Lee Cruiser

Copied from my reply to another post: Back in September we cruised on Celebration. We are platinum, so we have priority debarkation. We were outside and waiting on our Lyft at 7:45. We were through security at FLL and at our gate by 8:45 for our 11 am flight. We are cruising on Magic this September and we have a 10:15 flight out of FLL on Southwest. However, we will definitely have a backup plan in case there are unforeseen circumstances. We will book another flight with a refundable fare on a different airline. Wouldn't recommend booking a flight this early without a backup plan.

Back in September we cruised on Celebration. We are platinum, so we have priority debarkation. We were outside and waiting on our Lyft at 7:45. We were through security at FLL and at our gate by 8:45 for our 11 am flight. We are cruising on Magic this September and we have a 10:15 flight out of FLL on Southwest. However, we will definitely have a backup plan in case there are unforeseen circumstances. We will book another flight with a refundable fare on a different airline. Wouldn't recommend booking a flight this early without a backup plan.

Just found a different form than the one I've used for years. Going to try it to see what happens. https://www.carnival.com/forms/price-protection

Has anyone had recent experience in submitting price protection forms? I've submitted a price protection request for a September cruise twice and haven't had a response either time. Yes, it was an early saver fare and yes, the new fare was cheaper with the same onboard credit and deposit. Is Carnival still honoring their price protection policy?

Didn't work for us on our January Valor cruise.

That’s what I do if I’m going to use a gift card

Typically you can make changes to your current cruise or change cruises before the final payment due date. According to policy you will be charged a $50 per person to do so.

They have a gathering for just those who are platinum and diamond members, usually on the last sea day. They do offer drinks. On the Excel class ships, they just offer one drink if I remember correctly and then add one drink voucher to your sign and sail card. We rarely go as we don't drink, so it's never been a big deal to us.

My wife and I just completed cruise 24 and have only used that perk once or twice. One of those was at Cucina for lunch one sea day when my wife ordered a soda. We didn't even know until later that the bar staff had given her the soda as her free drink. Another time after that we asked about getting a soda for lunch and was told that we could only get that in the dining room, so I guess it just depends on the ship and who you ask. We liked the gold perk much better because we could use it at the coffee bar for a milk shake or other specialty drink. We don't drink alcohol, so the party means nothing to us. We rarely go to that either.

I said it wouldn't be a revenue producer

I'm hoping for a Shaq's Big Chicken, but it wouldn't be a revenue producer

We prefer the menus on the app. We can view the whole menu for the week as soon as we board. We love the app for a lot of reasons. I also prefer the menu on the app because it is much more sanitary than touching things that a lot of others have touched. It's just an OCD thing for me 😀

It's also worth noting: If Jubilee is like Mardi Gras and Celebration, Cucina and ChiBang are a part of YTD, so only those with YTD can reserve tables until 7:30 p.m. After that, they are open to those who have set dining times as well.

John originally said that we would get to choose between the three. Then that changed to they were going to rotate through the three gifts and then allow you to choose. I'm guessing that won't ever happen now, but hoping it does.

I'm guessing you were in a specialty cabin. Unless something has changed in the last few months, beach towels in most rooms are blue.

Back in the late spring and early summer we were looking at a November cruise out of New Orleans the week after Thanksgiving, which we thought would be less busy. There were several categories sold out more than six months in advance. We did book one, but ended up cancelling and doing another trip instead because the cost was going to be much higher than we normally pay. The price and popularity for cruising has definitely risen of late, so you can probably expect to see this more of these kind of search results.

I got a good Black Friday offer one year, but that was probably 5 or 6 years ago. It ended up saving us $250 on our next cruise. Haven't seen that since and don't look to see it this year with the way bookings are going.

Also, someone please correct me if I am wrong, but hasn't Carnival's cash on hand dropped by about $3 billion this year?

Carnival definitely had the best quarter in quite some time. Turning a profit is always better than a loss, though they do project a loss of 10 cents a share in the fourth quarter due to fuel prices. Also, it's always good to be paying down debt rather than incurring more. However, they should be having higher revenue. The prices of cruises and all the extras have risen considerably over the last year, much more than the rate of inflation. The price of onboard internet, cheers, soft drinks, milkshakes, and general onboard shopping has risen greatly! Gone are those 2 for $20 t-shirt sales. They now have prices like 2 for $30 and 2 for $35. That's at minimum a 50% increase in price, so they are far outpacing any increases they are paying. Obviously, there have been many topics on here about extraordinary rising prices like those of cabanas and such. It's great for them to see rising revenue, but that's mostly because of rising costs of the cruises and all of their onboard products and services. Will there come a point where people are no longer willing, or able to pay the rising price of everything? For us, we've reached that point on some cruises. We already cancelled our November cruise on Valor because it was going to be by far the highest cost per day we've ever paid for a cruise and extras. We decided to take another trip instead for several hundred dollars less for the same amount of time. While we will probably take our January cruise because it was booked under one of the great rate codes from last year, we are in the process of making a decision about our April Jubilee cruise. Chances are good we will cancel that one, but not 100% sure yet. Right now we have less cruises booked than we've had in years and for the first time in probably 10 years, don't have a cruise booked past next year. I suspect there will be more of that in the future, especially if prolonged high interest rates cause an economic downturn.

The menu for ChiBang just doesn’t appeal to us, especially with so many other options. I’m curious. They had started a policy at ChiBang that after the first time you had to pay an $8 fee to go there. Did you have to pay that fee the last two times?

I’m glad you had a great cruise. I’m sure there were many others who felt the same way as you. As I said before it was certainly not everyone as a whole causing problems. For us it was probably just the wrong place at the wrong time.

That's exactly right. It doesn't bother them that we've cancelled our November cruise. That ship was nearly completely full anyway. They will not miss us at all. I know a family that is cruising Carnival right now for the first time. It appears that they are spending a lot of money on pictures, drinks and who knows what else.

Wow! Schools around here have already been in session four weeks. I didn’t realize that there were still schools that started that late.

Definitely true. The majority of people were good and treated others well.

My wife feels the same way. I like the food options on the Excel class ships and the comedy options on Mardi Gras (though that may have changed now), but the overall experience just wasn't as good on this one. We are booked next April on Jubilee. It was a pre-build special offer that included a good price and quite a bit of onboard credit. We will have to decide by January if we want to keep that one or not.