Just days after the conclusion of his “For Fun’s Sake” (FFS) 2025 cruise aboard Carnival Magic, Carnival Cruise Line’s Brand Ambassador, John Heald, has announced his themed 2026 sailing.

The next FFS cruise will be aboard Carnival Spirit‘s May 5, 2026 departure – a 7-night roundtrip Alaska sailing from Seattle, Washington.

“For my 2026 FFS #8 Cruise I have decided after much contemplation to host a very special cruise to Alaska on Carnival Spirit,” Heald announced through his Facebook page. “Yes, I know some will be disappointed it is not perhaps a cruise that sails closer to home and that it is a different time of year than usual but I know this will be a very special adventure indeed.”

Heald’s FFS cruises are not full-ship charter sailings, but instead are special events held aboard existing sailings. Guests interested in joining in the FFS fun must first be booked on the selected cruise and then purchase registration as an FFS guest.

FFS registration will open on May 5, 2025, exactly one year before the ship’s departure date. Any guests booked on the sailing will have the opportunity to register for the extra fun, but spaces are sure to fill up quickly.

“Cabins are limited and so if you wish to join me for a massive dollop of Fun please book as soon as you can,” Heald urged.

The 2026 FFS cruise will be visiting the top ports of call in the Last Frontier. While the first day of the sailing is a day at sea, the second day will be iconic scenic cruising along Tracy Arm Fjord where guests will be able to see wildlife, ice, and panoramic Alaskan beauty. FFS guests will have a special opportunity on that amazing day.

“We will have a private viewing deck during the transit through Tracy Arm Fjord with some special food and lashings of hot soup,” Heald said. “That’s just one thing I am planning.”

The next few days will be exciting visits to Skagway (don’t miss out on visiting the Klondike Doughboy for their famous fry bread!), Juneau, and Ketchikan. The final port of call is an evening visit to Victoria, British Columbia, before Carnival Spirit returns to Seattle on May 12.

The 85,920-gross-ton Carnival Spirit can welcome 2,124 guests – significantly smaller than the 3,690 guests aboard Carnival Magic and the most recent FFS cruise. This may mean fewer spaces available for the exclusive event, and they are sure to sell out quickly.

What to Expect on an FFS Cruise

Heald is one of the most well-known and colorful characters in the cruise industry, always going above and beyond to ensure Carnival cruise guests have amazing vacations.

He has a tremendous social media following with nearly 600,000 Facebook followers and answers hundreds of questions about all things Carnival every week.

Read Also: What Is the Best Time of Year to Cruise Alaska?

His incomparable British wit and self-deprecating humor charm many guests, and his FFS cruises have become wildly popular. In fact, the open spaces for these sailings – often available for 500-800 guests – can fill up and sell out within minutes.

Onboard an FFS cruise, guests have unique opportunities for meet-and-greets, photo and autograph sessions, question and answer panels, behind-the-scenes tours, cocktail parties, themed activities, and much more.

Registered guests are also treated to exclusive swag and gifts that become fabulous mementos of the unique sailing.

“It is going to be a cruise full of fun, comradery, surprises and of course all to the backdrop of incomparable Alaska,” Heald said.

Past FFS cruises have typically sailed in the Caribbean. Heald tries to choose different itineraries for each annual cruise, offering greater variety for interested guests and giving all fans the chance to enjoy the cruise with an extra dollop of fun and camaraderie.

Many of Carnival Cruise Line’s most loyal guests eagerly collect the customized pins the cruise line offers for Gold, Platinum, and Diamond loyalty levels of the “Very Important Fun Person” (VIFP) program.

Yet some travelers have not been able to receive pins on recent sailings, owing to an issue many guests believed was long since over.

Several guests on recent sailings of Carnival Jubilee have noticed that the loyalty pins are not available, and the substitute gift being offered is not as exciting or nearly as collectible.

A concerned guest who collects those pins to commemorate her sailings reached out to John Heald, Carnival Cruise Line’s Brand Ambassador, for help.

“While on the Jubilee February 15-22 I turned Platinum and was so excited to get my pin,” one guest explained. “On the very first day I went to get my pin only to be told they weren’t giving pins out, that they were giving free pictures instead.”

The Platinum and Diamond level pins are especially popular as souvenirs and collectibles, as they are customized with each ship’s individual name. The Gold level VIFP pins only have the year, the cruise line, and “VIFP Club” embossed in the design.

