five.

That shower looks amazing.

I appreciate you mentioning that. I forgot about the old days and the itinerary in the mail. That was always so cool. It's sad that they just get left out. I wonder if they went through a travel agency, if that would take care of all of the technology part of it for them. I haven't done it post-covid, but you used to be able to email them prior to getting on and make special requests and such. Here is a thread on it: That is definitely one for me.

I have no recollection of frozen fruit in havana. That's a new one to me. We'll be on this ship and this itinerary in 40 days. Been awhile since we were on carnival. We are in a havana interior, cheap like that. The part that matters is outside anyways.

Just curious, is it cool to knock? I have actually thought about knocking, but my wife dragged me away first.

I assume self-embarkation is still the easiest and first ones off? That's what we always do and we've never had lines. Though last Carnival was shortly before covid.

This reminded me of the Glacier Smoothie soap store in Juneau. Another local store to check out.

I drive in, so I have no thoughts on Miami vs Orlando. But Magic vs Vista class, I'd go Magic every time. Though last Magic was right before covid shutdown. If I do go Vista class, I'll be in Havana. On Magic you'll find me on deck 5.

Wow! That's crazy. I have 3 year old nephews and I just can't imagine.

I went looking for more info on the GB topic and found some useful info: https://www.nps.gov/glba/planyourvisit/area-visitor-services-listing.htm https://cruisefever.net/best-cruise-line-alaska/ https://old.reddit.com/r/royalcaribbean/comments/1301rpb/glacier_bay_questions/jhvuw5d/ Essentially HAL and Princess are grandfathered in and get the most days, but are limited to half-days and can visit 3 of the 8 glaciers. In order to see all 8 of the glaciers, you'd have to go with the smaller ships that are listed as tour vessels in the nps.gov link. Some of those ships are there for multiple days in order to see everything. I mainly went looking because I was curious myself and thought I'd share with others. A quote from one of the above articles: A concession plan announced in 2019 limits the visits of cruise ships to two ships per day. Cruise lines must be granted permission from the park authorities to carry passengers to this region. Currently, these include Carnival Cruise Line, Holland America, Princess Cruises, Norwegian Cruise Line, Royal Caribbean, Seabourn, Uncruise Adventures, Viking Ocean, and a few others. This agreement will be in effect until 2030, so if you want to make Glacier Bay a part of your cruising experience you can look to book with one of these cruise lines.

It looks like with your signature you are all-in on Carnival, but thought I would mention that Glacier Bay is worth trying another line that is going through there. They award different cruise lines with access each year, thought I don't know exactly how that works. In 2022 the day we were there it was HAL and Princess I think and only two can go through per day.

I've seen golf clubs run through there.

Dream/Magic/Breeze class is where it's at 100% for Carnival ships. Vista class is a joke in comparison. A few pics to give you an idea: https://www.cruisedeckplans.com/ships/deckbydeck.php?ship=Carnival-Vista&deck=12 Youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uqlt0e-wgg I did a breakdown of all cruise lines not too long ago: As far as you're question "is it worth it?" - I will say we had said to ourselves "never again" on vista class and then we had enough OBC to cover it and the wife said "do it" so we will be on Horizon Havana and have spa on the other end of the ship. Idk why she wanted to bother, but we are doing it again even though we said we wouldn't.

This is hilarious. Your lost luggage / medical snafu story is a rough one that I've experienced too. So much added stress. But I'm glad it is at the beginning, you have a path forward and then it'll be behind you and you can enjoy the rest of the vacation.

Well that sucks. We ran into that on another ship to and it was essentially a horseshoe. I prefer the loops for sure. Hopefully it'll be temporary. Once Magic moves back to Miami, we will probably target it some more. Thanks for the heads up. We'd cruise all the time if Magic or that class ever ended up in Charleston, but Carnival is leaving Charleston in Dec 2024 last I heard.

Deck 5 is my favorite spot on any cruise ship I've been on. Hot tubs on both sides, that are often empty or only a few people. You can switch sides of the ship if you need the shade. And if you like to walk you can do laps. I love it.

We stayed in VQ10027 on NS and enjoyed the location. I usually have a note in my phone on the stateroom, but only see notes related to food this time. So I can't say much beyond we enjoyed it and the access to everything. But next time we'd probably go with 8, this time it was just a free upgrade.

Nowadays you get that via the app, as far as I know. I went ahead and pulled it up again to see if it had changed since I last looked and it has not. No refunds. We were on Nieuw Stat from March 11-18, 2023.

Yea, it was my first time getting one and I did enjoy not having lots of small charges on the bill, but I won't get it again. There was other people after I had this issue that reported they still got refunds and this was specific to Nieuw Stat. But that was just rumblings on CC, nothing official. Someone else posted their beverage card had text on the back that said it would be refunded, where mine was just the HAL logo I think.

I apologize for the slow response. As I said, it was purchased by me on the HAL website. It was not a gift from a TA or anything like that. It was a $250 beverage card, burgundy and white in color. With no disclaimers or text on the back. It was delivered to my state room on the first day, if I remember correctly. I had about $60 left on the card at the end and was not refunded. This was in March on Nieuw Stat.

They were purchased by me from HAL, it showed up in the same place you'd buy beverage packages and the like. I was expecting to be refunded, based on this website, but I didn't take any screenshots or anything when I was buying the card. And the card itself did not have anything on it about being refunded. Someone showed one from Koningsdam that looked similar except it had fine print on the back and mine did not. It was burgundy and white and said beverage card on one side and had the HAL logo on the backside with no writing. (This is all from memory.)

On my recent (March) Nieuw Statendam cruise at the end of the cruise we did not get a refund from unspent beverage card funds. Just as FYI. We lost any unspent funds that remained on the card.

We had our free interior a few weeks ago, ours was not a casino offer, just an offer they made when we were onboard our Alaska cruise. About a month before our cruise we got an upsell offer of $198 per person to upgrade to a balcony, so it really worked out. At the time of the free interior offer, it would have been $90 per person per day... so we saved a chunk of change by waiting them out.

One trick I learned on our recent cruise. If you have both a cabana and balcony, get them on opposite sides of the ship, so if the sun gets too unbearable in one direction, you can go to the other one and it'll be in the shade. We did that by accident really and it worked out, wife loved having the option to bail out on a few hot days.

Well I never heard the term cruise consolidators site. Interesting, I may have to check them out in the future when booking mine. I've never used a TA before, but I like free money. If it's really the deals like in this thread, $350 per person for Alaska? That seems incredible.

We were on about a month ago and did not have it on Nieuw Statendam.