groundloop

I got off Magic 5 days ago and was quite happy with the MDR food. The service was a bit slow on the first night but after that it was better.

There will be a cancelation fee.

On our Thanksgiving cruise on Freedom the internet was pretty much unusable (even compared to Carnival internet standards) so I asked Guest Services to cancel it and issue a refund. I was told that since I had paid for it pre-cruise they couldn't issue a credit to my sail-and-sign account but rather would issue a refund to the original form of payment within 2 to 3 weeks. (My daughter cancelled hers also and had paid for it with on-board credit once on the ship so she received a statement credit the next day). At the four week mark I emailed guestcare@carnival.com to ask about this and several days later received an automated email indicating that it could take up to 45 days to get a response. 🤬 Has anyone had any luck getting refunds of any kind, or can you suggest anyone else to contact?

I've sailed multiple times from Jacksonville, Tampa, Port Canaveral, and New Orleans and really haven't noticed a huge difference on the longer cruises. The only time I noticed a rowdier "party" crowd was on a 4 day. There will be organized parties being held by the pool and probably in the atrium, but if you don't want to be bothered by that you can have perfect peace and quiet in other parts of the ship.

Another option that many people use is to do nothing as far as paying for gratuities since they'll be automatically added to your sail-and-sign account on the next to last day of your cruise anyway.

Are you talking about the porters, or is there someone else who'd need to be contacted?

I haven't been on any of the Vista or Excel class ships yet, so I can't speak to the quality of internet service on them, but it's been my overwhelming experience on all of the other ships that their internet service isn't good enough to support consistent video streaming. At best I've been able to stream video (YouTubeTV or Netflix) somewhat tolerably early in the morning before most people are up, but when more people are online it becomes impossible.

It's been my experience that for some reason dinner is usually slower on the first night, and on the rare occasion when I was unhappy with a meal it was the first night. I don't really have an explanation, that's just been my experience. Most of the time dinner on Carnival seems to take between about an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes, occasionally it stretches out to an hour and a half. My preference is a quicker dinner, but hey, if dinner takes a little bit longer on occasion that's one more thing on my list of things to complain about. 😁

Guess where I'm not eating anymore. That is f$##ing ridiculous. Despite the crappy wifi and non-existent in-room entertainment options on the TV I've always been happy enough with Carnival that I haven't really looked into cruising on the other lines. I have 7 more cruises booked over the next two years, I think some of those will be getting changed to Carnival's competition.

I'm getting more and more tempted to do without internet for my upcoming cruises. I'm really kind of surprised that they're raising the price again so soon, especially for such crap service. I was on Freedom in November and the wifi was totally useless so I had it cancelled on the second day and went without for the rest of the cruise (and somehow survived - it helped that I had phone service for quite a few hours as we sailed past the Bahamas). Maybe this is Carnival's way of improving wifi service, price it so high that a certain percentage of people won't get it and free up bandwidth for those who are willing to pay the exorbitant price.

We did Hawaii from San Francisco this past September and it was great. I really enjoyed the extra time we spent in San Francisco both before and after the cruise. My wife is an even bigger baseball fan than I am so I got tickets to a Giants game, that's a really nice stadium with a fantastic view of the bay. We also went to Alcatraz and later did a sunset bay cruise. I've never been to Long Beach so can't give any kind of comparison, but I think you'd have a superb time leaving out of San Francisco.

Being Platinum has no bearing on seating with YTD. When you're ready to go to dinner you go into the Hub app and request your table. When a table is ready a notification is sent to your phone and you're expected to be at the dining room within 10 minutes. We've done both YTD and early dining, I somewhat prefer early dining but there's really not a huge difference. One nice thing with early dining is you'll have the same wait staff throughout the cruise, plus on average I'd say that fixed dining is usually quicker than YTD.

We were on Freedom for Thanksgiving and was so frustrated with the WiFi ("Premium" plan) that I went to Guest Services and cancelled it (and I'm fully aware that the normal Carnival WiFi is very mediocre at best). There were long stretches of time when it wouldn't work at all, and then when it was working it was extremely slow. I wouldn't count on live video being useable, you'd better have a backup plan that includes email or facebook messenger.

I'll second and third what everyone else has said, I was never asked to show my vaccine card while at Grand Turk in November. I just keep a photo of it on my phone just in case.

What opened my wife's eyes was on the first day when there was a problem with logging in to her WiFi. We went to guest services and there were over 30 people waiting in the 'regular' line whereas we were able to walk right up to the Platinum/Diamond desk and get her issue resolved in under two minutes. SWEET!!!!!!!

Yes, absolutely. Your status will change to Platinum on all of your documents several days after you finish cruise A.

There's no way in hell I was going to start questioning a security agent and risk spoiling our vacation because of my big mouth. It's really not a huge deal because we all finally got on the ship, but I'm just hoping to possibly learn something.

It's sounding as though there's some variability to dining on Journey's cruises. We did a 15 day San Francisco to Hawaii cruise last September and there were three elegant nights. I don't remember much about MDR menus other than the fact that there were a lot of good choices and I most definitely didn't go hungry.

Your status will change to Platinum a few days after the end of your next cruise (i.e. you'll be Platinum on the cruise which is going to put you over the 75 day threshold). And I don't believe you'll be allowed to enter the terminal any time you wish (you'll have to abide by whatever arrival time you chose during on-line check-in). But since you'll have had the chance to do online check-in two days before Blue, Red, and Gold members you'll pretty much be assured an early check-in time if that's what you want.

So would they have kept her from boarding if someone thought there was contraband of some sort in her checked luggage? If that's the case then maybe "boom box" was actually what she heard (although that would have been totally in error). And I was under the impression that if something contrary to the rules was found in checked luggage that it was simply removed and a note indicating that fact was put in the luggage.

Homeland Security? Or are those folks just employed by the port?

As we were boarding Magic for our Christmas cruise my adult daughter was held up at the final checkpoint just before getting on the ship. The agent took her boarding pass and passport to the supervisor and after about 15 minutes (during which time my daughter's blood pressure was going through the roof 😁 ) the agent came back and said "no problems" with no other explanation. My daughter said the agent initially said something about a "boom box" - I know that she mis-heard what the agent said but I'm wondering if anybody has a clue what that was all about.

Yep, I'll be paying close attention to this before I make my final payment for our upcoming Greenland cruise.

EXACTLY. Nothing beats spending a sea day relaxing on my balcony with a good book.

The best comedian I've even seen on a cruise was on Carnival, and he was memorable enough that I actually recall his name - Spike Davis. And the second best cruise comedian I've seen was also on Carnival - Jose Sarduy.