Eli_6

I went on Mardi Gras for the second sailing when she was at only like 65 or 70 percent capacity. I had a great time, but I commented many times to my husband that I would absolutely NOT want to sail her at full capacity or anywhere near close.

I don't do Fly2Fun on long-haul flights for this exact reason: You can only book economy.

I HATE insurance companies. In my experience, insurance companies do anything and everything they can in the world to not pay...even when it is patently unethical and illegal. After a decade where a decent part of my law practice involved either suing insurance companies for their failure to provide proper coverage and seeing the lengths they go to to avoid paying completely legitimate claims, I now pretty much only buy insurance when I am legally/contractually required to have it or when it would mean absolute financial ruin in the event that I didn't have it and there is a decent likelihood of something bad actually happening (e.g. home owner's insurance when I live in an area regularly hit by hurricanes). The policies are written to not cover your claims and the entire system set up to make recovery as painful and difficult as possible. Also, certain rewards travel cards and memberships in certain organizations will cover many situations that travel insurance will cover.

It is Early Saver Sale...so I think it does have price protection? Trying to look up terms and conditions.

Forgot about price protection. Unfortunately, I don't think this rate does, but going to see what the difference is to book with that.

Ok...I just realized that your question was if she could check in later because she can't be there earlier as opposed to simply having a later boarding time. I would call Carnival to confirm that if you have already checked in and are on board that she can check in on her own after you and that you don't have to physically be present there with her to check in.

They will actually let you book kids under 13 be in an inside cabin by themselves so long as they are directly across the hall from their parent/guardian or next door. "Children may only be booked alone in a balcony stateroom when they are over 13 years of age." There has to be an adult over 25 on the booking or cross-referenced with the booking, but not in the same cabin. I believe the OP probably *DOES* have to check in with or before the 19-year-olds even though they can have their own cabin. We also once took my husband's office on a cruise and one of his staff was 19. Her "over 25 guardian" (my husband) had to check in with her at the same time even though he was in a room with me and she was in her own room. Ironically enough, Carnival once put my then nine-year-old child across the ship from us in a cabin by himself when they changed our rooms because they changed "ships" for a given sailing date thereby breaking their own rule. A phone call to Carnival quickly remedied the matter and they moved him to a room across the hall from our suite. In my family, we try to get adjoining rooms where possible, but this was one of the instances where we were "across the hall" instead of in adjoining rooms. Sometimes it makes financial sense to book the kids in a separate room from the adults to take advantage of certain casino deals or Drinks On Us, etc...even if the kids end up sleeping in the room with 1 or more of the adults. It is easy enough to swap rooms after on board or just get keys for everyone in the family to both rooms.

Well, my kids are much younger, but we have had different boarding times before and we were all allowed to check in at the same time and were allowed to check in at the earlier time altogether as a family.

I have had a ton of laundry done by carnival and never had any problems with shrinkage or anything else. I would not send delicate items, but that pretty much goes without saying for any laundry service unless you are doing dry cleaning. I fit quite a bit into their laundry bag. We are a family of 4 (2 adults/2 kids) and were in the UK from the US for over 3 weeks. We flew with 4 carry-ons and 1 checked bag because we were nervous about our luggage getting lost at LHR. When we did an Alaska cruise, we flew with only carry-ons.

Do they ever have deals on the cruise rates on Black Friday or at Christmas/NY? Or just things like spa, drinks, etc.? I think I recall during the shut down them running some awesome deals, but it seems like that was really it and otherwise their "Black Friday" deals are usually not less expensive cruise rates. We are thinking about booking a Thursday-Monday cruise over the Easter weekend because my kids are off that Friday and Monday and my husband's clinic is typically closed on good Friday. Plus, we need an extra cruise to make platinum (number of days) on our 12-day Europe sailing coming up next summer...and given the tender issues last summer, I would really like to be Platinum for that cruise. (We had a suite last summer, but this summer have two adjoining balconies.) The cruise costs a bit more than I would prefer to spend. I am trying to decide whether to go ahead and book or wait and see if the rates go down later on...

We did Chef's Table on the Mardi Gras on her second sailing. We took our masks off as soon as we were seated.

Is that a penis-less sculpture of David??? I don't know how my children missed this. They love to point out naked pics/sculptures.

