CheapieD

I just booked a cruise to HMC, St. Thomas, San Juan and Grand Turk 4 days ago that leaves 11/11/17 from Miami. After booking, I saw FTTF was sold out. :( I've never cruised Carnival without FTTF before. What do you think my chances are of FTTF opening in the next 102 days? I've been checking multiple times every day.

I am on the same cruise in October. You should be close to the cruises final payment date. That night at midnight eastern time (actually the next day)

Trying logging in and see if any FTTF open up. I think carnival opens up more slots based on diamond/platinum numbers after final payment has passed. Also some people wait until the last day to cancel without penalty and if they have FTTF it gets released. I had been checking on a regular basis and viola at midnight it popped up for about a hour

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so...I still final balance of $800.00...I have 32,000 points...so how much would be applied to my credit card balance with these points. sorry...i just find this confusing, thanks for any replies

$320. But if you plan to charge anything else to the card you can wait to accrue more points. With 32k in points every point is $.01 (a penny) you have 180 days from the charge to redeem your points.

Edited to add you actually have to charge the $800 (or at least $320 if you want to drain all your points). Wait for the charge to post and than request a statement credit.

The

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Last year when we stayed at the

Marriott they had a free shuttle into Miami Beach as well. And the views were awesome esp from the concierge lounge. It was also great to eat breakfast outside and look right across the bay at all

The cruise ships. If I remember the marriott also is connected to a small shopping mall with restaurants. They even had a convenience store in the mall with sandwiches, pop, beer, liquor and wine (although the prices were touristy- I would just walk the less than half mile to the Publix). We are staying there again in October and I managed to use a Look No further rate to get a room for $98.xx so it was a no brainer.

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I used happy limo several years back and had some issues as well and some positives as well. My mother in law had set stuff with a TA so we didn't make any arrangements and were not privy to the details. We were told that a limo would pick us up at MCO. We were the first group in and arrived at 1am. Managed to find the driver and he proceeded to load us into a full sized van (not a new one either..old and rusty). My wife and I kind of exchanged looks and I said "no limo tonight?. ". The driver responded that no it would probably get us in the morning. Off we went to the hotel in cape Canaveral where we were to spend the next two nights. The ride was uneventful but I was surprised at how easy the trips was(we had never been on this route before)

We arrived at the hotel and the driver handed me an invoice to sign (not pay, just sign). I looked at the total and it was over $700. I was surprised but again I didn't make arrangements so I didn't make a scene. I asked "is this just for this trip or all the trips?" The driver responded that he didn't know and he couldn't call to clarify since it was so late the billing office was closed(3am ish). So I tipped him $140 and didn't think anything further. Fast forward to

The next day and my MIL and SIL's family arrive. That evening my wife asked my MIL and she said no that invoice was the whole

Package(one way transfers, and the hotel rooms). not just our trip. (The bill didn't indicate this). So I felt like the driver deceived me. My MIL also confirmed that she was under the impression that a limo was supposed to pick us up at MCO (their group came in a town car, not a van) so she called the TA and the TA called the company.

The company responded by apologizing and upgrading the limo for the port transfers(so when Given the chance they tried to correct things-the good part).

We didn't ride with happy limo going back because I talked my MiL into cancelling the return and I rented a van in the cape and did a one way rental to MCO which was super easy and cheap.

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The 1.5 points per $.01 only applies to redemptions over $1500 otherwise it is 1 point for $0.01The good news is the points

No longer expire so you let them

Build up (used to expire in 5 years)

Any charge you make on your carnival Mastercard that is Cruise related can be reimbursed up to six months after the charge. So today you pay $1000 towards final

Payment and at any time in the next 180 days you can go into your barclay account and get a statement credit at 1 point per each $.01 charged under $1500 and $0.15 per point over $1500 up to your available point balance.

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I found this in another post...at the bottom, it shows that it takes 7 to 8 hours to get to the Gulf... This is all pretty interesting! We are sailing on Dream on September 3 and will be following this "tour" as we sail along... ;-)

 

 

 

I will attempt to create a play by play tour of exactly what you will see as you embark on your journey down the mighty Mississippi, so here goes:

 

 

 

The French Quarter:

 

 

 

1.Ernest N. Morial Convention Center: This is the massive building you will see where the boat is docked. This is actually the original location of the 1984 Worlds Fair. You can still see the decorative waterfall staircase that was just adjacent to the Space Shuttle display during the Fair. The Convention Center is the 6th largest in the country.

 

2.Riverwalk: This mall was built for the words fair and has remained a great specialty shop and upper end type of mall. This is also the mall where in 1996 the MV Bright Field ship lost power and rammed into while thousands of tourists where still inside.

 

3.Harrah’s Casino: It is what it is…

 

4.Aquarium Of The Americas: Great place to spend a day.

