Definately go with the new FUNPOINTS program unless you want to travel only on a non-carnival owned cruiseliner. If you prefer Royal C. for example then you may be better off going with Seamiles.
What I can tell you so far, and we don't have all our answers yet, is that it didn't cost us nearly as much for our "free" cruise with funpoints on Carnival as it would have with Seamiles. Now I don't know if that will be true for all Carnival owned companies or not, but as far as Carnival itself the cost is considerably better. Part of the reason is that you can book cruises with discounts - ie. seniors, early saver, etc. So you get the advantage of the reduced rate, something you didn't have with Seamiles as they basically told you how many seamiles it would take for a certain cabin on a particular cruise. And I'm guessing the prices were close to brochure rates. We only used approximately two-thirds of the points Seamiles said we would need for our cruise (no air fare, though you could pay for that, too, with funpoints.) We were amazed! Now we haven't seen the actual credit show up on our card statement yet, but that's supposed to be there within the next couple of days.
This is what you can pay for with Funpoints:
•Cruise discounts on the World's Leading Cruise Lines
•Onboard gifts such as champagne, roses and much more
•Onboard credits for spa and special occasions
•Any Carnival Cruise Lines purchase including Sail & Sign® purchases made with your Carnival MasterCard
We've decided to use some/all of the remaining points for the Sail and Sign card purchases when we return.
We still aren't sure what the actual $ to funpoint ratio is. We still don't have our new Mastercard. But we were certainly pleased with our cruise transaction. In fact all of this turned out to be a blessing and I'm embarassed for getting so frustrated in the beginning!
One other thing...we did read that you will lose your points if you cancel your card.
If anything changes where we are concerned, I'll let you know.
