purplephenom

Curacao is my favorite.  It's a little different than the typical Caribbean feel- more like a European city.  For excursions, we went to Blue Bay there and felt it was a nice compromise.  The western beaches are nicer, but much further away.  Mambo beach is close, but crowded and crazier.  Blue Bay is about 15-20 minutes away, but is part of a condo complex or something, so not crowded. We also really enjoyed walking the town after some time at the beach.  Lots of places to get drinks, lots of shops to browse, plenty of nice picture opportunities, and we felt very safe wandering.

We were looking for a cruise that went to Bonaire and Curacao, and were told by the future cruise people that Carnival doesn't offer that because Aruba is by far the most popular of the ABC islands and is the port they make sure to include on most/all of their southern itineraries.  And in talking to people it seems like everyone LOVES Aruba, so I'd believe that.  We thought it was nice, but not our favorite- seemed more developed and boring to us.  The day we went, the water was churned up and the snorkeling was just average, so I'm sure that didn't help our perspective.

We haven't been to Bonaire, but have it planned for 2021.  I've heard even average snorkeling in Bonaire is actually amazing so we're excited about checking it out.  It doesn't seem like a place to hang on the beach- but a great place to be in the water so I'm expecting to love it. 

I'm expecting Curacao to stay my favorite, but hoping Bonaire will be a close second. 

11 hours ago, Jim and Monika said:

so cheers is 15 drinks a day, my 12 pack doesn't cover that...

Cheers includes unlimited soda.  It's 15 alcoholic drinks.  

I enjoy the line dances, so I think they're fun.  Everyone's in a good mood, excited about the fun week to come.  It means muster is over and the cruise can truly begin.  I know they're not for everyone, but you can always give it a try, and if you don't like it, go elsewhere. 

For those who aren't checking email or using their phone for anything other than pictures, if you leave your phone on airplane mode the whole time, the time won't change.  

If you're going to use your phone/internet, just turn off automatic time updating.  

If you have an iphone, go to Settings, General, Date & Time, and make sure set automatically is turned off.  (If it's on, it'll be green and white, if it's off it'll be all white).  

To me, they feel like any other golf balls at any other mini golf place.  So I'm going to say no, not fish food.

Of those 2, I like the Western route better.  But, at least for awhile, it might be for people who cruise for the ship, not the ports.  

1 hour ago, jimbo5544 said:

Hope springs eternal Grasshopper, we shall see.  

My hope is a different ship out of San Juan. If not, it's not the end of the world, I was pleasantly surprised by the Fascination.  But, weird they've taken this long to announce where that ship is going. 

I thought the largest I've seen were either 10 or 12 at a table.  You may be able to get 15 together if you go with a rectangular setup- tables for 2 or 4 pushed together.  Or, you may be happier with 2 tables for 8, so you can hear the people you want to talk to and switch who is at which table nightly 

3 minutes ago, cruisinagain1960 said:

the Pure Leaf, Propel, Gatorade and Starbucks will not be part of Bubbles, but will be a part of the alcohol package.

Yup, I saw John had mentioned this in a later post.  I'm back to not caring about this change :-).  Thanks 

Ok i'm back to not caring.  John Heald just shared another list,  Frappachinos, Propel, and Pure Leaf tea are only included as part of cheers.  

1 minute ago, maryhou said:

BOOOOOOO, this is horrible news for my NYE cruise. We can each bring a 12 pack correct?

Yes. And you can also bring a bottle of wine. 

I thought I didn't care about this, but then i saw the list of included drinks on John Heald's page.  I dont drink soda, but I do enjoy Pure Leaf teas.  I also like Propel, Gatorade, and especially the Starbucks frappachinos.  If those are all actually available on board as part of Bubbles, I may end up purchasing.

3 hours ago, RWolver672 said:

 

Miami has three lines.  "Priority" (Platinum, Diamond and FTTF), "On Time" and "Early/Late".  When we sailed on the Horizon, we got to the port around 11:30 and got in the Priority line.  Once in that line, we never stopped moving until we were on the ship.  

 

Thanks.  Maybe I'll show up a bit earlier.  I'm not really too worried about it either way- an hour isn't going to make or break my day.  

I'm curious about checking in at the Port of Miami as well.  I checked in at midnight and got a 12:30 time slot- seems late compared to other ports.  Does Miami just open for check in later?  Or is the early/late line open earlier?  

I'm leaning towards getting a late checkout at the hotel, and just heading over close to 12:30, but I'm just curious. 

I would cancel it and spend the money elsewhere- FTTF isn't worth it (to me), so not being able to board early would mean its worth even less to me.

