RoadTravelled

The reason for the stop in Victoria, Canada is because of the requirements of the Passenger Vessel Services Act. You can find a good article about this by clicking here. Bottom-line, since the ship is foreign-flagged, it must make a stop in a foreign country before returning to a US port or be heavily fined. In May, we did an Alaska round-trip from Seattle cruise and stopped here. We were delayed getting into port so only had about 3 hours to visit. We still got off and did a quick view of the city at night and went to a great Irish pub and then rushed back to the ship. Not ideal but we made the most of it.

We were below the dining room on a recent cruise and there was no problem. We did hear just a little bit of noise early in the morning while someone would roll a cart back and forth across the floor above us, presumably some type of food prep. But, it was short-lived and not at all a big issue. I would think being above should be fine.

The testing requirement for 5-days or less on Carnival is for Bermuda stops, not Bahamas. You can access their full protocols by clicking here. It's an ever moving target, so best to go to this website a couple of weeks prior to your departure to make sure you have the latest updates.

You can refer to Carnival's official protocols by clicking here. It is an ever moving target, so my recommendation is to always check a couple of weeks prior to your departure to insure you have the latest information on your particular cruise.

We always apply the full automatic tip as well as do a bit extra for the cabin steward and our MDR wait staff, based on their level of service. They all work extremely hard at making our cruise the best. We found these really fun and inexpensive ship-themed greeting cards on Amazon that we write a nice thank you note and include the tip in. We've also started a new tradition. It's not uncommon for us, as we walk around the ship (especially in today's post-COVID world), to see crew members around the ship in the public areas diligently cleaning every surface or doing other maintenance work to keep the ships in tip-top shape. These crew members get little one-on-one feedback or attention from guests it seems. And, they are a big part of making the cruise work. So, we now make a habit to search some one out each day and also hand them a thank you card with a small cash tip inside and a chocolate treat. They are so appreciative and shocked at the attention. We've even done that for the guest services people who help us as we know they mostly just get a lot of complaints or negative feedback.

Lisa, this is really great news and thanks for the insider view. We will be in Progresso later this month on a 5-day cruise from NOLA. We were thinking of heading to Mérida to spend some time exploring. Any tips or must sees you could recommend? We've done the cenotes and Mayan ruins already.

Yes, I live in TX (CST) and do this at 11:01pm the night before and it works just fine. It appears that the time kicks off based on Miami, FL (HQ) time. Good luck.