Zurc

Smooth boarding for Harmony’s 4-day sailing November 1st.   Parked in Terminal 10 North lot at 10:15, and onboard by 10:30.  
 
Self carry-off was supposed to start at 8 am on return.  I was off by 7:45 and many had departed before me.    

You know I tried using my highlighter on my cellphone and it just did not work the same. LOL!

I understand it happens on airlines, it is no less unacceptable.  At least with an overbooked flight, one can get a rather generous offer to simply take the next flight in a couple hours, not have an entire week or more affected.
I had an overbooked flight from DFW to LAS a few weekends back, when it was all said and done DW and I got to Vegas 2.5 hours later than planned, and with $3200 American Airlines credits in our wallet.

On our recent Wonder cruise our room steward gave us his card and pointed out the barcode picture thing on his card. Told us if we need anything 24 hours a day to open that code with our phone camera.  We did and it opened a web page where we could select lots items we might needed...Anything from extra pillows to ice.  We used it to request ice one late night and within 15 minutes it was delivered to our room.

A few items of interest from Friday’s Port of Galveston Board of Trustees meeting:
An Operating Agreement with Uber was unanimously approved by the Board. Uber has finally agreed to the Port’s terms and the agreement is the same as Lyft's agreement, including a $2.00 fee for each pick up and drop off. The Port is expanding parking for Cruise Terminal 10 near Pier 12. Trustees are receiving positive feedback from the community on the cruise traffic situation;  the new cruise terminal has not resulted in worse traffic. Cruise Terminal 25 (primarily used by Carnival) is being improved to accommodate Carnival Jubilee.  Jubilee is Carnival's newest ship, LNG powered, launching in late 2023 and will be home ported in Galveston.  They approved funding for preliminary engineering services for development of a potential fourth cruise terminal (Cruise Terminal 16) development. This is the cruise terminal location that MSC is interested in and would be located at the current Del Monte facility.

I'm not sure "slightly" larger properly captures the difference between Oasis and Quantum class. 
Nearly 2,000 more guests. 
They don't use small terminals in Florida for Oasis class because they don't work when boarding 6,500+ people.  OPT is smaller than even the smallest cruise terminals in Florida. 
When Oasis was being built they built a mega terminal in Port Everglades just for her and subsequently for her sister Allure.   Part of the business plan for Oasis class was a mega terminal in order to make it possible to turn around so many mega ship guests in the same amount of time.  Miami didn't see an Oasis class ship until they built terminal one, a.k.a the Crown of Miami specifically for Oasis class.  They knew better than to try to use the other terminals in Miami which are two to three times the size of OPT.  OPT from a cruise terminal perspective is pretty small.  It has zero space for waiting areas.  They don't let the people into OPT until the ship is boarding because there is no space inside the OPT to hold people.
In Barcelona they use two cruise terminals to handle Oasis class.  One wouldn't cut it so they split the traffic between two cruise terminals.  
They didn't bring Oasis class to Texas until they built a mega terminal in Galveston.  When they had to delay terminal construction in Galveston for one year they redeployed Allure and cancelled a year's worth of cruises from Texas because they knew better than to try to make Allure work from the other cruise terminals in Galveston which are much larger than OPT.  
MSC has the same challenge with World Europa.  They can't bring her to the US right now because there is no terminal big enough for her and Royal isn't sharing their Oasis capable terminals.   So while MSC builds a terminal in Miami, which is under construction, World Europa and her future sister ships can't come to the US until it's complete.
The other issue is the extensive ferry traffic near OPT.  With Oasis class being much wider it would severely impact ferry operations.  The extra 20m beam at the waterline means there is that much less space for the constant coming and going ferry traffic to share the rest of the space.  It's the width of Oasis class that sets her apart from any other class of ship.
But mostly it's about OPT being a very small cruise terminal.  It can't handle the passengers or provisioning of a mega ship.  

At this point even Denver, CO is possible.  Not very likely, but nothing is off the table. 

