MattG

$100 on Grandeur in August 2015 (our first time going, I remember it being a nice round number) $95 on Anthem in December 2021 $79 on Oasis upcoming October 2022 (this is the lowest I’ve seen yet, it’s been $85 for the past two months)

Acknowledging every ship and every itinerary has varying prices, I’m curious of everyone’s thresholds for items in the Cruise Planner? What’s your magic price point for specific items? When is the DBP/UDP low enough for you? What about Thrill Waterpark? Internet? On a similar note: what’s the lowest you’ve seen a favorite item? This includes DBP, The Key, UDP, massages, cabanas, ship exclusives (iFly, North Star, etc) Have you ever pulled the trigger on an item you normally wouldn’t get because the Cruise Planner price was so good? On our Anthem cruise in December, Thrill Waterpark was around $70 for months, then Black Friday came and it dropped to $35(!). DBP+VOOM was also at $60/day, which now seems incredibly cheap compared to our upcoming Oasis cruise ($85/day). UDP is also cheaper on Oasis ($166) versus Anthem (over $200).

It's possible, but it would require the person to go to "captive.apple.com" and provide alphanumeric input on the watch screen. It would be very interesting to try, but not a viable use case in the long run.

I brought my personal water bottle on our last Anthem cruise and refilled it with no issues. We had the DBP and when I asked for water, they just handed me water bottles, which I dumped into my own water bottle. I also refilled from the bathroom sink in my stateroom.

Hi everyone, We're 5 people in a Central Park balcony on Oasis with a 4-person family joining us two staterooms down. Because of the way the staterooms are laid out, you can't put 5-person and 4-person staterooms adjacent to each other, they alternate with 2-person staterooms. If that 2-person stateroom between is remains unoccupied on embarkation, could we ask the stateroom attendant to open the dividers between the three staterooms? We want a way to traverse between our stateroom and our friends without going through the hallway.

The Grande Silk Chic American Icon All four have different decor, but identical menus. You will be assigned an MDR and table on your SeaPass card. You may be able to change tables within your assigned MDR, but not switch entire MDRs due to current COVID protocols - some MDRs are for vax only, others are for unvax with kids, etc. This was our experience on Anthem (Quantum-class with the same MDR layout)

From my understanding, you can book specialty dining reservations at ANY specialty dining host stand. For instance, the Chops host stand can book Izumi reservations. Please correct me if i'm wrong!

The menu is the same for every ship in a given region, so all America/Caribbean sailings will have the same MDR menu. It changes a little when you go beyond 7 day cruises - Day 1/2/3/4/5 are the same as a normal cruise, as is the second-to-last day (usually Lobster Night) and last day. Any extra days in between are menus not normally seen in MDR except on those 8+ Night sailings.

And it showed nobody had a Cruise Compass on embarkation day!

Same here. We had a 11:30am check-in time, boarded around 12:30pn (kiddo COVID tests). Rooms were ready by 1:30pm and there were bags lining the hallway. It took us about 3 minutes to find them all.

A very good point! This is for October, hopefully some things change by then, either a vax for 2+ or relaxed vax rules.

Thank you!

Hi everyone, We'd like to do Izumi Hibachi, but I think each table is capped at 8? We're traveling with 4 adults and 5 kids (6, 6, 4, 2, 2). Do you think we can all sit at one table?

Prices on our October Oasis trip are starting to go down slightly - this is the first time i've seen some Cruise Planner prices go below the "floor" i've seen since booking (green is lowest price seen):

I'm really frustrated by the arrival times of Oasis/Anthem from NJ into Port Canaveral. The earliest i've seen is 12:00pm, and we normally do dinner at 5:30pm. It makes it very hard get in a worthwhile visit to KSC. Our last trip on Anthem departed late, so we didn't arrive until 2:00pm, so KSC was a bust.

Awesome! These were powered off/unavailable in December, good to see them back in use.

I'm still at my "standard high" price of $69.99/day for Oasis in October ("standard low" sale price is $88/day BOGO50). I did score $50 more in OBC since I last checked, so I have that going for me...

