twangster

Except with the "free" drink package you still pay a hefty service charge. Plus the 'free' internet is 250 minutes. You have to log in, check everything quickly and logout. i recently price shopped a December cruise. The advertised $499 inside guarantee cabin rate doesn't include anything 'free'. To qualify for a 'free' perk you have to step up to an inside guarantee cabin @ $669. So $170 more per person to get something for free in the same inside guarantee cabin. But wait, there is a $356 "Choice promo Srvg Chrg" added to that. So the "free" drink package really cost $170 x 2 plus $356 for a total of $696. For those people who hate misleading advertising NCL must drive them nuts.

Some excursion have dropped in price too. Saved a whopping $5 on one in September. But heck, it's $5. I'lll take it.

For the Symphony TA the drink package is now $39 per day, $49 for Deluxe + Voom. Voom S&S is $12 per day. I'm buying the drink package at this price point. Deluxe + Voom when Voom is $12 effectively makes the Deluxe drink package just $37 per day. That's a Kraken Lavaflow and two nice glasses of wine per day. Very easy to do that. Add a few beers, bottled water and fruit smoothies plus the fact there are supposedly in excess of 2,500 D/D+ on this cruise and the Diamond Lounge is going to be insanely overcrowded each night.

The two device plans are harder to calculate because there can be greater variance on-board. Based on what I have have captured in the past, the two device plan on-board is often $18.99 per device for Surf and Stream, full voyage. That's $37.98 for two devices total. Consequently getting it for $19.99 total including two devices in the cruise planner is pretty close to the 50% off on-board prices they are suggesting in the cruise planner and a very good deal. Just make sure you only apply it to one person. If you select both people when checking out you are actually buying two, two device plans for a total of four devices. For an upcoming 9 night cruise with my friend's daughter I am buying it at this price and saving $115 versus on-board using D+ discount.

It depends on your phone and carrier. Voom is a wifi plan only, much like you may have at home with your wifi router. Many US based post-paid cell phones support wifi calling (TMobile, Verizon, ATT, Sprint, etc). Right now at home I can turn on airplane and connect to my home wifi, then place calls just like I can when airplane mode is off. If you can do the that, at home, right now, you are all set. If not you can talk to your cell phone provider or use a wifi calling app such as those that @4ensic mentioned. I found Magicjack to work, but not great compared to my native TMobile wifi calling capable phone.

I just checked Oasis, Anthem and Ovation in 2019 and Solarium Bistro was bookable for all three. Thanks for reminding me, reservations made for all. I'm might cancel Ovation though since I'll have CK access on that cruise. For what its worth I was able to walk up to SB on Anthem and walk in for dinner one night.

Two years ago cabanas were located in a rocky area. You had to walk to the beach area to swim. They've been moved and now you have a roped off beach area just for cabanas. I grabbed some Cabanas beach photos in my Empress live blog a few weeks ago. https://www.royalcaribbeanblog.com/boards/index.php?/topic/8865-empress-73018-5-nights-inc-cuba/&do=findComment&comment=79860 I'll copy the URLs here so not to upload them a second time and waste any more server space: The beach is quite nice here. I think your girls will love it. EDIT - Another more distant photo showing more of the area.

Thank goodness you are not a geography teacher. Wait. You are not a geography teacher, right?

Possibly US Customs may not have the facilities to process large volumes in Bar Harbor. That may dictate re-entry into the US at Portland. For Northbound it could be just the way they could negotiate the ports of calls with all the other lines vying for port space. The other thought me be territorial limits. I'd have to look in more detail but perhaps this route maximizes time in international waters keeping the casino and stores open among other reasons to try to stay out of US waters when possible (taxes on each drink served, different fuel burned within 12 miles, etc). Another thought - ships sail better at speed. A slow meandering ship in a moderate wave will rock all over the place. At 8-12 knots it's much smoother. By overshooting it makes for a better ride without a huge incremental fuel bill.

Here is an interesting article I stumbled across when they were introduced on Quantum. http://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?12380/ Back them RC had goals of using RFID as luggage trackers applied to each bag. As these ships approach the 3 year mark it's time replace the pair of AA batteries in 3,394 locks on Quantum and Anthem each. That's over 13,500 AA batteries between the two. Harmony coming up soon. With more locks that's probably over 8,000 AA batteries. Royal Caribbean has set a goal for a maximum 10-minute check-in time for Quantum of the Sea passengers, who will have already created a boarding pass online that includes their own ID photo. When embarking, guests will proceed through a smart check-in process that starts with a scan of the bar-coded boarding ID card that was sent to their home prior to the cruise. Staff members will then attach a passive ultrahigh-frequency(UHF) RFID tag to each luggage item, and will link the unique ID number encoded to that bag's tag with the passenger and his or her stateroom number, using an MC9190-Z handheld reader provided by Motorola Solutions (now part of Zebra Technologies). When the bags are then moved from the receiving area onto the vessel, personnel will read the tags in order to update their status. Porters will again interrogate the UHF tags as they begin carrying them to passengers' rooms, and one final time as each bag is deposited at its appropriate room. Guests can download the Royal iQ app and use its luggage-tracker feature to monitor the movements of their bags and receive status updates, such as "checked in," "onboard," "in transit" and "delivered." The wristbands are made with a 13.56 MHz NXP Semiconductors Mifare Ultralight C RFIDchip complying with the ISO 14443 standard—a more secure option than the ISO 15693standard, according to Michael Hrabinas, the executive VP of Feig Electronics, which provided the HF readers used in the self-service Royal iQ kiosks. The cruise ship installed approximately 280 Feig Electronics Obid Classic Pro CPR 40 RFID readers, Hrabina reports. In addition, the cruise line installed battery-operated VingCard RFID-enabled lock mechanisms at 3,394 doors, to provide guests with access to their rooms. The locks' RFIDreaders enter a low-power sleep state when not in use. "It's important to extend the battery life through power-management techniques," Hrabina says. The approach of a tagawakens the device, which then reads the tag, controls the door lock and returns to the sleep state. Two AA batteries can last for up to three years, he adds, and for tens of thousands of transactions.

