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klc317

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Everything posted by klc317

  1. We managed to find the time to schedule a 5 night in June on Majesty out of Tampa. That ship seems to get moved around to different ports a lot! This will be the third time Ive been on this ship, my wifes 4th and surprisingly this will be the second time for our 6 year old daughter. She is the main reason we have been doing shorter cruises over the past few years....just more convenient for us. This upcoming cruise has 2 sea days which might be a bit much on this small of a ship but with our daughter with us we always seem to never get bored. As for Majesty, we've always had a great time.....yes, its not huge and not packed with activities and gadgets like some of the other larger ships but I was always impressed with the upkeep and cleanliness on board and the staff has always been outstanding. Its easy to navigate and learn your way around. Also, its much easier to meet some people to talk to since you seem to run into them several times at common spots throughout the cruise which is kinda nice. I enjoy the ship.
  2. We've been on Enchantment several times, and was on Mariner a long time ago....I believe 2007... I'm kinda excited to try Mariner again on a short 4 night in the near future but in my opinion either will serve the purpose just fine. We were on Enchantment last August and the exterior of the ship was looking pretty run down, needed new paint bad but they've since fixed all that and it looks great now. For a 3-4 night itinerary I almost think Mariner would be overwhelming although interesting if someone wasn't used to a ship of that size on a short cruise. But, it is marketing genius on RCs part.....folks would want to get another taste of a larger ship and its array of amenities again and likely on a longer itinerary if it was their first time. As for the flights, we live near Cincinnati so its usually significantly cheaper if leaving out of Miami to fly to FLL and catch a shuttle to the port in Miami. Seems either Frontier or Allegiant or a combination of the two can get us a quite inexpensive non stop ticket. As for the ride to the port of miami.... have used a small company called SAS Transportation quite a few times and have found their prices and service to be great but I'm sure theres many others.
  3. We used a company called Cortrans last month to get from MCO to Canaveral. They have your typical smallish buses (like the kind built on a van chassis) that were very nice and clean and the drivers were friendly. I would suggest them.
  4. Been kinda following along just out of curiosity to see how the logistics of a massive disruption like this works. I see Majesty is at Ft Lauderdale/Port Everglades now. I assume everyone disembarked there? Thats gotta be quite a strange situation trying to move people and reschedule flights. From what I can tell Port Canaveral, the original destination, is still closed for damage assessment until this evening.
  5. Not a bad place to be "stuck" for a day or two!
  6. I was wondering.....since the hurricane appears to be heading towards central east coast of Florida Thursday into Friday as of now what happens to say Majesty when it is scheduled to return to Port Canaveral on Friday morning? Would they still attempt to return to there? The forecast now appears that will be the worst impact near Orlando. We were on the 4 night last week, I guess we couldn't have picked a better time....weather was great the whole cruise.
  7. Yes. On our cruise last week we were able to FaceTime and use apps to call. No issues at all.
  8. We also were on the Sept 26 majesty cruise.....really got lucky with the weather this time of year, it was perfect. I also find the pillows to be kinda lacking and my wife likes to hold one against her as she sleeps so we had no problem requesting some extras.
  9. Our daughter, who is now 4 years old has been on a couple cruises with us, generally 4-5 night variety so she doesn't get burnt out. We've been successful each time (much to my concern prior to the first time) and she has seemed to have fun on each. We generally try to do simplified nearby tours or excursions where we know she will have interesting things to see and do to keep her from getting bored as well as having a short distance to travel back to the ship (in the earlier days) in case she decided it was time for an afternoon nap. The hop on/hop off type tours are ideal as mentioned previously. As far as the childrens area on the ship, Adventure Ocean, we usually took her there every evening for about an hour or two after dinner. She enjoyed the other children and playing with some toys and other activities they do was good for her and gave us a little bit of alone time to go to the casino, see a show, spend some "adult" time together, etc. The staff seemed very friendly and are quite thorough about being able to contact you and other safety measures if the need were to arise. When she was younger we brought a compact/lightweight type stroller with us....wasn't much of a hassle and had no problems moving around the ship (when we used it) except for the normal bunch of elevator stampede people you run into on every cruise as soon as the door opens...haha. In fact it came in really handy for us even to pack around towels, shopping bags, etc when she wasn't using it. No matter what you bring, bags, stroller, her toys, etc off the ship and into a beach setting you can expect to find sand in it forever.
