Many of these can be found in other posts, here are my favorites in no particular order:
Carnival uses sail & sign card for everything. It's a room key/charge card/disembark/boarding card all in one. You can use a card holder lanyard either with pocket or they have a hole you can just clip your lanyard to it.
We also got RFID credit card holders to take our cards/cash off the ship. They easily fit in your pocket.
Carnival uses sail & sign card for everything. It's a room key/charge card/disembark/boarding card all in one. You can use a card holder lanyard either with pocket or they have a hole you can just clip your lanyard to it.
We also got RFID credit card holders to take our cards/cash off the ship. They easily fit in your pocket.
You can also get a stick on stretchy wallet for the back of your phone to keep your cards and money in:
Coffee
usually sucks on cruise ships and some hotels.
If you really like good coffee bring your own and get a travel steeper:
/
Don’t forget your travel mug.
I also bring mini cups with lids to carry the
coffee from my room to the buffet and a ziplock to carry the steeper in to take back to my room to wash.
Bring lots of Ziploc bags in different sizes. Quart, gallon, 2 gallon. Can be used for ice, wet clothes, carrying your coffee to breakfast and the wet travel steeper back to the room. Also, grab some fruit/snacks and take it with you to your room.
The ship is metal, the walls and ceilings are metal, bring magnetic hooks. I got these at Walmart and they were very helpful keeping my oxygen tubing off the floor preventing a tripping hazard. Can also be used to hang clothes, towels, laundry bag etc.
I I bring extra hangers, the flat lightweight
kind, because there aren’t usually enough, though this time there were
plenty. I think someone left them
behind. You can get slim hanger clips for pants/skirts for the slim hangers. You can also just use the
magnetic hangers that I mentioned above.
Extension cords and power strips are helpful. You can usually get an extension cord from the ship, just ask your steward. On some ships staterooms have only 1 plug.
If you need a handle getting in/out of
shower/tub, this is a good travel handle.
Never fell off the whole week on the ship and I even hung my mesh
shampoo bag on it. It’s small and
lightweight enough to pack.
If you check your bag don’t forget to bring a
carry on bag with your medicines, jewelry, bathing suits, extra clothes
etc. You may not get your checked bags
until later. You can then use this bag for
the last night/morning since you have to put your checked bags out the night
before. On most cruise lines your empty
suitcases fit under the bed.
When the restaurant boxes up stuff to take back
to your room they usually put it on a plate with a cover. This plate doesn’t fit in the mini
fridge. We used to bring a small
collapsible cooler, but that didn’t work either for the plates. We got this round collapsible cooler. It collapses but it does take up quite a bit
of room in the suitcase. We were driving
so it didn’t matter because we could have taken it out of the suitcase and
carried it off if we need the room. One 2 gallon Ziploc filled halfway with
ice kept everything cold.
We got lightweight foldable backpacks. These worked great.
Cruise luggage tags work great and protect the
paper from getting wet or pulling off.
There are different ones for the different cruise lines. We got these for Carnival. They worked very well.
Tipping.
Bring cash to tip your dining room server (if you have anytime dining
like we did you can tip the individual groups accordingly) and room stewards. I don’t know about other cruise lines, but
Carnival takes some of the money out of the tips. Go to guest services and have dining and
housekeeping taken off your list and then tip them with cash. That way they will get the entire tip. Leave Alternative Services on since this goes
to all the people who take care of you on the lido deck. Bar servers you can tip as you go but watch
out as tips are usually included. I also
found out that Carnival has been cutting back on staff for the last year. Many long time staff have quit. (No this has
nothing to do with immigration, they’ve been cutting back well before Trump even
started running). Therefore the room
stewards need to cut back on service depending on the steward’s load. Our steward could clean the room either in
morning or evening. If you choose
morning there was no turn down service.
Every time I cruise I notice they’ve cut back more and more. However,
the staff is great, they bust their butts and they do it with a
smile. Keep an eye out, you’ll see they
work very hard. That’s why you want the
entire tip (and maybe then some) to go to them.
