Carnival gives out priority passes for free

Free perks are great, aren’t they?

Like when you’re at a theme park and you get to skip the lines on all the rides, saving you time. Oh wait, you have to pay for that. But what if you didn’t?

This is a situation that a handful of passengers on a Carnival Cruise Line ship found themselves in recently – and were given priority boarding for free!

According to Cruise Radio, the freebie was a glitch in the system, giving passengers who hadn’t purchased a priority ‘Faster to the Fun’ pass the ability to skip, hop and jump to the front of the line.

And ‘Faster to the Fun’ isn’t cheap, either. A pass can cost between $49.95 and $79.95 per stateroom, with the price depending on the length of cruise and sometimes the ship you’re on. But in this case, some passengers were receiving stateroom priority passes show up in their account without paying at all.

Obviously passengers who had paid for the pass were completely and utterly outraged, and took to Facebook (obviously) to express their concerns. Some said that their pass hadn’t shown up on their boarding pass or in their account, despite paying for it (or being a Platinum or Diamond member of Carnival’s loyalty program and getting it for free anyway).

They needn’t have worried, though, because a Carnival rep came to the rescue on Facebook – assuring everyone that they would be boarded in the correct order. Much to the disappointment of those who got the pass for free, we’re sure.

“The agents at the terminal will have a list of everyone who purchased [Faster To The Fun]”, the response said. “They will be manually checking all guests, and only allowing [priority boarding] to those who purchased it.”

And with that, justice was restored.

The ‘Faster to the Fun’ pass also offers priority access to security and check-in as well as boarding – plus being able to enter your stateroom immediately upon boarding. It also gets you priority delivery of your luggage, a special dedicated guest services phone line, priority dinner time assignments and a wider choice of debarkation after the cruise has finished.

Not for the people who got it because of a glitch, though.

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Email the Travel Weekly team at traveldesk@travelweekly.com.au

carnival cruise line Faster to the Fun priority pass