 

5.Woldenberg Riverfront Park: Great park to see the river and possibly hear some musicians.

 

6.Jax Brewery: Formerly where Jax Beer was made, now it’s a shopping mall.

 

7.St. Louis Cathedral: One of the oldest cathedrals in the country, original structure was completed in 1793 on the location where the former Catholic Church was destroyed by the Great New Orleans fire in 1788. A Catholic Church has stood on that ground since 1718. It is still a working Cathedral and therefore receives no historic funding.

 

8.Jackson Square: Park in front of the Cathedral with large statue of Andrew Jackson on his horse. The statue is significant as it was the first statue of a horse and rider standing on its back legs, very difficult balancing problem.

 

9.The Moon Walk: This is the small riverfront boardwalk area in front of Jackson Square. You will always here a saxophone going in this area 

 

10.The French Market: Open air market with shops, flee market and produce stands.

 

11.The New Orleans Mint: In operation from 1838 to 1861 and from 1879 to 1909. It is now part of the Louisiana State Museum.

 

 

 

Leaving French Quarter to Bywater, Upper and Lower 9th Wards:

 

 

 

12.Old docks: Doesn’t seem significant unless you a fan of the group Journey!!! This is the location where they filmed the video for “Separate Ways”.

 

13.Bywater and Upper 9th ward: The neighborhoods you see in the background.

 

14.Industrial Canal: man made canal for shipping purposes. This is the canal where one of the major levy breaches took place during Katrina and Rita. You can’t see the location; it’s on the other side of the St. Claude Bridge, which you can see.

 

15.Lower 9th ward: heavily damaged during Katrina.

 

16.Holy Cross School for Boys: This is where I went to high school. The school was established in 1849. The original administration building, which is still standing and you should be able to see, was built in 1895. Katrina damaged the campus beyond repair and after over 150 yrs of being on this location, it was moved to a new location on the other side of town.

 

17.Fats Domino’s house: you can’t see it, but its there.

 

18.Jackson Barracks: Originally designed by Andrew Jackson and built in 1834-35. It now houses the Louisiana National Guard Headquarters. It also serves as the dividing line between Orleans and St. Bernard Parishes.

 

 

 

Entering St. Bernard Parish and Chalmette: This is where Katrina hit the worst, even more so than the lower 9th ward. Abandoned by its country, the first responders here where Canadian Mounties.

 

 

 

19.The Le Beau Plantation: It’s about 2 blocks in and hard to see so look real hard. It’s in bad shape and has not been restored, would be beautiful if it were restored.

 

20.Interview with a Vampier fire: This area is the location where they burned a bunch of old warehouses and whatnot for the movie.

 

21.Domino sugar: One of the oldest sugar refineries in the country dating back to 1909. It produces 6 million pounds of sugar per day and more than 2 billion pounds per year about 19% of the country’s sugar. Now that’s a lot of sugar!!!!!!

 

22.Cavaroc House: Located at Domino Sugar, looks like a small plantation but dwarfed by the massive Sugar refinery.

 

23.St. Bernard Port: It was once talked about to build the cruise terminal at this location.

 

24.Chalmette Battle Field (Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve): This is where the Battle of New Orleans was fought during the war of 1812 one of the greatest land victories of the war. You should be able to see the “monument”, which looks like a small version of the Washington monument in DC.

 

25.The Beauregard House: Built on this site in 1832.

 

26.Chalmette National Cemetery: Veteran cemetery established in 1864.

 

27.Kaiser Aluminum: This plant pretty much established the town of Chalmette. Its smoke stack has become a local landmark of years past. The plant was the largest Aluminum Smelter in the world until it closed down in 1983.

 

28.Chalmette Refining LLC: This used to be Mobil which used to be Tennecco etc. It is now a venture of ExxonMobil and the Venezuelan State Oil company. Some of the fuel you and others used to get to N.O. was refined at this very location. If your lucky you may catch them Flaring the Boom. If so you will see a massive fire ball which will light up the entire sky. This is all part of the refining process.

 

29.Chalmette Ferry Landing: This ferry landing is still used to get residents from one side of the river to the other. To go around is a twenty mile journey, but the time can be the same if you don’t catch the ferry right 

 

That pretty much sum’s up the first hour or so of your 7-8 hour cruise down the might Mississippi. The rest of the trip is still very interesting, but not too many landmarks. You will pass multiple oil and gas refineries such as BP and Chevron on your way down to the mouth.

 

 

 

River Pilot: The very last thing of interest is when you get to the mouth of the river. A pilot boat will meet up with the ship, the ship will slow to a crawl and you can watch as the river pilot (who has been navigating the river) will jump from an open bay door on the ship to a small pilot boat. This will happen late at night usually somewhere between 10-12 depending on departure.