In late 2024, some Carnival ships had run out of the VIFP loyalty pins before the end of the year. Because the pins are customized with the year, it wasn’t possible at that time to order additional pins.

But a ship running out of pins in mid-February? That is a completely different issue.

“Yes, we have had some supply chain issues but never fear,” Heald responded.

He then offered the guest an email address to contact with her booking number and request, in order to arrange for her pins.

The idea that “supply chain issues” might be impacting the pins is a surprising one. Disruptions to the supply chain impacted a great deal of cruise travel in 2021 and 2022 as the industry was restarting and operations continued to be understaffed at shipyards dealing with logistical issues.

More than three years later, however, many cruisers have believed that supply chains have rebounded and are functioning well.

While Heald does not detail the nature of the supply chain issues impacting the loyalty pins, it is likely just a temporary shortage that will be quickly corrected, especially as the busy summer sailing season approaches.

Are Multiple Ships Affected?

At this time, guests have only reported a shortage of VIFP pins aboard Carnival Jubilee, the third in Carnival Cruise Line’s tremendous Excel class of ships.

Carnival Jubilee can welcome 5,228 guests at double occupancy or as many as 6,631 travelers when fully booked with all berths filled. The ship is homeported year-round from Galveston, Texas, offering 7-night Western Caribbean itineraries visiting Roatan, Costa Maya, and Cozumel.

Read Also: Carnival Cruise Line Reveals New 2025 Loyalty Pins

While Carnival Breeze and Carnival Dream are also homeported from Galveston, there haven’t been any reports of shortages of VIFP pins from those vessels.

Every Carnival cruise ship has a supply of the loyalty gifts, but how fast that supply dwindles depends on the ship’s overall guest capacity and how many VIFP travelers claim their pins and gifts.

Because Carnival Jubilee is the fleet’s newest vessel and has a fantastic reputation with the guidance of Carnival’s 2024 Cruise Director of the Year, Kyndall “Fire” Magyar, it is understandable that the ship would be giving out more VIFP pins than other vessels.

The pins are not being discontinued in any way. They will be made available aboard Carnival Jubilee again as soon as possible, giving travelers the chance to continue to build their VIFP pin collection.

What was to have been a fun girls’ getaway for three young women quickly turned terrifying when a small fire broke out on their cruise ship balcony.

The fear continued after the fire was safely contained with how the women were allegedly treated by crew members investigating the incident.

The fire occurred aboard Carnival Glory on Saturday, February 22, 2025. The ship had set sail from Port Canaveral the day before for a 3-night Bahamas cruise, and had visited Nassau earlier that day.

According to ClickOrlando, the fire was on the young women’s balcony on Deck 6, where a towel was draped over a chair when both began to smolder and became “engulfed” in flames.

Photos of the chair show much of the seat and back destroyed and melted, and video of the incident shows a great deal of smoke in the impacted stateroom and the adjacent hallway.

The ship’s crew responded to the incident immediately and the small fire was quickly extinguished. At no time were any of the ship’s operational systems impacted, nor were there any general emergency alerts for all passengers. There were no injuries reported.

Every Carnival ship maintains a highly trained fire response team onboard, and regular training and drills are practiced to ensure fast, efficient reactions to any type of fire situation.

The cause of the fire has not yet been conclusively determined, but a full investigation is sure to be underway to discover just how it began and whether or not all safety measures were functioning properly.

Women Upset at Crew Treatment

The young women involved in the fire, Tatianna Chuitian and two of her friends, who have not been identified, are upset not only at the overall situation, but with how they were treated in the immediate aftermath of the incident.

While Chuitian acknowledges that she and her friends were “cleared of any blame” by the ship’s crew, they were unhappy with how they were treated when taken to the ship’s medical center as an emergency precaution.

Worth Reading: Update on Next Cruise After Carnival Cruise Ship Fire

“They just kept telling me, like, you need to calm down,” Chuitian said. “‘You’re making this worse for yourself. Like calm down and tell us what happened. And then, you know, like if you ladies start lying to us like we’re getting the FBI involved, we’re getting Coast Guard’ like they’re just bullying us.”

In social media posts, the young women described being required to take pregnancy tests, with a suspicion that it may actually have been a drug test.

