Plumlee2028

Another set of souvenir cups that comes to mind are the fancier drink cups. I have an old pina colada glass with the logos and such on the side. Buy a drink or buy one for a bit more with a fancier glass. Are those types of glass a thing still? (I get drink package all the time now, so I never pay attention to that). One thing that surprised me in 2021 was that both Royal cruises I went on didn't leave the beverage package tumblers in the room like they used to. Could be another element to the question.

I think they saw too much overlap between Celebrity, Azamara, and Silversea. Especially with Celebrity moving towards All inclusive style pricing. Royal Caribbean seems particularly careful about their brands having too much overlap, whereas Norwegian felt that Oceania still fits between NCL and Regent.

$275 Million. About $100 million less than what Crystal built it for. It does sound like they will do some light modification at some point, removing the casino (which is gigantic) and the helicopters will probably be removed by the sounds of it.

Since my September Quantum sailing was booked on Cruise With Confidence, I am cancelling it moving the FCC over to my Oasis in January. Quantum could be fixed by then, but didn't want to take the chance. Discovery Princess is going out 1 day earlier, so trying them out for the first time. I always get drinks packages and wifi, so the Princess offering with a balcony was a little cheaper. Was in a studio balcony on Quantum. Have to admit, Im appreciating the IT aspects better thus far.

A big thing to remember for carnival corp is they are very regionally specific. When you talk Europe, they have Costa, P&O, Aida, and sort of Cunard. Carnival also has two of their North America brand (Princess and Holland America) operate massive Europe summer seasons. MSC just has MSC. Since 2019, Aida added 2 ships each over 5000 passengers. Costa added 4 (Venezia, Firenze, Smeralda, Toscana). So it makes sense to rationalize somewhere. Since the pandemic, they said they sold 23 ships, but added 9. The capacity available is about the same. That's a huge efficiency/revenue enhancement. Similar to Royal Caribbean offloading Majesty and Empress, but taking delivery of Odyssey. Carnival didn't say Europe was doing "bad" for them, just not as well as North America. That has generally been their history, so no surprise. Venezia and Firenze were always built for china originally, so when you have to relocate capacity, you may as well do it to where it will have the best benefit. MSC doesn't have that choice, North America is not as strong for them as Europe, so they bulked up Europe. As they are a private company, we dont know how well that is doing for them, they could be losing money on it. But where else do they put that capacity? Royal Caribbean does the same thing (Wonder of the Seas is a great example), but it is often less obvious because they use a global brand strategy, like MSC, rather than Carnival's regional brand strategy.

These ships were originally built for China. I think the rationale of the brand within a brand is to keep the ships ready to move back to China in relatively short order. Costa, as a brand, has done well historically in China. But with Carnival growing their China based brand with two former Costa ships and new builds in China, its a lot of capacity in a market that is not doing well at the moment. Costa also recently took delivery of Costa Smeralda and Toscana which are by far their biggest ships. Its a bunch of extra capacity.

Im going to Alaska on Quantum in September, and it was about a $900 savings in a studio balcony compared to a normal balcony. I got of the ones on deck 7 where the balcony is half the size of the whole room. In the rooms losing the couch is no big deal, I hardly ever use it. And the full size beds are big enough. Certainly to save money for drinks/wifi/excursions/ etc.

Anecdotally, I have found pretty shortly after the inventory is released for sale, the studios price higher. I think the system initially looks at "There are only 12 of these" compared to over a thousand normal balconies etc. Before long they come back down to pricing where they should.

I am early 30s and I love Celebrity. They don't target families per se, but they aren't targeting older guests only. They do lots of activities, games, etc that keep people entertained. So while there aren't slides and such, there will be a lot to do if you choose to. Not sure if you like shows generally, but I always enjoy Celebrity's and they tend to have a different one every night.

I'm on the Summit currently and everything is great as expected. 650 passengers, 940 crew. No waiting for anything.