  10. We've gone on several cruises with our daughter, she's now 4 years old. We did bring her lightweight car seat with us, used an independent transfer company from the airport to the port once. They didn't even think twice about it and I really don't think they care either way seeing as how its defined as a livery type vehicle as mentioned before. We just felt better about it and it wasn't much of an extra hassle to bring along the simple/lightweight carseat. We rented a car earlier this year to make the trip from FLL to port of miami (one way rentals) so we did bring it along again but the car rental places will rent you a car seat along with the car for a small fee.
  11. We were cancelled on once, the May 23rd. Though it took some aggravation and lots of time on hold we did manage to get it all resolved. Ive mentioned before that due to not being able to reschedule our time off work and flights we did make last minute arrangements on a Carnival ship for the same dates. We also managed to get our $200 next cruise money refunded at a later date. All of it took quite a bit of phone tree climbing and having to ask for managers/supervisors and just being persistent in the nicest manner we could muster but yea. We were offered a 4 night cruise in place of our 5 night cruise originally booked but declined the offer at the time and opted to get our money refunded. Our first time on Carnival was....eh. We were on Sensation which is quite a worn out ship in dire need of renovation but then again it was better than a week at work and got the job done. Having been on 10 or so RC cruises in the past I guess we are used to the brand and I'm sure some of the newer/larger carnival ships are just fine. The funny thing was when we got back to Port of Miaimi Empress was sitting there docked for its first initial cruise which from what Ive read was quite troublesome. We needed to use our next cruise credit before next year so we are booked on another RC cruise in a few months. Despite the aggravation and getting cancelled from our May Empress sailing I would say I will be happy to be back to RC.
  12. We went on a 4 night on Majesty last year and were booked on a 5 night on Empress last month but we got cancelled due to the delays. Ended up on Carnival Sensation since changing our days off was not an option. We have always taken 7 night cruises previous to these two but we took our daughter this year and last (she was 3 and 4 years old) so we decided that a shorter cruise "break in period" or "trial and error" was in order with a young child. Fortunately, she did great on both and we had had a wonderful time although I was not at all impressed with Carnival and the Sensation but thats a whole different discussion.....lets just say the statements your TA made would be correct in that case! However, we made the best of it and still had a great time...it is a vacation after all. Majesty was pretty nice last year and its back from a recent major refurbishment so I would imagine its now much nicer. Enchantment and Empress are also doing the shorter florida 3-5 night runs also as of now that I know of. Smaller ships but all in great shape and fresh. I would personally prefer a 7 night since as mentioned before you're getting more days for your buck especially if you were flying to Florida but we tried the 4-5 night ones and weren't disappointed. I don't think I'd go any shorter than 4 though but thats my opinion. There is obviously a slightly different crowd on a 3-5 night as opposed to a 7 night.
  13. Waaaytooo....I'm glad you managed to get it worked out. I think you will have a much better time on the Freedom and won't have the worries in the back of your mind about traveling on a pile of crap that just got patched together....lol!
  14. RCvoyager.....I agree! I'm just glad we were able to snag a decent room for a similar price last minute on the carnival ship on the same dates. I sure won't be surprised to see quite a few people onboard who are in a similar situation, RC faithful who were forced to make the switch. Been reading off and on all morning trying to familiarize myself with carnivals world and to get some idea what the ship is like. I don't see any reason why we won't enjoy it.
  15. Glad you can still go on another and have a backup plan or two. Fortunately as I said before we were able to make some moves last night and can still go on a cruise during the time period we have available albeit on Carnival. Sure we missed out on some on board credits and a few hundred on a future cruise credit we were going to use for Empress but those will still be around to use on a later date. We would have lost our butts changing our airfare and if we had accepted the 4 night option they offered we would still be stuck with the cost of a hotel room, rental car, and food for the day so it worked out in our case. Not an ideal situation at all and we aren't happy about RC handling this whole thing but.....it is what it is. I will miss the few crown and anchor perks of quicker boarding and a few other things but oh well. We will go and have fun with our daughter and make the best of it.