Other medical professionals have noted, however, that a quick urine-based pregnancy test is standard procedure when emergency treatment may be needed on any woman of potentially child-bearing age, as some drugs can be harmful to an unborn baby.

Other allegations include the idea that the women were not permitted to photograph their written statements, they were pressured to sign waivers, and all their belongings were damaged.

Further evidence of these allegations have not yet been forthcoming, but may be part of the overall investigation.

Read Also: Secret Emergency Codes on Cruise Ships Only Crew Members Know!

Carnival Cruise Line has not released any details of the incident, which is also standard procedure when an investigation is ongoing. The cruise line did release a brief statement to news media.

“We have a very robust fire management system, including alarms, detectors, sprinklers and training. This matter was quickly handled and there were no injuries,” the cruise line stated.

The 110,000-gross-ton, Conquest-class Carnival Glory can host 2,980 guests at double occupancy, and is also home to approximately 1,150 international crew members.

Following the small fire, there was no change to the ship’s itinerary and Carnival Glory has already departed Port Canaveral on her next sailing, a 4-night Bahamas cruise.

Carnival Cruise Line’s Brand Ambassador, John Heald, often gets comments through social media comparing Carnival to other cruise lines, with guests insinuating that the other line has some superior process, product, or performance.

Rather than simply deleting such comments or ignoring any reference to another cruise line, Heald uses each opportunity to reach out to his nearly 600,000 followers for their input.

In a recent comment, one guest notes that Carnival ought to improve seating procedures in their Lido Marketplace buffet restaurants.

“We have been on 4 cruises and we as a family [believe] Carnival does it all wrong. You should instruct passengers in the same way [another cruise line] does,” the guest explained. “You should get a table first and then go to the buffet line not the other way round. This is the correct appropriate etiquette.”

First of all, there is actually no “correct appropriate etiquette” for whether it should be table first or food first at a buffet. Different all-you-can-eat restaurants have different procedures that work best for their business practices.

“Passengers should get a table first, reserve that table and THEN go to the buffet line. Why is this not done on Carnival ships John? It is not acceptable the way Carnival does this,” the guest continues.

“Thank you, fascinating indeed, I never thought of this to be honest,” Heald noted.

“In a hotel you do get shown to your table and then as you sit down you think ‘oh FFS’ it’s a buffet and then you have to get out of your chair and then head to the buffet. But hold on, here comes the waiter with coffee so, um, you have to sit down again and then when the coffee is poured up you get again to head to the food.”

I’ve been to a fair few buffet restaurants – they’re a favorite for our family’s diverse tastes – and a local Chinese buffet does indeed seat guests first. A popular all-American buffet chain, however, has guests pay as they enter and they choose their own route – food first or table first.

“On a ship it is different because you do not get shown to your table on Lido. As for what to do, food or table first?” Heald asked. “I guess if you have others in your family or friends who can save the table while everyone else gets their food you can do this but if you’re a solo cruiser then that’s not possible.”

Whether to get food or find a table first can be a concern, especially at very busy times. During the breakfast buffet, for example, many cruisers are eager to get their food as quickly as possible so they can be ready to go ashore or get started on the day’s activities.

At that time, however, seating can be at a premium and it might be prudent to seek out a suitable table first, then either “reserve” it with a book or bag or leave 1-2 members of one’s party to save the space.

Carnival Buffet Guests Share Tips

But how do Carnival cruise guests choose which option to take when they visit the buffet?

“I think it is safe to say that most of you get food first, right?” Heald asked.

That question quickly generated nearly two thousand responses, with experienced Carnival guests sharing their approach to buffet meals.

“Getting the table first can help in that everyone knows where to go after getting food instead of wandering around looking for each other, especially when it is busy and everyone wants something different to eat,” one guest responded.

Read Also: Carnival Cruise Line Answers the Dirty Buffet Plate Question

“Table first. Then we take turns getting food. Better than wandering around for ten minutes with a plate of food that is getting cold while you try to find a table,” another guest noted.

Different commenters do note that food or table first can vary depending on the group size, how busy the buffet may be, and whether anyone in their party might need assistance, such as young children who can’t serve themselves or older family members who might use walkers or mobility scooters.

Another guest notes that they’ve had difficulty finding a table due to other travelers playing cards, doing crafts, or otherwise using table space but not actually eating.

