[Music] oh hello David
oh hi Cruisers welcome to this video it's so lovely to see you
and a very Merry Christmas
yes Welcome to our home
we've got it looking very Christmassy indeed
but we've got some very very juicy stuff to talk about don't we David
we sure do but first things first we need a little treat
we've got a mince pie mince pies
have you made some David
I've been slaving away all day and I made the journey
to the supermarket to collect these mince pies
let's sit down shall we
oh my gosh I love Christmas
it's an excuse to eat all the delicious treats and drink as much as you like
cheers David
Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas to everybody
first of all because this is Christmas Day we just want to say a massive happy holidays to everybody
no matter where you are in the world or whatever you're celebrating
but we just want to say a huge thank you as well
we really do thank you for all of your support in 2022
it's been a fantastic year for us and we've had so
much fun bringing our videos from all around the world to you guys
without you we wouldn't have a channel
we really wouldn't
so we just want to say a huge thank you don't we yeah
we do we really appreciate you just watching, liking,
sharing and getting in touch with us as well
we absolutely love it so thank you very much
and while it's the end of the year we've been thinking about what experiences we've
had this year and taking stock of the amazing travels that we've had
and some of the things that have surprised us and the
biggest surprise for us is what we're going to tell you about in this video
yeah one travel agent that we worked with a few times refused point blank to book us on a cruise
but first of all we want to see what we've got coming up next year because there's some things
that we want to do and we want to bring to you and honestly we always listen to your comments whilst
we can't reply to all of them just because there's so many of them I mean what an amazing problem to
have it's incredible that our Channel's grown I can't believe it we've changed our Channel over
the last few years we used to do very kind of clickbaity news and things like that but now we
just do vlogs in our adventures the biggest thing that we enjoy is when we get to meet everybody on
cruises oh my gosh yes and if we don't if you say hi to us and we don't hear you the first time just
please come up to us again and say hello that has got to be my number one highlight for the
whole year I think we got to meet so many of you guys which was so amazing and the best thing ever
is that you guys are just like super friendly and while we're doing thank yous as well we'd like to
bitsy a big thank you to our patrons I know we usually do it at the end of the videos but I'd
like to do it a little bit earlier this time because you guys are really amazing thank you
very much for all your support this year if you want to become a patron and you want to give us a
little bit of extra support you can find out more by clicking a link in in the description section
below but whatever you do just watching our videos we do love it just watching like and liking the
video does help us a lot yeah you guys are amazing not only if you're not a patron or you're a patron
absolutely in return we give you lots of things like a live Zoom call every month where we have
a lovely chat we do things like Christmas cards postcards we give you extra behind the scenes
footage and extra episodes and most of all you just really support us in creating the content
because it isn't cheap we put it all back into the channel even our normal YouTube money not
just our patreon money to just book trips because we do like to go on as many as we can that are
self-funded next year we want to do even more we want to go on some really fun trips especially
Guided by you guys as well in the comments so we always listen to your comments as we said and lots
of you want us to go to Alaska which we're going to try and get to do next year on week that's
going to be exciting yeah we get lots of messages asking would we like to do X would we like to do y
and absolutely and this year one of the highlights has been doing a lot of Firsts for us so that
first time cruising from New York first time on certain Cruise Lines West Coast cruising that we
did for the first time we've got an episode from the Norwegian Bliss coming up but that's got our
nephew in Oscar as well because I know lots of you guys love to see Oscar and our family as well so
that is the trends that we want to continue into next year is to keep bringing you interesting
content that you'll find helpful definitely and we're going to be doing another first in January
in fact it's our next Cruise we're going to be doing Celebrity Cruises for the first ever time
I'll say the first ever time we have been on Celebrity ships before but we haven't actually
cruised with them so we've got to experience some of the food and the ships and things but we want
to do another big announcement as well we've got a huge announcement guys that we're gonna make in
about three seconds three two one we're going to be launching a brand new channel oh yeah that's it
next month we're going to be launching a brand new channel it's still Cruise it's going to be called
something like Cruise news and tips and that's all it's going to be it's just going to be for
news and tips because I know a lot of people miss those shows so we're going to still be uploading
every single Sunday on this channel nothing is going to change all we're just going to launch a
brand new channel alongside it so hope you get to join that as well yeah we've got so much feedback
from you our lovely subscribers and viewers saying that you wanted more tip videos more advice about
cruises and cruise lines and going on cruises we're about six weeks ahead as well with our
content we've got so much fun fun content to come for you uh next week we're going to start with
the carnival celebration transatlantic series and that's a really fun cruise and then we've got the
Norwegian Bliss cruise and then we've got problem now we've got so much we've got a virgin voyagers
cruise from Miami which we did and then we've got sea dream yacht club which was the most amazing
experience ever right so that brings us to the bulk of this video the meat the main topic of this
video talking about meet David got some mince meat pies I don't know if you guys get these around the
world but they are absolutely sorry I'm drizzling just delaying guys mince pies or shove it a little
taste they're good with a cup of tea so it's like sweet mints it's not mince as in meat even though
they used to be made with meat back in the day but it's like a sweet minced fruits minced fruits
well hit me with a slate and call me Tim Allen in the Santa Claus because that is blooming good oh
amazing okay yeah I'm talking about highlights of this year big surprises and things coming up
one of our biggest highlights this year was trying Carnival Cruises and it was a little
bit of a worry for us and we want to tell you a little bit of a story about this because I
think it's nice to know our thinking behind why we go on cruise lines and what our experiences
with booking them as well yeah so we used to use a travel agent in the US now and again
especially for Carnival Cruise Line because they don't tend to sell much in the UK so we used a
