Cruise Deals

[TheForce]

Can't say for Carnival but on RCC and Princess you can and you have to pay the corking fee. Many do for their favorite dinner wine and Champaign. No fee for in room consumption. As far as sodas and beer are concerned, why would you? Seems stupid to me.

Scott- I would think that a full suite for a family (party of 4) would be OK for Carnival. The complaints I heard about small rooms were for the minisuites on down. At any rate you should study the competitors out there. Most have great Flash tours of the rooms and These are pretty accurate, WYSIWYG

I just checked and that is the full list for 4 people (2 Balcony rooms) on the May 28th cruise to:

Eastern Caribbean which is mainly Bahamas and VI. You'll enjoy the shopping for jewelry. Take some bucks though as the women may want to get the bargains in St. Thomas.


Also, I recall on Princess you could buy a bottle in the Dining room and they would bring it out each night and you didn't need to worry about it.

 

[gredneck]

Scott:

you can not bring booze onto the ship, and don't think you can buy booze in the on board liquor store and take it back to your cabin (they deliver it to your cabin the night before you arrive back in port!) it sounds a little crazy but I was talking to some people who were big drinkers and they would bring soda and put booze (I'm assuming clear) into quart water bottles. sounds a little excessive but then again, when I went on my first cruise, I was alone I drank beers and had a $700 bar tab.

I went on a carnival cruise about 2 weeks ago and the food was excellent!

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

I have been on crises before but its been awhile (about 6 or 7 years) my last cruise was on Carnival.

After calling around to a bunch of places (and thanks to everyone who send me phone numbers) everyone had the same price for the cruise!

Then my wife called Carnival Directly and they gave us the lowest price of $5116.80, this is for a category 11 room for 4 people for 8 days. (thats including taxes and port charges and trip insurance)

Anyone know what they charge for Internet on the boards? Its going to be hard staying away from here for 8 days.

 

[Pepper]

The Carnival ship "Holiday" sails out of Mobile and is being totally refurbished after serving as FEMA housing, should be really nice. It's a small ship, about the size of Gavin McLeod's "Love Boat" not one of those gigantic cities.

They are relatively cheap 3 and 4 day cruises but of course you got to get here first from wherever you are.

And of course I would throw in a tour of my backyard dish farm at no additional cost to you.

 

[thiggin2]

We went on a 5 day Carnival Cruise out of Tampa to Grand Cayman and Cozumel last Spring Break. We took our 3 kids ages (at the time) 6,8,10. They had a BLAST. There were alot for the kids on the boat.

 

[thiggin2]

Internet Cafe Price List
Charges for the following services will be billed directly to guest's Sail and Sign Account as follows:
A one time activation fee is $3.95.
To obtain a temporary account while on board, the set-up charge is $3.95.
To print information, the charge is $.50-per page.
To utilize the service of the Internet Cafe, whether using a private workstation, renting a laptop or using the guest's personal laptop, the charge is:
$.75-per minute.
Block of Minutes (no refund for unused minutes):

3, 4 or 5 Day Cruise
30 minutes for $16.50 (.55 per minute).
60 minutes for $24.00 (.40 per minute).

7 Day Cruise or Longer
100 minutes for $55.00 (.55 per minute).
250 minutes for $100.00 (.40 per minute).
To rent a Wireless Internet Card for a guest's personal laptop, the rate is $10.00 per day. To rent a Laptop, the charge is $35.00 per day; optional insurance is $10.00 per day.

http://www.carnival.com/CMS/FAQs/On_Board_Internet_Cafes.aspx

 

[gredneck]

my buddy used it for emailing, he said it was slow, like 2 minutes to bring up yahoo!
they'll sell you a bucket of 100 minutes for $50 and wifi is throughout the ship.

 

[Pepper]

Good Lord that's expensive Internet access. An hour at sea is like a month on land.

Aren't monopolies wonderful!

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Good Lord that's expensive Internet access. An hour at sea is like a month on land.

Aren't monopolies wonderful!

Thats because on the ship you are a captive audience.

We have been married going on 5 years this June and will be our first family vacation. Might as well live it up since it will probably be 5 years before we can do it again.

 

[Tom in TX]

Might as well live it up since it will probably be 5 years before we can do it again.

Then you should get the kids their own room!!!
Tom in TX

 

[Bob Haller]

Carnival is ownded by the same company that owns holland america. cruised on noordam once.

the no maintence line, poor A/C they were saving fuel by not running all 3 units, stateroom over 80 degrees after evening show, ship literally falling apart, since owners had elminated most onboard repair crews. materesses dished worn out. had bad backache from poor mattress

hopefully its better today, but I will never pay them another dime, it was a nice cruise onboard a falling apart ship. the line didnt even bother responding to my letter of complaint.

cruised later on royal carribeans monarch of sea, there oldest ship. it was impeccable, I couldnt find anything to complain about.

