Carnival Cruise Line has key policy kids won’t like
There’s a certain comfort of home you can’t enjoy on a Carnival ship.
Carnival has a list of banned items that you cannot bring on a cruise. For example, you can’t bring weapons, fireworks, liquor, any appliances with a heating element, or hoverboards, just to name a few.
One thing that is notably absent from the list is video game consoles. If you have a PlayStation or Xbox gaming console, you can certainly put it in your luggage and bring it on a Carnival cruise. Technically speaking, a video game console falls into the same general category of electronics as a laptop computer, so there’s nothing preventing you from bringing it.
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However, you could run into a problem that prevents you from using it. Specifically, Carnival offers a TV in every stateroom, but you are unable to hook any devices to it. This is by design and is a fact that many people find out the hard way after getting on board.
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Should Carnival allow you to hook a console to the in-room TV?
One parent recently contacted Carnival brand ambassador John Heald to inquire about/complain about not being able to play video games on board. Heald responded in a (since deleted) post on his popular Facebook page, which has more than 600,000 followers.
The message to Heald read, “My 12-year-old son does not make friends easily. He is an academic and does not enjoy time in cruise camps. We are in ****** cruise now on the Carnival Celebration. He was disappointed and borderline angry that he could not hook up his PlayStation to the TV in the room? There was no help to do this. I looked at the details of our cruise and nowhere is this mentioned…There should be hook-ups for this in every room for children who spend a lot of time there.”
Heald’s response was less than accommodating. He replied, “There is so much to do on the ship. I know he may be shy and I understand that, but to say you will not cruise again because of a Playboxstation, well, it really is sad.”
He went on to say that a PlayStation, Xbox, or similar gaming console cannot be hooked up to in-cabin TVs. Period. But he did end the post to his popular Facebook page by asking his followers “should I have done more?”
Unfortunately, for one reason or another, Heald’s post was deleted soon after it was posted, so we can’t list cruisers’ reactions. But the comments were overwhelmingly to the effect of “there’s absolutely no need to sit in your cabin and play video games on a cruise.”
Does Carnival offer a workaround?
As mentioned, there’s nothing that prevents you from bringing a PlayStation or other full-sized gaming console on a cruise ship. You just won’t be able to use it on the in-room TV.
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In all fairness, I understand. I’m a parent of two young children, and my 7-year-old son loves video games. He’s not shy and loves going to Camp Ocean on Carnival cruises, but if I’m being totally honest, it’s because they have video games to play there.
And while we don’t let him waste too much time sitting in the room playing video games, we do let him bring his Nintendo Switch to use while the rest of us just want some downtime in our stateroom or in case we get a rainy day and are stuck inside.
As a final thought, while you can’t hook up a PlayStation or Xbox to the in-room TV, there can be a workaround if you absolutely need a gaming console in your room to be able to fully enjoy the trip.
My suggestion is to bring a laptop and an HDMI cable and simply hook the console to use the laptop’s screen. There may be other methods, too, but the point is that with some planning, it can be done.
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