Loud_curly

On 1/5/2019 at 8:24 AM, cruisecritiquer said:

hahaha

Are you slide-shaming us? We are consummate Norwegians and we have always enjoyed our NCL waterslides. If Royal's doesn't compare, that's a shame. NCL's are great. 

We'll take water slides wherever we can find them. Atlantis. Maya Lost Kingdom. Disney. 

We like our slides.

I respect your opinion.

 

lol

Cruisecritiquer, I'm jumping in here to defend your love of water slides. We just got off of the Harmony, and those water slides did not compare favorably with NCL's or Carnival's water slides. The Harmony's slides were SLOW, and required lots of manual effort to just get down to the bottom. RC still has some work in this area. 

16 hours ago, chiguypaul said:

Just back from Harmony. Texting with iMessage worked without data plan, but very inconsistent. A few times we had to reactivate iMessage by enabling wifi service on the device, and reactivating iMessage. Given the consistency and reliability issues, my wife and I determined that going forward we would just suck up the basic Internet package for our family of four. Having texting with the family was invaluable. 

 Another one just off Harmony. We set our iphones to Airplane mode plus Royal wifi, and had no trouble communicating via iMessage during the cruise. We were also able to text back home to folks that had iphones. We went with another family that had Android phones and did not purchase Voom. They were able to receive all of our texts, but could not text back. It worked well for letting them know where we were and times to meet without calling the room. 

We had the same experience. We would order pineapple juice or virgin mudslides for our son with our drinks and were never charged.

Another one who had the same experience. Many times our cards would only be run through the system if alcohol was involved.

That said, if your daughter will ordering using her card, she will get charged.

OP, my DH and I were on the Getaway last month with our 2 boys. We are not drinkers, but still feel we got our money's worth (note that we had the UBP so I'm only accounting for the gratuities for the two of us for the week).

We regularly got non-alcoholic smoothies at the pool bars, as well as a few sodas per day. DH and I would have a glass of wine with dinner. And then we had lots of club soda + cranberry juice. I usually would get a mojito as well, and sometimes we would visit Margaritaville and get a drink there. It was nice to not have to worry about paying for drinks.

And it was also nice not to have to go back to our room to get a can of something we brought on, as we did on Carnival. Thirsty? No problem. There's a bar nearby.

It's been two years since this post - and I'm wondering if anyone has brought a metal detector onto an NCL ship? My 10 year old son wants to bring his on the Getaway next week. It is not on NCL's prohibited list. Anyone successfully bring one onboard? Thanks!

Thank you - this was so helpful in walking through some activity options with my boys. We leave on Sunday!

Did the CT menu on the Vista look like the menu on this thread?

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2351759

 

This is the same menu we had on the Dream in June. Thanks!

Yes, this was the CT menu on the Vista back in December. It was NOT the CT menu that we had last week on the Splendor.

We did the Chef's Table on the Vista in January, and just did the Chef's Table on the Splendor last week at $75, and the menus were different. The Vista CT was in the galley, and had more molecular courses. The Splendor CT was in a room adjacent to the dining room, and had more traditional courses.

We just got off the Splendor this Sunday (was on the 6/24 cruise), and was told that there were 3600 passengers, 1200 of whom were under the age of 18. That said, the aft pool was still 18+. As I had my kids, I never spent time there, but when I did pass by I did not see kids there. There were plenty of kids at the other 2 pools.

DH and I have done the Chef's Table on the Vista. The timing works perfectly with kids club - we sent the kids to dinner with the kids club at 6, then they stayed the evening session from 7-10, and we were there to sign them out at 10 pm. Camp Ocean prints out the kid dinner menu in advance (it's a fixed selection). If that doesn't work, then you can take them to the buffet early, and just send them to the dinner with the kids and have them eat dessert.

Our son turned 9 on our last Carnival Cruise, so he got to move up from the Stingrays to the Sharks. We asked at the Kids Club what to do, and they let him choose. It's a bit easier with that age break, though, since both groups go to Camp Ocean.

FWIW, he started in the Stingrays with his little brother, then bumped up to the Sharks on his birthday, but wound up back in the Stingrays since he knew those kids better from the get go.

For your daughter, I would definitely take her to Circle C on the first day, and try to sign her up there. In her case, I wouldn't even sign her up in advance for Camp Ocean, in case the two systems can't handle that.

You can go to the players club website and ask for a win/loss statement. They wont actually tell you how many points you had ( at least they would not for me) but I could see what they felt my win loss was for the cruise.

 

Hope that helps.

Thanks!

Pardon me if this question has been answered before, but how do you know how many points you got at the casino on your last cruise? Is it linked to your online VIPF account?

Different parenting styles perhaps but I would have made morning camp and evening not optional. That gives parents time and then they make friends and adjust. You still get plenty of family time on port days, lunch, afternoons and dinners.