 

[TheForce]

Yes, and Carnival recently bought Princess, said to be their better class cruise lines. It will be interesting to see if Princess will go down hill under Carnival ownership in the coming years.

One night we went to a club and watched a comedian. His routine was to poke fun at the competing cruise lines. He said, I won't say which one but it is somewhat like the Circus (meaning Carnival) Then he went on to rip them apart. About 15 minutes later some guy went up to him on stage and whispered in his ear. he turned all colors, but not losing a beat, asked- How many in this room knows that Carnival (mentions by name the first time) bought Princess out? Most of the people raised their hands. He then said "for the record, I said a cruise lines that sounds like Circus cruise lines Not Carnival," Brought down the house, and then proceeded to continue to rip apart "Circus" Cruise lines, I suppose the rest of his routine. He ended with, Folks you've been wonderful but if you hear the alert Man overboard you'll know who it was.


Gosh those posted internet rates are outrageous! I found my receipt and paid $10 per hour login ID. But then each hour really only had about 10 minutes of reall access so I suppose it's all relative. I recall when I did this on Princess- I had to go to the Pursers desk and purchase a card for an hour. Each time I had to sign a release that said, There are no guarantees that when you start using the card it will actually work, meaning there are no refunds. Buyer Beware!
What I would do is ask at the Internet cafe and if they were up and running I would go to the desk buy a card and hopefully get online before their system crashed. The Internet Cafe used a unique Browser that would not do most anything except for very basic webpages, I think it was hard pressed to handle animated gifs and anything like frames, near impossible. Better to use your own laptop.


I suppose the modem pool on board the Royal Caribbean was the best deal at unlimited $100 for the week! Now that I recall, and David Bott will confirm this, you had to go to the Pursers desk as soon as you got onboard because they only sold out 100 for the whole ship. Several AVS members were coming to my room to do work that week.

 

[sidekick]

On the Carnival Mexican Riviera cruise, we had priority diembarcation, while some friends of ours did not. We were off the ship 20 minutes after docking. They were off the ship over 4 hours later, and no, breakfast was not offered. They had to wait near their rooms for instruction.

The 3-4+ hour disembarkation is not normal. They now have the option for you to carry your luggage off with you which allows you to leave earlier if you want. Also, if you are not in a hurry to leave the ship in the morning of disembarkation then you can just sleep late, eat breakfast (yes it is available that morning), and sit back in your room till later on to leave...

Oh, and the Camp Carnival for kids is structured where they have things they do with them like games, crafts, and such. they even break them down into separate age groups. We went on the Carnival Conquest.

 

[sidekick]

Going on the Carnival Valor in April to the Western Caribbean. It's the first ship to have bow-to-bow WiFi.

Internet Cafe Price List
Charges for the following services will be billed directly to guest's Sail and Sign Account as follows:
A one time activation fee is $3.95.
To obtain a temporary account while on board, the set-up charge is $3.95.
To print information, the charge is $.50-per page.
To utilize the service of the Internet Cafe, whether using a private workstation, renting a laptop or using the guest's personal laptop, the charge is:
$.75-per minute.
Block of Minutes (no refund for unused minutes):

3, 4 or 5 Day Cruise
30 minutes for $16.50 (.55 per minute).
60 minutes for $24.00 (.40 per minute).

7 Day Cruise or Longer
100 minutes for $55.00 (.55 per minute).
250 minutes for $100.00 (.40 per minute).
To rent a Wireless Internet Card for a guest's personal laptop, the rate is $10.00 per day. To rent a Laptop, the charge is $35.00 per day; optional insurance is $10.00 per day.

http://www.carnival.com/CMS/FAQs/On_Board_Internet_Cafes.aspx

 

[FreddyvsJasonvsAsh]

Princess won't go down hill....Princess is a good cruise line....now for those with money Crystal Cruise Line is like the upper upper upper class line about the same as Carnivals very top of the line ship the Queen Mary 2. Carnival is working on the next worlds largest ship the new Titanic....it should be out in a few years. I will say in Carnivals defense that they are more than second rate service...they are the " Fun Ships" yes lots of younger people go on Carnival but that doesn't mean the food and service is second rate. Being around my mom in the travel industry for 16/17 years...I know the ins and outs of this field. My moms been on most of the cruise lines out with the exception of the higher class ships. She has been on Princess, Carnival, RCL, NCL, Celebrity, Disney, Seaborn, Costa. She's been on more than one ship in these compaines fleets. Like I said in another post she has gone through the Carnival, Disney, Princess and RCL class and have gotten numerous awards from them. So yeah my mums done a lot in which the average stint as a travel agent is about 5-6 years....the way I see it with people having bad experiences on cruise lines or even airlines is not the fault of the comapny in whole but just those individuals involved. But overall Carnival is a great company and loads of fun on their fleet

 

[LonghornXP]

