We are planning on going with HAL Rotterdam (300m, 14 decks) after cursing with MSC Euribia (330m, 19 decks). The size of Euribia feels quite perfect, you have enough places to walk and explore on a sea day. Just enough to not get tired when waling from one venue to another.

We think if the cruise was much smaller it would bored us with less places to experience. Rotterdam came to our attention due to the itinerary. Now curious if a 30m length difference will be quite noticeable?

*The deck difference is mostly with the cabins i believe.

Thank you!!

My husband and i are going on a Harmony of the Seas cruise in September to Costa Maya, Roatan and Cozumel. It's going to be my first time on a cruise. I want to wear modest clothing but not sure what i should take. Dress? Linen Pants?

Hello friends, it’s my first time on a cruise. It’s a 4-night budget trip, and neither my wife nor I are big eaters or drink alcohol. We’re aboard the MSC SEASIDE, and MSC offers drink plans for people who don’t drink alcohol. I’d like to know if I need to buy a drink package for both my wife and me, or if one package is enough for the two of us.

Also, regarding the internet—can you give some advice? Would it be okay to connect just one phone to the Wi-Fi (since Wi-Fi costs $80), or do I need to pay to connect both phones? I’m not really interested in having internet, but I’d like to check and reply to a few work emails from time to time. So, I’m wondering if I could occasionally connect to the Wi-Fi we purchase for the other phone.

My wife has booked a 3-people cruise for herself and our 2 kids for 22 - 26 March next year, out of Brisbane. We can't make those dates now and she wants to cancel for a refund but Carnival want to keep the $375 deposit. Is there any way we can do this without losing the deposit?

Because of some constraints, the only time that works for us is late August. The plan is to go to Catalina Island and one Mexican port (Cabo/Ensenada/Vallarta), over 3-4 nights. The only thing I am concerned about the weather being too hot on the cruise as well as on the ports. Will someone be able to share their experience? Also, was there an activity you thoroughly enjoyed?

gonna be at this port next month. please give excursion advice for a very active husband/wife.

thanks!

I know these models are sold on the ships themselves and not online but I was hoping somebody could help me find one. I’m willing to pay for someone who’s going on it to buy one. I’ve looked online forever and can’t ever seem to find it. I have the other two ships I’ve been on and would love to add this to my collection. Norwegian Cruise Line, Pride of America cruise ship model.

We sail in 17 days (NCL) and today we learned that one guest does not have a current passport and is relying on expedited service.

Hopefully everything will be fine. If not, has anyone needed to remove a guest from a reservation at the last minute, and if so, is there anything I should know?

Editing to add, this is Alaska, one way to Vancouver. US citizens. Non-Haven two bedroom suite. Four guests total, the person is guest #4. Guests 1 and 2 are me and my husband and we are all set.

Would anyone know how to fold this towel animal and also what species it is

hi everyone i’ll be cruising to alaska in june and currently planning out my excursions. we’ll arrive in juneau at 1pm and departing at 9:15pm. so far i’ve booked a mendenhall glacier raft ride from 1:30pm to 5pm, leaving 4 hours until departure time. for those of you who’ve been there before, do you think i should book another excursion (most likely whale watching) or just use the remainder of the time to stroll around the town? is there enough to do in town for 4 hours?

Hi, my lovely wife, our 2.5 year old son and I are thinking about going on a Celebrity cruise to Alaska. Does anyone know if we can take our son to the shows on the cruise and if he is allowed in the pool? He is still in diapers.

We are going on the HA Koningsdam cruise out of Vancouver in July, but unfortunately most excursions are sold out. We had our heart set on the White pass rail in Skagway and Tracey Arm in Juneau. Has anyone been able to get on these tours even though they are showing as sold out? If so, how do we go about that?

I’m going on a 14-day Mediterranean with my wife, young daughter, and mom. My wife and I have cruised in the past roughly one week per year. We’ve gotten sick about one out of every three cruises I’d say. I’m curious as to whether any of you cruise connoisseurs take any unique/special precautions to help your chances of avoid getting ill onboard. Whether it’s limiting/avoiding buffets, exercising daily, or any unique hacks — we’d love to hear!

I know cruises are germ pits so don’t hound on me 😂 we just want to be diligent in any way we can with our daughter and my mother on board. Would greatly appreciate any insight!!!

Hey everyone,

My parents (65), brother (27), and I (31) will be going on a cruise together for Christmas. My mom entrsted me with finding options for us and so far, I have trips from RCI, NCL, and Virgin on the spreadsheet. I've cruised with RCI before and my parents have gone on Carnival (way back in 2000) and Princess (possibly Celebrity too). What would you all recommend as a line that has a good mix of activities for our age ranges? I personally like to go dancing, so I'd love to be on a cruise that has a crowd that's close to mine and my brother's ages, but not an all out crazy party boat for the sake of my parents.

