TheSkipper

Bon Voyage, Rat. Don't forget I'll be looking for you HAL review and comments on the Sea of Cortez. Have fun with Crazie, we die.

OK, now I understand. Sounds great. In the meantime I booked a transatlantic on the Azamara Quest out of Miami which includes Air from Las Vegas and ground transfers in both Miami and Rome, pre=paid gratuities, and a $300 cabin credit. We will be departing on May 12th. Pending confirmation tomorrow morning. Once this is nailed down, I'm going to cancer our Oceania cruise in December. They have changed the Itinerary twice since I booked it, so now they can keep it and we will move on.

Carmen: Have you tried to book this?? I just did and total for two came up well over 3K. Somethings goofy on their site.

Carmen: Are you sure that is not a typo and should be $1,849 ??

You've gotta give it a go.

So do I Steve and Jenn. We had a fantastic time aboard the Spirit.

Here we go Jackie: http://www.photoshow.com/watch/xi3vP8Vy Enjoy the pics. Should give you a good idea what it is like. Ed

I like the fact that you can get lunch in the dining room rather than in the mess that usually develops in the Horizon Court on the first day as folks try and figure out where things are.

Below is the link for my Photo Show of our recent cruise aboard the Carnival Spirit. Enjoy. http://www.photoshow.com/watch/xi3vP8Vy

Jackie, Send me a PM with an email address and I'll send you a link to my Photo Show of our Glory cruise which includes photos of the cave tubing.

Great report and fantastic pictures. We are heading to South America in December, so we really enjoyed looking at your pictures.

You are linked in small groups of about six people. When you are in the tube you put your feet under the arms of the person in front of you. Keeps any one person from getting into trouble by getting too far from the group. Once in a while one of the guides will hook onto the front tube and paddle you back into the main stream. Our guides mantra was "Never Fear, Dennis is Here." There were four or five guides with our group. You will learn all kinds of interesting stuff like what "Butts UP" means. You will have a miner's lamp on your head and a life vest. And the water is warm!! Hope this helps.

Jackie, Don't know the difference, but cave tubing.com does an awesome job. Roe and I used them last March and had a blast!!! One of the best excursions we have ever taken. Our guide "Dennis" was simply the best. It is a great experience and they take you through two sets of cave not the one that the ship excursion does. And we are not kid anymore. I'm 73 and Roe is 66. Her younger sister and her husband stayed on the ship because they felt the "water would be too cold." Yea, right. If you go to Belize you gotta do this one unless you have some walking problems you do walk about 45 minutes through a rain forest which is too cool.

I think itinerary begins our search, followed by ship, which of course if followed by price. Sometimes a very good deal will influence our decision.

That's the fastest I've ever heard of anyone getting one. Even in the old days before the recent crunch. Jenn how long does it take to get a Canadian PP????

After our first cruise, cruising itself became a hobby which is still going strong after 51 of them.

Yes, I have over the year. Bought Roe a couple pieces of Lladro and a Gold Globe with diamonds embedded in all the countries we have visited.

Both.

It is not a fast process. We did the full transit and it took pretty much all day to get through both sets of locks and the rest of the lake and canal.

Since I was stationed in Alaska for a year. Well, actually the Aleution Islands, I can honestly my fondest experience was getting the H>>> out of there!!