So glad to hear none of the ports are tenders. That is a huge load off my mind!

Anything goes. Literally. In general, most people wear "sunday" or "church" clothes. You see a few dressed to the nines and a few in jeans, but most are in suits or nice slacks/collared shirt (for men) and dresses/pant suit (for women).

I may live to regret it given my experience on my Pride sailing this past summer, but I have FCC and I already had both the cruise and the airfare (4 business class from Houston to BCN and then return from LHR) booked prior to my sailing this past summer and it doesn't make financial sense to cancel. (Plus, I am hoping the Pride will have different crew by then.) So, can anyone tell me what ports (if any) are tender ports on this sailing? I am going to basically make sure that I book "carnival" excursions or not book an excursion at all on tender ports given my experience on the Pride in 2022 and the debacle that was the tender situation on my sailing. We go to: Gibraltar, Lisbon, Lexioes (Porto), Vigo, La Coruna, Bilbao, Bordeaux, Paris (Le Havre), and Brussels. I think that most of these are not tender ports, but I want to figure out which ones (if any) are.

I really want to go on the Apex, but the dates for where I wanted to go didn't work out.

Oh, and we did end up deciding to cancel our Panorama sailing even before I heard from Carnival and just lose our deposit. However, I don't really regret that because we will be right at the "three months mark" from our prior Covid (and that seems to be when immunity wanes) and my husband just feels like he can't risk that and having to take so much time off of work again and being down for that long again. For whatever reason, this last round of Covid was pretty hard on us. I don't know if it is a different strain or what, but it was worse than the first time...at least for me. I wonder if maybe it was a variant that was more resistant to the vaccine.

Carnival finally got back with me. They investigated and could not identify who the man was. Apparently, no one will own up to it, but they do have written reports of the incident...just apparently no one (including myself) could identify the employee by name. They tried to pull security video but it had been written over. The Carnival rep told me that it should have been handled differently on the ship (i.e. after we made the report, the video should have immediately been pulled so they could identify the employee...especially since it involved a minor) and they are giving us our cruise fare in FCC and said my sons and I could both go to three counseling sessions each. I actually wasn't expecting or wanting anything from them other than them to discipline/talk to the employee so I appreciate this. I do very much appreciate that corporate handled this correctly even if the people on the Pride did not. They were very apologetic and acknowledged that the people on the Pride did not handle the matter correctly. They did have incident reports of the matter (not sure if from other guests or employees???)and said that it should have been investigated as soon as the matter was report since it involved a minor and physical harm/aggression and the Pride staff was in the wrong for not doing that. I feel happy with this resolution and that Carnival corporate at least attempted to try to determine who the employee was even if they were ultimately unsuccessful.

Yeah, we went on the Splendor right before this and that has been my all-time favorite cruise! I loved the cruise and the ship...even with the weird circle decor. We got a kick out of the artwork...including the mosaic of the guy on the toilet in the elevator. My kids still talk about that. 8/9 year old boy humor centers strongly around bathroom jokes and seeing a piece of artwork featuring one of their favorite topics was fun for them.

Oh, the other reason my husband doesn't want to go on our October cruise is because we both came home from this cruise with Covid. We also had Covid after our May Alaskan cruise on the Splendor. We are both vaccinated and boosted. I did not get seriously sick in May, he did. We both got pretty sick this time. I am about 12 days out from getting sick and my husband started feeling bad on the plane ride home. I actually had to go back on the anti-viral drugs because I seemed to relapse even after getting a little better. I am assuming they are two different strains. This second strain we caught on the Pride was bad news. Considering that I am relatively young and don't have any health conditions, I was surprised at how hard it hit me. Our kids were fine...they are vaxed and boosted. One got a little sick the first time but never tested positive. Neither got sick or tested positive this time. Lucky them.

