Celebration: Planning
Booking
I booked this cruise when it first went on sale a little over two years ago. I wanted to get on the first cruise out of Miami but with that being Thanksgiving week, I went with the second cruise.
I have settled into booking 4J rooms or regular interior rooms close to the “secret deck” with a preference of lido deck and a secondary choice of the deck above the bridge which gives you the secret deck with wings where you can look down the sides of the ship.
Since these new ships don’t have the “secret decks,” I figured this cruise, and Jubilee next year, will be a good time to try the lido midship interiors. That’s what I booked. I paid a little over $1300 after taxes and fees. I got $225 OBC with the booking. Over the summer there was a significant price drop. I took about a $300 price drop but I lost $100 of my OBC in the deal. In the end I came out with about $1000 cruise and $125 OBC for booking.
Onboard Credit
In addition to the $125 OBC I got with the booking, I have another $100 as a Carnival Stockholder. I also used a FCC with $600 OBC from a canceled cruise during the shutdown. That gives me $825 OBC this cruise.
Excursions
Roatan
In Roatan I’m planning on doing the beach day again. I like being able to roll out of the ship and into the ocean. I’ll make it a short port day so I can catch lunch on the ship.
Cozumel
In Cozumel I booked the Mayan Ballgame, Mexican Show, and Lunch tour for $84.
I’ve been keeping my eyes open for Kusam Brewery where they have beer and tacos. I wanted to go last year but I found out they don’t open until 5pm. It looks like that’s still the case. If they ever change those hours to allow visits from cruise passengers, I’ll be down there to check it out.
Costa Maya
The last time I was in Costa Maya I booked a long Mayan ruins excursion, Kohunlich, and said I was saving the shorter excursion for when I came back on a nicer ship. This is the nicer ship. I booked Chacchoben Mayan Ruins for $90. That’s a four hour excursion. There are two others that are 6-7 hour excursions. That will give me a couple extra hours back on the ship.
Specialty Dining
My goal is to try everything. I booked 555, Rudis, and Teppanyaki. The goal would be to work in Pig & Anchor, Cucina, Chibang, and Emeril’s the other nights. My reservations were made through email back in the spring when they first said you could make them by emailing Mardi Gras. They aren’t showing on my account so I’m going to bring copies of the emails just to be safe.
Parking
I have been preaching that the strategy with The Parking Spot is to wait until closer to your trip and the price always goes down. Apparently, that doesn’t apply to the weekend after Thanksgiving. In the several months I’ve been watching it, the price has increased from $15/day to $25/day. $8-10 is what I have been paying for covered parking at the north lot. The absolute cheapest I can get right now is $14/day for uncovered parking at the less desirable south lot.
It’s coming to $250 to park in the north lot’s covered parking or $155 to park in the south lot’s uncovered parking. I’m checking a competitor I’ve booked with before once before. Park N Fly is coming to $119 for their covered parking or $108 for their uncovered parking.
I decided to check into the actual airport parking. DFW Terminal parking is sold out but their remote south lot, which is right by my terminal, is coming to $58.50. I’m a little concerned about getting myself anywhere called “remote” early in the morning but I’m going to give it a try. I went ahead and booked it.
Flight
Airline prices are up. I booked my flight on Spirit over the summer. It cost $616. That includes an upgrade to the big front seats and a checked bag each way. I saved $80 with my Spirit Savers Club membership.
In late September I got the dreaded flight change email. My flights were now scheduled to arrive in Miami at 2pm and leave at 7am. The arrival flight takes away most of my day I have planned. The departure flight is just not doable.
When I looked at alternatives, Spirit had nothing that would work for me out of Miami. I looked at Fort Lauderdale and found a flight arriving at 9:15am and leaving at 5:40pm. The arrival time is pretty good but the departure flight is later than I had hoped. My plan is to find a luggage storage space close to a sports bar that’s close to the airport and watch the noon football games there. The Saints don’t play until Monday night so that’s not a concern for me. I saved $200 on the flight change.
Hotel/Miami Plans
In case anyone didn’t know, the weekend after Thanksgiving is an extremely expensive weekend to travel. I started looking at hotels in the spring. At the time the best price for a decent hotel near the port was the Comfort Suites starting at $300 before taxes and fees. Nicer hotels were starting in the $500 range.
