MistyRo76

That was kind of my initial thinking!

Not sure if I should feel extremely proud of this or shamed by it....but I managed to get through all 83 (now 84) pages of this review since this morning! Surly that earns me a FREE CRUISE, right?? Or at least a ship on a stick?? 🙂 Great as always....now I'm second guessing my plans for a likely fall break cruise next year. I was pretty set on the Sunshine out of Charleston. Never been to Charleston or on the Sunshine and thought a shorter cruise would be a good amount of time for my 9 year old. But now I'm thinking we should throw caution to the wind and go for broke on the Celebration! Decisions, decisions!

YUM....my FAVE!

Playing catchup today (on your review that is!) - never seen this Watermelon Crush drink on any Carnival drink menus before. Looks tasty - what's in it?

Agreed that it's back...I see tons of kids at my daughter's school events with mullets!

Thank you! Wonder if they will ever upgrade the older ships wi-fi systems to be more in line with what the Excel class ships offer?? I don't usually get internet packages but the last two times I cruised, I left my daughter at home. In 2019, the hubby and I took a cruise to Cuba and left her with grandma and grandpa and my last cruise was a girls trip so she stayed home with daddy. But now I'll probably get at least the Social plan moving forward. The only place the premium plan didn't work great for me on the Valor was when I was laying in bed in my cabin. I had the cabin further into the room and if I wanted to FaceTime with home I had to go stand closer to the door. We were all the way aft in one of those "bowling alley" type cabins, so I was tucked in a little corner back there!

Wow! That's quite a difference! Thanks for the info! Hope to sail the Celebration sometime soon!

Excuse my tech-challenged ignorance - but what is the internet speed usually on some of the other Carnival ships? And is it safe to assume you were on the Premium wi-fi plan? I was on the Valor in October and got the premium wi-fi for the first time and was prepared to be standing in line at Guest Services mid-cruise to ask for a refund. But I was pleasantly surprised at how well it was working.

The safe in my sister's cabin on the Valor in October wasn't working. She reported it to her room steward, and it was fixed very quickly and easily!

I think it's most likely that the place he did go over was deck three. From the video I've seen of him doing the air guitar contest (which I didn't even know was a thing on Carnival, but I digress), it looked like they were in the Atrium. So that would have been the closest outdoor location. Maybe he stepped out there to vape or to pee if he couldn't find the restroom?? From being on the Valor a month ago, I did find that the restrooms close to the atrium and outside the large theater were harder to find than most. And a fall from Deck 3 would give someone the best chance to survive the fall itself. I am curious about possible camera footage Carnival may have. Wonder if they'll ever release it - if it exists?

My heart is racing just reading this! I never thought I would be, but am now in fact, a get to the airport way earlier than necessary type of person cause I just can't take the stress anymore! Off to a great start (for us reading it anyway)! Can't wait to read more! Love your reviews!

When I first started cruising, I was in my 20's and very much on a limited income. The fact that I worked for an airline and flew for free helped me be able to afford cruising on vacation! But we were young and really on in our cabins to sleep and get ready. So there was no need for us to waste money on a balcony at that stage in my life. When I booked my first cruise with my now-husband, I got an unexpected work bonus so I upgraded us to a balcony as a surprise! And now 11 years and probably 10 cruises later, I've stayed in nothing else besides a balcony! I wouldn't go back for anything now! We use our balcony quite a bit and i love being able to see us coming into ports! It's fantastic!

They started debarkation before we even started breakfast - at least for those carrying their luggage off. But I agree that timing could vary by ship - or even by sailing. My only point was that there wasn't an 8AM cutoff time on our sailing and in fact they were still seating guests well after that.

I got the call once - but we had a large group with our cabins all near each other, so I declined to stay near the rest of our group!

I'm not sure this is true - on the Valor last month, we met our group for breakfast around 7:30AM on disembarkation day. They were still seating guests when we were finishing up around 8:15AM or so.

