CityTourer

I very much agree with the OP.

On 6/13/2019 at 5:31 PM, californiacruisers said:

When my son was 4 years old, he loved cruising because he loved the kids clubs. As he grew older, he loved the pre-teen club and then the teen club. But he turned 18 and now cannot attend the children's clubs. And he doesn't fit into the bar scene since he is too young to drink. He is in limbo.

 

If you have a child who loves children's clubs, your child will eventually meet this fate too. SO PLEASE HELP DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

 

On our last cruise, I noticed that the Teen Club is open only during certain hours, e.g. 10a-12n, 2-4p, 6p onwards. I therefore suggest that the Teen Club facilities be open to college-aged people (18-22) whenever the Teen Club is not in session, e.g. 8a-10a, 12n-2p, 4p-6p. We could call it the College Club. The cost to the cruise ship would be very small since the College Club would be unhosted as its members are young adults who do not need supervision. College-aged people would be happy to use the Teen facilities such as video games, TV, table hockey, foosball, etc. Or just hang around with others their age.

 

All the cruise ship needs to do is to set up a few sessions introducing the Teen Club facilities and then let the College Club run itself. The introductory sessions and daily sessions would be advertised in the Daily Schedule of Activities. My son would have loved the College Club and it would have cost the cruise ship very little.

 

I made the above suggestion to the Teen Club staff when I was on our cruise. I also made the same suggestion on the feedback questionnaire at the end of the cruise. I will also send an email to the cruise line with the above suggestion. But I am only one voice and am easily ignored by the cruise bureaucracy. The cruise lines know about this problem but have no incentive to do anything unless they hear from customers.

 

If you have children who like the children's clubs, please add your voice before, during and after your cruise. Because this issue will eventually affect your child too. Please feel free to copy and paste anything I have written.

I wish Carnival would read this thread and do something about it. Soon! We were first-time cruisers last year and we were so fortunate that my son was 17 and he had a place to go to (Club O2) and make friends. He made friends with whom he was communicating via the app to meet up at different places on the ship as well. He was socializing more than I did that, he would come in at a much later time in the cabin as late as 1 am or 2 am if I remember correctly because the Club opened up  late hours for older teens. We are cruising on Inspiration again this year, but since there is nothing similar to Club O2 for the 18 and up (20), we've been scrambling to invite a friend or two to join us on the cruise but they all had other plans... So, he'll just have to stay with us or most likely just be on his own wandering on the ship. In a way, I would like for us to spend a little more time together as a family before he goes away to college. But, I'm sure he'd rather spend time with travelers closer to his age.

We learned a trick the last 3 cruises we've done. On Carnival each cabin has it's own mini frig. We order drinks from the "Fun Ship Shops" pre cruise for a 7 day cruise we get 2- 6 pack sodas and bottled water it's delivered to your cabin. We used to do the "bottomless bubbles" but found out that it did not become cost effective. Mainly by the large upcost since it began. By buying the sodas delivered to our cabin we would save about $60. each cruise. If the frig is not empty we ask the cabin steward to empty it for us.

You can bring your own but it is a pain, for you must carry it on yourself. Plus unless you have FTTF, a suite or platinum or diamond level you won't be able to get to your cabin until 1 pm.

Hope this helps.

 

Sent from my SM-G930V using Forums mobile app

We were in Imagination, I don't remember our cabin having a fridge. Could we have totally overlooked it??? Also, what do you mean by asking the cabin steward to empty it? Did you mean throwing away extra sodas? I agree with you about not bringing our own soda cans onto the ship. We barely used any. I was once able to bring a can into the Main Dining and poured it into one of the wine glasses, but that was pretty much the only time I drank a soda outside the cabin. But, how would that be different from having the soda cans delivered to your room? Wouldn't you still have to carry them for each meal to the buffet, dining, or any restaurant? Need advice for a wishful 2nd cruise. We did however purchase bottled water before the cruise which was already delivered to our cabin when we checked-in. We accidentally hit 2 packs when ordering online (about $9) so we were given 24 bottles for 2 for 3 days!!! One pack was good because we could bring a bottled water to the hot tubs, etc. and, just to drink at night or anytime in our cabin.

We got back from our first 3-day Carnival cruise with stop at Ensenada. We truly enjoyed it as a last-minute mini-vacation. Some day I will write about it in the reviews. Just wanted to share my experience about the shore excursions we were looking at. There were no bikes on the streets. The Tuk Tuk with Street Gourmet offered by shoreexcursions.com was the best if you're into learning about the city and culture you're visiting. We saw our fellow cruisers on horse carriages (too slow), double-deck buses (too high), ATVs (more for backroad), none of them seemed as appealing for what we were looking for. Some just walked it seems less than a mile to the nearest street. If we were confident enough, that would have been our 2nd best choice. We were very happy with our choice. It helped that our driver/tour guide seemed to have read our minds of what we were looking for.

Lanyards to carry your room/charge card. We thought we would get them for free. That wasn't the case: bringing our own saved us about $14 ($6.99 each). If you want to get one with the cruise ship logo on it for souvenir then that's fine.

The First Time Cruisers board seems an unlikely place to put this poll, as they will have little experience in this type of thing. Why not in the Mexico board under Ports of Call, or even in the Carnival forum?

Makes sense! I'm actually probably going to remove and check out the Mexico board Ports of Call forum for that and other info. I've decided not to do the biking excursion after all. Thank you.

Given my experience of drivers in and around Ensanada, I wouldn't get into a car, never mind get on a bike.

Dangerous.

Very.

Good day to explore what's available on board, if you are on a port-intensive cruise.

Thank you for the advice Canuker.

Has anyone done this in the past or plan to do one? It doesn't look like it's available directly from Carnival but it looks like it's tied to it through a travel agency: National Leisure Group. We are moderate bikers but we thought this would be a good way to tour Ensenada (city, beach,...) but I haven't seen any reviews of it online. Please give us your tips, thoughts,... Or advice on bike-related shore excursions in general: i.e. is it safe? should we bring our own helmets? Is $59 per person worth it? etc. Thanks.