So we had two of the same, one in our carry on and one in a checked bag 
 
The carry on got through no issue but when we got the checked bag we got the note about it being confiscated... I went to ask why when the other one made it through they then had security escort me back to my room to confiscate the one that had gotten through 
 
 

They don't for the same reason the airlines, hotels, Disney World and everyone else don't. 

I've criticized RCG for some of their health protocols over the past year or two, but I'm here now to praise them. Since the restart following Covid, Nancy and I have taken 21 RCG cruises over 16 months. In not a single instance did we return with the usual "cruise crud", Covid, or other sickness. Not once.
We just returned from the 2nd US sailing on MSC Seascape, MSC's newest ship.  There are plenty of comparisons to be made. But as far as health goes we knew we were going to come home sick... and we did. Virtually no automatic doors, so every door/bathroom we entered we had to touch a door handle, push it down, and pull or push the door open. The bright chrome finish in all the public areas was beautiful but graphically showed all the handprints on door handles and handrails. Very few hand sanitizing stations or hand wash stations. Very few complimentary options for breakfast and lunch, so they essentially pushed everyone to the buffet which was a crowded mess with everyone serving their own food. Even the security person who scanned sea passes as you get on/off the ship would not scan it unless you handed it to them so they could spread germs from all the other passengers to your sea pass.  So yes, I'm sitting here with "cruise crud" and fever for the first time in years.
I'm not here to compare MSC to RCG which I could spend a lot of time doing. I am here to say that RCG has its act together on their protocols.  If you complain about RCG that's fine (I certainly have), but you might want to check out the competition occasionally to see how others operate their ships and treat their passengers.

https://www.cruzely.com/is-msc-coming-to-galveston-port-approves-talks-with-cruise-line-for-fourth-terminal/
 
MSC in talks with Galveston Wharves.

Even worse, lots of media invites so higher than normal ratio of folks all trying to upload pics and video all capped at 2Mbps upload so the airwaves would have been jammed solid for hours.  Perfect storm of bad ship internet experience.

Howdy, Allure !!
 
 

 

November 13 cruise - in deck 8 OV balcony , approx 4 Mbps down, 1.8-2.4 Mbps up.   No problem sending pics or short videos from theater, ice rink, and public areas.  (Of course this was just a few hours after sail away.)
I’ll update the thread around Roatan, and also on sea days. 
 
 

November 13 cruise - in deck 8 OV balcony , approx 4 Mbps down, 1.8-2.4 Mbps up.   No problem sending pics or short videos from theater, ice rink, and public areas.  (Of course this was just a few hours after sail away.)
I’ll update the thread around Roatan, and also on sea days. 
 
 

Disembarkation was incredibly easy, even better than Miami. 
Why?
The distance from gangway to facial recognition to luggage is a matter of feet. It's a very short walk.

There may be some coverage gaps at the moment in the lower central Gulf for Galveston based Starlink ships.  That should improve with time.

You’re welcome!  If I recall from the parking map, the slim white covered area you can barely see in front of the blue-covered parking, is bus drop  off.   And then cross street right into terminal.  
I’ll try to take pics of parking when I board Sunday, to update this thread.  OMG!  I’m boarding Sunday !!  My first Oasis class ship !

@Galveston Steve, Beautiful picture!  Thanks for sharing!
can’t wait to be onboard Sunday !

Terminal looks pretty impressive.  Huge contrast to the old terminals.  Great way to start an adventure.  

It’s been a long time coming, but this is happening! (Actual photograph, not an artist’s rendering) 🤣

So excited - not on the trade event, but excited to be on the sailing Sunday!!

Howdy, Allure !!
 
 

 

You’re welcome!  If I recall from the parking map, the slim white covered area you can barely see in front of the blue-covered parking, is bus drop  off.   And then cross street right into terminal.  
I’ll try to take pics of parking when I board Sunday, to update this thread.  OMG!  I’m boarding Sunday !!  My first Oasis class ship !

Howdy, Allure !!