cruzincat50

Anyway, here is the pdf of the spreadsheet, sorted by ship across the major cruise lines.  Use it or don't use it.  Your choice. Note the change of ranking by Victory vs Radiance. Most importantly, because of the thread this is in, note the position of the Mardi Gras.

Ship space sorted by ship.pdf

6 hours ago, jimbo5544 said:

Lol,  are tools.  This particular one is often treated as the be all.  My post, reflects the many times it has been debated here.  

I would call it argued, which it seems you like to do more than anything. If I had the GIF of the man beating the dead horse, here is where I would post it.

27 minutes ago, jimbo5544 said:

What would that tell you?  Which space do you use?   Which so I use?  How often do we use it? Is there public space that the majority of cruisers do not use?  Are there spaces included that are not used that the vast majority of cruisers do not use?  Data can be manipulated to show what ever tou want.  The measurement in question does little (if anything at all)  in assisting you or me  determine whether the Mardi  Gras or any other Mega ship will be right for us to cruise on.  

 

If sailing on a ship that has 5,000 plus cruisers works for you (or me) than it does, not because of meaningless ratio.  Is the lowest number the best, regardless of what features the spaces have?  My view is no, your opinion may vary.  

So you are against using any tool to compare ships?  Where did I say that comparing the ratios was the be all - end all way to determine what everybody needs to use.  

FWIW, I created a spreadsheet to compare, not just Carnival ships, but all the major N American choices in cruise lines, because, I was wondering why everyone seems to like the Pride so much.  Most of the comments were that it was not so crowded.  Guess what I found out.  The Spirit Class has the highest ratio.  The Mardi Gras’ numbers put it near the bottom of the list, and not just when comparing only against Carnival ships.  

Given that Carnival has pretty much the same square footage in its cabins, the space per passenger comparison can pretty much be divided between public spaces and crew areas.  The bigger the ship, the more crew members, so going from one size ship with x number of passengers to a ship with 2x number of passengers will probably end up with 2x number of crew members as well, requiring crew spaces to be 2x as well.

Now the question becomes, if you haven’t been on all of Carnival’s ships, how do you choose your next cruise if a feeling of being crowded on a ship matters to you.  I use “you” in general terms because it obviously doesn’t matter to everyone, but for those that it does matter, a little mathematics may help to compare.

For Gods sake man, it’s just another tool.

On 6/14/2019 at 7:30 AM, jimbo5544 said:

Possibly the most meaningless stat in the industry.  

Do you have some way of comparing ship size(public space) to passenger count, other than personal opinions? If you can point me to data on square footage of public space on each ship in the fleet, I would be happy to create a spreadsheet for comparison. 

Not be a downer, but the Mardi Gras will have the worst ratio of tonnage to passenger count of all the ships in Carnival’s fleet by a wide margin.  

From the South Forida Business Journal:

"The probation violation stems from the Bohemian government's claims in 2017 that Carnival subsidiary Princess Cruise Lines' boats dumped 500,000 tons of treated sewage into local waters. Carnival was forced to pay $40 million and was placed on probation for five years."

Is Giacomo Puccini the governor of this region?  What other ships go to "Bohemia"?  hmmm 

I've been to The Bahamas and they didn't look Bohemian to me.

On 5/14/2019 at 12:48 PM, cruise_mojo said:

we got 5 100's and one 500 just before sailing on a royal cruise in april ( yea carnival cards from aarp ) they were shipped together 

 

we just changed an existing booking over the phone for next march where we went  from a 5 day to a 7 day cruise where we had a 300 deposit and were going up to a 7 day and I just used two cards over the phone with the number called in and pin easy peasy

 

now,, on our last carnival cruise in march I did witness a PO"d passenger that had just loaded a card onto her sail and sign acct a couple days before the end of the cruise or maybe just the day before - I suspect she was trying to be cute and get the cash out of the card at the end - anyway she was pitching a fit to get a refund from the actual chief purser on the ship on debarkation day ( we were stil on board for B2B cruising ) He was telling her that a check would be mailed from corporate for her refund in a couple weeks and he couldn't refund the money since it was from a gift card 

 

SHE WAS NOT HAPPY! 

 

ANYWAY her non loss was our gain since we had waited to be called down for our b2b stuff and since she was bellyaching about me being in line there at the platinum  and the purser wanting to wait on me ( I just wandered over to the atrium bar since I knew she was blowing a gasket ) the guy went to the bartender and gave us a bottle of moet & chandon! woo woo!    the bar wasn't even open yet even though I had my boarding papers which was ticking me off already anyway 

 

 

I understood that they send you another gift card with the balance on it.  If that's true won't she be surprised when it arrives and she finds out she will have to book another cruise to get it?

15 minutes ago, n6uqqq said:

 

Believe it or not many TA's don't know as much as we would hope 😉

True.  I may be training him more than he is helping me.  If he wasn't so much more responsive than all my previous TAs, I'd still be looking.

2 minutes ago, n6uqqq said:

 

Carnival never recharges old gift cards, they send out new ones.

Then it might have been the TA.  Either way, it wouldn't hurt to hang onto them until after the cruise. They will end up in a landfill eventually.

Heads Up information on AARP gift cards.  I had paid for my cruise using gift cards.  Later on I got a notification from my TA that the price had come down, and he was having the refund put back on one of my AARP cards.  I quickly had to get in touch and tell him I no longer had that card, since I threw it away after I used all the funds.

I recommend you hang onto these cards until sometime after your cruise is over, just in case something like this occurs.  I caught it quickly and he put it on a previously used credit card instead. I don't know if it had gone through and he reversed it.  

