twangster

Surprisingly I'm not visiting Two70° as much as I have on other cruises. So much going on with great views outside but we'll see what happens when we visit the glaciers.

I book scuba diving excursions solo. You can choose whatever excursion you want. If a partner is required, they will match you with one or the excursion leader will partner with you. Don't sweat it, book it. Photo packages? I never buy one. They are not required or mandatory. I would find an excursion that you want and just book it. It's your money.

With Hawaii cruises you really have to look at the itineraries and pay attention to port times. For Royal these can vary quite a bit from ship to ship and year to year. It can be great way to see the islands. I've visited on a fly in basis and while it's relatively easy to fly between islands, there is something to be said for unpacking your things once and not having to deal with airports multiple times, if you find the right cruise itinerary. The nice thing about Hawaii is that it is part of the US. It's easy to rent a car, cell phones work, GPS on phones can be used to navigate, etc. You don't have to book ship excursions as long as you don't mind doing the research and planning your own day like you would have to when you fly in. Some ports are tender ports so a ship excursion can be a great way to ensure your spot on a tender boat. The Pacific ocean can be rough sometimes and gentle sometimes. It is a cooler ocean on this route compared to the Caribbean but for me that is a good thing.

Day Four - Icy Strait Point Placeholder #3

Day Four - Icy Strait Point Pictures coming, for now here is a 7 minute video of the Glacier Bay Flightseeing excursion. Originally $399 but offered on sale for $319. The right seat as offered so I jumped at the opportunity. Plane seats nine plus the pilot. At the 3 minute mark is the John Hopkins glacier and around the 5 minute mark you can see Ovation at Icy Strait Point. Pretty awesome experience and looking forward to seeing Glacier Bay by ship now that Royal can begin sailing there in future years.

Day Four - Icy Strait Point Just got back from Glacier Bay Flight. Wow. Too many pictures to go through. Quick bite of lunch then I've got my next excursion soon so this will function as a placeholder and I'll update it once I have time to do the beginning of day four with justice.

@ScooterScott22 - I tend not to do M&Ms. Another Alaska Enrichment talk on day three in Two70° at 1:30pm was well attended. This one focused on the Geography of Alaska. Temperatures were in the mid-50s and sunny. Some folks were in t-shirts and shorts. Flowrider was going. Voom is becoming very slow. We've switched to the old satellite platform that was designed for ships half this size. With 4000+ guests it's excruciating at times. Dinner tonight in Jamie's was very good and courtesy of my travel agent. I was in a corner with poor lighting for photography so I couldn't get good food pictures. I'm spending a lot time outdoors looking for photo opportunities and with the very slow Voom I'm going to switch from live blogging to semi-live or a few days delayed and will fill in the missing photos when I can give them the respect they warrant. As we move into the port intensive phase of the cruise I'm going to focus on the cruise and less on the blog, at least for now. Back soon...

Minor differences. Somehow I enjoyed Pixels better.

The Case of the Disappearing and Reappearing Stacks In order to pass under the bridge in Vancouver they lowered the exhaust stacks at the top of the ship's funnels. This along with timing the transit to occur at low tide provided the necessary safety margin to sail under the bridge. May 13 - Vancouver harbor: May 15 - At sea.

I was up early on account of still being on my home time zone two hours different. At 4:30am it was getting light out so I was hoping for a sunrise. Temperature was 39° F according to the itinerary channel. Finally blue sky above us! To the East the sun was trying to rise but cloud cover obscured it and the mountain range that I know runs along the coast here. If you look closely you sort of see mountains along the water's edge. To clear under the bridge in Vancouver with the largest margin possible they lowered the stacks. The gray area with the piping is an assembly that lowers as a unit. It appears it rides on those chrome support columns or they might be the hydraulic rams that lift and lower it. The indoor pool area was a nice place to warm up. It's pretty massive and should work great for families on these sea days in Alaska.

Day Three - Sea Day Here is the breakfast door tag I've been using to order a continental breakfast each morning. Time slots are 6am - 11am in 30 minute windows.

Before I forget, time change at the end of day two, we are now on Alaska time, four hours off eastern time.

The Music Hall has permanent sound and lighting equipment.

Will try. I've yet to see a DJ on the pool deck, no outdoor parties.

I use cameras that capture in the RAW format. This allows for a lot of options to "fix" pictures later in software. For indoor or dark shows I tend to use around 1/80th or for skating shows 1/250th shutter speed to avoid motion blur and I let the auto-ISO of the camera go crazy high, then I apply noise reduction later in software to remove the noise that is typical with high ISO photos. The Pixel shots were captured with a Sony RX100M6. It's not inexpensive but small, discrete and it shoots in RAW just like my bigger mirrorless camera does. It's a very capable little camera.