Also may be considering which Baltic Ports, although they did it this summer just skipping Russia.

I have to know: Which cruise ship had fights on it that were so bad that it to be escorted by the coast guard back to port? I somehow missed this. I knew of one instance where there was a sexual assault on board and they returned to port and took the perpetrator off, but I had not heard about returning to port due to fights on board. Brawling on board somewhat goes to age/demographic of passengers (i.e. I have never seen senior citizens get in a physical altercation), but SA doesn't really follow those same lines. I used to work at a DV/Sexual Assault non-profit many years ago and we had victims in their 70s/80s (even of stranger sexual assault--in fact, sometimes elderly women living alone are specifically targeted) and perps of all ages because sexual assault isn't really about sex, but power. Point being: Sexual assault could occur on a more expensive line as easily as it could on Carnival. Not meaning to bring a funny conversation down or anything...

In my experience, it is hit or miss and somewhat depends on how many people are out there watching the movies.

John Heald said yesterday that the Avatar movie was going to be on the IMAX on the Horizon and Vista, but he hasn't said what is playing for the Dive In movies.

FWIW, I have never had a *really* bad experience cruising out of Galveston. Worst experience was just with people cutting in front of others for the elevators. Most people are fun. I have been on the Breeze before and it was a super fun crowd. Galveston is my "home" port and I have never seen a fight or someone who was drunk and obnoxious. (I have seen people who were obviously drunk, but it was more of a "fun" drunk and not a "get in a fight" drunk.) Been on ships out of Galveston twice at Christmas. I don't mean to stereotype, but it seems like a lot of the bad behavior comes out of ports or during times that one might expect bad behavior -- i.e. spring break, the "booze" cruises, the short cruises out of New Orleans. And not that I am bashing NOLA because I love NOLA, but if you look at the stats, there have been a lot of problems on the Valor with fights, people jumping/falling off, etc. I have never personally witnessed any of that out of Galveston. And I certainly don't think that Thanksgiving is going to attract the party crowd.

You are so priority that you get beamed on to land.

FYI (not being snarky) but I think there is now a curfew for minors. Not sure what it is because my kids are too young to wander around by themselves anyway.

I was hoping there would be an update today from him, but no such luck. It is almost 6 pm in England so I would have thought he would have posted today. Still nothing on the website.

I am feeling more confident it is going forward because they have been adding excursions. I think they even added excursions for one port within the last week. I think every port now has excursions listed except for Belgium. Also, I would hope that they surely would cancel before final payment is due in a month. (With that said, they didn't for 2021...but Covid was an issue back then.)

I like it better now. I built an office building in 2016, my lake house in 2017 and we renovated our main house in 2021-22 so I have been staying on top of design trends. As much as I know many people like the Farcus (sp?) designs, they aren't exactly what you are seeing in design magazines or on design websites these days. Plus, our house we just renovated was very "Farcus-ey" before our reno and I really didn't like it. Lots of wood paneling. Lots of dark colors. Lots of very "over the top" and "faux" design that seem (to me) to be dated. For example, we removed this giant open fireplace that was literally in the middle of the living room and was big enough to roast a whole pig on.