Check out this web site they list all the Live Ports Webcams all over the world it is pretty awesome .
http://www.shipdetective.com/ports/webcam_index.htm
I know this is in the past, but I read an article on Google news that RCL broke all types of records over the Black Friday weekend enticing people to sign up for future cruises and other types of deals. This might be what was crashing their website. Just wondering🤔.
I’m currently on Symphony of the Seas. The food sucks.
1. The nachos cheese is fake.
2. crab cake doesn’t have real crab
3. same food at wind jammer every day
4. dining room food was also bad most days
What I like about the Esplanade on Quantum class is that I can bypass it and walk above it looking down into the Esplanade by using deck 5. You are not stuck fighting your way through as the only means to move forward and aft like you are on Voyager, Freedom and Oasis class Promenades. T-shirt sale on the Promenade? Forget it, take an elevator to the pool deck to go forward. At least on Q class I can use deck 5 on port or starboard, by way of the rarely used Bionic Bar or the Wonderland side to walk above the t-shirt sale.
I really wish the Promenade on other classes had an interior walkway one deck above the Promenade like Quantum class do. Great for people watching. Great for events like parades.
The Schooner Bar on Q class is disappointing since there are no windows.
My family & I just returned from sailing Odyssey for the Holiday. We had an excellent cruise, everything was perfection. The Music Hall is an amazing venue (especially on Odyssey). We were there every single night enjoying the karaoke, bands exc. The upstairs area is prime time with plenty of seats, pool tables and a full bar. I’ve been before on other ships but for some reason (maybe the layout), I enjoyed this venue on Odyssey more than the others. For anyone getting ready to sail her, you are in for a treat!
Just got off Anthem and ended up at the Next Cruise desk...ended up booking this as a special mom/sons cruise (my husband booked Liberty to Bermuda in Sept for a dad/daughters cruise). I'm looking forward to getting to relax, the boys will be 11 and 13 and can fend for themselves while I read in peace.
When we were on Anthem we saw two really great tribute bands, one Led Zeppelin and one Beatles. I’ve never been a big fan of tribute bands but they were so good! The Beatles band played in the main theatre, and Zeppelin was in the Music Hall several nights and once in 270.
When we were on Anthem we saw two really great tribute bands, one Led Zeppelin and one Beatles. I’ve never been a big fan of tribute bands but they were so good! The Beatles band played in the main theatre, and Zeppelin was in the Music Hall several nights and once in 270.
There are a number of temporary factors in play with Starlink.
Let's start with some history. Skip if you are not into a long read.
A History Of Satellite Services
Prior to the introduction of Starlink Royal had two primary satellite connectivity providers. Speedcast provides legacy geostationary satellite services for the Royal Caribbean Group while SES/O3b use a medium earth orbiting (MEO) constellation to provide services to Royal Caribbean International.
Geostationary Satellites
Geostationary satellite are very high in the sky which leads to higher latency when sending signals into space and bouncing them back down to earth using a geostationary satellite. These satellites around 35,786 km above the equator but slightly more distant as you move further away from the equator on the surface of the earth. That distance causes latency (a.k.a delay) in the area of 600 - 700ms.
Geostationary satellites as the name suggests are located in a fixed location above the earth. They are stationary relative to the earth. As the earth rotates so do geostationary satellites fixed above the equator locked in orbit with the earth's rotation. From their fixed spot in space they can focus their signal into a footprint much like shining a flashlight onto the surface of a ball (earth). Since the earth is round a single geostationary satellite in space can't illuminate all of the earth with signal so there are geostationary satellites that cover regions such as North America or Europe or Asia or Australia, etc. Since governments tend to regulate communications in their own country we usually see satellite service companies that are licensed to operate in specific countries and regions.
Geostationary satellites are in orbit above the equator. As you move away from the equator on the surface of the earth towards the North and South pole it can become very distant and very difficult to use geostationary satellites so coverage in remote regions such as Alaska or Northern Europe becomes less reliable.
