Cousin Eddie

11 minutes ago, Eli_6 said:

So, is there a place to dry dock the boat in Singapore?  I though the dry docks were usually in Italy.

I am sure there are a number of shipyards there, but I know that Norweigan has used Sembawang shipyard in Singapore in the past.

1 hour ago, CruiserBruce said:

So, as I understand it, the "surge" is one incident, correct?

No the current violence is not a single incident. It is large scale civil unrest stemming from the arrest of the leader of the Sinaloa cartel. This has resulted in essentially full scale battle between the cartel and the armed forces. Some Mexican news sources are reporting that 10 military members and as many as 19 cartel combatants were killed in fighting yesterday. An AeroMexico passenger plane was shot and damaged in flight by small arms fire. The cartels set up road blocks across the state and burned businesses and cars. While we often see crime and violence overblown as it relates to tourist areas in Mexico,  it would be asinine to dismiss the current situation as a singular incident and ignore dramatic rise in danger at this time.

violence-hits-mexico-cartel-stronghold-as-chapo-son-nabbed

cartel-violence-erupts-sinaloa-ovidio-guzman-recaptured

I'll join the crowd in saying Rhythms of the night in PV. I thought it was really good despite being pretty expensive. I am glad we did it.

Looks like anything after 11:00 am should be good for the baggage service:

https://maketraveleasier.com/PortValet

We sailed on Panorama February 19th. I was concerned that we would have cold weather coming and going from Long Beach and I was concerned about the Pacific being rough as compared to the Gulf or Caribbean.  In our case we had mid 70s on the first and last days and low to mid 80s once we down south in Mexico. We used the Havana pools and hot tubs every day and were very comfortable. Seas were surprisingly smooth and the views of the Baja Peninsula were awesome as we headed back north. We saw a number of dolphins, sea lions and whales. Of course weather and seas can vary greatly from week to week but, overall this was one of my favorite cruises, I am already booked again for January. 

12 minutes ago, codeyell0 said:

The testing page was updated today. Now the antigen test is not listed as it was. I'm traveling Monday the 14th and the page was updated feb 12th. 

Guests ages 2 and older must present a negative PCR COVID-19 test, taken within 72 and 24 hours prior to the sailing date at check-in

We just took the cvs rapid test. But it's an antigen test not pcr

 

 

You left off the most important line, which appears immediately above the blurb you copied and pasted from the webpage.

It reads:

"Unvaccinated guests granted an exemption must abide by certain requirements and protocols, which include:"

So if you are fully vaccinated you can go by the information mz-s posted above. the paragraphs that you are copying from only apply to unvaccinated.

Platinum and Diamond members get access to online check in at T- minus 16 days while others can access at 14 days. I have read on these boards that Carnival expects the Feb 26th cruise to be the most full since the restart on Panorama, so it is likely that a lot of Plat and Diamonds are on that one.

When I checked in to my Panorama cruise for the 19th, I got Boarding Zone A-1 and the check in time listed was 12:00-12:30 so I assume Panorama starts a little later than most others we have sailed in the past.

On 11/28/2021 at 10:14 AM, MoCowBell said:

Be careful with these ladies. They do not even have a proper business set up. They have no commercial insurance and zero permission to collect people at the airport or at the cruise terminal, or anywhere else in Galveston for that matter. Plus it's not even the cheapest option. You'd think by foregoing all the legalities they would be able to save the passengers some money but they don't. They could literally be arrested for providing this service, while you sit in the car. Then who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters?

Seems a bit dramatic to suggest anyone is going to be arrested.  I'm not concerned with protecting any taxi cartels and it doesn't concern me whether they have paid concession fees to the port. I enjoyed the service and the conversation. You are correct that they were not the cheapest option, but then I didn't pick them based on price.

In the past we have wanted a car for a couple ofdays so we used uber from the airport, rented (and returned)a car in Texas City and then another Uber to port on cruise day. Kind of a hassle and a real time waster, but much cheaper than trying to return a car at the one rental car place on the island.

