groundloop

True, but then you get to port along with thousands of other folks who want on the ship at the first possible instant, wait in line for the check-in process, sit in the terminal area for an hour or more (usually) until the ship is ready, and then sit in the crowded buffet on the ship for a couple more hours until you can get to your cabin. It's WAY easier to get a late check-in time (about an hour or so before the final boarding time) and breeze right through check-in with no lines and waltz straight to your cabin.

I actually paid for FTTF one time, and then it dawned on me what a colossal ripoff it is. All that money and the only tangible thing I got for it was being able to get on the ship a little bit earlier. No Thanks.

There's nothing all that strange about it, there has been severe fog for the past week or so and tanker schedules have been impacted. The airlines are working around the problem by having planes carry additional fuel coming into Orlando. According to articles I've seen online the weather is lifting and things should be back to normal very soon.

You have to log into a wifi plan with your folio number and birthdate, pretty tough to forget doing that.

OH.... daughter is 25. She's an elementary school teacher.

Actually there's a couple of feet on each side, so tons of space. 😁 But definitely close enough to reach out and touch the side of the canal if you were so inclined. And yeah, on our Panama Canal cruise we thumped the wall pretty good one time.

That would have been to get through check-in and security, not for boarding the ship. You board the ship based on the Boarding Zone printed on your boarding pass (with the exception of the aforementioned priority boarding groups).

Did you report this to security? If you reported this then yes, the blame is on Carnival for not doing something. If you didn't report this you have no call to complain, security can't possibly do anything unless they know about it. The first thing they do is put a strongly worded letter under the doors of all nearby cabins informing people that smoking has been reported and that there's a $500 fine plus possible expulsion from the ship, which usually does the job. After that I have to imagine they'll take measures to catch someone in the act.

We're doing a private/customized tour with Bernards in a few weeks and we're looking for ideas of places to visit. My daughter is insisting on Maho Beach to watch planes, other than that we're totally open to ideas. Maybe an out of the way family restaurant or burger joint for lunch - I seem to recall someone mentioning a good place at Orient Beach but I can't seem to find the post anymore.

I've seen 2 to 3 Mbps download speeds with "premium" internet on most of the Carnival ships I've been on. Most recently I was on Freedom for Thanksgiving and the one time I could get a speed test to run it was less than 1 Mbps. The internet for that cruise was the worst I've ever experienced, I finally gave up on it and had Guest Services cancel my plan and issue a refund.

I was on Freedom the week of Thanksgiving, and while there were plenty of things to complain about, one of them (for me) was not the dining room food or service. I wouldn't write it off after trying just one dish. To be honest, I don't care for how Carnival prepares fried chicken either, but have always found plenty of other dishes I like. If you get a dish you don't like your server will be happy to bring you something else,

And just to expand on using a credit card - you'll be able to link your credit card to your onboard account when you do online check-in about two weeks before you cruise. The first day of the cruise you'll see a $200 charge from Carnival placed on your credit card which is just a 'placeholder' and will be taken off when the cruise is done.

John Heald posted that arrival should be around 3:20 PM. It's going to be a mess for folks getting off, I've been through that once before when Elation arrived 4 or 5 hours late because of severe storms. Carnival will most likely be sending texts to passengers on the next cruise telling them when to arrive at the port, although one person currently onboard was complaining that she wasn't given any information about updated arrival times and she had an international flight which would likely be missed.

I'm seeing 22 or 23 KNOT winds there, so more like 26 mph. That's getting up there for maneuvering a large ship with so much area exposed to the wind.

Since both types of cruise cash are "use it or lose it" I'd be more inclined to link a credit card to the sail-and-sign account. You can keep an eye on your account on your Carnival Hub app so there aren't any surprises, and at the end of the cruise your balance is automatically charged to your card. If using a credit card isn't an option then the cruise cash comes into play, but I'd be darned sure I'm going to use all of it. You could always add cash in bite sized increments as you go to make sure you don't lose any at the end of the cruise.

Same here. I just checked out the price for Bacardi White - $135 plus $24.30 delivery fees for a total of $159.30. No Way In Hell.

To be honest I don't believe Carnival will give you anything more than they already have offered. You're not the only person who booked this cruise only to be disappointed, there's an entire shipload of people they have to deal with. Find a different cruise and enjoy.

Yes. HOWEVER, there's really no need to pre-pay gratuities, they will be automatically charged to your Sail and Sign account on the next to last day of the cruise. I can understand why some folks might want to pre-pay this so they don't have to worry about it, but I just always know ahead of time how much I'll be charged for gratuities and keep an eye on my account.

Yep, our first cruise post-restart was on Magic with around 50% occupancy. Some days the ship seemed like a ghost town. I suspect that you'll like Spirit. We've sailed on Spirit once so far plus three cruises on other Spirit Class ships, they're my favorite.

My adult daughter (who happens to be a second grade teacher) doesn't do patient 🤣. She was cussing Carnival constantly for 'overbooking' Freedom (double occupancy capacity 2980, total capacity 3754). As I'd mentioned we had 3700 guests, so we were pretty much totally maxed out. I suppose that should prepare us for Christmas since it really can't be any worse. And yes, this was the first time we've ever sailed on a holiday without any Covid restrictions. We did Thanksgiving last year on Pride and that was quite pleasant, nothing like this year on Freedom.

I think you speak for a great many of us. There's no way I'd want to go through enough drinks each and every day to make Cheers a break even proposition. Even on the few occasions when I was able to get cheers as part of a promotion I rarely had over three drinks in a day. If it ever shows up again in a package deal I'll think about it, but definitely not worth it to purchase by itself.

T-Mobile has international roaming included, no additional fees (I can also use my phone as a hotspot). I may very well quit purchasing wifi and just use my phone data on port days. On our Thanksgiving cruise last week on Freedom the wifi service was so bad it was essentially useless. I had Guest Services cancel it for a refund. And in fact on the way back to Florida we were a few miles off one of the Bahama islands and I had phone service for a few hours.

Only if the person getting Bottomless Bubbles is under 21.

I think what was mentioned was that pre-cruise liquor would be back on the Carnival site beginning Dec. 1. And I've just wasted a good half hour scrolling through John Heald's FB page looking for this and have yet to find it. Oh well, I guess we'll know tomorrow if it's true.

We were on Freedom for Thanksgiving last week along with 3700 new friends (which included 1100 mostly well behaved kids), to say that the ship was packed to the gills with people is an understatement. I guess I should have expected it seeing as how cruising is mostly back to normal now. I normally avoid cruising on holidays, but we'd done a cruise last Thanksgiving which was relatively sedate and for some crazy reason I was looking forward to a repeat. My adult daughter talked us into doing a Christmas cruise this year as well (on Magic), now I'm starting to wonder what we've gotten ourselves into. For those of you who've cruised both Thanksgiving and Christmas before should I expect Christmas to be just as crazy as Thanksgiving?