AFS1970

Speaking of exorbitant prices, I know there is a service station on the highway that last time I was by there (a few months ago) it was a dollar more a gallon than the places on the local surface roads.

The subway is your best bet to get between the two. Also, not too far from the financial district is South Street Seaport as well as a couple of historic pubs like The Dead Rabbit and Fraunce's Tavern, which are good options for food and drink. If you are looking for food in the times square area, there are lots of places on the main roads (Broadway, 7th Ave, 42nd St), but prices may be more than expected. A friend who used to run various informal gatherings taught me to go a block or two off the main part of Times Square for interesting restaurants at better prices.

We had this same debate when I worked in mall security, over the years there have been at least a dozen jumpers inside and outside of the mall. Management likes to call these incidents falls because they think it deters people from jumping. I used to argue that they should be called jumps because falls implied a failure or inadequacy of our safety barriers.

As I said, I am dancing around certain aspects of this issue because I don't want to get a lifetime ban from the forums. The long and short of this is that problems are caused by people, not the ship, the port, the time of the year, or even the demon rum. My first cruise was on Carnival out of New Orleans, which nobody can dispute is a party-oriented city. Yet the cruise went off without any major incident that I was aware of.

The police (NYPD) have nothing to do with making sure a driver takes you anywhere, and zero authority to compel them to do so. In NYC these matters are handled by the Taxi & Limousine Commission (TLC). As with most non-emergency city agencies in NYC, the TLC can be reached by dialing 3-1-1 on your phone.

I love all the theories on what causes these fights. It is the NYC port, it is the 4-day cruises, it is spring break. While some of these maybe factors, the videos do not lie. For obvious reasons, I will dance around what I am actually saying, but almost all of the video evidence falls into two broad groups of passengers. Guess what, both of these groups are present on all lengths of sailings, at all times of the year, and at all ports. The more I think of it, one group isn't all that common in NYC, but then again NYC is probably the easiest place to travel to. As for the action or inaction of security, most corporations want security theater, not security. They are probably under so many restrictions on when they can escalate an action and if they do and one of the fine upstanding citizens from the night club complains, the security officer will be fired for doing their job. Trust me, most passengers don't want real security either, look at all the complaints on the recent addition of a K9 unit.

I am born and raised in Connecticut, and a Lobster Roll is cold lobster salad with mayo! They are so common, my local supermarket sells them. DW, who I transplanted from New York, thinks the Hot Buttered ones are the real deal...she is incorrect!

Thanks for posting this and taking us along. It has given me some ideas for my September Cruise.

Thanks for this thread, and glad to see you were not chased away (except by over moderation). I will be sailing in September to Nova Scotia.

I finally made it to the end, thanks for this thread, it has helped me make some tentative plans for September.

I read it as a new (elegant night) gown, not as a new elegant (night gown). So I understood what she was saying.

Where do the supplies for the "boat" building contest come from?

Ship is due into NYC on Tuesday morning, right? Any idea what time?

It's been a while, but I thought taxis in NYC were flat rate outbound from the airport to within the 5 boroughs, but on the meter going in bound to the airport. That may have changed.

We sail on the 16th also, only on your first week thought. This will be our second trip to Nova Scotia, the first was 30 years ago.

I was in NY & NJ yesterday, it smelled smoky but wasn't overpowering. The sky was a weird yellow / orange color. This morning I came through NYC and the only place that still smelled smoky was (oddly enough) inside a subway car.

Wow, seems like it took me forever to get to the end of the thread, probably because I haven't been on in a couple of days. I see in the fun times that they are running drink specials on doubles, do those count as two on your drink count?

One thing to remember with renting a tux here on land, is how long the rental is for. Make sure you tell them you are going on a week-long cruise. I have checked prices in the past and found that they are priced for a weekend and need to be returned in three days at that price.

A good Alchemist should be able to turn lead into gold. A good bartender is close, but I usually don't require metallurgy.

You are tipping for each drink with a package, it's just that each drink is discounted with the package, so the same percentage is less. If a drink costs $10, and I tip 20%, it is $2. If tomorrow that drink is discounted to$5, and I still tip 20%, I only tip $1. I don't raise my tip to 40% because management is running a special.

Based on that pic, I would say more iconic!

Funny, I was talking about good vs bad bartenders with a friend who is a bartender. To me it is not just the customer service but product knowledge and attitude. I also like a bartender I can trust to make me an interesting drink, but that takes time (more than a week) to develop.

I thought I had replied to this thread but must have posted elsewhere. I am following four different live threads about this cruise. I am not sure what happened, I have seen some threads that seem like they are replies to something I can't see, I assume some posts got moderated. I do hope nothing bad happened to @IntrepidFromDC and that he will continue this thread, I have enjoyed reading.

Are Peroni & Moretti the only draft beers? And risking a hijack (or piracy in this case) accusation, what makes a good bartender in your opinion? I know what I think, but probably won't find one in only a week on ship.

I worked in security in a shopping mall for several years, I can tell you that private security is always a balance between enforcing the rules and customer service / perception. Corporate would generally take a customer is always right, even if they were clearly wrong, if they complained attitude. I suspect Carnival, despite their press releases to the contrary, works on the same basis. As an example, in our food court there was a kids play area. It was height restricted to shorter children for safety reasons. Very often bigger kids would go in there and one of our jobs was to make them leave. This was usually accomplished by speaking to parents. There was a sign, and a cartoon character with his hand out as the height indicators. One of my coworkers saw a kid in there that was too tall and called him over to tell him to leave, this angered a parent. The officer said it was because the kid was "too big" and pointed out the height guides. The parent went to the management office and complained that the security guard called the kid fat and made them ashamed. Family got a $50 gift card and an apology, and we all got a memo saying to use the word tall as opposed to big. Funny thing is that no matter if the size measure was in height or weight, this rule was put there (by the same management) to keep someone form accidentally hurting a smaller / younger child. I can absolutely see the same thing happening on a cruise ship, especially if the parent / family in question are repeat cruisers. Carnival wants to enforce the rules, but they want customers more. BTW: I scrubbed the story of demographics, because it was sadly a universal trend I observed working there.