 

 

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This is usually us as well - morning and evening camps when not in port - unless there is some morning family event and then we move things around. My boys are 6 and 9, so in different groups, but they are both fairly social and made friends. They also enjoyed the video games at Camp Ocean.

For us, the biggest thing is not getting the Cheers! package and taking the stairs. We don't feel the "pressure" to get our 15 drinks/day. We stop by a store before we board to get cans of sparkling water and some flavor packs for water. At home, we might have one glass of wine/beer with dinner, or one mixed drink if we go out to eat. We still order these on the ship, as desired, but don't deviate from what we usually do. So for us, there is no need to suddenly start throwing back drinks to have fun!

Here's the thing - if you are a true foodie you are likely to do better with the American Table menu. It's a bit different than a basic meat-starch-veggie menu. DH and I are from NYC and live outside of DC now, and consider ourselves quasi-foodies. We had no issues with the American Table menu on the Vista. We also did the Chef's Table, and loved it. And we thought the pizza was pretty good for a cruise.

DH and I are 41. We've been cruising with our kids these past few times, so we don't get Cheers since we don't have as much time to just sit and relax with a drink. And we gamble, so we eventually get a few drinks there.

That said, we have done Chef's Table, and loved it. Was the highlight of our cruise. Great for foodies or wannabe foodies.

I was on the Vista back in December, and went to the Chef's Table on the first sea day/formal night. I seem to recall that they have Chef's Table most night of the cruise. The best part was we got to have the formal night dinner the last night of the cruise bc the head chef set us up. So we had our lobster tails and steak after all!

We sailed the Vista in December. There were 4 of us in a room - 2 adults and 2 children. We brought 2 bottle of wine and 48 mixed cans of soda, La Croix, V8 Fusion juice, and apple juice boxes. No issues.

Pro tip: Pack these in luggage with wheels since you have to carry them through boarding and up to the cabin. We had no problem doing this. We flew to MIA the evening before, took out the clothes from our one luggage piece and transferred those to a duffel bag we checked with Carnival, and then went to a Walmart and filled the wheeled luggage. Easy peasy.

We were on the 12/17-12/24 sailing, and it did not feel crowded in most places to us. We were always able to find a spot to sit near a pool, we didn't have any issues with Anytime Dining for our family of 4, and only had to wait in minimal lines for the buffet and pizza. Lunch at Mongolian Wok and Kids Club pickup were the longest waits by far.

In terms of SkyRide and the ropes course, we did both while in port. During our St. Martin stop, we stayed on board until 11 am, and then rode the SkyRide multiple times when it first opened. We then hit the island for a few hours. We did the ropes course after we got back from San Juan but before sailaway.

Just curious, are you comparing this to other Carnival ships or other cruise lines?

 

Barry

Barry,

I'm comparing this to food in general. We have not been on a cruise in 4 years, and this was only our 5th cruise overall, and first on Carnival. And I cannot remember what food options were open at 10 pm back then. This time, it stuck out, since that's when we would pick the kids up from kids' club and they wanted something to eat. So pizza it was.

We did not pay for any of our meals, with the exception of Chef's Table which was excellent. All of our food was good - nothing outstanding, nothing terrible. If we didn't like something, we would order something else. We consider ourselves "foodies" (hailing from NYC and now living in DC) but also recognize that this food is designed to please most people most of the time.

We were also on this cruise, and had a really good time. (I'm the mom to Parker and Cooper, of Morning Show "fame.")

My boys loved all that there was to do. We typically ate dinner in the MDR around 6 pm, and never had to wait for a table for 4.

DH and I got to do the Chef's Table, and it was absolutely amazing. Highly recommend it.

We just got off the Vista, and had a balcony on deck 9. We loved how it was only a few flights of stairs up or down to all the stuff we wanted to do. The elevators were quite lacking on the Vista, and we took the stairs everywhere.

My family just got off the Vista on December 24. Overall, we loved it.

Yes, the lounge and comedy club are WAY too small for the number of passengers onboard. But we were able to easily get seats for the morning shows and the kids shows. We did not try to get into other shows.

We thought the staff was great. Our room steward was phenomenal, with 4 of us stuffed in a balcony room. We had no issues with storage in our cabin.

The food was generally good, with limited hours. We were surprised at the limited amount of food offerings after 10 pm.

There were tons of families on board, and lots of kids, and my boys had a great time with all the kid activities. Yes, there were some lines for the stuff up top, but if you timed it right, it wasn't too bad.

As with the other posters, a cruise can be what you make of it. We made it a lot of fun.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! This is wonderful information. Now, if only I can convince my DS to spend all of his time in the Fun Factory so I can take advantage of everything!