Carnival Victory 11/18/2007

[stockli]

Hello,

I am new here. I have a few questions. Myself and a couple of my friends are looking at doing the Carnival Victory 11/18/2007. My birthday would be 11/20. I did click on the form that I'd be celbrating my birthday. Do they do something special for you or is that something someone would have to plan?

ALso, we are 25 years old. Is this ship suitable for us, or would you suggest another ship? We are planning on going to the Western Carribbean (Ft Lauderdale (Pt Evrglds), FL ; Nassau, Bahamas ; Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands ; Ocho Rios, Jamaica ; Ft Lauderdale (Pt Evrglds), FL . Would you recommend this or something else for us?

Also, while filling out the booking form, it asks if you'd like to include the gratuity. Is that something I want to do ahead of time or?? I'm a little new on this. I went when I was like 14 years old with my parents to the bahamas, but thats been a while.

We are also trying to keep the costs low. Right now I'm getting a rate of $552 per a person, not including airfare which would be roughly another $230/person. Would choosing another time of the year, or possibly another location lower this rate?

Thanks so much for your help. I'd be interested to see how many others will be on this cruise!

 

[SandyBeach]

I passed up your post the other day as I thought you were looking for people cruising at the same time. Let me see if I can address some of your questions....

The time of year should be good for the rates. Keep an eye on the cost of similar cabins from now until November and if you see they have gone down then contact whomever you booked with and unless you got some sort of "special" deal they should give you a discount or onboard credit. (It depends on how close to the actual cruise you are as to what they may or may not give you.)

I happen to have Frommer's Caribbean Ports of Call 2006 here - checked out from the Library - and it says the "low season" is September, October, early November, the first two weeks of January, and sometimes in late April and May. Those being the best times for the lowest prices.

Carnival use to give free cakes for special occasions. Unfortunately, Travel Agents encouraged people to make up special occasions...thus everyone traveling seemed to be needing a cake. As a result they are no longer free. They will bring out a desert with a candle on it on your birthday...or you can purchase a special birthday cake.

I think this ship will be fine for you and your friends. The longer the cruise the older the passengers...but Carnival keeps things pretty "young". Frommer's says that 30% of Carnival's passengers are below age 35. Their other suggestion for singles under 30 was Royal Caribbean. (It's been six years since we've cruised RCI and they have made changes...but at that time we thought they were very sedate compared with Carnival.) We've been on 12 Carnival cruises...including Victory (not your itinerary) and have enjoyed them all.

We haven't been to Nassau since 1997..you might want to check the Ports board to see what someone who has been there more recently might say. In Grand Cayman....swim with the stingrays! It's such a fantastic experience. In Ocho Rios I hear Dunns River Falls is the thing to do. We've been at the other port in Jamaica...but hope to do Ocho Rios in the not to distant future.

I'm not sure about the gratuity thing was...although I have heard some talk about having "prepaid" instead of having it put on your sail and sign card when you get there. This would be up to you...
the only thing about pre-paying would be if you didn't like the service you got and wanted to go to the pursers desk to get the amount reduced...you probably couldn't do that in a pre-pay situation.
(This is just a guess on this one though.)

As far as keeping costs down...if you aren't locked into November 18th...then I'd check out earlier that month...and October (we've sailed several times in October and not had any problems with hurricanes) - or if you are concerned about hurrican season - perhaps just the last week or so of October and the first week or so of November and see if the same cruise is being offered for less. I don't know if your $552 includes taxes and port charges or not...if not keep that in mind. I went to carnival Sunday 4/1 and looked at the Victory - Western Carribean - and saw that Nov 4th is going for $459 and December 2nd is going for $429. The Eastern Caribbean route also had some less than $552 - those ports are good as well. www.carnival.com/Ship_Detail.aspx?shipCode=VI

You can also try going to the Carnival Site and select "find a cruise" put in the information they ask...and they'll put up all the cruises for that time frame and length - that way you can see if any are less expensive. (You will have to register if you haven't already in order to do this.) If I remember correctly most of these don't include taxes and port charges.

If you have any other questions please let me know...here or by "Reply via PM".

 

[savanah]

hi
we're going on the Victory this month...doing the western carribbean route. i'll let you know how it went, and whether or not its a young crowd.