Dan

Bananas?

I didn't think too much of the place, but we took a private tour. I don't suggest that, since we thought we were done when the guy pulled over to talk to a bunch of rough looking guys on the side of the road. I would suggest taking a ship's tour. There isn't really much to see in the immediate area around the ship. There was a small market at the pier, and a nice park area on the waterfront to the right of the pier. Other than that, it's a very blue collar harbour town, with little touristy stuff.

I have for all our cruises. Small price to pay for peace of mind.

Welcome back, Chris.

Doesn't seem out of line to me. Gone are the 2:1 pax to crew ratios on mass line cruises. The Carnival Victory had fewer crew members than that, and it carries around the same number, and more since Carnival will have more 3rd/4th berths filled than Celebrity probably will. Same thing with the Grand Princess. It has 1100 crew to 2600 pax (double). We thought service was great, other than trying to order a drink in the Horizon court. And that wasn't a lack of staff, just a lack of ambitious staff at the time. And in fact, if the Cruises Only website is accurate, the Caribbean Princess only has 42 more crew members for 500 more passengers LOL. And don't forget, not all crew are part of the hotel services. That number also includes the ship's operations personnel, which there doesn't need to be as many nowadays with the automated systems the new ships have. And part of the job of junior crew members is to service the crew themselves. Less crew means less crew required to service the crew, if you follow that LOL.

The ship probably arrives an hour or so earlier than that as well, in case you were planning to be up on deck that morning to watch the arrival.

There's always Jeff's house LOL

Tortola?

Oh yeah, I beleive you can buy tickets on the Carnival shuttle even if you bought your air separately. Your TA or somebody at Carnival should be able to arrange this for you.

You should ask Jeff to pick you up in that Mustang covertible and let you grab a nap at his place LOL. Seriously though. If I got into town that early, I'd look at renting a car for the morning, go for breakfast, see some sights, visit the beach, go shopping, something to kill some time, drop it off at Miami airport, and take a cab to the port to arrive in the noon to 1pm range. But if you are going to sit in one place or the other for a few hours, I'd choose the airport. I've never been to the port of Miami, but if it's anything like other ports, there isn't a lot of places for boarding passengers to kick back for a few hours while the unloading of the ship goes on. Check-in probably doesn't open until 11-ish.

I dump the suitcases out on the floor. I suppose on the next trip, we'll have to leave some kids toys in the middle of the floor to trip on at night. Then it'll feel like home LOL.

Jason, you might want to change the title from NCL to Celebrity. Then you can delete my post, and it will be our little secret LOL.

Too bad a ship with that name couldn't be a little more attractive. Kind of bland. They need to paint something on that front superstructure where those 6 cabins sit there in the middle of all that white LOL.

Not having done this myself, I can't say for sure, but I beleive you can book onboard, and transfer the booking to your TA when you get home. I think you get a shipboard credit or something when you book onboard, as well as not having to put down the regular deposit.

I'm guessing they have more demand for the one way trips, and less for the round trips, so they put the bigger ships on the one-ways.

If the seating is 615, we don't feel obliged to wait after 630 or so. Of course, on Carnival, we didn't skip the dining room, since there was nowhere else to eat, except for the buffet LOL.

If the seating is 615, we don't feel obliged to wait after 630 or so. Of course, on Carnival, we didn't skip the dining room, since there was nowhere else to eat, except for the buffet LOL.

If the seating is 615, we don't feel obliged to wait after 630 or so. Of course, on Carnival, we didn't skip the dining room, since there was nowhere else to eat, except for the buffet LOL.

Would love to join you guys and sail from New York. But we'll have just come back from the Sapphire Princess a couple months earlier, so we'll have to pass on this one. But if anyone's up for something in Jan/Feb 2007 to help celebrate the twins' 5th birthday, we might be doing something. We might look into who's doing cruises out of NYC in the winter then, since it's a relatively easy drive from here (9 hours or so)

Would love to join you guys and sail from New York. But we'll have just come back from the Sapphire Princess a couple months earlier, so we'll have to pass on this one. But if anyone's up for something in Jan/Feb 2007 to help celebrate the twins' 5th birthday, we might be doing something. We might look into who's doing cruises out of NYC in the winter then, since it's a relatively easy drive from here (9 hours or so)

If you are referring to taking an inside guarantee and ending up with the Royal Suite, this type of upgrade doesn't generally happen. It's not unheard of to be bumped up to a balcony from a window, but these are the exceptions than the rule. We did get a 9 category upgrade on Carnival, and could have gotten even more if we asked, but this was 4 days post-9/11 and the ship was 75% empty.

Funny how they started that release calling their ships "vessels" then switched to "cruise resorts" then back to vessels again LOL.

Welcome home Lisa. Looking forward to what you have to say.

Tortola?

It also looks to me in another picture that if you are under the Lido restuarant, your roof sticks out another 4 or 5 feet than if you are under a Lido balcony cabin, but you aren't exposed to above in either case.