Speaking of dining, Carnival has 3 dining
options. Early dining at 6:00pm (5:30pm
for Alaska cruises), Late dining at 8:15pm (7:45pm for Alaska cruises) or 'Your
Time' open seating, between 5:45pm and 9:30pm (between 5:15pm and 9:00pm for
Alaska cruises). The early and late dining you get the same table/wait staff
every night. We do
the ‘Your Time’ dining. If you come
early you might have to wait. They use
pagers now. If you come at 8pm or later
you don’t have to wait and you can ask to sit with the same wait team (though
not necessarily same table) every night.
It’s very flexible and if you don’t like your dining staff you can pick
someone else the next night. Also, if
you go later you get more individual attention because the dining room isn’t
full. Don’t forget, unless otherwise
stated, you are not limited to only one appetizer, dinner or dessert. I sometimes get the fruit and cheese dessert and take it back to my room to snack on. You
usually can also get the dining room menus in advance if you ask at guest
services/purser and also on the app. If you are traveling
over a holiday, make specialty dinner reservations as soon as you book your
cruise. Even though we did, the steak
house was sold out for our anniversary which coincides with Valentine’s day.
If the ship has multiple buffet stations on lido deck, the ones in the back are usually less crowded.
If you like bananas, eat them at the beginning
of the cruise, they will be non-existent by the end. They load them on in the home port so they
are no good by the end of the cruise unless you grab a few and keep them in your mini-fridge. They will turn black on the outside but the inside will still be good 5-7 days once ripe.
We’ve now had 2 bad experiences with the
Carnival Breeze “Cherry on Top” store.
The first cruise they didn’t deliver things as promised and then tried
to say they delivered things they didn’t.
It was a hassle and my birthday cake came 2 days late because of all the
back and forth trying to get it delivered.
This cruise they had the total for something Jerry picked up in the
store and he signed for one amount and they added a tip for delivery (it wasn’t
delivered) without telling him. We had
to go to guest services Saturday night and wait in a long line to get it taken
care of and it still wasn’t taken care of as we were getting ready to get off
the ship. Once again we waited in a long
line to get it take care of. The guest
services person got on the phone and waited until it was credited to our
account and then gave us our final bill.
Long story short, watch your charges like a hawk.
Carnival hub app. It’s great.
There is room for improvement, but it’s great. It has the entire schedule, ship map, photos,
time schedules open/close, menus etc. There’s a
chat feature that costs $5 and works sporatically. The photo feature will get even better as
they convert the ships over to totally digital photos.
Speaking of photos, they use your passport photo
as your id photo now. I was appalled as
my photo is horrendous and every time I went in/off ship or had photos taken
there was my awful photo.
Carnival says don’t bring towels they have for
you to use, and yes they do. However,
their towels weigh a ton and 2 tons wet.
I bring lightweight towels I got at Walmart for about $5. They also come in handy when you need to wrap
breakable things up.
You can bring on 2 bottles of wine. Depending on which port they may ask to see
the wine. I use wine skin bags to
protect the wine. They are disposable
but I usually use them several times before I need to throw them away. You can also use the bags to protect small
breakable items on the way home.
Carnival has a $15 corkage fee if you want to drink it in the dining
room. On our last cruise we found a wine
we liked. On the ship it’s $36, at Total
wine it’s usually 12.99. I got it on
sale for $10.39. So even with the
corkage fee I saved money. (Yes, they charge almost 3 times what you can get
the wine for on land). You can also pour yourself a glass in your room and carry it with you to dinner for no extra charge. Mini fridge is
good for wine. You can only bring on one
bottle per person.
Bring filter bottles and fill them on the lido
deck. You can also bring a travel cup or
sports bottle and fill with juice/tea.
Carnival has Orange juice and a mixed juice in the morning and lemonade
and tea all other times. (Subject to change) You can fill
your bottles and they will fit in the mini fridge with your wine.
Depending on the port you may have to have your
CPAP/oxygen concentrators check by K9 unit.
They never opened the CPAP machine bag, though I’m sure they are
supposed to. They do sell distilled
water on the ship. Gallon is around $3.49.
Most ports let you on the ship just by showing
your sign/sail card. Some ports, like
Cozumel, make you go through security, X-ray, metal detector etc.
If you are on Carnival and it a standard
stateroom, if faster to the fun is available it's worth the price, unless you don’t mind waiting…
They sell out fast.
If you are in a cabin or hotel room that you
need to put a card in to keep your lights on, you can use any card, it doesn’t
have to be your room key card.
Have fun.
If you have any other great tips, let me know and I’ll add them.
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