I started looking at the beach area. Most of those hotels were in the same range. There were a couple decent hotels I could’ve had for around $200. I was really close to booking a hotel on the beach at one point.
When I started looking at what I wanted to do, Little Havana stood out. I started looking into transportation from the beach. Hop on Hop off bus, Metro Mover, etc.
As my plans formed, it was clear that once I was done in Little Havana, I would have no time to enjoy the beach. I decided to look at hotels closer to the airport and Little Havana.
I pretty much decided to book the Radisson Red which is basically a new hotel. It has a free airport shuttle and it’s about a three mile Uber/Lyft to Little Havana. The hotel was going to be about $120 after taxes and fees. I had that in my mind as the hotel, but I didn’t book it. I put it on the back burner as I worked on my Seattle, Alaska, and New York City plans.
When I returned from Alaska, I checked back in on Radisson Red. The price had doubled. I decided to shop around. I’m pretty deep into the Little Havana plans at this point. I decided to look for the closest decent hotel I could find to Little Havana. I come up with the Best Western Premier which is one mile away. This time I’m not taking any chances, I’m booking a refundable hotel room right away. I paid $171 after taxes and fees.
In July I was still looking around at hotels. I was fine with the one I had, but I really wanted something where I could walk somewhere in Little Havana for coffee and breakfast on embarkation morning without it being two miles round trip. I come across this Reach Miami Hosting luxury apartment on booking.com.
I don’t usually see apartment rentals on booking.com and I don’t mess with Airbnb because if you see a good price, it usually doubles when they add in the cleaning fee. It just doesn’t seem to be worth it for one night. But booking.com doesn’t have cleaning fees. This apartment is coming to $130. I could save $40 and be in a better place. It’s actually almost across the street from Life House which is the one Little Havana hotel that looks nice. It also looks very expensive. But it has a great looking rooftop bar where I saw myself ending the night. Having a place across the street would be ideal.
There was one thing that bothered me about the apartment. At a hotel I can arrive early and have them store my luggage until my room is ready. What do I do about an apartment? I started to look into luggage storage options. It looks like there’s a place a block away. I also sent in a question to the apartment people about if there was a place I could secure my luggage a few hours prior to check-in. Crickets.
It’s time to go to New York. I put the apartment on the back burner. But I have it in my head that this is the place I’m staying. Even though it was just one room and I haven’t booked it yet. I think you can see where this is going.
I get back from New York and I still haven’t received an answer from the apartment people on luggage storage. But I have it so far in my head that this is where I’m staying, I need to go ahead and book it, then figure out my luggage later. Of course it’s no longer on booking.com. Now I have to wrap my head around going back to Best Western Premier.
I decide to look for another apartment on VRBO. Guess what comes up? Reach Miami Hosting and it’s available for my night! It comes out to be a little bit more than the booking.com version. It adds a $20 fee but that’s not bad at all. $150 is good for me. No more dithering. I’m booking it and canceling my $171 Best Western Premier.
Less than three days from flying to Miami I got hit with a curveball. I messaged the apartment people to inquire about the check-in process. They canceled my booking, refunded my money, and said they apartment wouldn’t be ready because the last tenant caused damage. That was it. They ignored all other messages I sent. What would they have done if I hadn’t asked the question? Would they have waited until I arrived to cancel and refund me?
What am I going to do now? Prices have gone up. I’m not going to get another place like that for $150. I think they owed me more than that. I would’ve been penalized had I canceled within 7 days. They should be responsible for replacing that apartment with a comparable place.
I had no recourse. Reach Miami Hosting ignored all messages I sent them. I had no way to leave feedback for a place I didn’t stay at. There was no way to speak to a human at VRBO. My recommendation is don’t use VRBO and don’t book with Reach Miami Hosting.
I did find another place. As you can imagine a lot of them are booked up the day before thanksgiving for the weekend after thanksgiving.
My last room was $150. This is $195. That’s about the best you’re going to do Thanksgiving weekend. I think the other one was a nicer place being in a newer building and having a balcony.
I have figured that a company owns this entire building and has it broken down into apartments that are all rented out on Airbnb. They all seem to have high 4’s out of 5 for a rating. My specific one only has 5 reviews and they are all 5 stars. The location is better than the other place because it’s two blocks from the heart of Little Havana where the other one was way down on the end.