Still have not heard anything from Carnival. It doesn't look like I will get anything back on any of my future cruises because they were either booked using FCC that was from a cancellation of a cancellation going back to 2020 -or- are too close to sailing date -or- have non-refundable deposits. I would lose about $1800 plus $600 OBC on my October Panorama cruise plus $700 in airfare. And I would lose about $2700 on my Pride cruise next year plus $600 OBC. We did have a wonderful cruises on the Splendor and haven't had any major problems on any of our other cruises...even ones we took after the shut down. We have been on the Mardi Gras, Vista, Breeze, Splendor and Pride since the re-open and ONLY the Pride was a bad experience. Sigh. So, I am really in a conundrum about whether to keep them or not. My husband is of the mind to eat the $ on the October sailing and go on the Europe one for next year and I am just the opposite...my view is that I have more faith that the Panorama will be okay but I do NOT want to get on the Pride again. He thinks that maybe they will have gotten it together by then and says it won't even be the same crew by next year and the Pride will be coming off of a dry dock. Also, he argued that the cruise we will be on (BCN to Dover with Spain, Portugal, France and Belgium) will not have very few tender ports---which is where most of the stress and problems originated from. I don't know what to do. I really hate losing money and this isn't just a matter of a couple hundred dollars. But I also don't really want to get back on the same boat where we had a pretty horrific experience. Fortunately, I don't have to decide right away on any of them except the October sailing... However, I am going to cancel my 2024 cruises to Australia...but the deposits are only like $450 total for both of them and after doing the flight to Europe with my kids, my husband already said there was no way in h**l that he is getting on a flight to Australia for 17 hours. Albeit, our delayed flight in Houston plus flight plus layover in London--which was longer than it should have been because of a delay on our flight to Scotland--plus flight to Scotland plus drive to where we were staying was about 24 hours in total...it was 4 pm Houston time when we left our house to 9 or 10 pm UK time the next day by the time we arrived at the castle we were staying at in Dollarbeg, Scotland which = about 23-24 hours. But at least that was broken up with being able to stretch our legs and a shower at Heathrow. The idea of actually being on the plane itself nearly that long sounds horrible.

As an aside, I never thought that Carnival was to blame for the traffic. What I did think was that when it became apparent that they could not debark normally in the morning (because debark started at 5:30-ish am), they should have done something to plan for all of the passengers they knew would be arriving at 10, 10:30, 11 am, etc. to embark. They did nothing. Carnival, in fact, DID make phone calls and sent out emails later in the day to all passengers (we got the message) when they pushed debark time back so they could have made that same call to tell us to hold off coming to the port. It isn't that hard. If they could do one, they could do the other. But, really, even the embark situation is low on my list of things wrong with this cruise. Yes, they could have handled it better but it wasn't the end of the world. I probably was more annoyed by it than I normally would have been because I had just walked a mile pulling my luggage and my kids' luggage. In the heirarchy of my complaints about this cruise, it was low on my list.

I think because students go on summer break at the end of July and August and are still in school in June. Apparently, July 22nd was the first day off for "summer" break for kids in Kent. I did not know this when I booked the cruise. So, basically, you had the normal number of big rigs trying to cross to France and on top of that you had a massive number of vacationers trying to go from the UK to France. Then, because of the UK leaving the European Union, they recently started requiring complete passport checks for people going from Dover to France on the ferrys. Then apparently for some reason only like 2 border control agents showed up to work. Not sure if they had Covid, or had a strike, or what. French border control (which is in Dover and on the UK side) only had like 2 of 8 car lines open. Or something like that. I don't recall all the details or even know all the details...or even care. The British media blamed the French saying they were not properly staffing their border control. The French blamed the British saying it was because they left the EU. Then there started being people running out of gas on the road, and accidents and even more problems...and emergency vehicles couldn't get to the accidents timely. Then they closed down one major road because of it. All I know is that it resulted in basically a complete gridlock where no vehicles could go anywhere. Whatever the cause, it was cleared by the time we got back 9 days later and it appears everything is functioning normally. Maybe the French border patrol showed back up to work. IDK. I live in Houston which is known to have some of the worse traffic in the nation and literally drove like one of the most dangerous highways in the nation every day to work and this was next level even to anything I had ever seen before. It was insane. Makes me think maybe the US isn't quite as bad as everyone says...

