Nevada Jen

I can't imagine not tipping extra but it sounds like that is standard with ATD. next tipping question, at the steak house do you hand them the tip discreetly or leave it on the table like you would in a regular restaurant? Are those waiters even included in auto tips?

we got stuck with anytime dining. How do you tip? With early we tipped once at the end of the cruise. Assuming I only tip once, do I give one to to the head waiter to split with the others or do I to the assistants separately?

We are on a carnival cruise with a short day in Limon. We don't arrive until 11. We really want to go to the Jaguar Research Center. Looks like to do that we will have to do a private tour. Which means we need to hire a private driver/tour guide. Does anyone have a reccomendation for someone they used recently?

We used chat with good results on Liberty. I believe the teens on the ship also used it for their meet ups. I really like the non-chat (free) functions of the app. I chose activities and it would send me reminders when they were about to occur.

I reached out via the contact form and heard back after a couple of days. I have a spot reserved but I need to provide my credit card to hold. She gave me a number to call. I get voice mail. Is it safe to leave the CC number on the voicemail? What is the time difference between cayman time and pacific time if anyone happens to know off the top of their head.

We took uber when we did the same thing and it was $95 I am thinking. Right when we got off the boat, there was a taxi stand, I can't remember what the guy told me, but a shared taxi with another group of two would have been a lot cheaper. I actually had a good conversation with the uber driver for the long ride though.

You might try visacentral.com

Also, call the state of your birth rather than trying to use an outside service to get your birth certificate. Nebraska just mailed mine to me after I gave them my credit card number on the phone. I would also call Carnival. I think it is possible that a combination of an expired passport and a current valid drivers license is adequate.

I just booked my first cruise on NCL and it made me realize what I like about Carnival. I like that they serve coke products. I am an addict. If you happen to be addicted to a different soda than is served on board, you can bring on your own 12 pack. Not so with NCL. I will be forced to drink pepsi.

Carnival's alcohol package includes everything not just alcohol (water, sports drinks, fancy coffee). I now realize other lines don't do that.

So those are my two expected things. A word about price. I don't think Carnival is necessarily cheaper. In fact, I would say for the same cruise and perks NCL is normally cheaper when you price it out. But you can go cheap on Carnival if you want. And you can also spend a bit more and get way better perks. Faster to the Fun gets you better than suite perks, for instance!

We have a cruise booked to Alaska next summer on Bliss. I am finding NCL's website to be less than helpful. A few questions:

Is there anywhere on board to buy coke products? If not, is it true you can't bring cans of soda on board?

We have the UBP as one of the free perks but my parents are joining us and trying to decide on their free perk. Mom doesn't really drink alcohol but can put away fancy coffee and water like it is going out of style. Is fancy coffee included with UBP? It looks like water isn't?

My big question: passenger name changes. Are they allowed? Can I switch out a passenger until a certain point?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Your videos are seriously good. Not sure what you think your real job is, but you really should be a travel vlogger! I am super excited for the next one!

Thank you for the quick kid/safety review! Of course, now it's too late because school starts next week! Can't wait to hear the rest of the review!

About 100 extra per day (including travel days) in small bills for two people. But that assumes everything else you are doing/drinking/eating is already paid for. Maybe a little more depending on how you are getting to the ship. For instance before I even made it on the ship I tipped sky cap at home, airport shuttle twice, port shuttle once and the porters at the pier and paid for a hotel room overnight and a shuttle to the port. Any numbers people tell you will be based on how they cruised and may include things you don't have to pay for or exclude things you do. For instance, I spent 1200 on travel to and from the ship (including tips and airport parking).

That line at guest services and getting to Lido before everyone else was worth it for us on our first cruise. As well as just boarding (and even waiting to board) without the masses. Its a bit overwhelming and FTTF definitely helps with that on your first cruise.

The only potential problem is if you have to cancel your cruise and you get your money back, you get it back in carnival gift cards. We have a suite on an upcoming panama canal cruise that is pretty expensive. I didn't want to pay for the entire cruise in gift cards because it is the equivalent of at least 2 normal cruises for us. That is way too long for my money to be tied up in gift cards (and there is a decent chance I have to cancel or the cruise cancels because it is in hurricane season). Also, make sure as you are using them, your balance is going down. I noticed that my cruise wasn't as paid off as I thought it was and it was because a batch of 4 100 dollar cards didn't go through on the carnival site. It might have been user error on my end because the cards worked just fine when I re-entered them.

