just4steven

No, you cannot do this. Any liquor you buy on the ship is held until the final night when they deliver it to your room.

Unless you order it online before hand

I've only been on one cruise but I am a pretty big foodie. Well, some might say a big foodie because my loves range from chicken wings and macaroni salad from the Walmart deli all the way to the best seafood and steak houses in major cities :D

That being said on the Legend back in January we were extremely impressed with everything we had. Well, on the brunch day I had a steak and I must admit it was the absolute worse steak I had in my life. Not sure what happened there because again, everything else was on the extreme good side.

Um, I am not up to date on all the different dinning room changes on the ships, but if I remember correctly someone told me on our cruise that the Legend was using "old menus". I forget, but if that's the case maybe the new ones just suck, not sure. Either way whatever they had on the Legend in January was incredible.

Maybe when you are in port when you find something you like you can order 2 and just bring the leftovers to the MDR with you and instruct the waiter you do not want anything from their menu and to just heat up your leftovers??? :confused:

That was just an example.

How about this --> I want to pre-purchase an excursion. I want to do it online before I board. Can I pay using the eGift card?

 

I guess to simplify - can the eGift card be used to purchase anything (excursions, gifts, activities, etc...) on Carnival.com or can it only be redeemed at Guest Services after you are on-board?

Yup, I've used them for both excursions well before the cruise and stocking my cabin with "goodies" to drink on the balcony! The option to use them is right above where you put in your credit card information I believe. No worries, shop away like me! :D

I wouldn't worry too much about your personal security with two big guys during the daytime at tourist destinations.

 

My wife and I travel (daytime) without too much concern other than being very aware of our surroundings at all times. We have clocked over a thousand kilometers of car travel during some of our stays.

 

Guns are illegal on the island (though available) but I'd probably be more concerned about a guy with a machete. :)

 

I've posted photos of some of the watersports businesses on Orient offering a shuttle, not "water taxi" to Pinel in the past, but I haven't noteced that recently, and I usually walk the entire beach each visit.

 

The Jetski rental guys would surely offer to shuttle you back and forth for a price, but I don't have any idea what that would be.

 

gary

Thanks Gary!

LOL, not sure if it helps any but check this out. I'm just throwing this post out there for anyone that might want to do more than just Key West in a trip and is worried about time:

This is when I had a little over 36 hours to kill and that is from the Miami airport back to the Miami airport. I just crunched a few things in a little over a minute. John Pennekamp park for a while, Bahia Honda for a while, sea plane to Dry Tortugas, quick stop at Key coloney, just chilling by hotel pool and few other quick things here and there I did not try to cram in here.

Of course you won't have near this much time, but on other visits I have had to the Keys I find it a place where you actually can do a ton of stuff in a day. On one hand I agree with others to save a drive of the Keys for when not on a cruise. On the other hand I was staying in Marathon one time in March (pretty busy time) and easily spent a long day at Bahia Honda, strolled around Key West for a while, explored Fort Zach and did that beach for a bit, then some late afternoon bar hoping at Key West and made it back to Marathon before it was super late. I am not a mega Keys expert, but I know of the several times I have been there I have never had a hold up with traffic anywhere on highway 1 or in Key West. Not that it can't happen, I have just never experienced it. Like I said above, I love it because the drive is wonderful and you really can do a ton in a day!

All this being said, if someone has never been to Key West before and is there on a cruise ship I would definitely stay around Key West and not worry about a car and exploring highway 1. There are a ton of interesting things there to do and see. If you have had cruise stops in Key West more times than you can remember and have done "everything" there and are tired of Fort Zach and are a beach lover and are in port longer than something like 7 a.m. to 1 p.m., I would consider either renting the car and heading up to Bahia Honda for a full day while making a couple other stops and just driving highway 1, OR, my favorite, taking the seaplane to Dry Tortugas!!!

