Carnival Art Auctions

Can anyone comment on how Carnival's Art Auctions compare to Princess?

Thanks

[Eaky77]

I have never been on Princess, but what I will tell you is that watch your receipt. We had double charges on ours. We also didn't get some art that we ordered, and were charged. The people at the auction were very nice, and it was fixed in about a week. We did have to wait about a month for the refund for the double charges, but it wasn't a problem. The auctions were really fun though!

Enjoy!
Erin

When I cruised the Destiny four years ago, the art auctions were incredible. They had Dali, Picasso, Disney, Warner Brother's, you name it. The price ranges were anywhere from $5.00 up to $10,000. One thing I found was that the starting bids were all quite low for the caliber of the artwork. I could have gone crazy! I did pick up two Indian artwork pieces commissioned by the White House to honor the Native American Heritage for $110.00 for both. The nice thing was that Park West Galleries, based here in Michigan was able to ship me the pieces so I did not have to get them home. I was charge correctly to my sail and sign card and the artwork arrived three weeks after returning from the cruise (ahead of the scheduled four weeks I was told). There is a terrific selection. During my cruise, we had a lot of poor weather that kept us in the ship with an additional day at sea (Grand Caymen was closed to cruise ship traffic). So we ended up having three art auctions. I was really surprised to see that there was some of the same stuff, but with each auction, new pieces were added that I hadn't seen the time before.

Now I can't compare to this to other cruise lines, but I was very impressed on all levels with the Carnival art auctions. And if you do follow art, Park West in my case is one of the big dealers of art. I don't know if Carnival still uses them, but if so, I don't think you will go wrong.

Am I correct in the fact that there is only one company that has the auction contract on most of the main line cruise ships?

Princess owns their artwork (no gallery to deal with). They have it warehoused in FL and is framed/shipped from there.

From what I understand, RCCL uses Park West too. Last Nov, on Princess, we heard rumors that Carnival would be doing the same as Princess. I was pleased with the way it worked and hoped it would be the same on Carnival.

We have made several purchases and were very pleased with the service and finished product. It's a fun way to kill some time on vacation. We've never been to an art auction on land.