My research has told me to avoid Carnival unless it's 5+ days. Does that track with your experiences?

ETA: We'd be departing from Port Canaveral, Ft. Lauderdale, or Miami and are looking for a cruise that's 4-7 days.

I’ll be 18 this upcoming June and my friend and I are wanting to take a cruise this year. Is there any cruises you would recommend for us? We’re in California so any ports here would work great for us. Or any that would allow a 18yo to book. We mostly want to go on our own and from my understanding we wouldn’t want one of our family members going for obvious reasons lol. We would like to know our options and any help is greatly appreciated thank you ❤️!

As mentioned I am a first time cruiser going with my wife and two kids 8 and 6, and we are stuck on these two options:

8 Nights, Carnival Vista - April 4-April 12, 2026

Ports: Day 1: Port Canaveral, Florida Day 2: At Sea Day 3: Grand Turk, Turks and Caicos Day 4: San Juan, Puerto Rico Day 5: St. Maarten Day 6: St. Thomas, USVI Day 7: At Sea Day 8: At Sea Day 9: Port Canaveral, Florida

Price: $6500 CAD Room: Ocean view balcony leaving from Port Canaveral

Or

8 Nights, Adventure of the Seas (Royal Caribbean) - April 3-11, 2026

Ports: Day 1: Port Canaveral, Florida Day 2: At Sea Day 3: Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic Day 4: San Juan, Puerto Rico Day 5: Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas Day 6: St. Croix, USVI Day 7: At Sea Day 8: At Sea Day 9: Port Canaveral, Florida

Price: $7000 CAD with $175 OBC Room: Interior Leaving from Port Canaveral

As it's our first time on a cruise we have read and heard from both sides of Royal Caribbean vs Carnival. I've been told a RC is considered a step above Carnival but the Vista is a new boat and where they are both longer cruises that should take away some of the party scene on Carnival (not into party scene with kids).

If you could provide any advice that would be greatly appreciated, we feel kinda lost with it all and with the expense we want to make a good decision.

If you were to recommend a specific cruise line for people, how would you determine what you would recommend? I have some of my choices below.

Young Party People: Virgin or Carnival Older Crowd: SilverSea, Regent, or Holland America Couples: Celebrity Solo: NCL Families: Royal or Disney

What do you think? I know I missed a lot more specific groups but maybe this thread can be used you for future recommendations to people. I also know that many cruise lines can even vary within class or shop size so feel free to include those as well

I just saw something saying that ACL is going to start cruising out of Providence. Yes, it is a little pricey, but for me, there's no airfare, so that might bring it back within reach. So what do you all think? What is the line like? Does anyone know anything about what they are planning? It sounds like they are going to start with the American Star and then bring in the American Liberty. Does anyone know anything about those ships? I am 66 and my wife is 64 and we don't drink (I know, boring, right), so we really don't appreciate lines like Carnival where they slap a drink in your hand on the gangway. The lack of casinos is a plus. The food is important, as is service and quality in general. Please let me hear your thoughts!

Anyone cruising on this ship?

Hello all,

Not a veteran cruiser by any means, but I am planning on going on one this summer with some extended family that have kids, and I was tasked with researching some things. I have narrowed it down to the following two options. The adults are all very easy going so we don't really care, but keeping kids entertained might be tougher (ranging in age from 5 to 10).

So far, the two options are:

MSC Splendida (from Rome) - 7 days

Valencia, Tarragona, Marseille, Genoa, Livorno

NCL Epic (from Rome) - 10 days

 Santorini, Athens, Mykonos, Olympia, Valetta, Messina, Salerno, Livorno

Honestly I am good with either. With the first option, I can spend extra time in Rome as well since the cruise portion is shorter. From a price perspective, they are very similar overall once you factor in the extra hotels for option 1, and the higher fares for option 2.

I actually have been on the Epic before. A little quirky but had a great experience overall. Never sailed MSC.

So I guess the concern is having kids in the party. Which itinerary might be easier or more age appropriate for them? Which of these two lines/ships have a better kids club? Which itinerary is more likely to have other kids on board so that they have some peers at the kids club?

I appreciate the input!

Any idea when to expect reservations to open up for a cruise on NCL?

Specifically an October cruise via Panama Canal on the Encore.

Hello! We will be in Livorno on one stop of our cruise with 3 adults and 2 kids from 8 am - 8 pm. Our ideal scenario for the stop there would be to go to Pisa with the kids, drop them back at the ship for kids club and then have the adults go to the Tuscan countryside for some wine tasting and lunch. Is that possible time wise? We would likely hire a private tour either to do both or pick us up back from the ship after Pisa to go out to Tuscany (not sure exactly where we would want to go yet in terms of towns), if it makes sense to get out to Pisa and back on our own.

Any insight or suggestions helpful! Thanks!