Ok, so I posted an update and while I was working on the post, my contractor (I am having work done on my house) came and got me and I pushed submit reply but somehow I guess it didn't go through as I am not seeing the post. On top of that, I am now not seeing another update I made. May be my internet as I am having work done on my house. So, if the other one shows up, I apologize that there are multiple posts. Re the aggressive guy at debark: My husband complained about the situation at debark and the guy manhandling my kid to both guest services and then to security. They paid lip service to him saying "Oh yeah that should not have happened" and then we heard nothing afterwards. Ironically enough, we got an apology letter for our shower being broken for the week and nothing on the other. I didn't even care about the shower and only reported it so the next person would have a working shower... I showered in my kids' room all week so it was no skin off my back. Since I never heard anything back, I emailed guest services (and found Christine Duffy's email and emailed her, too) about the incident with the aggressive guy leaving a bruise on my kid. I sent a pic of the bruise. Someone called me, said they would investigate and get back with me by the beginning of this week. It is Friday and I have heard absolutely nothing back. Crickets. I emailed yet again. Nothing. I am not threatening to sue. I am not asking for FCC. I am not asking for anything from Carnival other than I want to know the guy will be talked to/better trained and this won't happen to someone else. I have not been given that assurance or any sort of update. So, in summary, even though I currently have 5 future cruises booked (including one already fully paid) totaling over 5k in money I will likely lose, I am still most likely going to cancel those bookings and lose the money. Not completely sure yet as I hate to lose money, but I also don't want a repeat of this situation. For those accusing me of lying or exaggerating: I literally deleted the post because I knew someone would say that and I didn't want to be attacked. Someone else had already quoted it and reposted. So, I have no clue why you would think I was making the story up. What is more, I am a Carnival stockholder and have been on many cruises with Carnival. This was our 5th since the restart. Why in the world would I lie to make a brand that I own stock in look bad? And why would I be considering losing about 5k in deposits and funds paid on future bookings had not the experience been really bad??? Makes no sense. I am not crazy or stupid. But if you still want to think that for some reason I am making all of this up, go ahead. It isn't any skin off my back. As for the problems with embarking and Dover: The roads were clear on the way back. Per the reports I saw on the BBC discussing the issue later on and the fact it was not a problem when we debarked or the weekend after that, I think this was something that was a specific problem to July 22nd. Something having to do with the French. I am guessing people won't be put in a warehouse in the future or have to walk unless something similar happens again. The boat's condition was NOT completely horrible. I never said it was. I said other people complaining about it weren't wrong, though. And that is the truth. The Pride looks its age. It is need of a freshening up in parts. In fact, I think it is scheduled for one soon. That is all. Conclude from that what you will. Also, the situation with the spa worker and the guy at debark were not even remotely on the same level. The guy in the spa was bitchy. Had I not already had such an ordeal with embarking, I probably would have let his rudeness roll of my back but it upset me because it had already been a really stressful day just trying to get to the ship and board. And it was unexpected and a stark departure from what is the norm on CCL ships where they usually bend over backwards to help you. On the other hand, the guy who manhandled my son was aggressive and literally got physical with us. Not even remotely in the same category as the spa worker--he was much worse. And they were seven days apart...not the next day. This was a 9 day cruise. The sailing after ours was 12 days. And I was not the only cruiser who noticed some rude workers. Frankly, even my cabin steward was pretty curt with me on a couple of ocassions. (My sheets had stains on them and smelled like smoke. I asked for two days for them to be changed. On the third day, seeing he was busy, I asked him to just give me the sheets and I would change them. He barked at me, "I said I would change them when I am not busy." Other times, he was really nice. My guess is that they are overworked, overtired, and stressed. I can excuse being curt. I can't excuse putting your hands on a child. Someone asked if it had not been for the debark situation would I cruise the Pride again in Europe? Here is my answer: Had I not had that situation in Dublin, I probably would have kept my booking for next year that I had already deposited and had FCC on for the Pride for next year. However, I would not have made new bookings. And I probably would have continued to cruise on Carnival US sailings. However, even excluding the completely inappropriate debark/aggressive guy, I still felt like overall that Carnival forced its European schedule. I don't think they had enough staff (in fact, they only had about 50 percent staff but were at 85 percent guest capacity), I don't think the staff was properly trained and up to CCL's normal standards, and I don't think they had properly prepared for the debark/embark situation at the ports.

No. It was specific to the day I boarded. When I debarked, there was no issue. I don't know all of the details, but according to the news there was some sort of incident involving French border control or something that caused the massive pile up of cars and big rigs that basically shut down all of the roads going into Dover which, in turn, meant that buses/cabs/etc. could not get to the port to pick people up. It was cleared out by the time we debarked and we made it from the ship to Heathrow in 1.5 hours.