sparks1093

Oh I absolutely get it. They probably removed that statement from the website because of that.

And yet if they only tread water they die. They (like any other company) have to grow in order to survive. Now, if they had paid 1 billion cash for each ship you might have a point,

Do you know how often? It seems to me that it would be relatively rare but since that's only a gut feeling it could just be that I am hungry.

To be fair it does say on the State Department website to guard your expired passport since it is still proof of citizenship, at least it used to be there. Does sound like something I would do to test that but I'm glad that I no longer have to 🙂. (I just looked and it appears that this has been removed from the website.)

Not on every island/port, though (there may be a Consulate on another island that is responsible for it, but then how do you get there if you don't have a passport?).

Hello Cruise Critic land! It has been my practice before setting sail to give everyone the opportunity to ask anything they would like to find out about the ship we are sailing on. I usually do a review of the cruise both on the forum and in the review section and very often someone asks a question about the cruise that, had I known about it beforehand I could have gotten the answer onboard. So if I have a list of questions that folks are interested in before we sail I can be on the lookout for the answer. This also gives folks who have sailed on the same ship the opportunity to answer the question as well. So, we leave on Mardi Gras in 16 days. What would you like to know the answer to that I can find out for you? I will try to come back to this post after the cruise with the answers and will include them in the review. (And the ports are San Juan, Amber Cove and Grand Turk.)

I was just going to ask the same thing. It might only be something that can be checked by accessing a database and they don't do that at embarkation.

I am aware of each and every change (they are certainly harped on enough on here), no being boiled alive, here. I will sail with Carnival until the day comes that I don't feel that I'm getting a good value for my vacation dollar and I hate to say it but if that day comes it will be the end of cruising for us because I am not going to pay more for a cruise just to get a "better" experience.

Sheesh, it's been too long since we've cruised. Glad one is right around the corner, but now that you mention it the Cheers slip might be set up the same way.

Not necessarily. Klfhngr needed to catch up with the ship, which required him to go to the Embassy/Consulate in Nassau. But if you are on an island with an Embassy/Consulate you will get your passport in a number of hours (which does generally require an overnight stay). Many islands do not have one, so either you get stuck on the island or something happens that allows you to get home. The authorities have two choices in that case. 1) they can authorize you to fly to an island with a State Department presence, which would require a passport which you don't have, or 2) they can authorize you to fly directly back to the US where you can be cleared through secondary inspection. In either case you need a waiver to travel without a passport and the easiest way to deal with you is the second option. I have read a number of times where exactly that happened- the authorities exercised their authority to grant a waiver.

Nope, just 0.00. I believe it shows up that way on the onboard account as well, but it isn't printed out on the final invoice. But I normally order off the menu and I do glance at the price out of habit. I just don't retain the info for very long.

Very true, but the passenger is responsible for paying for that return (my understanding only, of course). Since many will already have a return ticket it is a matter of adjusting the price.

That's what I love about Cheers, I don't have to pay attention to the price. (But now I'll have to remember to look when we are on Mardi Gras in a couple of weeks.)

People will pay a lot for convenience, so again, what the market will bear. I've heard that their PB&J is really good, but I'd rather get the pizza or one of the other hot entrées.

And a lot of it is location. I would wager that a higher percentage of folks in my village have traveled up to Canada than those at the other end of the state, which is about 190 miles from here, if only because of travel time involved. The folks we are traveling with for our next cruise obtained passports for the trip simply because it saves them so much to fly to Florida from Montreal that they save money even with the passport expense. As US citizens we can travel to a wide variety of locations, including tropical beach locations, with nothing more than a drivers license. Traveling abroad is pricey and out of the reach of many.

And as a consumer I also know what companies do- they charge what people are willing to pay for the product. Supply and demand.

My previous reply answers this. If they can get triple the price for it then good for them. (It is also very possible that sales of these packages has declined significantly because people who have Cheers don't purchase them. They still have to pay for the product, pay to have it loaded, have it take up storage room on the ship, and any other overhead cost associated with this. So the price increase could be the passing on of this overhead cost, as well. Since none of us has any data on this it's all just guess work and at the end of the day each consumer needs to determine whether or not it's worth it to them, just like any other purchase anywhere else.)

I doubt that Carnival is sourcing from the same discount store but yes, some of this can certainly be a matter of charging what the market will bear. They have undersold in this area for years and now that they have record debt to deal with they are looking at ways of maximizing profits. Smart business from where I sit. (By way of comparison only the last time I looked NCL sold their cases of water for around $50, although I'm not sure what they charge now, that price was pre-pandemic.) (Just looked and a 12 pack is $35, a 24 pack is $50.)

All port employees aren't created equal and nor, evidently, are the procedures used in port. I suspect that had the embarkation port been as thorough as outlined by @Ferry_Watcher this wouldn't have happened.

Only one of the reasons that we usually book our excursions through the cruise line.

Exactly, ever since we started buying Cheers we stopped buying the water. Just grab a water with every order through the day and have plenty to take ashore (which is what we use it for). As for prices going up, well, they are going up everywhere and if Carnival is paying more for things they will naturally pass that on to us.

As I said earlier, it's inconsistencies that people use in their language that is the issue. Since more documentation is required to obtain a REAL ID one can say that it is enhanced versus a regular license but then that doesn't mean it's an Enhanced Drivers License. The proper search term is "what is the difference between a REAL ID and an Enhanced Drivers License" which gives better results and even includes images. But as mentioned, people don't know what they don't know so this makes it difficult. (I have read of one gentleman from Texas who showed up with only his license, thinking it was all that he needed. Fortunately for him someone at home was able to fax a copy of his birth cert to the port.) And as I also pointed out the Carnival FAQ also contains this vital information, but it's paragraphs down from the section that talks about using an EDL to cruise. So in the "what travel documentation section" it has two introductory paragraphs, then a section "US domestic cruises" and under this it lists "State Enhanced Drivers License" as acceptable. Then it has 8 other sections, from "Europe and Transatlantic Cruises" to "The US Passport Card" before getting to the section "State Enhanced Drivers License (EDL)". If one takes the time to scroll down and read this critical information then boom, there's the difference between the two right there. Again, people don't know what they don't know, so they don't know that they have to scroll down to find out critical info. Perhaps if CCL added "see important information below" after saying a "State Enhanced Drivers License" can be used it would make more people look, but who really knows.

The luxury lines seem to be the ones that do this most, whilst also requiring all passengers to have a passport regardless of itinerary. (I know, I didn't need to reply, but come on, pass up the chance to use "whilst" in a sentence? 🤣.) Most carriers are not going to impose a stricter standard than that required by law, even if they do have that right.

I believe that most Carnival ships have self-service laundry.

My son mentioned that he might consider playing Hold Em when we cruise in a couple of weeks and he asked me what the minimums were. Can anyone help with that? I know a little about how it all works in a casino but certainly no expert (and would probably be booed off of the Black Jack table🤪).