  16. My wife sat on hold for a little over an hour and finally got through to what I assume is a foreign call center person with canned answers. We were offered a 4 night Bahamas cruise on another ship (enchantment I believe?) but we declined and opted to receive option B which was a full refund which they stated would take 4-6 weeks. She was not rude but really kinda drilled the guy with questions but really didn't get anywhere. Unfortunately since our dates are not flexible for vacation time this year we called up Carnival (who we have never used before) and got a nice ocean view room comparable to what we would have had on the Empress for almost the same price, minus our RC next cruise credit of $200. Took all of 30 seconds to get ahold of someone there. Cruise is 5 nights and the exact same dates so we didn't have to go through the hassle of getting our airfare changed. We kinda had to jump on something since it's only a month away. Also had good luck with our travel insurance who gladly accomodated our rescheduling for no extra
  17. Just heard the news....I guess one of the mods can go ahead and delete my topic about seeing the pics of the Empress.....unbelievable.....thanks a lot RC. Thanks for the 10 yrs, we are done.
  18. I don't know if I buy all the roach infestation etc. or other rumors I've seen and read (I did go to CC and read a little) but obviously something quite major as far as equipment, systems, mechanical stuff, etc had to be replaced or majorly overhauled and perhaps ordered and built specifically for the ship late notice otherwise a delay of a month or more wouldn't have happened. Seems like they can usually get a ton of work done within a months time on one of those huge ships and its quite well orchestrated. In fact some of the videos I've seen its amazing how they do it....no easy task. My wife really enjoys and thrives on getting to the bottom of things if we get screwed over on something we paid for.....lol. She will argue over $1 overcharge at the grocery store, argue with the cable/internet company for hours, etc. God help them if we lose out on this...haha. Anyway, Im looking forward to seeing some pics/videos if anyone does get on the Empress prior to our May 23rd itinerary. Fingers crossed!!
  19. Nice. Thats the same one we are booked on also. Im sure it will be full due to people being moved into the mix from the cancelled dates but thats fine. Its kind of an unusual itinerary with an overnight stay and 2 days in Cozumel but we thought why not? we will give it a shot. The price was good and it fit into our schedules nicely. Yea, it would be interesting to see some info/videos/pics. I always like to watch a few YouTube videos of any new to us ship we go on just to get a rough idea of what we are going to be dealing with.....lots of people seem to put up some quite detailed ship tours but this time we are going in blind. All in all we've never been let down or had a bad experience on a RC cruise so I'm thinking positive and hope I'm right. Its not easy to reschedule vacations with our jobs.
  20. We've been through port of Miami several times and the only hang up is some long lines trying to come back in after the cruise through customs and such. Its not awful but can eat up some time. We always book a later flight just to be safe on the way home. As for coming in its pretty fast.....we've arrived sometimes at 11:30-12:00 and never had any trouble getting on the ship right away after checking in of course.
  21. Hi. First post on here. We have been on about 10 RC cruises, usually one a year since 2006. Last year was our first smaller ship/shorter itinerary (as our girl had just turned 3, we brought her along) on Majesty on a 4 night bahamas/key west itinerary. This year we have an end of May five night to Cozumel on Empress booked. Again, we are bringing our daughter since things went quite smooth last year and she seemed to enjoy it. Kinda taking a risk on an even smaller ship than we are used to but I'm sure it will still be enjoyable and we will have fun as always. Anyway....I have been looking around online trying to find any recent pictures/sneak peeks of the construction/refurbishment on the Empress with no luck. Ive read all about the first 6 weeks or so being cancelled due to more time needed but I'm hoping by end of next month everything will be ironed out so we can still go. Best I can tell on a cruiseship tracker is that its been sitting at Freeport Bahamas for a week or two, obviously getting more work done. Anybody know of any recent images of anything completed? I imagine RC is kinda keeping things under wraps until its officially in service.
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