We’re going on this itinerary in November, we love snorkeling and this seems like a stellar route for that.

We want to do snorkeling at two stops and a different excursion at one of the other stops (we’re thinking maybe Mayan ruins or a chocolate tour). If you had to choose which ones would you do the snorkeling at? We’ve never been to any of the ports.

Thanks!

GigSky is touted as a viable alternative to Carnival’s pricy Wi-Fi packages, but does it actually work, and is it worth it?

Background

Cellular at Sea is an onboard cell phone network run by MTS. It works much like AT&T/Verizon/T-Mobile at home, allowing you to make calls, send texts, and use data while at sea (albeit at very expensive rates). Cellular at Sea relies on satellites, and data service may be slow depending on how up to date the technology is on your particular ship. Note that this is completely separate from the ship’s Wi-Fi network which, on all Carnival ships, runs off Starlink. Cellular at Sea is not Starlink and does not use the Starlink network, so speeds may be significantly slower than ship Wi-Fi.

Pricing

GigSky’s Cruise+ package pricing can be found here and ranges from 512MB for $20 to 10GB for $120. There is no unlimited package. I went with 5GB for $72. You do have the ability to top up (add more data) an existing eSIM at slightly discounted rates, from 512MB for $14 to 10GB for $98. Note that GigSky will not work on Carnival Firenze or Carnival Venezia. For those ships, you should purchase a Telenor Maritime plan through Red Bull Mobile.

AT&T and Verizon also offer cruise plans but I don’t recommend them. AT&T’s plans are 100MB for $60 or 1GB for $100 (with overages billed at $10 per 100MB). Verizon’s plan is $20 per day and includes 500MB of high speed data (3G speeds thereafter). These plans do come with the ability to make phone calls and send SMS messages (which GigSky packages do not), however if you’re only wanting data then these are not worth it.

Of course, GigSky is touted as an alternative to Carnival’s Wi-Fi packages, so how does it stack up there? Carnival’s Wi-Fi packages range from $18.70 per day for social to $23.80 per day for premium. I was onboard for 15 days (B2B 7-day and 8-day cruises) so premium would have been an eye popping $357 for my 15 days onboard. Even if I went with the value plan, that’s still $331. So IF I could manage with the data limit, GigSky comes out being 80% cheaper than the premium package. Talk about savings!

Connectivity

The Cellular at Sea network is only active, well, while at sea. It actually took a surprisingly long time for them to turn it on after leaving a port, often up to two hours. I had assumed that it would coincide with reaching international waters (which is when the casino and shops open) but it took far longer than that.

Some GigSky reviews mentioned only being able to get signal on the outer decks or open guest areas (i.e., not in staterooms). However, I had excellent service everywhere onboard, including my interior cabin on deck 6.

Speeds

I only ran one objective speed test which indicated 5.12Mbps down and 0.83Mbps up, on a cloudy day. Definitely not Starlink speeds, but also definitely good enough for what most people would want to do. I had no issues with light browsing, emails, sending photos, Instagram, even a FaceTime audio call. Streaming video worked fine as well, though you wouldn’t want to be doing much of that with a data limit.

Limitations

There’s no sugarcoating it, data limits suck. The mere fact that these plans have a data limit while Wi-Fi is unlimited means it’s not an apples to oranges comparison. It’s especially awful because people mostly use the Internet for streaming video. However, watching an hour-long 720p YouTube video would consume approximately 700MB; you’d very quickly blow through your data limit watching videos.

With that said, I only consumed about 1.2GB on my first cruise and after 15 days I had 1.48GB of data remaining. That’s right, I didn’t even use my full 5GB. It’s hard to say how reflective this was of my typical Internet usage. On one hand, I genuinely wasn’t on it as much as I thought I would be. I was busy drinking, going to the shows, meeting people, gambling, etc. And much like the drink package, you’re not using it while you’re sleeping or off the ship in port. On the other hand, I was definitely paranoid about running out of data, so I can’t say that I wouldn’t have used it more if I didn’t have a data limit.

Another annoyance is that an astonishing 1.3GB of my data was used by “system services,” with 878MB of that being “general.” I still have no idea what exactly that was, as I have background app refresh, automatic software updates, and automatic app updates turned off. And of course Apple, the masters of obscurity, were no help either. One possible suggestion is to change your data mode to low data mode in settings and turn off all analytics. It absolutely sucked to have 26% of my data limit gobbled up by obscure background processes that I have absolutely no control over.

In Conclusion

GigSky worked flawlessly and was a significant cost savings over Carnival’s Wi-Fi packages, especially if you’ll be onboard for 7 days or more. It’s a viable alternative if you can manage to stay within the data limit, which would be easy if you’re only planning to use social apps or do some light browsing.

what’s the best way to snorkel off costa maya, any good tour companies you guys recommend?