I'd suggest you plan to rent a car, but you don't say how many are in your party. If more than two, like four, then definitely. Driving is Easy-Peasy, except for the traffic. Even with just two ships in port, I'm not very trustful of the taxi returning on time. If you had a party of eight, that's something else.

 

Travel time to Pinel Ferry: Allow 45 minutes and hope for 30 minutes or less, either direction.

 

I thought that the ferry started up at 9:30, but it's definitely 'island time, so ...

 

I think what was posted above about the return trips was that in the afternoon they only make a trip every hour, not like in the morning with the 30 minute schedule.

 

Pinel to Maho (or reverse) I would definitely allow 45 minutes, and remember that the larger planes come in between 11'ish and 2'ish.

 

Return from Maho to P'Burg could be from an hour to hour and a half plus, even with the new traffic routings.

 

gary

 

p.s. If you decide to rent a car, come back and I'll help you with a route.

Thank you very much for the info, Gary! There will be only 2 of us, but we will not really nit pick about $20, $40, or whatever amount within reason we could have saved if we are able to do what we want. That being said I do like the renting a car idea.

I do have 2 other quick questions for you or anyone else that might have an idea.

1) I really do not want to make this into a safety/danger debate, lol. I would like an honest opinion though. I heard it's better to travel in groups. Again, there will only be 2 of us if we plan on renting the car. I will have a "man purse" bag with me that will have towels and camera equipment and whatever. We do not have any plans to stop anywhere other than where the ferry is to get over to Pinel. We are 2 dudes and how should I say this, I guess if a would be robber had anything less than a gun they would definitely think twice before attempting something or would look for a much more easier target :cool::D (yes, I think I am a certified chuck norris wanna be). That being said, as long as we take normal precautions I take it there should be no worries with just 2 people driving on their own over to Pinel?

2) I found on some older posts that that some of the water sports companies on Orient had water taxi shuttles over to Pinel. There were even pictures posted of the signs the businesses had. However I cannot find any current info confirming they still do this. Knowing it is easy to taxi to Orient and back we would like this idea as well if we knew for sure there were still some water sports places somewhere along Orient that offered the water taxi to Pinel. Has anyone seen this going on lately? I forget how old the other threads were that showed this was offered from Orient but I thought within a couple years.

Thanks! And yes, don't mind me that I'm a master planner :o

They are next door to each other. If you buy admission to Coral World, there are showers and you can go back and forth. A generic burger/pizza place at Coral World, local food vendors at Coki. Should be something for everyone!

Definitely agree with this! We were staying on the island and had a group from 12 to 65 and everyone had a blast! I am super afraid of sharks while snorkeling and I did the shark tank there and it was totally awesome and completely cured any fear I had of them while snorkeling! That was like $40 extra for me to do it though. I booked it online ahead of time to ensure my time slot if anyone in your group is interested. We also saw a whale while we were way out by the "dome" observation thing, but this was February and a higher possibility to see them.

Ok, I'm getting off subject again :o But yes, there is something for everyone! The beach/snorkel only lovers in your group do not even have to go over to coral world if you want to save money. However you do it there is definitely something for everyone and they are literally a couple steps away from each other.

Yes, please try Pinel Island and take a taxi there and back and then report back to all of us dying to know the latest updates on ease of return by taxi and how early the ferry shuttle boats start going out there! Inquiring minds really need to know! :D

Thanks for sharing, were you using the suction cup mount for the shots leaving the ports?

Thanks for the picture shootr!

Hope everyone is doing well! And glad you are home doing well Dancin85! I stayed exactly the same, right at about exactly 194 as well. Hoping for some big losses in the next 2 weeks! Have an "all nighter" softball tournament on Saturday where the first game doesn't start until 9 p.m. so this should be interesting! Then the following week my first 5k race! I'll have to walk a lot of it, but hey, I was 210 and probably couldn't walk a half a mile about 80 or 90 days ago so I'll take it!

