Vancity Cruiser

Well our Prime Minister IS going crazy right now so anything is possible

Hopefully not needed because that would mean the 15 ships sailing out of Vancouver would need to find new itineraries

It depends on what you want from a cruise. It is a small ship with not a lot of activities. It is a very relaxing ship if you like to lay around and relax

Do you feel the benefits of diamond status is worth the cost of a cabin?

I wonder if any cruise lines opted in under the ‘not highly vaccinated’ category. It would definitely open up a marketing opportunity to those who are not comfortable taking vaccines but looking to get back to cruising. Edit: Just had a look at the dashboard. It appears MSC has 3 ships listed as ‘not highly vaccinated’. Every other ship is ‘highly vaccinated’ and interesting not a single ship has opted for ‘vaccination standard of excellence’.

I miss being able to prebook entertainment before getting on board. Also, I miss the full entertainment schedule. Too many cancelled shows

I think that ever since vaccines were approved for 5-17 year olds Carnival has not had to employ the ‘lottery ststem’. Under this new program where children under 5 are not included in the 95% I don’t know how Royal could fall under the threshold of 95%. They require all eligible passengers to provide proof of vaccination so where would the 5% unvaxxed even come from?

So looking forward to a maskless cruise! Unfortunately, being from Canada I wasn’t able to cruise at the beginning of the restart when they were maskless. So my 3 cruises so far all included wearing masks which wasn’t the end of the world for me but I am excited to go maskless! 63 days to go

$79 for rapid antigen at YVR. Still robbery but less than $110

Will be there in April and again in October. Coming from Vancouver anything over 65 degrees is swimming weather for me.

That’s hilarious that it was cheaper after the ‘sale’ ended

It will be interesting to see what the ‘plan’ is for the cruise industry that the government is supposedly working on

The Canadian government has completely missed the mark here. We shouldn’t be celebrating the fact that we ‘only’ need an antigen test instead of a PCR test. It’s still a pita for travel. There is no reason that asymptomatic fully vaccinated Canadians should need to test in order to return to our country! What is the purpose? To prevent covid coming into our country? It’s here, travelling is not what is spreading it.

Honestly this is a typical Canadian government bullshit make an announcement without actually changing anything. The inconvenience of a test is still required, still doing ‘random’ testing upon arrival. This is not a great announcement at all. If they don’t change anything this will drastically affect Canadian ports again for the Alaska season. Are the cruise lines going to go back to providing antigen tests on-board for each passenger the day before they get back to Vancouver? Or before the PSVA required stop in Victoria for ships sailing from Seattle? Expect the Alaskan governors to be in the news shortly looking for an extension on the PSVA exemption

NCL has announced that masks are no longer mandatory as of March 1st. You would think if it is contingent on all passengers being boosted you’d think they would have announced that as it would most likely affect a lot of booked passengers. There has got to be some interpretation that we are missing. NCL would not announce new protocols of no masks if they ‘can’t’ follow through on it.

I find it interesting that the first cruise line to supposedly ‘opt in’ to the CDC’s ‘voluntary’ program is the first line to announce they are going totally mask free.......

I’m curious if any Canadians who returned to Canada after cruising in the last few months have NOT been ‘randomly’ selected for additional testing. It’s happened to me both times and everyone I know who has cruised has been ‘randomly’ selected for additional testing upon arrival.

I’m not sure what the deal is but I assume there are contracts in place that they are tied to. It’s no secret that Cats is the least liked show on the RC fleet. It’s got to be tough on the cast to see more than 50% of the audience not return after intermission. If there was going to be a change it should have happened a couple years back when Oasis went through her amplification but it didn’t which leads me to believe there is some kind of contract and/or licensing agreement.

I don’t think that the cruise lines that opt out are just going to drop all their vax requirements. They may drop testing but I feel the vax requirement will be the last requirement to drop, if it ever does

Must have been a very aggressive bid!

In the gift shop on Allure you can buy a model of the amplified Allure

Interestingly I find the ships from Genting Dream to be very similar to NCL’s ships.

No. We had done the portside testing. By the time we got our “inconclusive” results it was 2 hours before our flight. We rushed to Nomi Health in the airport. They have a qr code out front that you can scan and register. We then got in immediately and had our results 17 minutes later. You can book ahead of time but it is not necessary

Nomi health at MIA was $179USD per person.

We did eventually get the results, 2.5 hours later (after being told results would be 45 minutes) but the results for BOTH my wife and I were “inconclusive”. While the Miami airport option (Nomi Health) is expensive I will be using it in the future for peace of mind. They had a very efficient set up and had our results in 17 minutes. I don’t mind paying for peace of mind.