big travel agency as well we don't want to name them because we don't want to make them look bad
or anything because that's not the aim of this video so basically we sent an email over to this
um travel agency that we've used a lot to book our first Carnival cruise on the Carnival Mardi Gras
and we were really shocked of what we heard back when we yeah we already had um ideas about what we
thought Carnival was going to be like Jesus Christ that's Amazon oh my God only jumped out my skin
oh my gosh last minute Christmas and the reply that we got was we don't book Carnival Cruises
as I wouldn't even send my own family on them yeah so we were really surprised and obviously
this is a weird thing for a travel agent to say because we haven't heard this any other time from
anybody else that people refuse to book certain companies and surely Carnival can't be that bad
can it anyway we went back and said oh well that's a surprise and we just booked it direct we just
went and booked it direct went on the cruise and honestly guys we said it in the video but super
pleasantly surprised whilst it wasn't Perfect by any means very rarely cruises are there's always
something that isn't good or something that's a little bit not as good as usual but we had a
really good time especially on the new ships and I think this is where it comes to I think Carnival
from what I see are trying to change a little bit we know that lots of the ships were very old they
had a very party atmosphere and a reputation for people drinking getting drunk having fights and
things like that and it's not wholly true it really isn't on their new ships on their New
Vista class ships like the Vista so the Panorama the Mardi Gras now the celebration we had a really
good time on Mardi Gras we really did and this led us to book the carnival celebration just a
few weeks ago on the transatlantic overall we were super pleasantly surprised and it felt a
lot like Royal Caribbean yeah so we had a lot of misconceptions or ideas about what we thought
Carnival was going to be like we also had a lot of comments from you our subscribers on the Mardi
Gras video and on the upcoming celebration when we were talking about that so maybe we should just go
through some of the things that people have said and some of the things we thought and to tell you
exactly what their experience was compared to what people thought about does that make sense so a lot
of people have been commenting our videos mostly positive comments but as always we get negative
comments and a lot of them are saying things like oh my gosh you would never get me on a Carnival
ship in a million years they're awful and what's really funny is that most people have either just
cruised with them years ago before the products changed or they haven't cruised with them before
and they're just really going with the stereotypes of cruising with Carnival we can tell you having
done two cruises now spent over three weeks on Carnival ships on the new ships remember we are
just talking about the new ships not the All Ships we haven't done that before and we've seen some of
them important oh my gosh they do not look at in good condition some of them they're very old in a
very different crowd well so some of the things that we thought about on some of the comments
we've got is that Carnival is full of drunk people fighting no well you didn't see that one so yeah
we didn't experience that we did hear there was a few scuffles on our cruise at certain points on
our second our celebration cruise but we actually didn't see any of that we've seen drunk people on
lots of cruise lines before we've seen a Norwegian piano we've seen it on Royal Caribbean we've
seen it on most cruise lines but anywhere where alcohol is involved in crowds there's going to be
some sort of situations at certain points but we never experienced that we actually found everyone
really lovely and welcoming which brings us to the second misconception was that Carnival is not for
LGBT people and it is not a welcoming inclusive Cruise Line not true at all that is not true we
were actually pleasantly surprised with the amount of um same-sex couples gay couples so yeah she had
a real diverse range of people which was really nice to see it was a very welcoming crowd and a
very open crowd which we were really surprised about most of the passengers on board were from
the United States so another thing that we kept getting told about Carnival was that the food was
terrible and we kind of have a 50 50 about this we've already explained in the Mardi Gras what
we thought about this so go back and watch them videos in a nutshell basically the fast food and
the Quick Service dining absolutely fantastic better than most other Cruise Lines the main
dining rooms a little bit rough around the edges the service isn't just as good the food's a bit
um but honestly we've been Royal Caribbean recently we've done the Allure of the Seas and
it wasn't much different to that really it really wasn't they're really catching up and as I said
that fast food like the barbecue at the back and guys Chicken Shack's chicken and Guys burger oh my
gosh it is so so Bloom and good uh another thing is that Carnival is a cheap budget Cruise Line no
I wouldn't again maybe with some of the cruises all cruise lines have all trips on routes around
the Caribbean Norwegian do princess do Royal Caribbean do where they have cheaper cruises
on older ships and that's the same with Carnival but if you're booking these new ships they have
cabins of all shapes and sizes and they're just on par with other cruise lines like Norwegian
and Royal Caribbean on their new ships I have seen the I do think the onboard products are the
extra charges and not as much as particularly as much as Norwegian and Royal so specialty dining I
know it's recently just gone up but it's still not as expensive as the other cruise lines so
in that sense it is a little bit more budget it definitely does feel at certain points more Budget
on the ship the service there's not enough crew on the board but the newer ships are lovely yeah
really lovely very aching to something like Royal Caribbean and Norwegian fantastic we really enjoy
them and the entertainment on board absolutely fantastic the shows are really good in that
Central stage area as well as the stage at the front in the theater lots of entertainment we have
to say the two Cruise directors we had the Flying Scotsman on the first Cruiser Mardi Gras then Lee
the cruise director on the second one oh my gosh some of the best cruise directors we have ever
ever seen on any Cruise Line out of all of our Cruisers such fantastic fantastic crew members and
the fun Squad really good teams I keep seeing it pleasantly surprised that was our overall arching
feeling anyway guys we've taken enough of your time it's Christmas day so go and enjoy it get
that turkey down you in that big Sunday lunch and have lots of drinks and be merry and have a lovely
day no matter what you're celebrating if you're not celebrating Christmas and something else or
happy holidays to you as well guys but thank you so much for a great 2022 we'll be back next week
as usual and here's to 2023 eh definitely until next time happy cruising I wish we put a little
bit more memory in this yeah yeah maybe maybe some Baileys or something maybe an Irish coffee