I hate to admit it as I raved and promoted this place so much (here's more spamming of it)

but since the topic came up, yes, even at this "high end" excursion I felt the drinks were quite watered down. I don't know, maybe my tolerance went sky high in the couple of days before we got here, but I don't think having about 10 drinks and 2 shots and hardly feeling a buzz is potent. Gosh I hate saying that because this was a totally awesome AI excursion and the hosts are a blast! But since it seems to be a trend around the island I might as well get out the one slight fault, and yes I had that many drinks and can remember.

I am worried I might not make it. Does vacation protection last over 40 years ? what about price drops ?

LOL, I was getting the same thing after I clicked on the cruise deals. Quite amusing I thought!

Hello,

I read a lot about this topic before my first cruise so I decided to put it to the test. My other half used a credit card and I used cash. We noticed no difference at all. I hear the stories about guest services and how long it is, but maybe I'm lucky but I never had that issue. We got on board, dropped off our bags, I went down to guest services to set up the cash account and was the only one in line. Done in a couple minutes. On the last day I went down to check out and as I wasn't sure if I owed $1.57 or they owed me. They said they owed me, oh and again, no one else in line, I told them to keep if for the charity and that was that.

There was literally no difference between the two. I do see the point of getting the points on the CC though. Other than that we experienced no difference whatsoever.

OK, thank you! Just checking if there might be any other options but the boatyard sounds fun to me! Nothing like getting a selfie of doing a belly smacker off a dive platform! I know, it might be kind of sick sounding but it's amusing to me :D

Yeah I better make a disclaimer:

People with a little patience and realize they are lucky to be out in the middle of nowhere checking email will most likely have a drink in hand, a smile on their face and just enjoy the "island time" Internet and probably won't think much about it when writing a review of the ship/vacation.

People without patience and especially if they are a demanding type person will most like bash it somewhere.

We are all human so nothing wrong with either type of person, I just wanted to get at least one positive thread about the Internet going because it seems all you read are the negative ones and it might scare people off from using it. You know yourself, if you have some patience and would love to check email or do some other things online I would definitely at least try it out! I don't know, I am guessing hearing all the horror stories before my cruise put my expectations pretty low, but either way I say it's definitely worth a shot!

 

This next part comes with a BIG, FAT DISCLAIMER: I am an idiot when it comes to computers and know not of what I speaketh. DH, on the other hand, is a professional computer geek. He owns an IT company. He deals with this stuff all day, every day. He definitely knows of what he speaketh. The following information was gathered from a telephone conversation between the two of us and any inaccuracies are completely my fault...

 

 

So, DH says results from speed tests run on the onboard internet will be misleading because it's a satellite system. Many factors including latency, packet size, file size, and even the weather can affect speed tests. So it probably won't do you much good to test it.

:o

LOL, thank you for confirming this! And it sounds like you heard it correctly :) It was why I also mentioned "if possible". All of the ones I know have to ping off of a server somewhere and, well, that somewhere is not going to be in the middle of the ocean so I'm not sure what would happen, lol. Then again I did hear google was working on something, but who knows and that might be a ways off. Again though thanks for the info! Gotta love techie people!

We have used the internet on our past few cruises. Always been OK. Never expected it to be lightning fast' date=' so no problems. Laptop is easiest. I always have trouble "logging off" of my iphone which can use up minutes. That was my only problem.[/quote']

 

This! I used my laptop as well and the other tip is remembering to log off! As 3 2 mentioned you have to remember to logoff or it will keep using your minutes. I can't really explain it but when you are on you will see what we mean. Other than that if you aren't expecting "blazing fast speeds" and realize you are out in the middle of the ocean, odds are you should at least be satisfied.

 

I did also use my phone briefly but could just do more faster on my laptop.

Hello! So I see lots of threads going around about many topics and people throwing in their opinions, which I think is great as it gives many viewpoints.

I have seen many posts where the main subject is not even about the Internet but comments are thrown in like "it's slower than 28.8 dial up" or "don't bother trying to send pictures because they will still be sending when you get home". LOL, had to laugh at that last one, but I did want to throw in my personal experience.