But, you said you want it for other perks besides boarding early- so If I were you, I'd keep it, but stick with the other cabin as far as check in/boarding.  They might allow your kids to go with you, they might allow the whole cabin, or they might allow no one from the other cabin.  If the answer isn't "sure other cabin, go ahead and board," that starts your vacation on somewhat of a sour note, so I'd say just don't take advantage of that part of FTTF, since that's not the only reason you're buying it anyhow. 

I think the piano bar is also 18+ after a certain time.  But, I don't think they card there- just announce/ask if people are 18.

It really depends what your group wants to do at night.  If the 18 year olds really want to go to the night club/casino/comedy, and one of the group isn't allowed, it could cause some issues among your group.  If they're likely to end up at the pool, wandering the ship, eating pizza, and just fooling around, that's probably less of an issue for you. 

One more thought- if it's the Seavis (or something like that) tour you had booked in La Romama, I think they have a discount code for booking through your link.  If you can get the code, post in in roll call groups both here and elsewhere, but also share why you were excited about the excursion.  If you just post a link, people may ignore it as spam, but if you include it as part of a more descriptive post, you might get some takers.  

La Romana really does seem somewhat lighter on excursion options than other ports.  Maybe try something not water related here- I'm usually all in on the water excursions, but it doesn't seem like there's much to choose from in this port that isn't far away. 

As for Curacao, if it's a sunset tour you want, i think a few different independent operators have them. Or, you could see if you could find something at the dock.  

Don't stick to the Eastern/Western- Curacao is really a different looking port.  Even without an excursion, you won't feel like its the same as every other island.  Aruba is more of a desert island- very different from the others. But generally, I agree with your coworker- if you just go to the beach everywhere, things tend to run together after awhile 

2 minutes ago, Lalory77 said:

Thank you so much for your reply. I've been going back-and-forth whether to do the excursion or take a cab ourselves there. The price difference isn't that much since it's $30 each way for the cab and then there's an admission fee to get in. I always feel safer doing an excursion through the ship LOL. Thank you so much for your detailed description. I appreciate it so very much! 🙂

However you get there, have fun.  Its a good place to go- not as crowded as Mambo, and closer than the far western beaches. We had several people from our social media group go, and everyone had a good time and felt it was worth it. 

so i guess i can't answer the beaches/ports/excursions..

1. Chocolate melting cake.

2. Deck parties

3. trying to win a ship on a stick 

All of them.  There is a social media site where you can look up who your piano bar player will be.  And then you can either google/ask around for reviews on them to see if it's someone you'd enjoy listening to.  It's something like Carnival Piano Barbarians and the list is in the announcement post so you don't need to join unless you want to

14 minutes ago, Lalory77 said:

Thank you so much for your response! I had read some reviews for this excursion that mentioned the transportation there took about an hour because they went the long way doing some site seeing and there was less then 2 hours of beach time? Do you recall how long it took you to get there? Was the beach nice with clear water?  Thank you for your response 🙂

We did this in February 2018 so I don't know if things have changed, but the description on the website looks the same.  It probably took us about 45-50 minutes to get there.   But there really was a lot to see and take pictures of on the way there.  The way back was very quick- maybe 20 minutes.  I was very indecisive about booking this and emailed Carnival shore excursions multiple times with questions on this and the turtle snorkel in an effort to make up my mind.  I just pulled up my emails and their response was beach time is about 2.5 hours.  On our particular day, we got a bit longer.  I'm 100% positive that's true because I checked my social media site and one of my captions was "we had 3 hours here at i spent almost all of it in the water."  I don't know if we just got lucky, or what, but on our day our beach time wasn't cut short.  

The beach is nice with clear water, yes.  It is part of a condo development or something, so its not really a public beach- it's not packed and you can easily get loungers (included) near the water. There's no music or anything playing.  Bathrooms are clean- they got a little sandy as the day went on, but there was always someone there cleaning so doesn't get gross. The water is a little rocky when you enter, but it's really not bad.  You can take water shoes if you want.  If you want to float/let kids play, just hang out in the water, the protected cove area doesn't have a lot of current.  There are some palm trees- it looked enough like a Carribean beach for me to happily take pictures.The sand away from the water's edge isn't rocky- you can walk onto the rocks that shape the cove- this is obviously rocky, but the tops are smooth enough that I was barefoot and it was fine. 