Legacy geostationary satellite services have been around for decades going back to some of the first satellite services in the second half of the last century. Geostationary satellite TV services became well known when they were leveraged by companies like DirecTv in the 1990s to launch nationwide satellite TV services in the US. Other satellite TV providers did the same in other regions using different satellites in that region. Prior to that satellite services were largely used by industry more so than consumers.
Suffice it to say this is very proven technology dating back several decades but that is part of its downfall when it comes to modern internet connectivity since the internet didn't exist when the first geostationary satellites were launched. Many of the geo satellites were launched to service the TV industry so they've had to adapt those concepts to pass internet signals. The results have led to less than stellar satellite internet services as the internet has matured over more recent times.
Recognizing the evolution of communication requirements over time satellite providers looked to modernize. In 2010 O3b began to launch a medium earth orbiting (MEO) constellation as a mean to provide more modern connectivity to more places on earth. By 2014 they were operational and providing MEO satellite services.
Medium Earth Orbiting (MEO) Satellites
MEO satellites are moving in an orbit circling the earth. Several MEO satellites flying in the same or similar orbit are said to be a constellation. Essentially these satellites are following each other along a similar path in space circling the earth so that there is always one or two overhead a position on earth at any given moment. Unlike geostationary satellites MEO satellites are moving across the sky relative to a fixed location on earth. Think of a group of school children playing a game of musical chairs. As long as the music is playing the children move in a circle following each other circling around the chairs (earth). As one satellite passes overhead a receiving station on earth establishes connectivity then has to follow that satellite as it moves across the sky. When a satellite becomes too distant the receiving station on earth finds the next satellite beginning it's pass overhead. This repeats ad nauseam.
MEO satellites are closer to the earth, some 8,062 km above sea level versus the 35,786 km height of geostationary satellites. The closer distance means it doesn't take as long for a signal to reach a MEO satellite and be bounced back down to earth. This reduces latency or delay down to the 190 - 230 ms range.
Each O3b satellite completes five orbits around the earth every day but being closer to earth means their footprint or ability to cover an area on the surface of the earth is smaller than the potential of a geostationary satellite. O3b's MEO constellation has operation limits and doesn't have coverage above or below ~ 65° latitude North or South. As a result they don't currently provide coverage in places like Alaska or Northern Europe.
Eventually O3b was acquired by another company so you will often reference to SES/O3b.
What it Means to Us Humans
To put things in perspective the human brain can perceive delay in a voice conversation when it is above ~ 250ms or 1/4 of a second. A voice call over a geostationary satellite with 600-700 ms of delay has perceptible delay to humans and it can lead to people talking over each other as both parties can begin talking before the brain hears the words from the other party in the conversation and stops talking. A voice call over MEO satellites with 190-230ms of delay usually falls under the threshold that most humans can perceive delay resulting in a normal conversation.
When it comes to browsing the internet more latency or delay means when you try to visit a website it takes more time for the internet to provide the content of that website back to you. Just like with voice calls the human brain can perceive delay more when it is above a threshold. To the human brain a delayed internet response can appear to be a slow connection even if the throughput or bandwidth to send and receive information is relatively large.
In this sense many people will state that latency is the most important aspect of internet connectivity when it reality if the delay is below a threshold most people and most applications can't discern the differences in delay just as they can't with voice calls. Timing is very important in stock trades involving large numbers of shares and gaming or gamers can be very sensitive to delay since less delay can provide a competitive advantage when trying to beat other gamers in an online game. If one gamer reacts after 700ms while another gamer can react in 20ms the first gamer is at a significant disadvantage and will probably lose the game every time.
Streaming TV services have gained in popularity over more recent years. Streaming services work better with lower latency but if a streaming application is coded properly streaming service can work with higher latency, they just need to buffer a few seconds more to build up a local copy of the content before displaying it. A more latent or delayed connection with ample bandwidth or throughput will usually work fine for most streaming services except for live TV. Watching Netflix over a geostationary satellite connection will usually work fine as long as there is enough bandwidth.
Streaming isn't necessarily a problem but voice and video calls or gaming is more of an issue over geostationary satellite.
What it Means to Royal Ship Internet
Speedcast uses the legacy geostationary satellites for some Royal ships while SES/O3b uses the newer MEO satellites for other Royal ships.
