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The line's ships are hubs of activities, entertainment and excitement including a vibrant nightlife and the best live comedy scene on the high seas -- all included in your cruise fare. Cruise Critic's Deal Score will help you find the best deals on your favorite cruise line. By combining our extensive price data with upgrade details, onboard credits, itineraries, and more, you're able to quickly and clearly see just how much money you're going to save on your next cruise.
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Carnival tops its deals with reduced deposits, onboard credit, and room upgrades. Those can really add up when you factor them into the deal. Carnival also promotes zero-down and zero-percent financing through Uplift, which can save credit card interest if you are paying for your cruise over time. Carnival makes it super easy to search their site for deals, often with a red alert at the top of the page and by clicking on "Cruise Deals" under the main "Plan" tab in the header. The secret sauce with Carnival is always to be logged in with your Very Important Fun Person (VIFP) Club account, which you can sign up for free before you even book your first cruise.
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On many ships there are extensive dedicated spaces for the different groups. Carnival ships are all about fun in a very laid-back, unpretentious, nothing-too-fancy sort of way. Carnival is also one of the most family-oriented lines in the industry, and you're bound to see lots of kids onboard, even during the school year.
Carnival Cruise Line quietly raising another key price - TheStreet
Carnival Cruise Line quietly raising another key price.
Posted: Sun, 03 Dec 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]
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One more ship in the series — Carnival Jubilee — will arrive in December 2023. However, for many years it chose not to follow rivals such as Royal Caribbean and MSC Cruises in building ever-bigger ships. Mardi Gras and Carnival Celebration are now the only Carnival ship on the list of the 50 biggest cruise ships. Carnival ships offer a ton of free dining options, so you can have variety without having to splurge on specialty restaurants. One of the best and most popular bites on Carnival Cruise Line ships are food celebrity Guy Fieri burgers.
It's a fun-at-sea focus that has gone to new levels over the past two years with the debut of Mardi Gras and Carnival Celebration, each of which has — get this — a roller coaster on the top deck. At 800 feet in length, these aren't the biggest roller coasters ever. However, they're real ones — the first ever on a cruise ship. For the most part, Carnival ships don't have quite as many features on board as Royal Caribbean or Norwegian vessels, in part because they're not as big. They're still packed with a variety of attractions, including multiple entertainment venues, casinos, spas and lots of deck-top fun zones such as water parks and ropes courses.
Keep in mind that Carnival has other rates available that you might see. Be sure to read the terms of the rate before booking to see if it’s the right fit for your trip. Unlike the Early Saver rate, there is no mention that you even receive the deposit in the form of cruise credit should you cancel. In other words, if there is even a hint that you might not be able to make a cruise, you likely want a different fare. You can go ahead and book the fare you find and not worry if the price changes in the future. If you find a better price down the road, you can let Carnival know and the difference is given back to you in the form of onboard credit or a free upgrade.
Sail a few longer voyages, like a transatlantic sailing, and you could reach it even sooner. In fact, the lower tiers of the Carnival program are among the most stingy in the entire cruise universe. You'll receive things like a single complimentary bottle of water (at the Red tier) and a single free drink that only can be ordered on the last night of a cruise (at the Gold tier). In other words, if you are sailing seven-night cruises, you will be Gold level on your fourth sailing, as you will be passing the 25-day mark on that sailing. The drinking age on sailings on Carnival ships in Australia is 18. Most Carnival ships have self-serve launderettes on cabin decks with washing machines, dryers, irons and ironing boards.
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Carnival has been rolling out faster Wi-Fi systems across its fleet in the last couple of years, such that you can now stream video on some ships. Pricing changes over time, but the fastest "premium" service on Carnival vessels was recently priced at $21.25 per day when bought in advance ($25 per day when bought onboard). Carnival cruises are casual, with shorts, tee shirts, capris, swimsuits or swim cover-ups de rigueur during the day (no bathing suites in the dining venues, however). Most nights, the dress code on a Carnival Cruises remains much the same, minus the swimwear, though technically the cruise line asks that people not wear shorts into the main dining room.