This time we are using a car service called Galveston Saltwater Moms car service (they are on the site owned by Zuckerberg so I cant post a link). They have given good communication so far and the price is very competitive so hopefully if all goes well I will be able to recommend them after i use them next week.

13 hours ago, K_e_short said:

You can also email the casino to get written proof of your offer if you are worried about issues on the cruise ship.

 

http://oceanplayersclub.com/contact/

 

 

Thanks for this link, I came looking for something that could tell me which offer I had booked under. I've had to pass on many the last year I can't remember which one I actually took advantage of.

The EU vaccine rollout has been slow. Hopefully that pace will quicken.  I love traveling and I love Europe, but I think their is a moral hazard in being a tourist to areas in lock-down. Hopefully countries wont allow tourists to roam free while citizens are still on lock down and not allowed to travel beyond a specific distance from home.

1 hour ago, parachutes63 said:

Great Britian and Ireland are not part of the EU any more. That does not help for that travel.

The United Kingdom is made up of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and is no longer in the EU.

Ireland is of course the Republic of Ireland and is very much still a member of the EU.

3 hours ago, 4774Papa said:

I am not an anti-vaxer.  Both wife and self have had Pfizer vaccine.

 

Still, I was concerned to read this article.

https://fos-sa.org/2021/03/12/open-letter-to-the-who-immediately-halt-all-covid-19-mass-vaccinations-geert-vanden-bossche-dmv-phd/

 

I wouldn't put must stock in that non sense. This self described expert is board certified in Veterinary Virology, Microbiology and Animal Hygiene and hasn’t published a research paper since 1995 but claims to have accomplished great things while spouting baseless garbage in this letter.

Here is a quite detailed and most importantly, referenced debunking of the veterinarian' s claims.

https://www.deplatformdisease.com/blog/addressing-geert-vanden-bossches-claims

I wouldn't worry about any starving pilots, according to a study done way back in 2009 the average salary for an association pilot in Florida was $368,000. I can't imagine its less than that now.

The articles are of course from industry publications that would benefit from breaking the association's grip on pilotage, and I have had trouble locating newer or unbiased information. But I would imagine the underlying numbers from the WEG study should be close to accurate.  I would be interested to find updated information.

https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/2010-2-18-open-market-harbor-pilot-system-benefits-all-floridians

46 minutes ago, Earthworm Jim said:

 

At this point, it's just a bill introduced by one person, Florida Senator Jim Boyd. Bills are introduced all the time, and a lot of them go nowhere. We have yet to see whether his bill has any support from others in the Florida legislature or the governor. Much to early to take it too seriously for now.

Folks can follow the progress of this bill here: https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bills/2021

Its SB 426. The Florida Senate site allows you to set up an automated tracker to alert you when new actions are taken on a bill.

17 hours ago, skridge said:

Do you notice how at the end of the graph Italy is in a freefall down and the US is spiraling up.  Italy also has 60 million people compared to the US with 331 million.

The statistics provided by Johns Hopkins prove this statement to be hyperbole and misinformation.

9 hours ago, skridge said:

I don't understand how it is someone can downplay and sluff off these grim statistics.  If we have a 9/11 number of deaths every day for the last few days and we are not making our way to the end. 

I have not attempted to downplay anything. I simply corrected your misuse of the graph provided by another user from which you drew incorrect conclusions and thus spread misinformation.

I said the US, like the rest of the world is faring poorly against this virus. I do not however choose to subscribe to the eternal doom and gloom that some seem to have a perverse need to wallow in. The vaccines have arrived.  They are being distributed. There is victory on the horizon. We may or may not eradicate the virus, but we will defeat the pandemic, that is no longer in question.

Will it take months to conquer this pandemic? Absolutely! But when you look at how dire the future looked just 8 months ago, I think it is appropriate to be optimistic and enthusiastic about the future.