I am going on Celebrity in a couple weeks. There are about 17 or 18 excursion options right now (For reference, only 12 or 13 in Nassau, so relatively more in Puerto Plata). They have several that have animal experience/shows at a marine park. There are hiking/waterfalls/jeep expeditions in various combos. There is an excursion to boat out to a sandbar which is set up like a beach club. There is kayaking through a manatee reserve and a few others as well. As for the port itself, it is still a work in progress I think.

Carnival Does Bahamas but they make it an 8 day. One of their ships alternates 6 day down to cozumel/belize type route and 8 day to bahamas. They have 3 ships regularly in Galveston (one for 4/5 nights, 1 for 7 nights, 1 for 6/8 nights) I think outside of one-offs its hard to justify without a third ship.

Often times I have been able to walk down the hall (50-100 feet or so) and see them staged in a line and grab mine during the process of delivering.

Historically, San Juan cruises have been over the winter months. I suspect (but I don't know for sure yet) that the southern Caribbean options will be from Florida with longer itineraries (8-11 day type sailings). For example in May this year, I am doing an 8 night to Aruba and Curacao from Fort Lauderdale.

Theres some historical ownership overlap in there. And the existing Dream cruises ships were built by Meyer Werft, same as the Breakaway and Breakaway Plus class at Norwegian.

Im not sure they would want something as big as the Global Dream under construction. Its over 200,000 tons and seems rather densely designed. They also have a bunch of capacity coming with 6 Prima class ships in 7 years. Now the current dream fleet is not too dissimilar from their existing breakaway class.

Interesting to hear a German taxpayer view on this. I agree, Genting was unwilling to participate in additional risks, and so the German/Local governments shouldn't have either. Especially as, according to media reports, Genting was asking for the loan payout several years before originally contemplated.

On a separate thought, I do think that the ship pricing is going to have to change. All of the major groups (Chantiers, Fincantieri, and Meyer) have to compete hard for these major projects and margins are not great based upon reported financial results. There is a ton of risk for the ship builders, costs, complexities, etc without a significant gain on the pricing end.

This is the result of the Genting Hong Kong mess over the last several weeks. The ship yard component occurred a couple weeks ago. These yards were only really producing ships for Genting (Crystal and Dream) and one, Lloyd Werft had been doing some conversion/dry dock type work. Unfortunate for all of the employees of the various arms of the company. Genting has always seem to run these on a shaky financial footing and it is nearly impossible to manage the last couple years in this business if you weren't solid from the beginning. Even in the beginning of the pandemic Carnival Corp was borrowing money in double digits (like over 11%) which is insane in modern business, but it had to be done. I imagine Genting's borrowing prospects were worse.

Interesting. Allure is doing curaçao and aruba this summer from FLL several times, im trying one out in may. Your explanation cleared up some celebrity summit repos i saw from Miami to New Jersey. I thought it was odd, but makes sense now.

Labadee is supposedly happening now or soon, so that should hopefully work for you in March. San Juan may relax those restrictions, as they were given timelines each time the rule was made, and the rule was made with the latest surge, which may subside some more by then. Good news is that another option could be St Maarten. It is certainly large enough to handle Symphony and at St Thomas you are right next door. St. Kitts could be another but that would probably require bigger itinerary rework. Nassau could also happen as well.

With Liberty, it got some significant upgrades just before the amplification program. Similar to how Adventure got upgrades just a year or so before. Committing one of your biggest ships and investing heavily in a custom terminal is a huge program. The original intent was that Allure would be amplified before starting service in Galveston. Im sure it will be one of the first ships to get amplified once that program resumes. It may lead to Harmony or similar coming over at some point, or perhaps Icon some day. otherwise, Carnival is putting the brand new Jubilee in Galveston and Norwegian is bringing Prima, which will be their most upscale ship. Royal may commit further to Galveston than they already have, they have not yet replaced Majesty in New Orleans, and they may not any time soon.

Labadee is reportedly being prepped for use prior to your trip so that may be a go for you.

That's the one I am on.

Im doing that on Allure in May. Excited for it.