Dan

It would be nice if they moved them around a bit. I haven't really looked at them in a while, but instead of just showing the horizon, or the funnel, maybe they could angle them down to the pool area or something. I doubt we are going to see "live action" like watching a movie, since I'm sure they pay plenty just to be broadcasting the still pics they do now. Some of the RCI and Celebrity ships had promenade and computer lab cams, and Princess has wedding cams on several ships.

I haven't stopped doing land vacations. We just do different type of land vacations now, but with the kids, I'm sure there will be weeks spent at Disney in our future. But I agree with the above about value or health concerns causing us to drop cruises as a vacation choice.

If I agree they should have allowed cancellations or rebookings without penalty. For it's warts, Carnival was good about this sort of thing on both our cruises with them. First, they sent us a notice 2 weeks before departure that they were dropping the port call in Cartegena Colombia. The stated reason was civil unrest. The real reason was the ship wasn't fast enough to have any useful time in port, and they received complaints that people would prefer more time in Aruba and none in Cartegena on the Panama route. They offered us no penalty cancellation, or $50 pp credit if we kept the booking. Needless to say, they got that $100 back in the casino LOL. At 9-11, when we were booked on 9-15 out of NYC, they didn't offer us cancellation, but they gave us the opportunity to have a future credit for 18 months for the value of the cruise. Or should we take the cruise, and get ourselves to Boston, they would give us $200 pp credit, which was also able to be refunded in cash when we didn't spend it all that week. (We also got another $20pp when the port call in Sydney NS was cancelled due to weather).

I've never gone to Halifax, which I do every second year or so, and had it be colder than here in Ontario in the middle of summer. Spring starts earlier here and fall later, but July is typically as hot and muggy as here, especially in the cities where the cruise pax would be. Historical average temps don't really say as much as, say a 10 year trend due to global warming. Out of curiosity, how much hotter is Bermuda in summertime? As to the topic at hand, I do agree RCI should have either offered more than a token compensation or allowed people to re-book without penalty, but I'm not really sure what else is expected. Had they sailed to Bermuda and got tossed around in the remnants of a storm they would have been given as big a black eye as this. They have to operate from a safety first perspective, but they also have to realize that many people book a cruise for the itinerary. Canada cruises are nice, having done one myself, but if I boarded the ship expecting Bermuda, I'd be disappointed too. No real difference than booking a 14 day cruise to the Caribbean and they turn around and do a round trip Atlantic crossing instead.

A credit to buy warmer clothes? In July? It's darn near above freezing in Canada in July LOL.

I was impressed when Carnival announced this last winter that they were finally doing something for loyalty. But I was also surprised that since their sister line, Princess, offers free internet and most of those Carnival perks starting on your 6th cruise that Carnival would wait until 10. But at least it's better than it used to be, which was a free drink at the past guest party LOL.

Not in our case it wasn't LOL. 4 of the eight of us were past guests, who are supposed to get gold cards. Due to a spelling mistake, I got a blue one, just like the other 4 of our group who were first timers. No biggie. Then we go to board the ship, and the gold cards won't scan in the security centre. So, the golds who were bugging us blues on the gangway about our blue cards got it right back when we said at least we can get on the ship and they can't LOL. The security officer had to do some manual override to get the gold cards to scan in. Hopefully this wasn't the case with every gold card on the cruise.

Aww Jeff, but that means when the cruise is over, you're vacation is too when you get home that hour after the cruise. We get to stretch things out by flying across the country LOL. What's this 6 am business? We left the house at 10 and were in LA at 6pm (9 by our clock). Then a relaxing 20 minute hop to the ship Saturday morning.

I should say this last cruise had several opportunities for "favourite moments" simply because our friends went with us and it was their first cruise. It was actually Bob's first flight. I was really looking forward to his reaction on take-off, but when the opportunity came up for me and my wife to get exit row seats, I said "enjoy the flight, see you in LA" LOL. Then the next morning seeing their reaction as we drove to San Pedro and we all saw the ship for the first time. The language filter here won't allow me to repeat what they said when they saw the Sapphire sitting there LOL. Nothing like the feeling of introducing cruising to new people. They got engaged on the ship and have booked a 14 day on the Sea Princess for their honeymoon next March.

My favourite part of locking the front door of my house as we leave for the airport knowing we are on vacation.

I think it is overpriced, just like almost everything else on board LOL. They say the prices are 30-40% of what you'd see on land, but how do you know? It's not like you have time to find a piece you like, then go on the net to research it. Our friends that went with us in January bought a few pieces on Sapphire, and had them shipped home. Not sure what they paid, but they are happy with them and they look nice in their home, so I guess that's what matters.

Congrats everyone on this milestone. I have a feeling it won't take near as long for the next 100k LOL.

This site does that too. You can't put a x link here, and there was another site that was blocked and prevented me from adding a countdown clock before my last cruise.