If anyone is interested in this you can ask more questions. Now Scott this doesn't exactly relate to you and I doubt your young ones would enjoy this but when the youngest reaches maybe 14 years old both of them would greatly enjoy this. First keep in mind this cruise I'm about the mention is very expensive but its one trip I can say from personal experience is worth every penny but the choice of where you go is yours. About three years ago my parents, brother and I decided to get together and take a long cruise as we at that point in time hardly ever saw each other. We went with a cruise company called Crystal and lets just say its amazing. We took a cruise pretty much around the world and it was just a bit over 100 days at sea. Now you might be thinking this is way too long but once it was over we felt we didn't see as much as we could thinking we had plenty of time but in reality we wasted more time and not out of bordom far from it. Now they were very strict on their penthouse suites not allowing more than three people period no matter what so we ended up getting two penthouse suites. My brother and I stayed in one and my parents stayed in another. Now again this wasn't cheap as it costs us together about 80 grand per person so this was a total trip costing us almost 400 grand once you add airfare among the regular spending you will no doubt do. Now you can go for the basic room which costs about 50 grand or so per person. Again its not cheap but for that kind of money I highly suggest the penthouse. The view of the ocean is great and drinks and meals are all included and you also get your own butler which I might add was quite usefull more than you would think.

Again I must point out that this isn't cheap and not everyone on here can afford this but if you can its worth every penny spent as your seeing pretty much the entire world as far as the key areas of it and the ship is very nice and the penthouse rooms are more than you will need but you will need the space I can promise you that. With two people in a room for 100+ days you need the space and don't even think about the excuse that you won't be in the room that much because the truth is you will flatout be living in this room more than you would ever think. All I can say this was a trip of a lifetime and if you have the chance to try one that goes maybe 45 days it would be over half the cost of this and it would be very good but again nothing beats 100+ straight days seeing the world.

Oh by the way I'll give a little run down of the areas you will be going to.

First you depart in LA and you finish in London which requires that you fly from London back home in the states. They do offer an everything is included package per person which includes all airfares including the fare from your home to LA and the fare from London to your home state. I posted a link below so you can see where you will be going.

http://www.crystalcruises.com/cruise_itinerary.aspx?CID=6303F

Also of note my brother mostly paid for this trip as he managed to get a pretty steep discount from the company he works for as he is high up. I think he got it at about 280 grand instead of 400 so that was why we decided to do some of these upgrades like the Penthouse suites. Either way its well worth every penny. If you were to ever save all your money for one vacation in your lifetime this would have to be one on a very very short lists of vacations.

 

[StevenD]

I'll second Crystal Cruises. Also, there's nothing like having a butler to take care of just about anything in the Penthouses. Not to mention they have the hottest stewardesses!

I refuse to travel on Carnival or Royal Caribbean after going on crusing on Crystal. But please folks, dont bring your kids on Crystal...there is NOTHING for them to do. Crystal was designed for the affluent 65+ crowd. Im only 31, but I'm an old man at heart.

We are considering doing the World Cruise in a few years. My girlfriend is an event planner and she has boooked several events on Crystal. She was talking to her Crystal rep and he mentioned that we could even bring our own matress with us or they would arrange to get any mattress we want while on the World Cruise. Now thats service! Im VERY picky about the bed I sleep in.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Well I am glad we booked yesterday. The prices went UP today and the same package is now $600 more!

I do thank everyone who gave me numbers of their travel agents, friends and family who work in the industry.

Now the only thing left to do is find a Limo from Hartford to the Pier in NYC, My wife called one and it was $900 round trip.

 

[Kaluyen]

I went on my first cruise this past September and we had a great time and also an unexpected 'extension' to the trip.

Since we live in the Houston area, we took the 7-day Caribbean cruise from Royal Caribbean out of Galveston. We went to Jamaica, Grand Cayman, and Cozumel...before going to Ft. Lauderdale to refuel and head back to Galveston. Unfortunately, that week was the week Hurricane Rita was churning a course directly into Houston. We managed to get out of the Gulf in plenty of time, however, all we could do from Tuesday on was watch CNN and see the utter chaos that was Houston....worrying about our kids, family, friends, house, etc.

Royal Caribbean treated us well during the ordeal, they gave everyone free 10 minutes a day in ship-to-shore telephone calls (expensive!) and also 10 minutes a day free in Internet access to be able to communicate with people to see what was going on. Once we got to Jamaica and Cayman, I checked to see if my Sprint PCS phone would work, and luckily it did....and the extra cost on the bill was not nearly as much as I feared. Of course, Rita moved east of Houston so there was no damage to us (we live on West side of town), but there were plenty of stories when we called people about running out of gas, going back home, etc.

Since the cruise was a 7-day, and we could not return to Galveston until the Port Authorities cleared us to arrive, we zoomed to Ft. Lauderdale to refuel and resupply, and then leisurely got back on the following Wednesday....so 3 extra days for free was kinda nice

Anyways, just wanted to mention how well we were treated, and my wife and I plan on going on RCCL/Celebrity again in the future.

Enjoy your trip Scott!!!