twangster

CATS! tends to be viewed with polarized glasses. Some love it, some hate it. That's entertainment. I'm more of a DOG person but I still may watch CATS! again next cruise just because the theatrical aspects of the production but I understand the show isn't for everyone. It did quite well on Broadway with similar outcomes.

No one here knows. Royal doesn't publish if they cap free sites.

It's a bar basically, that isn't always crewed.

Jewel has an adult only Solarium. I was on her last week.

They used to. I've not seen Royal announce plans to bring back all of the second theater shows since the restart. Columbus the Musical have been missing on Harmony for example.

Quantum class all launched with RFID. Card stock that's pre-punched has been hit and miss even before the pandemic. I've received prepunched cards then two months later on the same ship they weren't. I imagine with supply chain variability it's even more unpredictable now.

Before the migration to Starlink Navigator has had terrible internet for years. From the days before her amplification she had terrible internet. That's a large part of the frustration with Royal's Voom packages. Newer ships had better technology with lower latency and faster speeds yet they charged the same amount on the older ships that had terrible service where it was difficult to stream even if your purchased that capability. Mariner and pretty much the entire older fleet has terrible internet. This is why so many are eager for Starlink particularly on older ships. Newer ships have better technology compared to Starlink but Starlink costs them significantly less money so they are effectively downgrading the newer ships.

In terms of a contact the Next Cruise team is part of the Crown and Anchor department. Contact CAS at ‭(800) 526-9723‬.

Did this book the cruise you were just on with a travel agent? If so they'll get a copy of the Next Cruise booking email as well. I purchased in the app on Friday last week which was the last full day of the cruise. Later when I went back to look the app recognized I had made the purchase but I hadn't seen the credit card charge yet. On Saturday morning I debarked the ship and hadn't seen anything yet but by the time I got home they had charged my card and I had an email with the booking number. [email protected] NEXTCRUISE BOOKING - Invoice for Reservation ID XXXXXXXXX It appears someone on the ship processed it so I assume there is a manual human step involved.

Interesting. Thanks. Starlink uses local gateways regional to location where you are. I thought they might tunnel everything back to the US so it will be interesting to see if you get Mexican internet as you sail south.

Probably removed Surf packages in preparation for the massive price drop of Surf & Stream now there internet costs have been slashed substantially

https://support.starlink.com/topic?category=27 What are the limitations of Starlink Maritime? Best Effort Service: Starlink prioritizes network resources for Starlink Maritime users at sea and on terrestrial waters. Starlink Maritime service is provided on a best effort basis; stated speeds and uninterrupted use of services are not guaranteed. Starlink is not intended or registered for use as a Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) service at this time. Coastal Waters: Starlink for Maritime should only be used in territorial waters where licensing is either held by SpaceX or the end user. Starlink Maritime is currently approved for use in the US. FCC Authorization Notice. Federal Communication Commission authorization to Starlink for in-motion services in the United States has been granted on a non-interference protected basis, i.e., unprotected basis with respect to operations in the 12.2-12.7 GHz band. Therefore, Starlink’s in-motion operations, including for vessels, must accept any interference received from both current and future services authorized in the band – even if such interference causes undesirable operations for Starlink Services and its customers. Starlink in-motion Services must not cause harmful interference to any authorized service in the band, whether licensed or not. Starlink Maritime delivers high-speed, low-latency internet with up to 350 Mbps download while at sea. From merchant vessels to oil rigs to premium yachts, Starlink Maritime allows you to connect from some of the most remote waters across the world, just like you would in the office or at home. Coverage: See the Starlink Maritime Map Hardware: Leverage 2 Flat High Performance Starlinks Fleet Management: Remotely monitor and manage your Starlink fleet from a single enterprise portal. Pause: Pause and un-pause service at any time Additional specifications about Starlink Maritime can be found here.

Starlink now available domestically across all of Alaska. Hopefully this means next year's Alaska cruise season will have much better internet on board.