In fact studying the amazing response from world governments and the scientific community to so quickly isolate the virus structure and develop a mRNA vaccine, and cooperate to see worldwide distribution efforts well underway is absolutely a reason to celebrate. The potential exists for this unprecedented effort to provide a knock on effect of scientific breakthroughs for years to come.

While I agree that there are some on these boards that seem to dismiss the seriousness of the pandemic, I have not and I don't give any weight to their arguments.

As someone who lost a family member as a result of 9/11, I find the invoking of 9/11 to make a point about pandemic response to be an unnecessary attempt to draw an emotive response instead of letting the facts and figures speak for themselves. They tell a grim enough story on their own. Reason, logic, science and cooperation will see us through this dark time and then hoaxsters and the chicken littles will have to find the next thing to belittle each other over.

1 hour ago, skridge said:

Do you notice how at the end of the graph Italy is in a freefall down and the US is spiraling up.  Italy also has 60 million people compared to the US with 331 million.

Hopefully we are making our way to end of this terrible time and everyone will stay safe as best they can. Meanwhile its important to try to limit hyperbole and misinformation by dispassionate observation of facts from reliable sources.

The mortality rate measured per capita normalizes for population for comparison. So while the sheer number of victims in the United States is staggering and tragic, the relative size of the two countries is inconsequential to the rate when the comparison is per capita. According to Johns Hopkins the US is doing poorly,  but is faring better than a number of European countries including Italy and Belgium.

This bears true even when isolating the comparison to the last 7 days, so it would be a mistake to infer too much from the rather short trend line illustrated on the graph above while ignoring the time scale represented on the x-axis which tends to make the trend appear more prominent than it actually is. By zooming in on the scale  such as below, it is apparent that the US is not spiraling up, neither is Italy in free fall. 

Cases and mortality by country

22 minutes ago, Earthworm Jim said:

Dumb question: What does 95% effective mean? That any vaccinated person is 5% as likely to contract Covid as a non-vaccinated person, or that 95% of vaccinated people will have 100% immunity and the other 5% do not?

Not a dumb question at all, but it's important to note that the word effective is misused here often in regard to the vaccines. 

The vaccine is 95% efficacious. This means that the vaccinated group experience a 94% reduction in the measured endpoint as compared to the placebo group. The primary endpoint for most of these studies was lab-confirmed (PCR) symptomatic covid.

The clinical trials measured efficacy not effectiveness. Efficacy in this context means "reduction in disease incidence in a vaccinated group compared to an unvaccinated group under optimal conditions" (McNeil, 2007).

Vaccine effectiveness-ability of vaccine to prevent outcomes of interest in the “real world” (McNeil, 2007).

https://www.who.int/influenza_vaccines_plan/resources/Session4_VEfficacy_VEffectiveness.PDF

The differing words aren't usually important as a lay person but in regards to the virus and vaccine it is important.

Here is an article that explains what this means in regards to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/20/health/covid-vaccine-95-effective.html

This concept is nothing new. The International Certificate of Vaccination or Prophylaxis already exists and for yellow fever. Other restrictions requiring vaccinations for travel to and from certain countries is nothing new. The list of vaccinations required to obtain a US visa is quite long. There is no slippery slope argument to be had here. If you choose not to abide by the requirements to enter a foreign country, you can simply choose not to travel there.

1 hour ago, Hoosierpop said:

Why is this not good? Anyone in a high risk category (age, medical condition, etc.) shouldn’t cruise. That should be common sense. Shouldn’t take the government to tell people that.

 

I hope people listen to that advice.

Well it is certainly not good for the cruise industry if the government of the the United States advocates against people taking cruises and comparing cruises to "huge incubators". You may not realize it, but the cruise industry tend to attract a relatively large proportion of their clientele  from the population of older persons who are in the high risk category.  It certainly seems that the worldwide spread of this virus is inevitable, lets hope that medical treatment can eventually catch up and mitigate its effects.