Heald has addressed this concern before, and different spaces are available on Carnival ships for card players and crafters.

During very busy dining periods, Carnival crew members may ask individuals to relocate if they aren’t eating but space is at a premium. Such activities are not banned, but guests should be considerate of their fellow diners.

Just two weeks after Carnival Sunshine made her debut at her new Virginia homeport, Carnival Cruise Line has rolled out facial recognition technology to expedite the debarkation process in Norfolk.

This will be a welcome change for the more than 3,000 guests who sail on the recently refreshed vessel for every cruise, as this update dramatically speeds up the debarkation process.

The new technology was first used at the conclusion of the ship’s February 16, 2025 departure, an 8-night Eastern Caribbean sailing that visited Amber Cove, Grand Turk, and Princess Cays. When the ship returned to Norfolk on Monday, February 24, 2025, the facial recognition technology was ready and waiting.

“Yesterday (February 24th) we added facial technology debarkation for guests cruising on the Carnival Sunshine from Norfolk, Virginia,” confirmed John Heald, Carnival Cruise Line’s Brand Ambassador.

Facial recognition technology dramatically speeds up customs and immigration processing as cruise travelers return from their vacation.

Without the new upgrade, every debarking guest would need to speak with a customs and border protection agent to have their documentation examined and identification verified before they can leave the cruise terminal.

Now, travelers who use US passports only have to pause for a few seconds as the camera records their image and compares it to the established database, confirming their identity. The photos used to do this are deleted shortly thereafter, ensuring security.

In-person identity verification can take 2-3 minutes per passenger, while facial recognition processing takes less than 30 seconds. When working with thousands of guests, this can make a massive difference in how quickly cruise passengers debark the ship.

This better efficiency then has a knock-on effect of permitting embarkation for the next cruise to begin more quickly and the ship can even set sail sooner, getting the fun started on the next vacation.

To be clear, if guests do not have a US passport, they must still speak with an in-person agent for debarkation processing. With the implementation of facial recognition technology, however, even those in-person lines will be shorter.

Reaction to the facial technology is generally positive and enthusiastic, though some guests feel as though Carnival Cruise Line is forcing travelers to get passports.

Heald followed up the announcement with a daily poll question about if travelers use a passport to cruise.

One commenter noted, “Facial technology again Heald! Why is Carnival Cruise Line pushing all of us to have to buy a passport. 50% of Americans will never get one.”

To be clear, no cruise line is requiring that all travelers have passports. Whether or not cruisers need one depends on their chosen itinerary. With very few exceptions, closed-loop cruises from US homeports do not require passports and other forms of identification are perfectly valid for sailing on those voyages.

Only two percent of the more than 23,500 votes in Heald’s poll agreed with the original commenter about the cruise line “pushing” for passports.

On the other hand, 36% of respondents (more than 8,300 votes) do already have passports they use for cruising.

New Technology In Use at 11 Carnival Homeports

Norfolk is the eleventh cruise homeport Carnival Cruise Line has upgraded with this improvement.

Read Also: Do I Need a Passport to Go on a Cruise? – Full Guide

“This means we have successfully rolled out this technology in Miami, Tampa, Port Canaveral, Jacksonville, New Orleans, Galveston, Long Beach, New York, Baltimore and Mobile,” Heald said. “It really does help get guests who have a passport to be able to proceed quickly through the debarkation process.”

At many of the homeports where this technology is in use, Carnival Cruise Line has been able to move up ship departures by 30 minutes – starting the sailing fun even faster for thousands of guests every week.

This upgrade is in addition to $12 million worth of cruise terminal renovations and improvements already underway in Norfolk, including additional seating for guests, a sloped walkway for better accessibility, and canopies over pedestrian areas.

The two-phase upgrade project to upgrade the Half Moone Cruise Terminal is planned to be completed by May 1, 2026.

Carnival Sunshine (formerly Carnival Destiny) is now homeported from the Old Dominion year-round, offering 6- and 8-night Bahamas, Eastern Caribbean, and Bermuda itineraries.

While Carnival Sunshine is the only major cruise ship homeported from Norfolk, several river cruise ships from American Cruise Lines also use the port.

Furthermore, several ships are scheduled for port visits to Norfolk in the coming months, including Holland America Line’s ms Zuiderdam, TUI Cruises’ Mein Schiff 1, and Princess Cruises’ Majestic Princess.