Originally older ships in the RCI fleet were deployed with legacy geostationary equipment since at the time there wasn't anything else (MEO services were not available before ~2014).
Geostationary satellite providers are naturally interested in selling their services to where there is substantial populations to purchase their services. Consequently they focus their signals to cover land masses where people and businesses are. This means that in the middle of oceans the geostationary satellite signals are often very weak since fewer people live in the middle of the oceans. As the saying goes you can't sell satellite services to fish.
For cruise ships this means that geostationary satellite internet services away from land and in the middle of oceans is very poor. This also means that when a ship moves between regions it has to connect to a different geostationary satellite that services countries in that region. A ship sailing in the eastern or western Caribbean will often have to change geostationary satellites as it sails the itinerary.
Around the time that Quantum of the Seas was being built O3b began offering MEO satellite services and the satellite company was eager to sign up new clients. They convinced Royal Caribbean to launch Quantum with this newer technology that was capable of providing much higher throughput internet services with lower latency compared to geostationary satellite services. Since their MEO satellites were circling the earth ships everywhere could be connected even in the middle of oceans. It worked quite well and subsequently Royal included O3b on all new ship builds since. Royal Caribbean International and Quantum of the Seas were an important launch customer for O3b. Quantum was the first cruise ship to use this new technology.
Royal did go back and retrofit Oasis and Allure, all Freedom class, Majesty of the Seas and Enchantment of the Seas with O3b. They did not retrofit any other ships so all other Vision, Radiance and Voyager class were left with geostationary satellite equipment. Newer ships like Harmony, Symphony, Anthem, Ovation, Spectrum, Odyssey and Wonder all launched from the shipyard with SES/O3b.
SES/O3b continued to seek more clients and they scored a big win when they later signed up Carnival PLC. The parent company agreed to retrofit all ships in the Princess fleet as a trial and based on the outcome would migrate more ships in other fleets under the Carnival PLC umbrella. MSC also began building ships with SES/O3b satellite services.
Voom (and Gloom)
Despite all of this stuff and the difference between how different ships are connected to different satellite internet providers and different satellites in different regions Royal sold one internet product to guests. "Voom" was sold as a standard product to guests regardless of the all stuff going on behind the scenes. Voom is Royal's name. They could have called it anything, they could have called it "Bob" but they chose the name "Voom" as the name for their internet service plans on board.
When a guest purchases Voom the guest doesn't know if it's using geostationary satellites or MEO satellites. They don't know the name of satellite that services Europe or the name of the satellite used when a ship is in Florida. The guest isn't aware that a ship sometimes has to switch satellites along the itinerary. The guest just knows they purchased Voom internet. In reality guests have been purchasing different technology depending on which ship they were sailing and the region they sailed in. This resulted in different guest experiences despite every guest purchasing "Voom".
A satellite or even a constellation of satellites has limitations. With more and more ships signing up for SES/O3b they reached their capacity. No more ships could be added. Royal dragged their feet and didn't upgrade the older ships to O3b. Once other cruise lines signed up with SES/O3b Royal couldn't migrate additional ships to O3b since the constellation was at capacity. SES/O3b was planning to launch a next generation of their satellites in 2020 to add more capacity. At one point SES/O3b stated they would soon have enough capacity for all the cruise ships in the world. With the pandemic the launch of the next generation SES/O3b satellites were delayed. Only recently has SES/O3b started launching the newest versions of nextgen satellites that should go into service "soon".
Given all that is involved with launching satellites using expensive rockets the cost to provide satellite services is very high. Prior to the pandemic Royal was selling Voom plans to cover the high costs associated with the bandwidth they were acquiring from their satellite services companies Speedcast and SES/O3b and making a small profit in the process.
Once the pandemic hit and the cruise industry was shutdown cruise lines couldn't just park their ships, turn off the internet and go home. Ships had to sail with skeleton crews and those skeleton crews needed internet access. The ships needed some internet but they didn't need the same bandwidth or throughput meant for thousands of guests with only ~100 crew on board. It is understood that cruise lines reduced their bandwidth commitments to lower their internet costs during the pandemic.