On 11/3/2019 at 6:00 PM, scpirate said:

I've got a cruise on sunshine in February 2021.im pretty much dreading it.but we wanted to cruise out of our HomePort also one time.for me carnival is at the bottom of my list.i had gift cards that needed to get used.anyway did the ship feel crowded? Was the comedy club hard to get into.? It's still a long way off and I have another cruise to prepare for before then.thanks for the review.

 

I love the sunshine- but yes the comedy clubs are difficult to get into.  I don't even like the comedy clubs and it just bugs me that some seats face the wall, and you get to watch a monitor of the comedian.  If I were you, I'd line up for comedy (people do this, you won't be alone).  Should you have to?  Of course not.  But you really dont want one of the silly facing the wall seats. 

I sailed in February, and other than comedy, the ship really didn't feel crowded to me.  We enjoyed hanging out in Ocean Plaza- the Alchemy Bar is right there, as is the Red Frog Pub.  So if either of those places got crowded, you could hang out at Ocean Plaza.  At night, they usually had a band going, and it was pretty low key but they were good. 

If you don't want to deal with Lido, deck 5 has some breakfast/lunch buffet options.  Its not everything that's offered, up on Lido, but its significantly less crowded. If you're going to lido, I suggest the Blue Iguana taco salad- you can customize, load it up at Blue Iguana/Guy's toppings bars, and take it somewhere peaceful to eat.

I usually love the Serenity area, but i was disappointed on this ship because the top deck or 2 was usually closed due to wind.  We were sailing the Southern Route, so that may have made the difference- you may not experience that. But, if we went up a deck from Lido, we were always able to find chairs, even in the middle of the day.  We sometimes went back by the waterslides too.  A lot of families claim a couple chairs but then go with their kids on the slides/play area so its surprisingly quiet back there. 

For shows, people did line up on our cruise, but we found that wasn't really necessary.  If we got there 15 or so minutes before the show started, doors were open, and we could go in, relax with a drink or just talk to people, and wait.  I found the theatre nice and cool, so, at least twice, I used that time for a quick cat nap.

The piano bar looks crowded from the door, but when we walked in we were ALWAYS able to find seats without being squished.  I'm not sure if its the layout or the darkness, but if that's your thing, give it a try- it's really not as crowded as it looks. 

I don't know if they do the Michael's craft sessions anymore, but these looked crowded.  However, we always found a seat (these happened in Ocean Plaza), and we always had the supplies we needed.  So they were prepared for a large group.  On our particular cruise, they were pleading with people to let kids go first so they could pick the colors they wanted.  I'd say 90% of people respected this, but there's always a few who needed to beat the kids to pick out supplies.  That slowed everything down, but in the end, wasn't a big deal.

I'm focusing on crowds, because you mentioned it, but like I said, the ship really didn't feel that crowded to me.  We ate at off peak hours, and started our days fairly early.  I'm sure there are certain times of day where parts of the ship feel crowded, but we were able to avoid them without any extra effort.  My BF might be the most impatient person in the world, and I didn't hear any griping about crowds outside of craft sessions (and I always do if we have to wait), so either we sailed on a lucky week, we did a good job avoiding the crowds, or we were having too much fun for it to matter.

We did this excursion. Blue Bay is a little less crowded than Mambo, but closer than the western beaches. If you have kids, there’s a protected cove area that’s good for them to swim and play in. 

The Snorkeling is decent around the edges of the cove. The excursion includes a mask and snorkel but not fins. It’s wavy enough that you’ll probably want to rent them- I think they were either $10 or $15. 

The food there is ok but it just takes a bit so order before you’re starving. 

The bus on the way there gave a quick city tour.  Bus doesn’t have window panes so you can take pics of the colored buildings. 

On on the way back, the bus drove past the flamingoes and stopped for pictures. It was ok to see but they were sort of far away so don’t count on amazing pictures. They’ll drop off in town or at the pier for shopping. 

We enjoyed the beach. We were there about 3 hours. It really wasn’t crowded, no vendors or anything, and pretty good Snorkeling. We thought we would’ve wanted more water time, but I spent all but about 20 minutes in the water and the current was enough to make me tired. Some people say take water shoes, I had no issue barefoot but something to keep in mind. 

20 minutes ago, ishap said:

 

 

Maybe they could post someone there, however there are two LCD televisions mounted at the elevators with the instructions on how to use the elevator.  I did my research ahead of time on how to use the elevators, but I know everyone won't do that.  I stand by my statement that I think the better way would be selecting the floor, then the number of people.

 

 

 

I agree with you that entering the number of people makes sense- I just think until Carnival gets the approval/updated software to do that, there has to be a better solution for the interim than letting people get massively frustrated about the weird elevators that don't even have floor buttons :-)