 

Remember this phrase: “White over Red…Pilot Ahead”. The pilot boat will be a small vessel and at the very top of it, you will see 2 lights, a white light that sits above a red light. This is how you can identify the pilot boat ahead of time.

 

That’s it, you have officially finished you sailing of the river and are entering the Ocean Blue. Oh, don’t forget to watch for the more then 3000 oil rigs along the continental shelf. Have a great trip.

Nice information. Would be interesting to also plot on a satellite map

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I have used card cash and it is a legitimate website. The problem lies in the fact that there is a lot of fraud in the gift card space. I.e. Criminals buying gift cards with stolen credit cards. If you contact them within 45 days they are good about refunding your money. Unfortunately in my experience the rate of valid gift cards staying valid within 45 days has been about 50%. I always check the balance right before using the gift card so I don't get a nasty surprise when the balance is zero. What happens is the criminal buys a gift card, sells it to card cash and than when the victim finds the fraud and disputes

The charge the company cancels

The gift card. Or the criminal writes down the number of the gift card and uses it themselves or reports as lost/stolen and gets a replacement.

If you are close to sailing and have other funds to pay for the cruise in the event the gift cards are invalid than it would be a good deal but if you are not close to the sailing date there are much safer options to get discounts on carnival gift cards.

I also wonder how carnival handles payments made with gift cards purchased with fraudulent credit cards. It would be a shame if they cancelled a booking due to

Fraud

And the mess you would have getting your money back. I know both Starbucks and iTunes are aggressive about shutting down accounts and locking you out of your account balance when payment gift cards are fraudulent. (You can google for stories on this-mostly dealing with ebay purchase of gift cards).

So buyer beware when dealing with online gift card resellers.

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Oh that is interesting. The glory schedule has been revised. A few months back that had Eric B coming back as CD but he is now off the schedule for the October cruise we had

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You can just directly to the website and search for caches in each country. If you are a premium

Member you can even set a pocket querie with the cruise port as a center location. The info on gc would be more

Current as far as

If the cache is still there. You also can use the gc map feature to look around

Here is one example of one near the cruise port and would be a good central starting point.

GCTXME

The OP asks about downside. There are several things

1) the stock has performed very well in the last 18 months but prior to that it lagged the market considerably. You are investing in a stock that provides a non essential consumer product. If the economy slows down and we enter a recession this category is one of the first things that gets cut back in a consumers budget.

2) OBC is not the same as cash and should not be used to determine returns. You cannot access the OBC without spending money to buy a cruise. Also the true net value of the OBC is not really $100 since you have to use it to buy items at a high markup from the actual cost. For instance a six pack of beer on land might be $6-$10 dollars but on the ship it is closer to $30 making the OBC worth less. If you were going to buy the items anyway than at least you are not coming out of pocket for them but if you likely would refrain from spending that money if you had to shell out cash than the value is diminished.

3) opportunity cost: the $6500 or so dollars that it will cost you to buy 100 shares could maybe be used to invest in a more profitable investment. The higher returns could pay for OBC for many cruises . This was definitely the case prior to the stock recent run

You also have to look at risk. Buying a single stock is inherently more risking than having multiple stocks. Conventional wisdom says you should never have more than 5-10% of you net worth in one stock. (Based on a $65 closing price that would be a net worth between around 150 to 300k). If you are in that position and feel the stock has good fundamentals go for it.

You will hear all kinds of post about how they bought the stock at xyz and have gone on 100's of cruises and came out so far ahead but you have to look at the big picture. In the end it is only around $6500 and if that doesn't present a hardship to buy and makes you happy buy away.

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Anyone know if the Splendor muster stations are inside or outside? Last muster I went to was outside and took ove 45 minutes... it was very hard for me to stand there that long... my back felt like it was going to break... I may ask if i can sit somewhere during the muster if it is outside...

Last November the splendor was outside

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It was last November but I was able to use my project fi cellphone with the middle internet plan to make and receive calls as well as plain text messages. Sometimes it worked great and than in the evenings it was less reliable but that was true even just using the regular internet due to the larger number of people on board using it in the evenings

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My offer was available this morning (6:45 a.m. on July 5). Thank you for posting the info.

No love for me on 4 cards. Is there a twitter sync for this offer?

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I think the big question is: Can you fly to the port with a van of Lysol spray.

 

I didn't think you could.

I assume you meant a can:). If you have a flying van I would like to see some pictures You can not carry it on. The FAA guidelines for checked

Luggage. https://www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/hazmat_safety/more_info/?hazmat=2

So the short answer is no.

https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ash/ash_programs/hazmat/media/hazardous_materials_carried_by_passengers_and_crew.pdf

I have been on more carnival cruises than Disney cruises but without a doubt Disney was an excellent experience. If you can find cruises for a smaller difference in price definitely go for it. Hard to

justify 7k more though if you are booking comparable cabins and cruise length. If you can be a little flexible just watch cruise fares and you can book for a smaller difference. We sailed 5 day 4 night for the price of a similar 6 day carnival cruise.