Fortunately cruise lines were able to survive the shutdown and as we all know they started sailing with guests again in summer and fall of 2021. At that time the cruise lines had received no revenue for many months and they couldn't afford to return their internet bandwidth commitments to pre-shutdown levels. This worked okay during the initial restart as there were limits on guest capacity.
Once the capacity limits were removed ship started sailing near capacity. Cruise lines had mountains of debt and many bills to pay. Despite ships being full they still were recovering financially from the effects of being shut down. Despite selling many Voom plans to guests they had to carefully adjust bandwidth commitments with satellite providers while balancing other bills and financial considerations. Satellite internet is not cheap. This has led to severely oversubscribing internet throughput as they continue to struggle with the financial impacts of the shutdown. It has led to the former Voom experience becoming a Gloom experience for guests. Nothing works well when internet service is severely oversubscribed. It is a terrible experience for everyone. Streaming and voice calls that worked great before the shutdown now often led to complaints.
Starlink
Starlink began launching satellites into a new low earth orbit constellation or LEO. LEO satellites are much closer to earth. In the case of the first Starlink satellites they are in the area of around 550 km above the earth. As we saw with the difference between geostationary and MEO satellites, LEO satellites have much lower delay or latency when sending a signal from earth into space and bouncing it back down to earth. The delay is well below 100ms. Starlink has plans for more constellations including some as low as 340 km and 1,100 km above the earth. The future constellations and new capabilities they bring will result in lowering latency down below 25ms or so Starlink estimates.
As we saw with MEO versus geostationary when a satellite is closer to earth it can't cover as large an area. Starlink's answer is to deploy thousands of satellites to cover more area on earth.
The first important point about Starlink is that it is a relatively new service. It first became operational in a limited capacity in 2020. This is very new technology just as O3b was new technology in 2014.
Starlink consists of more than one constellation of satellites. While one constellation circles the earth in one direction other Starlink constellations circle the earth in different directions at different altitude so they don't run into each other. Starlink is planning more constellations at different altitudes moving in different directions. Eventually there will be so many satellites in orbit there will be several overhead to choose from at any given moment.
Starlink satellites pass overhead much more quickly compared to MEO satellites. The connection between an earth station and single Starlink satellite can be measured in seconds and low single digit minutes. The satellites are literally flying by overhead. A Starlink earth station is constantly switching between overhead satellites depending on which is best at a moment in time.
This bring us to the next important point about Starlink. It is evolving. It isn't done yet and not even close to being completed into the final vision of what it will be in the future. It is like building an airplane while it is flying. Starlink is still under construction. Starlink is new. They have started to sell services to earn some revenue that can be used to help pay towards the continued evolution of the service.
The ability to service ships at sea is possible because like the MEO constellation the satellites are circling the earth. The challenge with providing service at sea is getting the signal back down to earth where it can be connected to the internet. In the long term that is where the other Starlink satellites that will be at higher and lower altitudes come into play so that satellites can relay signals through each other in order to make it back to land and the internet.
Starlink has just started to enable some of this type of inter-satellite communication which is how they are providing service closer to the poles including Alaska and the South pole (just recently announced). As they continue to enable more inter-satellite relay they will be able to cover more of the seas and oceans.
Important point number three. Starlink can't provide 100% coverage of all oceans just yet. There are dead spots today. This will evolve and coverage will improve over the coming months but today there are dead zones that will be experienced at sea. It is not a perfect technology and they flat out state there are dead zones with the maritime service.
Most importantly for cruise lines is the much lower price point compares to MEO and geostationary satellite services.
With the lower cost Royal can once again pass through to it's guests more throughput. It's not that Starlink is better technology, for cruise ship guests the important effect will be allowing more throughput at lower latency. The reason why guest will experience higher throughput (lower operating costs) isn't that important, higher throughput and in some cases lower latency will be important to the guest experience.
Modern Times and the migration to Starlink
So that brings us to the state of the fleet prior to Starlink. Older ships have legacy geostationary satellite equipment while newer ships have SES/O3b. Bandwidth constraints have made Voom into Gloom on all ship regardless of the technology.