Before Bimini had a pier, many years ago, Royal planned to call there but had to abort en route once they discovered there was no pier. This according to some long time Florida based cruisers I met once. Not sure if that's true or not. More recently a few Royal ships have called there but it's very infrequent. It was more recently developed into it's current form by Genting's Resorts World. I imagine Royal wasn't super keen on paying money to a competitor. You may recall some drama when the Crystal Symphony stopped in Bimini (since the parent company Genting Hong Kong has a business interest in the pier/port/area), debarked all guests and ceased operations before going on the run to evade being "arrested" in the wake of the Genting bankruptcy. I suppose the reluctance of lines like Carnival, MSC, NCL and Royal to pay money to Genting to use Bimini contributed to their downfall. Virgin Voyages does use it though. I think the first Royal ships used Bimini as an alternate when the Caymans was still closed to ships in late 2021. Carnival Horizon stopped there at least once. When renovated the pier was designed to be Oasis capable but Royal didn't seem too eager to fund Genting's investment.

While many of the more common ip address sites are full of ads and who knows what else, ipchicken tends to be pretty lean and clean.

Curious what public IP addresses they are using and if it stays consistent over the cruise. What do you get if you browse to ipchicken.com ?

Does she use the 50% BOGO beer/wine coupon for them? Or is she using the Diamond drink coupons?

The estimated wait time for your chat agent is... 243 minutes.

I manage an environment with nearly 3,000 access points. We still have dead spots. More access points is not always the answer. Sometimes more access points makes it worse, not better. Ships are very challenging environments and will never have perfect coverage everywhere.

The Chops or Giovanni's suite breakfast is an underrated benefit. I really enjoy the relaxed start to the day and on the Radiance class these venues have great views to the sea. It truly is a great way to start the day. As an early riser I tend to be there near the start of the breakfast service so I miss the late-comers arriving at the end.

Even older ships have a controller based wifi setup that uses Wifi-5 capable access points. I typically get wifi connection rates on board the older ships in the 90 - 300mb range. I am referring to the physical wifi connection rate between my device and the access point, not the internet speed achieved. This was recently on Jewel with her "old" wifi environment: Jewel still uses the old legacy Speedcast geostationary satellites so the latency to off ship resources is very high yet the PHY connection rate between my device and the access point was at this moment 324 Mbps down and 243 Mbps up on a 40 MHz channel. Not bad really and that will self-police users to a degree without the draconian 4 Mbps per user cap that Voom typically employs. Most of the advancements for newer Wifi-6 and Wifi-6E technology is in the 5GHz or 6GHz spectrum with only minor improvements in the 2.4GHz spectrum. That isn't really going to do much in an environment that relies heavily on the 2.4 GHz band to penetrate steel cabin walls. The only area that newer access points will provide some benefit will be in high density locations such as theaters where older access points can't handle several hundred client associations per access point. Given that Starlink maritime service is currently limited to 350Mbps as a best case on a perfect day they don't really need more than Wifi-5 technology to reach the theoretical limitation of Starlink and even if they invest millions to upgrade all ships to Wifi-6 or 6E due the extensive use of metal walls, ceilings and floors the user experience would not really improve that much.

Most of the time you have to ask them to use a coupon. Recently I was sitting at a bar and the bartender informed another guest they had a 50% coupon and asked if they wanted to use it. I haven't seen that very often. I've not tried to use the coupon against a hard seltzer.

I can't remember if the passage is available to the public on Ovation. On Quantum it is not while on Odyssey it is. I tried going through old photos but couldn't find them. See if there are YouTube videos of the Ovation Solarium. The door to the cabin hallway is right where the door to the outside bridge wings is located and on some ships there is a sign "Crew Only". Maybe you can get a sighting from a solarium video tour from Ovation.

Chat feature requires human agents waiting to chat. If they had more agents the phone wait times wouldn't be horrendous. Catch 22.