Try it once and see what you prefer. When I have grandkids I will definitely take them on a Disney cruise but for now we have chosen Carnival (and a Princess cruise-yuck).

Is Disney a better experience- absolutely but you have to weigh the cost imho

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When we went they offered a couples package that was cheaper than 2 single person packages. I think it was per cabin (group of 2) Also the brand ambassador John Heald offers spa discount codes several times a year (I think the one we used was 15%).

Re: poster saying buy spa cabin. Sometimes it is cheaper to buy the cabin you want and add spa

Access. Or the cabin type you wanted is not

Available as a spa cabin.

Regarding the splendor spa

Itself we found the pool was almost always crowded and on some days the thermal rooms were crowded as well. Things were also out of order throughout the cruise but I suppose with the high heat and humidity maintenance must be difficult.

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I wish they would stop calling them a "Gratuity" which implies optional, and call it a "Service Charge". I know it wouldn't completely solve the problem, but a least we could get beyond the "It's a tip and completely up to my discretion" argument, when it is really a large portion of what certain positions are paid.

They call them a tip for tax purposes. If they were service charges they would be subject to corporate income tax.

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Even though carnival says wifi calling isn't available it did work sporadically on the splendor with mid tier internet package. Seems to be dependent on time of day just like in the states (supper time into evening the slowest)

I had no trouble with data in other counties either since my phone had international data for the same price as domestic $10

A GB. Worked in all the ports on a southern Caribbean route.

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I have played something similar in casinos. It's just one of those games to make you feel like you have some sort of an edge but ultimately only increases the odds in favor of the house.

 

 

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You just described the entire casino :). How do players not stand up to the continued raising of the house edge by not playing. Even standard blackjack games only offer 6/5 black jack

I miss the drink coupons from the classic drinks. You could almost negate the house edge when playing craps with two people.

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In today's age it is always hit or miss with close connections. If things go ok there is plenty of time to make your flight. However, there is three potentials for bottlenecks. 1) Customs: most of the time you breeze through but there has been

Times when I have had to wait 45 minutes to clear due to lines and either slow screenings or not enough staff. Some of this is probably related to the ports of call(they have higher rates of violating items than other ports).

2) true with any large city but due to causeways that lead on and off the pier any accident can really snarl traffic. Nothing you can do about that until you leave the port.

3) line to checkin and check luggage can be very long at times. Also TSA lines can vary and be over an hour in time.

If you were just a couple of adults traveling I would say don't worry about it but with 2 young kids it might be safer to switch to a later fight. Would you rather be early

And sit at the gate for two hours or would you rather try to scramble

to find alternate arrangements to get the whole clan home?

That being said 1130/12 flights are not usually a busy time at the airport (figure you would get to the airport 10-1030) so the lines SHOULD be light.

Maybe something else to

Look into if you change your flight is going to an airport hotel and getting a day pass/day rate. You could leave later in the day and not be stuck in the airport all day

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The computer will block the sale. The only exception for some reason is an alcoholic drink with a bottle of water. A coke and a beer won't work. A mixed drink and a coke won't work, a coke and a bottle water even doesn't work. On multiple instances the bar tender tried to do two and when they swiped the card it won't let them. They will sometimes give you two and than wait to swipe your card after 5 minutes. For instance maybe we came over to the bar with a sandwich and wanted to order a beer and a coke to drink. They could give us one or other but the computer would block the second. They would keep swiping and low and behold as soon as the five minute period was up the register allowed the sale.

I wish the system let the bartenders over ride the system when it was obvious that the person is consuming the beverage and not sharing. (at least with the NA drinks) I found it annoying to stop at the bar after working out to get a bottle of water and having to wait 5 minutes for another bottle. Also at the bars it is just the small bottles that work with cheers, you have to go to the dining room for the larger bottles.

Regional deal at Hyvee grocery stores through 5/16. Buy$50 in select gift cards and receive $10 hyvee gift card plus $.10 fuel saver.

Select cards include Carnival. Found some in my store but the minimum was $100.

Something is look out for if you have a

Local

Hyvee

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I was able to prebook a couples spa package last November on the splendor. Also look for discount codes that John Heald posts on his Facebook page a couple of times a year.

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If i remember from my cruise last November on the splendor the larger (32 or 40oz don't remember) were only available in the dining room. I tried to order from several

Bars and they were not

Going to be free.

At dinner it was no issue. It is also annoying that you could order an alcoholic beverage and get a bottle water at the same time

But couldn't get a NA drink and a bottle of water without waiting 5 minutes even if you sat at the bar and finished the NA drink or the water.

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