Title :: 01-25-08 Author :: The Skipper Category :: Carnival Spirit Information :: A fantastic cruise which far exceeded our expectations. Only thing that would have made it better was if it was longer than the eight days we spent aboard. Description :: Mexico Carnival Spirit January 25 through February 2, 2008 (Eight Days) Balcony Stateroom #5158 This was our 51st cruise overall, and our 10th cruise with Carnival Cruise Lines. It was a fund-raising cruise for the Stephen Ministry Program at our Church. Sixty-eight folks cruised with our “Spirit Splendor†Group plus the Cruise Crazies Mascot – Crazie. Our chartered bus with 57 passengers departed Las Vegas at 6:30 AM on Friday, January 25th. The other cruise passengers either flew or drove to the Port of San Diego. The trip to the ship was six hours in duration during which we watched a movie and had a Trivia Challenge contest. Crazie rode “Shot Gun†on the dashboard next to the bus driver so that she had a good view. We took lots of video of the trip. We arrived at the San Diego Cruise Terminal at 1:15 PM which proved to be a perfect arrival time. After a little confusion over where we could unload the passengers and the luggage, we were dropped off right at the door with our hand luggage. The bus continued on into the bus parking area and we did not see our larger luggage again until it arrived at our staterooms. The Check In process was very quick and easy. Roe and I had VIP Check In due to our Platinum Status, but to be honest we did not get aboard the ship any faster than the rest of our group. There was simply no waiting for anyone. After a slight backup at the Security Check Point, we dodged the photographers and boarded the ship. Elevators were jammed, so we walked up three flights to our deck. Not the brightest thing I ever did with hand luggage, but it beat waiting for an elevator with everyone else. Our stateroom was ready with a bottle of chilled champagne and a basket of fruit and other goodies waiting for us. Dropped off our hand luggage and headed up to lunch on the Lido Deck #9. The mandatory Lifeboat Drill took place just before sailing out of San Diego. Never much fun, but this one was less painless than most and well organized. Our luggage had arrived at our stateroom when we returned from Lifeboat Drill so we unpacked and skipped the Sailaway Party on deck. For those of you interested in such things, the Spirit was delivered on April 12, 2001 and is 88,500 tons. Total guest capacity is 2680 with a crew of 920. Carnival staterooms are always a little larger than the average. And this was true on the Spirit. Plenty of storage and hanging areas. There new “Comfort Bed†is the best we have had at sea. Bathroom was well laid out and the shower was fairly large for a cruise ship. Temperature regulation in the shower was perfect with no variation. Our group was assigned to an almost private area in the rear of the Empire Dining Room at the first seating. Our location made for a great time. One minor annoyance was the fact that this location led to a lot of vibration and engine noise. Not a major issue, but if I were sailing without a large group, I would avoid this area of the dining room. On our first formal night we enjoyed dinner with Captain Antonio Marchetti and his Senior Officers. This proved to be a very elegant and enjoyable experience. This was our first dinner with a Carnival Captain, although we have dined with Sitmar, Celebrity, Princess and RCI Captains in the past. Our Ports of Call for this cruise were: Acapulco, Zihuatanejo/Ixtapa and Manzanillo, Mexico. We took none of the ships tours since we have been to all of these ports several times. We did hear many good reports on them from others in our group. We found the food aboard the Spirit to be some of the best we have experienced on all of our cruises!! I thought the bread selections were rather boring, but Roe loved them. Go figure. Service was excellent to outstanding throughout the ship. The production shows in Pharaoh’s Place showroom were perhaps the best we have ever seen aboard ship. There are some sight line problems in the showroom due to pole placement, so be careful where you sit. Never had a problem getting a good seat and there was no need to arrive very early as we have found on many ships. The guest performers were IMHO pretty much what we expect on most cruise ships. The days were filled with all of the typical shipboard activities. I don’t think we ever lacked for something fun to do or experience. Some very nice dance floors on board. There was a group of 127 ballroom dancers on board and they selected the Spirit because of the many dance floors. If you have not noticed dance floors and card rooms are getting smaller and smaller on the newer cruise ships. There are a lot of excellent gift shops on board the Spirit so shoppers will have lots of selections. All I bought was a new Spirit pin for Crazie. The only Art Auction we attended was on the last day and we did buy one piece for our Son and Daughter-in-Law for their upcoming anniversary. Casino seemed to draw a lot of action and was spacious and well laid out. In summary, this was a fantastic cruise which I would rate as a 9.9 on a 10 point scale. View Review

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Greeting to All: Below is the link to a slide show of our Mascot aboard the Carnival Spirit for her first Group Cruise. As you will see she had a great time on this cruise to Mexico out of San Diego. http://s236.photobucket.com/albums/ff15/ew...nt=608ddfc5.pbw Enjoy the trip with Crazie.

Joey, Having been involved with several group cruises where voting is involved my experience has been that Florida will always win out. It did year after year for the Great Group Cruises on rec.cruises.com simply because of the number of East Coast cruisers and the expensive of more exotic departure ports. Living in Las Vegas geography is not really factor. I simply like cruising out of Florida more than the "Upper East Coast aka New York/Brooklyn/New Jersey. And, we just had six of the noisest folks we have ever encountered on a cruise in our hallway from "Da Bronx." So, I guess we really do prefer Florida.