ARcruisin2

missed opportunity - I'd have been tempted to say - yes of course because there are “no menu substitutions”

Beautiful! better check that attitude or Mom won't get you anything at the tack store...LOL. thanks for sharing 🙂 My horse snubs me when I come back from being gone several days.

I think we're going to need pony send off pictures to kick off your next review🐎

"we're not going to necessarily want to put the best ship on the best itinerary" I'm going to read into this, new ships draw passengers just for that new ship experience. Older ships get more interesting ports to interest people in booking them for new location experiences.

I would agree on suggestion of using a travel agent...an actual person you can talk with. You can set them up as point of contact for everyone in group to provide their information and payments, travel documents, everything. I've read some painful experiences here of people trying to coordinate a big group. That takes the awkwardness and responsibility for that off of your shoulders. Also, I believe the discount, like one person free or something, starts at 8 cabins through Carnival Groups dept. You can deal with the groups dept yourself, but i would assume a TA would best help herd the cats and remind everyone of deadlines, etc.

I just read an article about that. It's a fenced/gated property. And it said that even before this, they did not let cruisers leave the property to explore on their own. Also excursions are only right there offshore of the property.

yes! I always used to use the calendar view option...but lost the link when my computer crashed. Is that still a thing?

I wonder if it's showing that it's cheapest if you live in Australia, or if it's incentive to offset airfare to tempt US residents to jump onboard?

Thank you so much sharing another cruise with us in your fun and entertaining way! Whoo Hoo! the virtual chanting worked.... just like at a concert when we clap and yell for a favorite artist to come back for a curtain call 😉 You are a ⭐and CC's your stage!

oh yes, you're right.. you get the double points at purchase...

Agree it would be nice if it were a Carnival Corp all-brands card, so that you could get the double points for booking and the higher point to $$ rate when you apply to your purchases for any of their family of brands .

You caught my attention... I'm in!

looking forward to your review, Patti's great pics and the tribe cruise wrap up!

the crowd is chanting for a Willdra Review! Willdra!! Willdra!! Willdra!!

never mind

as note: they are not looking for a refund - they cruised, enjoyed themselves and were trying to book another cruise, when all this from 7yrs ago came to light.

So if I understand correctly - you paid travel agent, travel agent paid Carnival...but then did a charge back. I'm betting the agent did this with more than just you and then either got caught and banned, then skipped with everyone's money. And you and Carnival are paying the price for it. Maybe you can ask your credit card company to provide in writing that you paid travel agent and did not get charge back credit to your card. Then maybe reach out to John Heald with all the information and see if he can help. I bet they can see if there were multiple instances with that agent. Maybe if you offer to pay in full up front the first time you sail just to prove good faith, they'll be more open to working with you. good luck!

Glad to hear that it is no longer a problem. I do recall on one of our earliest cruises, that when we would come back on board mid-afternoon from port day food options were very limited - but we found a place serving tasting plates with new options for a new venue on some future ships.

Since it's just family going, I would suggest getting folks together in person or on zoom to discuss. Ask them to come prepared with at least 1) if they are interested 2)what dates they are already committed 3)how much lead time they need to get off from work. Tell everyone up front, no hard feelings if you can't go, but we wanted to give you the opportunity and would love to celebrate the occasion with you. That will give you a feel for who's really interested and how far to plan out. You'll never please or accommodate everyone, but hopefully you can find the sweet spot. 🙂 I'm actually glad you said each will have to pay their own way, because if the couple paid and someone didn't show up, that could cause long-term relationship damage. Also, I've read stories on here on difficulties being the coordination person. I would suggest once the date is set, call a Carnival PVP, or a travel agent to help choose a cruise with cabins available close together. Then give contact information to family and tell them it's their responsibility to confirm and pay directly. - If there are enough cabins needed to book as a group(8 i think) you can ask about group perks and discounts.

One thing on Princess that was confusing, was food options in the atrium. Like pastries etc in a single case where some were free and some had a charge. In general trying to get a straight forward answer had us feeling like we were playing Who's on First, What's on Second with interactions. Example: In the atrium on the ship they had a wine bar. We were walking by on a sea day and saw them putting sushi in a case, so walked over to see if DH could get some... convo went something like this: How much is the sushi? It's free ok - we would like some oh, it's only free when you buy wine ok - how much is a glass of wine? we're not open yet, you'll have to come back. 🤦‍♀️ Anyway, might talk to kids about asking if what they want has a charge, for example if you set them a limit for the day.

thank you. Since I haven't cruised lately, I didn't know this was an option. Sounds like a new option added, that's a good idea, but they didn't think about the venue charge part(i.e. downstream impacts) They could either provide a warning that if you use this option, you could be assigned a venue with a charge due to # times you've dined, provide you an option to build your own list of venues, or the app could go check to see how many times each person has eaten at each restaurant and then exclude duplicate dining from your options.... which could be more complex and take longer to code when you add in things like a group that's dined separately, etc. 🙄probably way more geeky answer than requested... Perfect thing to mention to John H on the book of faces, so that they can have IT dept address.

The points to dollars amount is best when applying them towards paying for your Carnival cruise or onboard spending. as others have said - I wait until we return from cruise, where I have had everything from S&S card and the cruise itself, charged to the Carnival Barclay card...then apply all those points to pay for Carnival charges. You will do this on the Barclay site. You can use them to pay for certain other charges on your statement, but return is best on Carnival line items.

following along...off to a good start. I have family stationed at Keesler AFB so wave as you go back by 😉

Exactly what i was thinking! $35 for the week, to check in due some family heath issues each day, via the book of faces, was worth it. At over $100 for a 7 day cruise...we'll go back to living unplugged from the world for the week.