being platinum for the first time there's a lot of perks and so just
trying to get a handle for what that's all about so we get the complimentary
beverage so for gold when it's over five day sailings you can get it after 5
p.m. at any bar but when you're platinum you can get it any day but it has to be
in the main dining room MDR you know for shorthand at breakfast brunch or lunch
it can't be dinner so that's a little weird I mean that's similar to the
restrictions they used to have on the red drinks but it's just it seems a
little silly to have those restrictions on there and again you get the litre
water which is fantastic there is the platinum and diamond party however it
has to be a five-day sailing or more this is a four-day milk run we're on right
now so no party the unique ship pin is actually quite nice they've got some
serious heft to it it's got the year the ship so that's that that was quite nice
I thought but you no longer get the gold annual pin when you go into platinum but
that's how I got quite a few of those you get priority dining seating where
you're supposed to talk to the maitre d on embarkation day we were not aware of
that so we didn't do that so I'm not sure exactly what that would mean you
can also get a priority specialty restaurant reservations
there's no specialty restaurant on this ship and we've never done the specialty
restaurant really so you know we'll possibly use it one day priority Spa
reservations we haven't utilized after our experience on the dream we are not
really Pro Spa people dedicated Guest services phone number we haven't had any
issues where we needed to call anyone so not even you know we have our own
extension which I will keep to myself as listed it in your welcome letter and
again on those five plus day sailings you're supposed to get the chocolate
delight but this is a four day sailing so we can't speak to it I haven't
experienced it yet there's a buy one get one free entry into a tournament at
the casino I'm not a big gambler I'm not sure if you get if you do this once per
sail or if it's just once you're platinum you do it one time we I don't know
complimentary arcade credits valued at $5 I want this but it's only available
it says only available for up to two children under 18 per member
so yeah it sounds like the child doesn't have to be platinum if someone they have
to travel with a platinum person to qualify for that which the website
doesn't make it very clear but the letter here that they gave me on
entry into platinum on arrival yeah it sounds like it you know the child of a
platinum member could get this so that would be nice
perhaps if he doesn't want to use it he can kind of hand me the credits I don't
know if that can be a thing complimentary Wash and fold service so
we tried that out. Nice. We didn't really need to but it's free and why not
so we wanted to test it out for you good people on the interwebs so it's nice
there's a bag and you can basically put as much stuff in the bag as you can
without ripping it you itemize what you've put in as a sort of an inventory
and there's this little section where the platinum person writes down their
folio number so they know not to charge the room or anything they know that it's
free and you get it back within a day yeah you're supposed to drop it off like
nine if you're doing do regular service you're supposed to drop it off at 9 before
9:00 a.m. don't know what they mean by dropping it off you just leave in your
room. You can probably go give it to your cabin steward but that's for the
express service right well if you want same day then you have to drop it off by
5:00, 9:00 a.m. then get at 5:00 p.m. then that day for the express
service but there's a 15 dollar surcharge for that or if you just do
regular then it's you know drop it off at 9:00am and then you get it by 5:00 p.m.
the following day so so basically expect a minimum 24 hour turnaround time so if
you want to take advantage of the laundry services I recommend doing it
honestly especially if you have that free service but just make sure like if
it's something that you want that day maybe plan or like if there's a specific
day that you want a specific item of clothing that happens to be dirty plan
an extra 24 hours to get that washed otherwise you're gonna be stuck you
know if it's like a dress that you know you wore you know at the hotel the night
before and you got a little bit dirty and then the next day you want to wear
it at MDR well it's probably not gonna happen because you're not unless you
pay that extra 15 dollar surcharge so just kind of plan that ahead
yeah and so basically you get two free bags on sailings of three to six days
three bags on seven to thirteen days sailings and five bags on 14 plus day
cruises so we're gonna be testing out the three bag one in September where we
take a ten day to Hawaii so that should be nice you also get a carnival logo
gift item this will not be in your stateroom when you first get on the ship
I've I was sort of expecting it to be there so I asked the stateroom Steward
felt a little silly but here on the imagination we got a nice tumbler here
which which is pretty good you know it's got a picture of ironically the carnival
legend on it which is going to be our probably our next 2 sailings will be on
that ship but we haven't been on her before I doubt that they knew that
enough to do that in advance but it's it's pretty nice it seems pretty like
decently high-quality it's dishwasher safe and it can be sort of sealed at the
top so that's. It's Tervis brand for those who are into water bottles yeah
apparently it's a super high-end brand and it's made by wind energy yeah yeah it's
really quite interesting so the energy that went into this is ethically sourced
and it's actually a product made in America has a lifetime guarantee so
that's that's pretty cool that's so we've got this time looking forward to
collecting a whole bunch of this stuff like this one thing we're thinking about
is I've read online about some of the gifts that people can get they get like
carnival branded visors and stuff like that so we might be running a contest in
the future if we have anything that we don't necessarily want to keep ourselves
we might have an extra gold pin or two for 2016 or anything like that so if you
think that you might want to win some carnival stuff from us let us know what
kind of contest you think would be fun and we can see about running something
in the future if we have sort of surplus carnival things that you might be
interested in that could be a bit of fun some other stuff you get priority tender
boarding so I was kind of curious how this would work having not previously
been platinum I thought maybe you just show your card and you jump to the front
of the line but carnival's a little bit slicker than that a little smarter about
it because if you were to do that you'd kind of piss off everybody else in line
right so what they do is there's a secret meeting
place for the platinum and diamond people and faster to the fun as well
where someone will escort them to the front of the the line for the tender and
I it seems to be seamless it's like in a way that the line doesn't know you're
cutting the line I think they because normally when you when you board the
tender you go to the lowest deck of the ship and there's normally a crew or
maintenance area so it's not like a public area generally and so there's a
lot of access corridors and stairwells and paths that are just not visible and
the general public is unaware of so I think they take you down like an
alternate stairwell or something and then just pop you right on to the tender
so we didn't need to do that though because we kind of slept in on the
tendering day at Catalina so we just walked down and walked on but I think
that's sort of how that works so just kind of a bit of a reveal there for that
process there's also a priority debarkation which I guess if you have an
early flight could be important but I want to leave the ship as late as
possible it's like pry it from my cold dead hands so I was really hoping that
they would say like hey you know Platinum people you sleep you get to sleep
in til like 9:00 9:30 instead of like the 8 or 8:30 that you normally have to be
out of your cabin by no it's just you get you get zone 1 on your on your
luggage tag if you're not doing self assist and you can you know they'll
probably call you with the first group to leave if you want but that's about it
there and yeah so those are those are some of the perks that we've encountered
so far or are looking forward to but that's a little glimpse into what
platinum is like