You can easily double that for supply chain, warehouse and distribution costs, plus labor overhead, dealing with faults, guests services time, computer issues, etc.and applying a logo to them. In my experience with RFID dongles the cheap ones have a fairly high failure rate. 3 in 10 are useless. You get what you pay for. I have a device that copies RFID cards. The version I have is limited to an older platform that can't copy the newer chips used by Royal. I suspect there is very little net revenue in Wow bands. Once upon a time they were supposed to $2. That would be revenue negative.

San Juan was where I had a simple 2 wire extension cord confiscated only to be replaced with the exact same style extension cord for medical use on board. Same cord made it on board in Miami just fine. San Juan is tough.

Likely local cartels interacting with each other.

Upper members of the CAS expect everything for free, especially if it denotes status. An RFID enabled Pinnacle badge?

A call to RCMP/CSIS wouldn't hurt. They know how to engage the appropriate agency on the other side of the border. One concern with calling RC is that only represent RC's interests. They won't likely get this guy on any radar screens of any government agency where he appears to belong.

Royal's future is smartphones. Use an app on a device you provide. Wow bands aren't cheap. Even in bulk they add up when you consider many of them will never be used again or not for a long time and if they were free there would be tens of thousands every week going into landfill . The future is an app. All major hotel chains are going with apps. They may update some of the fleet to have app enabled cabin locks but I don't see the whole fleet going there. Perhaps the "AMP" enabled ships might be upgraded but even that is still a huge investment to replace every cabin lock and this investment introduces zero revenue. Radiance class and below I predict will never see app-enabled locks on the doors. Possibly Voyager class too. Like Mariner the AMP will bring enough WOW! without updating cabin decor or cabin locks. I'd much rather see decor updated before cabin locks. Making it easy to order a drink on your phone without leaving your chair does make it easier to spend money which increases revenue. The future is the smartphone and an app.

There are two things I prefer about booking the train directly with the Alaskan railroad. 1. - It has Goldstar service. I did the regular 'Adventure' class of service last year and it was great, but seeing the Goldstar car and people out on it's larger outside deck made me very tempted to try Goldstar. With Goldstar breakfast is included as well as 2 drinks. I had to buy breakfast last year. The charter 'transfer' doesn't offer Goldstar. 2. - The direct train arrives at the ship around noon. I like getting on the ship early, always do on every cruise I take. The charter train arrives around 4pm. In theory it allows people to fly in during the morning and then transfer to the ship in the afternoon, just like Royal's transfer services in Florida ports. Difference being the 4 hours it takes to get from airport to ship. With a later sail away that works but as a morning person I'd rather be on the early train.

What deck is your cabin on? If you are in a suite that sort of implies deck 10 on Majesty which should have no issues with smoke.

The theory was the POS terminals at bars would have a long cord that could be extended to reach the guest. Most of the time though, the cord wraps around bottles or other items like drink of the day displays so in the end, you do have to usually take it off and hand it to the bartender. The terminals sometimes have issues. On Anthem at the pool station it would never read my band for the whole cruise. My card was in the room since I was going swimming so they had to key in my towel manually. Took several minutes and quite a line developed while they fuddled with it.

Updating over 2,700 cabin doors plus the computer upgrades to work with the new RFID locks, plus adding hundreds of POS terminals to read them is easily a million dollar investment for hardware alone. The labor to retrofit a ship is probably another half that. You can't put $1.5M to $2M into a ship upgrade without increasing fares. Wow bands aren't going to generate new revenue that didn't exist before, they are just 'cool'. To recover the cost fares would have to go up. It's one thing to build new ships with new tech. The incremental cost isn't that much. Retrofitting existing ships to add them would require downtime. Every minute of a dry dock is precious, extending a dry dock to perform a Wow band upgrade causes more money to be lost. I agree wow bands are cool tech but not so cool I am willing to pay more for the privilege.

Following. Greek cruise is on my radar.

The Genie for the Pit Suite was da bomb.

At the 3 day mark revenue is passed from corporate to ship. At that point all guest purchases and booking are under ship control. That doesn't make it a law, just inflexible IT. I'd still like to see the actual piece of law that is imposed by the US government.

So far only Mariner is doing "Dress your Best" that I know of. Mariner only does 3 and 4 night Bahamas cruises at the moment. Short cruises don't tend to see as much formal wear as longer cruises. Caribbean cruises tend not to be as formal as European cruises. I'm one of those people who doesn't notice what other people wear. I tend to bring an old sports coat and shirt with a collar. No tie. It's hardly formal but quite average. I don't even notice what other people wear. If you offered me a $100 as I walked out of the dining room to tell you what the table beside me wore at dinner I couldn't.

There is a shampoo that supposedly has conditioner in it that is provided. A couple of bars of soap are provided as well (one for shower, one for sink). It's not very good stuff in my opinion. I always bring my own in airline style 2oz travel containers. Girls I travel with bring full size shampoo bottles and about 14 of them. If you are not picky, you can get by with what they provide.