Yes, it is slow, well, slower than what you most likely have at home and slower than most 4g cell networks. However I never had a problem. I uploaded plenty of pictures (selfies of course, and gosh I looked good!) and emailed plenty pictures. I forget how many minutes I went through in total but I think it was around 50 something. Long story short it worked way better and faster than what I was expecting after reading these forums and I will definitely use it again. It definitely was NOT as slow as dial up.

Maybe I was just lucky? I don't know, but I used it at random times in the day and night and never had a "major" slow time. This was on the Legend back in January, so maybe they have super high tech upgrade :rolleyes: or something, but just sticking up for my good ole trusty onboard Internet since everyone has to give their honest 2 cents now a days. I do know on my next cruise I am going to try various speed test apps, if they even work of course, to see what kind of results I am actually getting. This is just my opinion, but if I had to give an example I would say it seemed like a early generation cable line for my laptop and a "decent" 3g network on my phone. Yeah it would be nice if it were improved, but I'll take it out in the middle of nowhere when I desperately need to post some selfie pics!

I might have asked this before so forgive me if I did, I'm forgetful. Are there any other places like the boatyard, but not the boatyard, with different water trampoline things, but MORE than that, like a diving platform and rope swing? I'm still a kid at heart and as long as I don't break anything I love playing with water toys where you can get a little crazy and occasionally make the accidental belly smacker. Are there any other options or is the boatyard pretty much it?

You can get up to 500 MB's a week for free on Vimeo. I do agree with the search engine part of youtube, although I do have a video on vimeo with a title of a shore excursion and when you put that shore excursion name in google my vimeo video is the 2nd result, right after the excursion from the cruise line. I'm guessing there are ways to increase search traffic, but my days of doing that are gone at the moment so I'll leave it up to the current marketing guru's to figure it out :D

I mean, I am not really bashing youtube, but the only things I do not like are the increasing ads and the pet peeve I have when people have to add in saying "and don't forget to set it to hd", or "don't forget to set to 1080". At least with vimeo you get the highest quality right from the get go without having to tell anyone to do additional steps.

I guess I also push for vimeo because it would be good to see more competition for video uploads.

I went by the gym on my last cruise - it looked nice....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(What - I was supposed to USE some of that stuff???):D:D:D

Hahahaha, ditto! Although now that I am getting back in the swing of things I'm hoping this is different on my next one!

In a couple months I will be going on a carnival cruise about exactly a year after my first one. I make everything fun :cool: and am always happy so I will definitely be curious if I even notice anything from a cutback standpoint. It's definitely not something I'll be seeking out, but I'm just curious if I will notice a difference in a year.

Is this for inside, outside, or overall everything?

Wow. Did you not have time to look I'm the mirror before breakfast?

Running late for an excursion :o

Have things changed? I received this reply from reservations at the Best Western Emerald Beach last year:

 

Lounge chairs are available at a cost of $7.00 each and umbrellas are

>> $10.00 each and can be paid directly to the beach attendant on the

>> beach.

>>

I am not sure on this but my guess is it should be roughly the same? Hopefully someone else can chime in with more recent pricing.

Anyway, I did want to babble about Emerald Beach for a second. When we stay on St Thomas not on a cruise we stop here before catching our flight back as it is so close to the airport and such an awesome way to sit and chill with decent food to end a trip!

The OP was spot on with how much quieter this beach would be than some of the popular ones, and it does have everything you need right there. The only thing I wanted to point out to those not familiar with the island is that while Emerald is awesome, there are other beaches on St Thomas or even easy to get to ones on St John that are "blow your mind spectacular"! It's kind of a give and take though. The pandemonium (love that by the way, so true!) will continue on for a little longer if you want the "spectacular". Just throwing it out there if you have never been to St Thomas it might be worth it once (but be prepared) to go through some hassle just to see the "spectacular" beaches. All depends on how many cruise ships are in port too.

I love the pics too OP! Especially the first one facing towards where the runway of the airport would be! I could picture myself there!