Woody14

sailed on her last summer to Alaska. the ship was in great shape, I didn't notice the age at all,

generally there are 2 kinds of perks that are possible with a TA 1. is if the agency the TA works for has negotiated 'group pricing' or specials which could be for a specific cruise or cruise line and usually are only good for certain time periods or till they sell out. some times they may have some perks that they always offer on all cruises (usually OBC) 2. is agent specific perks - this could really be anything (OBC, special dinning, wine, et all) ultimately a portion of this comes from the agents commission and is often split with the company they work for. At least that is my experience after 25+ years cruising and 3 years where I supplemented my income working as a cruise agent for a travel agency specializing in cruises.

Thank you I should have checked your site as I figured you would have it.

Anyone have a bar menu for day 1 sailing out of Galveston?

RU2 is now a rare offer. Have seen lots of RU0 - basically a slight discount on adding cheers separately and occasionally RU1 which puts cheers on at about 50% of as a separate add on. I haven't had a RU2 come across my promos for at least 18 months.

Usually they have a decline (I am happy with my current room) option, so it goes away once you click that.

that is a Royal thing

Best shows is Disney. But Royal has some good ones as well.

loving all the faces they put on / build in to the food.

price will likely be the same, a TA may be able to offer you a bit of extra OBC - really they are giving up part of the commissions to do this but may TA's have this as a benefit. Most PVP are employees of the cruise line directly and can only give your the current offers provided by the cruise line - no extras.

I took my first cruise with MSC on the Divina in 2012 and between that experience and what people are getting now it is already way more Americanized. My hope is the add back in more of the European flavours it had back then

I have both and to be honest I think this is an over-rated 'must have'. Most of the time they are more hassle than they are worth in my mind.

The picture of the eggs benny with scrambled issue is amazing!!! glad it worked out in the end. PS love the drink summary at the end of your daily posts on all your blogs.

Still have not nailed it down yet. I am leaning towards a cooking excursion that also has a 'beach break' or at least time at their pool. Not so worried about getting off the ship in Cozumel as it is an island on its own so the issues going on in Mexico are not really affecting there (or at least from everything I can tell).

I always select prepay when I book. the reality is you don't actually prepay till you have to make final payment and my tip rate is locked in. I can't see carnival going belly up between my final payment date and sail date without a lot of talk out there so not a lot of skin in the game per se

if you keep checking the app reservations do open up, I did not see a waitlist.

It might depend on the person at guest relations. The default seems to be the benefits go with the room but when you factor in minors it seems they have some flexibility on this. If the 2 rooms were booked together they likely have the same benefits. Celebrity seems to deal with this a lot better than some of the other lines I have been on.

you can really easily make the changes you want at guest relations. if the beds aren't right your cabin steward will make that change for you. One tip do the muster drill before making the cabin changes at guest services as some times it takes a bit for the system to update all the hand held devices they use to scan you in for the muster drill. speaking from experience here as we did the change before and it caused some issues, nothing major but just took extra time and had to have a supervisor come in and fixit up.

I had to pick the date and time (although time was only one choice) when I booked for the Chef's Table through the cruise planner. How did you book?

Generally you should be assuming that it is nearly full or full. The cruise companies do publish this information on their shareholder sites. For example Royal Caribbean group (RCL, Celebrity, Silver seas) is reporting that 4th quarter of 2022 was 95% overall with Caribbean at 100% and holiday sailings at 110%. they are forecasting that 2023 first quarter will finish out with capacity at 100%. It is important to note that cruise lines deem 100% on double occupancy (not total capacity) and so many sailings can sail at numbers above that as the ships capacity is higher as some rooms are able to handle more passengers. (3 or more per cabin) Carnival Corporation (carnival, princess, p&o, costa et all) was reporting for 2022 that they were overall capacity 19% below pre pandemic levels (which was around 110% overall) so that means they were running at 90% or more at the end of the year. They are reporting that first quarter of 2023 would be just over 90% and by summer 2023 would be 100% or over.

you totally don't need the sticker. My one cheers experience was that on day 3 I went to one bar and a bar tender added the sticker. My wifes card never got one. It didn't seem like it made any difference. they scan the card anyway and it deals with it.

Time of year you sail also plays a big impact on the number of kids on board. Sailing around school holidays lots of kids. Where you are sailing will play some impact as well. for instance always seems like less kids on europe, panama canal and south america than on the carribean.

You may at some point after booking get an upgrade offer. I have received one for my end of July sailing, currently I have an inside cabin and they are offering me an upgrade to an ocean view. I don't like the price or the new location so I turned it down. On a previous cruise I was given several different options and I did take one of them as the price and location change made it worth while.

Had the same on Voyager in November, by the time we boarded we had an assigned table. But as people have noted if you don't once you board head to the MDR and see what they can do.

that is a very interesting comment, I wonder if it would be as long or well read as this thread?