12 hours ago, pjhootch said:

I normally resist upsells unless it is a screaming deal-

 

But I was tired when I got the call this afternoon and my will power was weak.  LOL.   We leave on the Legend Saturday and had an inside aft cabin booked on deck 8.  I was okay with the location under serenity deck.  Aware it could be noisy with deck chairs and such.  We had one of the sideways cabins that feels more spacious than a regular inside cabin.  But this is a partial transit of the Panama canal and decided to go ahead and pay to move up to an 8K balcony on deck 8 when the sales call came.  I saw the 305 area code and knew what the call probably was about.  It may be noisy but nothing compares to being right above the disco (did that on a Journeys cruise one time and it was hysterical when the bass started thumping).  Since this is an 8 day cruise and there are only 2 port days, I will really enjoy the balcony.

 

I looked at balcony prices when I booked and they were pretty crazy- so this is a much better deal than if I had booked it at the start although  quite a bit more than our inside room cost.  🙂

 

I am pleased with it- although feel a little silly after telling my husband we were sticking to a budget!  Oh well- life is meant to be enjoyed and I will just have to work a little more when the cruise is over!

 

Congrats!  Yesterday I took an upsell offer as well.  First time I ever got a decent offer, went from an inside to an L shaped room with extended balcony on Conquest for $175 total. Strange thing is that the cruise doesn't leave for 11 months. I thought they would wait to see what sold before making these offers.

I would definitely never book a return flight that early.

Of course the rest of my usual group are clueless and always book flights way too early to be safe, and despite my protestations, they have not missed one yet. Still, I have a healthy respect for the ability of airlines or TSA to screw things up, so I always add extra time, and have been thankful for the buffer on several occasions.

Fortunately someone posted a copy of the letter from Carnival so I knew what to expect.

I was impressed by the person I spoke with after calling in to Carnival, they were knowledgeable and efficient. I put a new booking on courtesy hold before calling, and just provided both booking numbers, confirmed a few things and was off the phone in less than 15 minutes with a confirmation email.

I was able to use the 25% FCC and received the $100 per person onboard credit to book another cruise and I was able to have the money that had been paid on Mardi Gras transferred to the new booking so I don't have to worry about tracking down a refund across the several different payment methods. In addition to having used several forms of payment, I also had future cruise credit from an earlier cruise applied to the Mardi Gras booking, so it was a pleasant surprise that everything went smoothly. 

I will mention that the Carnival rep said they could not apply any funds paid by Paypal to the new booking, and I had used that method to put a little bit on the Mardi Gras booking, so that portion has to be refunded through Paypal. I expect that to take several days to a week or more with the holidays and high volume due to the cancellation. No problem there, just thought it was useful to know that Paypal funds have a little less flexibility in case it becomes important to anyone in the future.

1 hour ago, mkeane1120 said:

I've read on a few post that you can get the balance of your pre-paid cruise cash by cashing it out at the casino. I called Carnival to verify and the gentlemen told me he wasn't sure. My wife and daughter are leaving on a cruise Saturday and I would like to pre-load their account but want to make sure they can in fact get the remaining balance before they leave the ship as the website says its non-refundable. 

 

Can someone please verify that you can get the balance in cash at the casino? Thanks!

The casino cash out is sort of a "work around", I would not expect any Carnival reps to acknowledge the possibility. And they will close your player bank if they suspect that you are doing this to avoid the 3% fee for cash from tables or ATM. To avoid this follow the advice from chasinraynbowz to play at least a couple of spins. I also prefer to leave the funds in the player bank until the final night when everybody else is cashing out.

2 hours ago, momof3cruisers said:

Go to the casino and load it to your player account and then cash it out.

This is the way I would go! Just go to the slots and load your player bank by charging your room. Make sure you either play a couple of spins. Afterward, I suggest that you wait until the final night and go to the casino cashier and tell them you want to close your player bank and they will hand you cash.