As we saw with MEO satellites voice calls have low enough latency so that most people can't discern any delay with MEO satellite service. The lower latency offered by Starlink won't be a dramatic improvement for ships that already had SES/O3b equipment. Royal migrated these ships first (if they were in the US region) so that they could immediately reduce the cost of internet on these ships since SES/O3b has higher charges compared to the Speedcast geostationary service. Starlink maritime as a service isn't fully approved and licensed in all regions so they focused on ships in the US market first where the US FCC has approved it.
With that mostly complete they have started migrating Voyager class ships from Speedcast to Starlink. Radiance class is also migrating. Other than Enchantment which was migrated since it had SES/O3b, we haven't heard as much about the other Vision class ships.
The migration of Speedcast ships to Starlink will be more transformational. Guests on these ships will experience a notable improvement as latency drops from 600-700ms down under 100ms. Voyager class and Radiance class have had abysmal internet even before the shutdown. These ships will greatly benefit from the Starlink migration.
Having said that remember that Starlink is still in its infancy and it isn't even close to being completed. There will be some downfalls to migrating to Starlink and for the guest experience that will primarily involve dead spots in the ocean where they can't provide Starlink coverage just yet.
Yes there will be down times with Starlink that are not experienced with the long proven but more expensive Speedcast and SES/O3b services. This will improve over time so if you have a bad Starlink internet day in 2022 that may be completely solved by the time you sail again at some point in 2023.
What's Next
We don't know what Royal plans to do as ships migrate to Starlink.
Will Royal continue to use the name "Voom"?
Will Royal offer more than one level of service?
Will Royal leverage the lower cost technology to offer basic chat for free?
We don't know. Time will tell.
These are the kind of issues where I call RCL and ask for a supervisor. Do not tell the person anything or they will try to fix it and waste your time. Just insist on a supervisor. Then explain to the supervisor you did not approve the travel agent and you expect RCL to remove them. (period). it is their mess up without your permission.
Your account posted almost this exact same complaint/comment last week. I am absolutely not trying to be rude, but am wondering what you hope to accomplish by reposting it in a new thread? I can tell that the experience was very upsetting, but this is not a Royal Caribbean company site - perhaps you should take it to them if you're looking for some sort of resolution. I've listed a few email addresses for customer service that I found quickly online below. Best of luck finding some satisfaction. I hope I never have such a negative experience as you seem to have had.
[email protected]
Chief Executive Michael Bayley President and CEO 1050 Caribbean Way Miami, FL 33132 [email protected]
Other senior email adresses listed here: https://www.elliott.org/company-contacts/royal-caribbean-customer-service-contacts/
I just played in a Hold'em tournament on Adventure (11/18/2022), so I have recent info.
$100 buy in, plus $50 to double your stack. Everyone doubled.
Ten minute rounds. Blinds go up fast. An aggressive strategy is probably best.
One table, ten seats. Sign up as soon as the casino will let you. Don't wait until the day of the tournament.
We had one tournament on the first sea day. The second sea day had one scheduled, but some players complained a lot and they added another.
Our tournament lasted about an hour and a half.
First two places paid out. First place was $840. Not sure what second place was.
I work in retail and some customers are just bullies. They believe that the best way to get what they want is to cause a scene and berate employees, who in most cases are not making very much.
As a manager, I will never give these types of people anything more than I must.
Great first post. In the future a Travel Agent would save you from this issue.
Maybe try calling off hours, like early in the morning or late at night. It may also be worth trying to connect with them through social media. I find being nice helps 😉
FoxboroCruiser reacted to cruisellama in Webcam viewing
FoxboroCruiser got a reaction from MDT127 in RC Food Suck
FoxboroCruiser got a reaction from mom2mybugs in RC Food Suck
FoxboroCruiser got a reaction from Neesa in RC Food Suck
FoxboroCruiser got a reaction from sleepy425 in xSAILEDx Liberty of the Seas - Jun 20, 2023 - Jun 24, 2023 (4 Night Canada Cruise)
FoxboroCruiser got a reaction from King of Wales in Anthem of the Seas tribute bands
FoxboroCruiser got a reaction from WAAAYTOOO in Anthem of the Seas tribute bands