I absolutely cannot be out of contact with my office (Yes. I know it is a vacation and I should be able to unplug but I can't and I can't reschedule very easily). That said, what are my options for keeping in contact with my office. My cruise has essentailly 6 sea days. From what I am reading, the WIFI on the Miracle is extra horrendous. Will it really not be good enough to send or receive and imessage? I don't need to access complicated websites or streaming sites or anything like that but I do have to be reachable in an emergency (a work emergency) and I need to be able to transmit some kind of messages back and forth with my secretary with some degree of promptness. So what are my options?

Looking forward to your review. I'm in Phoenix also, and I have not pulled the trigger on one of the Long Beach trips yet because 1. No Balconies and I am not paying for a suite for such a short trip and 2. Not really sure I want to sail to a couple of places in Mexico I would not otherwise choose to visit for the sake of a massive drunk fest. 3. Oh and 3, not sure I want to expose my kid to that. As you are experiencing the cruise, do me a favor and tell me if you would have felt comfortable bringing your daughter and if you think she would have had fun.

My 12 year old found the crowd at Circle C to be way too young for him. There is a lack of supervision in the activities. THe counselors are more like facilitators. And they most definately don't stay in the "room" as a matter of course like they do in the kids clubs. What she gets exposed to will depend largely on the crowd of kids who happen to be on the ship that week. I guess think of it this way, people "send" or "take" their kids to the kids club. Kids decide if they want to go do a circle c activity. Our experience was that an activity might draw the group there but then the group goes off on their own. By the way, zero complaints about that or Circle C. I was completely comfortable with it and the kids there.

You can also use the chat feature on that website. I may have gotten lucky but I found it extremely helpful. With my somewhat professional level of knowledge of insurance coverage, I don't know that I would feel comfortable with anything other than cancel for any reason coverage considering how close you are to sail date.

I made my child take quizes to get enough points to pay his fare.

Thanks everyone. I decided to skip it in favor a a fancy room at a fancy hotel with a waterpark in town. We did a 4 day on Liberty out of Port Canaveral over New Years and I was shocked how sedate it was, but I think a few of you hit the nail on the head, we would eat, go to a show and then hang out in our room on our BALCONY, which neither of the Long Beach ships have. And it stormed like crazy so for at least half the trip all outside areas on the ship were closed, cutting down on the Lido party scene. I suspect we inadventantly avoided the crazy party scene. No balcony, plus drunks, plus kid = no bueno.

You have to pay for a wifi package to get wifi throughout the ship. You can download the HUB app before you leave for free and it will have all the ship related stuff on it (and it updates, lets you mark favorites to be reminded of from the schedule and all sorts of stuff related to your cruise.). The HUB app also has a messaging component you can use to communicate with others on the ship who have the messaging component. That is 5 dollars a device. It works reasonably well. Not perfect but I would give it a 4 out 5 on the reliability scale. Separate from that you can purchase a wifi package that will allow you to use your regular social networking sites (social) or surf the web and get your email (regular or premium). I can tell you the wifi is really quite bad on all carnival ships (except maybe the Vista). If you don't need it to communicate with folks back home or work, don't spend the money. I am sure you can find someplace in port to connect to much better wifi.

looking to do a quick last minute vacation. How much of a drunk fest is the 3 day cruise to Ensenada out of long beach? Like would you take a 13 Year old with just one adult and have a reasonably good reasonably sober weekend getaway? What does one even do in Ensenada? The destination board has very little info on it. Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

I would have let my kid have self check out priviledges at that age. But he is extremely mature and not at all boy like. I wouldn't have the slightest worry he would cause trouble or a ruckus or do anything dangerous. My only worry would be the other passengers posing a danger to him. But I could get around that easily by having him contact me through the HUB app when he was leaving the club.

In all my reading here for a year I have never heard anyone say the premium package makes a difference. I had value on liberty earlier in the year for work email. It worked but barely. I would receive but sometimes couldn't open an email till later in the day. It seemed to send my messages just fine. I would suggest that before you leave you tell your students to please send bare bones emails with no attachments, stationary. Or signatures. That will help. But expect to be frustrated.

If she is 16 definately have her go to the teen club open house thing the first night. We had a few teens at our dining table and they actually seemed to be having a great time. Its like they all met their groups the first night. The teens in our dinner table were not in the same clique but I would hear them asking, "Are you guys going to the scavenger hunt tonight?" or various things that made it clear the the cliques hung together and then faded in and out of the organized activities. If she hates it and makes no friends the first night, she doesn't need to go again. My son was in the circle C group and this particular group of cruising kids was very "young" compared to him and he did not find a group on our 4 day cruise, but it didn't kill him to go the first night and he still knew kids on the ship to say hi to and they would often invite him to join him when he ran into them in the hallways.