Great Deal From Port Canaveral
The line has formal children's programming and activities for children as young as 2 years old through the age of 17. On the vast majority of Carnival ships, there's not just a single waterslide but a whole water park area. Dubbed WaterWorks, these areas vary in size and features from vessel to vessel. They typically have one or two big waterslides (sometimes three!), a play zone with interactive water features and a large, continuously filling dump bucket that periodically soaks everybody within range. The top decks of Carnival vessels are covered in family-focused attractions – pools, waterslide areas and bustling fun zones with such draws as ropes courses and miniature golf. Also, there are always several music venues where you'll find live performers in the afternoons and evenings, including — on some ships — the Atrium Bar and a secondary hub area called Ocean Plaza.
You'll also pay 10 percent more for this package if you book onboard. You can save by spending your vacation in unplugged nirvana or looking for cafes with free Wi-Fi on land, but Carnival Cruise Line also offers a pretty good deal on their onboard Wi-Fi. Carnival's newest ships have such attractions as SkyRide, a recumbent bike you ride in the air, ropes courses, an IMAX theater, 4D Thrill Theater and more, and the cabins tend to sell at a premium rate. Register with Cruise.com to get access to exclusive rates, discounts and special offers. Furthermore, Cruise Critic makes no guarantees for availability of prices advertised on our site.
An interior cabin starts at just $369 for nearly a week on the ship. This ship isn’t the newest, but was built just a few years ago as the start of the Vista class, Carnival’s second largest style of ship. That means it has all the latest features you’d expect on a Carnival ship. The round trip cruise has stops in Mahogany Bay (Carnival’s private port in Roatan), Costa Maya, and Cozumel before returning home.
From the least expensive cruises overall to great deals on cruise itineraries you don’t see every day, this list should give you a good idea of what sort of offers are out there. A slightly more expensive "value" plan, at $19.55 per day when bought in advance, adds access to email and most websites. This is a notable change for the brand from just a couple of decades ago. There was a time when Carnival operated some of the biggest cruise ships in the world. Check out value-priced sailings on some of the line's older ships, which are still lively, fun and offer such attractions as WaterWorks water parks -- and often at bargain prices. Known for their thrilling variety of onboard activities and delicious dining options, Carnival ships provide a fantastic travel experience for their guests of all ages.
Note that Carnival's two oldest ships — those that are part of the 1990s-built Fantasy Class — have relatively few balcony cabins by today's standards. (After retrofitting, several have around 150 balcony cabins, out of a total of more than 1,000 cabins in all.) In part because of this, Carnival has been phasing these ships out of its fleet in recent years. The arrival of Mardi Gras and Carnival Celebration over the past two years has marked a major turning point for the line. At around 180,000 tons, they rank at No. 15 and No. 13, respectively, among the world's largest cruise ships — the only Carnival ships to crack the Top 20. They are roughly 35% bigger than the line's next-biggest ship.
Loyalty programs are a great way to get freebies on cruise ships. Before your first cruise with Carnival, you can join the Very Important Fun Person (VIFP) Club. It gives you access to special cruise offers, including discounts during an end-of-summer Carnival cruise sale. Before you even start your online search for a cruise deal or call a travel agent, take a look at Carnival's latest deals including super low last-minute offers. Like other big-ship operators, Carnival packs a lot of dining options onto its vessels — some included in the price, some at an extra charge. Aside from the main pool, which is the hub of much of the line's fun activities, almost every Carnival cruise ship also has at least one waterslide, with several having multi-slide water parks.
Older kids (aged 15-17) are grouped into what's known as Club O2 and have their own lounge for meeting up, listening to music, dancing, singing karaoke and other activities. Passengers can learn to cook everything from Carnival's classic warm chocolate melting cake to its popular saffron risotto during one- to two-hour classes that cost $30 to $59 per person. Carnival also uses its big theaters for lots of interactive shows that involve you, the passenger, getting a little silly. They include Lip Sync Battle Carnival — a shipboard adaptation of the Paramount Network TV series — and Hasbro, the Game Show.