From Carnivals website/deck plans

If you belong to the VIFP program at Carnival, you won't get credit for going on a Princess cruise or any of the other cruise lines under CCL, but if one of those other lines get a huge fine, you certainly could end up paying more for your next Carnival Cruise.  Somehow this is wrong.

16 minutes ago, Thorncroft said:

 

You realize this is a case of probation violation after already being found guilty and paying a $40M fine, previously? Carnival has no recourse but to throw themselves at the mercy of the court, here. You can almost bet there will be a precedent setting fine and who knows what else? 

If they deal with the people within the organization that actually committed the infractions, and do so harshly, providing the government with evidence to prosecute them, then they might come out of it, without too much damage.  

Any fines imposed on CCL will likely end up causing higher cruise fares in the future. It wouldn't be fair to penalize CCL's customers.  Instead there should be investigations in all cases of illegality and jail time imposed on those responsible. If CCL does not assist in the investigation or in firing those responsible, only then should they have to pay a fine.

Every now and then someone asks about the schedule and someone seems to find a link to it.  Usually, if I am booked well in advance the schedule does not go that far.  As I get closer I get curious, and try to search for it myself, but can never find the current schedule.  If the link goes to a current schedule and someone finds it, can we get a sticky for it?  I know you don't want to clutter the first page with a lot of stickies, but it seems like a topic that could use one.

On our last cruise, I brought along an inexpensive water conductivity tester. It measures the mineral content of the water. On the Pride I measured zero ppm with the purified 12oz bottled water. This is equivalent to distilled water. I also tested the distilled water that Carnival delivered. Zero ppm.

I measured the water out of the tap that is supposed to be desalinated sea water via reverse osmosis.  That was 92ppm.  It doesn’t tell me what the minerals in the water were.  You are welcome to take your chances on what is in the tap water, as well as whether or not it ends up in your lungs.  My wife won’t. 

I don't believe there has been an increase in wasted food from room service.  I think that it is a case of more people seeing the trays outside the cabins, because there are fewer stewards or other personnel taking away the trays.  I've seen trays/plates/glasses sit there for more than a couple hours at times. This is an issue they created by cutting back in personnel, and now they are looking to grab more revenue for a false issue.  

If more people start bringing food to their cabins, the mess in the hallways will get worse.  There will be accidents, especially when the seas are rough.

If we spent as much in the casino as we have buying artwork on board we would have had a free cruise by now.  Before anybody chimes in on how bad it is to buy art on the cruise ship, we only buy what we like, and not for investment.  We like to buy on the ship because we would probably never buy otherwise.

1 hour ago, Poppy42 said:

I agree that Carnival should have some reciprocity across their brands.  We went on Costa back in 2003 because the leaders of our group picked the cruise line.  We went to Alaska on Princess because Carnival didn't go there.  Even a credit of 50% would get us to Platinum - our next cruise will get us there but would be nice to have it now.

If you will achieve Platinum during your next cruise you will get the perks when you show up at the port, including priority boarding.

On 10/30/2018 at 3:24 PM, grandmarnnurse said:

Amen! I hope to get to Platinum, and I can only afford to cruise once a year in an inside cabin on my retirement budget. Basing it only on $$ rather than sea days IS elitist! 

People who can only afford to cruise every other year might consider you elitist.  It's all relative.

On 11/20/2018 at 9:10 AM, serene56 said:

Chicken store onboard some ships?

36 minutes ago, jimbo5544 said:

I think that is the point.  Two weeks ago aboard the Breeze John discussed the need for a loyalty program overhaul and HIS thoughts on what it should be.  WHat prompted that was a question during a Q&A about loyalty rewards across all Carnival brands.  It makes sense, but extremely hard to bring to fruition, for many reasons.

More people are finding out that MSC will offer parity with other brands such as Carnival's VIFP program.  That's a heck of an incentive to give MSC a try in my opinion. We just turned Platinum on Carnival during our 14 day Journeys cruise.  The free laundry was nice, but I don't think I would need it on shorter cruises.  That is the main thing MSC does not have in their program. I can see where CCL starts to see some erosion in cruising loyalty if they don't do something comparable with their other brands.  People want to try something different, even if only to confirm their satisfaction with Carnival.  Allowing them to try out CCL's other brands keeps the money flowing to them.

31 minutes ago, Twinswithtwins said:

I can help. I'll be on the Victory in a few weeks. My favorite ship. Can you show me what they look like?

If they don't have one?  We do.  Coming...

13 hours ago, BlerkOne said:

 

If you haven't completed a MSC cruise at least once every three years, your status disappears and you get to start over. Carnival status doesn't expire. Yet.

But, if they still have status matching, can't you just get it back that way, if your membership has expired with MSC?

23 hours ago, evandbob said:

Why not just give out early check in times to those who has early cabin access?  Let those who aren't priority check in and board at later time windows?

 

If a particular cruise has "too many" P&D and FTTF's (and possibly casino fares) on it, then just delay the whole process by an hour and start boarding later?

 

By continuing to allow early check ins of 10:30 or 11AM for anyone, Carnival creates their own boarding madness.

One problem with that idea is that some people book more than one cruise in advance.  Happened to us. We had our cruise that starts next week booked since June of 2017.  We booked another cruise for this past September afterward.  That cruise gave us enough points to turn Platinum for the cruise next week. If we didn't already have an early boarding time, we could get on earlier. I guess we booked early enough that it is not an issue, but if we had booked in June of 2018, we would have been stuck with a later boarding time with your idea.

10 hours ago, firemanbobswife said:

With the S&S cards being in the mailboxes when the cabin is ready, you won't be able to drop your stuff off in the closet. This system prevents this very thing keeping people out of the hallways and out of the RS way so they can get their work done.

In September on the Pride out of Baltimore, they were still giving us the cards at checkin in the terminal.  Hopefully they will still be doing that next Sunday.