I'm hesitant to believe any report that uses terms like "all" or "never", etc. There are plenty of bars on the ships that are more out of the way and don't get as much traffic in general meaning less wait times. For example, on the Lido deck the Red Frog and Blue Iguana bars were usually very busy during the day. So often I would make a slightly further walk up to the Serenity bar and get my drinks there. I never had more than 1-2 people in line before me there. If Alchemy was very busy, we would pop down to the casino bar which usually wasn't as crowded. Now one example I can cite from my October cruise on the Valor of longer wait times at a bar was during the Halloween deck party. The Lido deck was the most crowded I saw it all week. And only the Red Frog was open. Not sure why they didn't also have Blue Iguana open that night. Because of that Red Frog was packed...but even then it probaly only took me 7-8 minutes to get my drink.

My advice is to head to the MDR to enjoy one last relaxing meal on the ship before getting off! I haven't really done that in the past - but we did it on our cruise last month and it was great! We were able to be done eating right before they called our zone for debarkation so timing-wise it worked out great!

We were on the Valor a month ago and actually had to change dining table assignments twice. The first time it was because two friends of ours booked the cruise without us knowing and surprised us at the Port. They didn't link their reservations to our because that would have given away the surprise, so we weren't seated together for dinner. Once onboard, our friend went to the dining room to inquire about the change, but there was no one there to talk to until after we sailed. Once he was able to speak with someone, they moved us so we could all be seated together. It was no problem at all! Our second change was due to having some very rowdy and completely uncouth people seated at the table next to us (extremely filthy language, extreme sexual innuendo, nudity - in the form of one girl flashing her breasts, and even a lap dance thrown in for good measure). We chalked night one's debacle up to maybe going a little heavy on the FunShip specials once onboard and that maybe it would calm down night two - but that wasn't the case. Night two was more of the same, so we requested a change to a more peaceful location which we were moved to for our last three nights of our cruise.

That video is just crazy! Seeing him in the water and going under and bobbing back up like that?? I was exhausted watching it for just a minute! What a miracle indeed!

Thank you for your suggestions! I will add these all to my notes for this cruise and hopefully we can work all/most of it in!

Hello! I am looking at booking the Carnival Sunshine out of Charleston for me and my 8 (will be 9-year-old) daughter over her fall break next year. I have never been to Charleston before so would like to come into the city a couple of days early to explore the city. What are some must see/do things that would be interesting and fun for my kiddo? Thanks!

I feel for this woman and it's easy to Monday morning quarterback the situation. But it sounds like Carnival dealt with the situation appropriately and this woman is now having to deal with the consequences of her actions both from Carnival and personally from having this video posted and seen by who knows how many people. We should all be thankful that this had the ending it did because it could have turned out so much worse. She's a single mother of two kids, who could have ended up without their mom had it not been for the actions of the man in the adjacent cabin talking to her and the quick actions of the security guards to get her back inside unharmed. I would hope that she gets the help she needs after this scary situation.

We were just on the Valor last month and the main stage shows in the large theater had 7:30 shows several nights. We went to two of them. Seating would open at 7:00 and the show would start at 7:30. We had the 8:15 dinner seating in the Aft dining room. Typically, the show would end around 8:10-8:15 and we would have to sprint (not really...more of a fast walk) down the entire length of the ship to get to dinner. But we were never more than 5 minutes late due to going to the show.

We were on the Valor a month ago and had late dining. We didn't have any issues seeing the shows. The comedy shows we saw were usually around 10:00-10:30. If we wanted to see the shows in the main theater, we would usually go to the 7:30 show, which would end right at the same time our dinner was starting. It worked out well for us!

I'm interested in this as well - though not specific to the Magic. Looking to take my daughter (will be 9 at the time) on the Sunshine over fall break next year. Only experience we have with the children's programs are when she was 3. But I think she is at the perfect age now to really enjoy the kid's programs and the cruise in general! She is very into video games (mostly Minecraft) at this point and also loves anything having to do with arts and crafts.