"Cruisecrazies" used to be a trigger word over there that automatically referred your post to a moderator for approval. If you were able to actually post it, they must have let it slip in their last software upgrade, but I imagine it will be deleted if seen by a mod, and the mod queue re-instated. I respectfully suggest we don't purposefully try to antagonize over there (and I'm not saying that's what posting the packing list link was). This board, in it's various forms, has been around for almost 5 years now, so we should act like we are our own comminity, not an off-shoot of CC misfits.

I understand the re-entry to the US, whether codeshare or not. It's the transit in England that has me curious. They fly Venice to Gatwick on BA then Gatwick-Dallas-LA on AA. If the whole return flight isn't a codeshare on the same itinerary, I'm pretty sure they have to retrieve their luggage at LGW, clear British customs/immigration, and go right through the whole check-in process again. If it is codeshare, they likely have to clear customs with their luggage just as they will in Dallas, but they wouldn't have to go check-in again, since they should have been able to do that in Venice.

Did you book the VCE-LGW as part of the same itinerary? I'm not certain that BA will check your luggage to LAX from VCE unless you are on a codeshare arrangement. In fact, you may have to do the customs thing in LGW as well, where you retreive your luggage and have to put it back in teh system afterwards. I'm pretty sure Heathrow has a sterile onward transit area, where you don't actually enter England, but not sure about Gatwick. If the VCE-LGW leg is separate from the LGW-LAX itinerary, I can see you having to clear customs at LGW, go out and check-in again just as if you walked in off the street. I would check with AA to see if the VCE-LGW is a codeshare flight, or if it can be set up that way on your itinerary to allow you to check luggage and get boarding passes right at VCE all the way home. If you can bring yourself to revisit the evil board, you could send a PM to greatam. She knows her AA stuff, since she flies them a couple hundred thousand miles a year.

If it's anything like the Toronto or Detroit onward connection area, you will collect your bags, go through customs, and put the bags back on another belt as you go through customs. It's not quite as much a pain as going back upstairs to the check-in area to check your luggage again. You could do this on Air Canada in Toronto if you want a pain. You land at the infield terminal, take the bus to Terminal 1 to get your luggage and clear Canadian customs. Then you take another bus to terminal 2, and clear US customs, and check your luggage again and board your flight. The good part here at least is you are done with US customs and immigration before you even get on the plane to head there.

5A are the French Door cabins. No balcony. 7A are the balconies on the same deck as the life boats. Depending on the cabin, your balcony might have a view between the boats, or be totally blocked by the boats. But at least you can be outside.

I buy shot glasses in each port.

Princess should be able to give you that info now. Not flight numbers and times, but they should be able to say which day. You should look into flights on your own, and compare prices, and schedules. You may either want to book your own air, or book custom air on Princess which allows you to pick your flights. You may alos want to look into getting there a day or 2 earlier to adjust for jet lag. Where are you flying to?

I think the cruise lines do a cursory credit card approval for $500 or so, or maybe per person. But I've been told it's not a hold on your credit card line. So if they get $1000 cleared at the start of the trip, and we (read: my wife) spend $1000 in a port on something, if I only have a $1000 limit, the card won't approve my ship account. I'm not really sure what they do if the card is declined. I know if I was running things at a cruise line, there would be a credit card hold placed and a credit limit assigned to sail & sign cards. But if they don't do that now, I would guess it's because it hasn't been a big problem for them.

A Fort Lauderdale to Miami repositioning. Via Panama, Australia, South Africa and South America. With a stop in Princess Cays LOL. On the next ship with the same engine troubles Millenium had so it takes forever LOL.

I think you'll find that fares fluctuate throughout the day. Flights around noon and later in the evening on a weekday are usually cheapest. Plus if you are looking at January, that's usually a slower travel time, so there are usually lots of seat sales to be had. I'm not sure of your dates or cities, but I just priced out Jan 5 from Newark to Ft Lauderdale on Jetblue for $258 pp round trip, or $218 pp from JFK. That would fluctuate a bit since Jan 8 is as far as their schedule goes right now.

I don't see any real plus or minus to either. Depends on your schedule, and which works better for you as far as time to prepare to elave, and time to take care of things like laundry and whatever when you get home. Coming home on a Thursday might be a little less hectic as far as airport congestion goes, since mid-day, when you would be flying, is generally the lull period on a weekday. If you do the Monday sailing, you will fly home on Saturday, and will likely have a lot more cruise fliers to deal with at the same time. This also affects prices for flights since mid-day weekend flights are more popular from cruise ports. Flying in the day ahead is always a good idea, especially in winter. Gives you some leeway should the weather mess up schedules, helps make sure your lost luggage cacthes up with you before the cruise, and gives you an opportunity to have a relaxing night before the cruise knowing you only have a cab ride to the ship the next morning, not a 3 hour flight.

They are hoping to make it up in 3rd/4th fares. I couldn't beleive they were charging over $400 for 3rd/4th on a 5 day cruise whose 1st/2nd fares were only $549. I was thinking of breaking the kids on their first cruise when I'm off work in late June, but not at those prices.