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That bow design is also helpful at reducing emissions, improving speed, and reducing passenger experience of seasickness. In all honesty, it was about time we saw an improvement in this area, and we should all expect cruise lines to choose the design that will be most efficient going into a future where we need to be thinking about emissions and footprint.

In all fairness, the "orange stick of Butter" helps these ships stand out and have been a huge marketing tool for Celebrity. The fact that it's multi-function and makes tendering a better experience for those onboard is also a huge +.

That's a nice perk if you're doing a lot of tender ports. I'd say for $250 you get early access to the ship, a calm and delicious lunch on embarkation, your carry on luggage delivered to your room and some peace of mind on debarkation day when your luggage also gets priority off of the ship while you enjoy a nice final breakfast in the MDR, too. But that's just me.

Money is going to be the downfall of every industry, and we're starting to see the cracks at every turn (well, trying to make up for money lost during the pandemic, anyway). Just because these [fill in the blank: ships, flights, restaurants, rental car counters, etc.] CAN hold X number of people doesn't mean they SHOULD be holding X number of people until after we can get through this surge of post-pandemic demand and things even out again.

Yup. If you can hold off long enough, airfares usually go back down right after Labor Day. I would take day trips to Miami for less than $125/RT from the Northeast that were priced for double a month earlier. Keep an eye, set a google price alert on google flights and wait it out if you can.

As others have mentioned, the Key is often on sale for only a couple of bucks more per day (I paid $3 more/day and includes Surf+Stream (plus I was one of the first three on the ship). If it works for you and your situation, I'd keep an eye on it.

I have to disagree. I had surf+stream on Freedom (pre-Starlink) and I could barely load social media, let alone make a photo post. There were times I could be in just the right area of the ship and make a duo call, but often would only be able to do (choppy) audio. Emails would load in (apps running in the background at all times) but would take a long time to send. YMMV, but if Surf+Stream had trouble on a good day, Surf is not going to cut it.

A lot of corporate systems will automatically trash any attachments as a security precaution to a first email, and will allow subsequent attachments once contact with the customer has been established. It's possible that your initial request was denied because the system worked as designed.

Thank you for bringing this up. I was going to post that I was watching a YouTube video that was explaining how Carnival's ship designers had a design that looks eerily similar to what we now know as the Oasis class of ships. There are sources out there claiming that this design was happening as early as 2004 by the designer Joe Farcus. I imagine that there are some engineering limits that might require this kind of design, combined with wanting passenger experience not to feel claustrophobic or overcrowded (imagine how many interior staterooms cold fit in that gap!).

I was on freedom a month ago and could very easily access the spare HDMI port in both the oceanview and balcony staterooms. I once heard that if you unplug the ships ethernet cable from the TV, it becomes easier to switch inputs (so long as the TV is off when you do that). FWIW, never tried this, so YMMV.

Guess again. RCL has their key program with is similar to FTTF. Their program has been in place since covid. Ultimately, everything on cruises is driven by economic impact. If FTTF is profitable for CCL and they have the staffing capacity to do it, they'll bring it back.

I feel like this is unnecessarily harsh and dismissive. I know OP was in their room at the time, but if it was really 1am I'm sure a lot of folks were also up partying around the ship and would have found a power outage concerning. There's nothing wrong with trying to get more information if it's available.

Found it- looks like a minor fight on the lido deck, small group of people, others chilling watching the drive in movie still Youtube Video

With your criteria, I feel like either ship would be a good fit. I'm wondering what additional preferences you might have that would "make" or "break" your vacation/experience (i.e. noise levels, amount of children present, availability of adult only activities or areas, nightlife, cost, etc..). Without a better picture of who you are as a cruiser, I don't know that this forum will be of much help. Without any of that, I'd personally go with whichever ship had the newest retrofit and most options- which would probably be the Dream. But again, with your limited criteria, either would probably do.

This is a great point- I maybe wasn't clear in that I already have travel insurance, but it seems odd that RCL is offering additional (company funded) support whereas Carnival is not offering any sort of passenger assistance and are basically saying "if you get Covid on our ship, good luck." I know RCL cruises offers a different experience from Carnival, but in this case, my quesiton is really more around would it be smarter to go with RCL with their offering of assistance vs carnival's none.

Hi Everyone! I'm looking at booking my next cruise, but am a bit torn. RCL is $200 more expensive for the same category room for the same itinerary cruise, but they also offer that guarantee where they'll "get you home" if you test positive onboard. I've been reading around different people's experiences with this program, but ultimately it seems better than Carnivals "good luck fam" policy for what to do if you get covid onboard. If everything else is equal (ish), would that guarantee from RCL be enough to convince you to cruise with them?

This is true, although many of their ships don't require reservations for show and there (in my experience) was always seating available at shows. I just got off Freedom and they had disabled the reservations for shows/entertainment in the app.

I bought this package at $23/person/day. It's usually listed at around $34/person/day