On Anthem in December, I had to wear a mask on while face up, but could take it off when face down.

Yes, and it varies from ship to ship and sailing to sailing. Some have seen it as high as $92/day, and as low as $40ish/day (very rare). Anywhere under $60/day is considered a great deal.

A distributor is not the same as a farmer or grower. The quality of the ingredients will vary from port to port because of sourcing. That being said, i'm sure the quality requirements for speciality/CK are higher than for MDR. MDR also does mass prep for apps/entrees, versus specialty/CK which is cook-to-order. @Ampurp85just did a B2B2B cruise on three different ships, and spoke about the quality differences amongst all three: MDR's fillet is from the Chops menu, so they're identical. I'm not sure of the CK fillet is the same as the Chops fillet.

I do know these secondary launch windows are built into the overall NASA/CCAFB schedule - while it's rare to push a launch to it's fourth "alternate" date, it is public info. Agreed, however there are a few limiting factors: RTLS launches are rare, as they require the payload to be light enough for the booster to have enough fuel for the return. I do believe the RTLS attribute contributed to a stricter range/exclusion zone, and factored into the scrub. SpaceX only has two recovery vessels on the east coast, so they are limited on launch/recovery cadence (unless they squeeze more performance out of the Falcon 9 to do more RTLS) The exclusion zone out of Port Canaveral did leave room along the shore for ships to travel. This would have been a non-issue if Harmony had hugged the shore a bit more.

My two cents: It's all walking. You may get lost, and that's okay (almost expected). Know where the major landmarks are on the map (Rialto Bridge, Saint Mark's Square, the train station), and use a convenient one as a landmark to return to. Many of the major walking intersections have those names with arrows painted about 15 feet up. If you do get lost, just follow the arrows, or ask For the little time you have, St Mark's Square is avoidable. Don't go out of your way to see it, but if you pass it, that's fine too. The Rialto Bridge is pretty cool, along with the Rialto Market, though I think it's pretty much packed up around lunch time. Around late afternoon (4pm), all of the small bars start serving "cicchetti", which is basically small bites, tapas-style. All of the food is super fresh and very delicious. It's popular to grab a bite or two and a glass of wine at one osteria, then bounce around for an hour or so before dinner. Some great places (in the area of Rialto, on the San Polo side): Bar All'Arco, Cantina Do Mori, Al Mercà Don't go to a restaurant with a tourist menu. It's a trap: bad food, worse prices. Conversely, find a restaurant with a smaller menu, or something written in chalk, or with very little English. Bonus points if it's further away from Rialto/St Mark's Square. Santa Croce and Cannaregio neighborhoods were downright delightful and quiet to walk through. You probably don't have enough time for Murano or Lido.

On the SpaceX sub-reddit for this launch, someone posted that they were listening into the maritime radio channels and heard chatter between USCG and Harmony prior to the abort/scrub, so there seems to have been communication in place. Another redditor overlayed the exclusion zones and Harmony's ground track, and it appears to have encroached. I wish I could find that overlay, but I can't seem to right now.

This is two of my words colliding (spaceflight and cruising), so this is gonna be fun: The launch customer (the company that hires SpaceX to put the payload into orbit) dictates the launch time, which typically aligns with some other entity (for instance, an ISS cargo re-supply MUST launch at a precise time to most efficiently catch up with ISS). These launch windows are typically instantaneous, meaning you can't hold and wait for even a few minutes, because the object you want to catch up to has already flown by. Additionally, it's very difficult to "hold" a countdown, mainly due to fuel constraints. Rocket fuel is stored at incredibly low temperatures, and as it's pouring through the ambient fill lines and fuel tanks, begins to boil off. This is why a Falcon 9 has so much fog around it immediately preceding the launch. SpaceX practically "overfills" the tanks, because they account for a certain amount of boil-off during fuel loading. They also load fuel right up to 90 seconds before launch. When T-0 hits, SpaceX knows how much fuel is on-board, how much has boiled off, etc. If there's any kind of hold, the fuel continues to boil off, which affects launch weight (it gets lighter) and, more importantly, could impact how long the rocket fires. Less fuel = lower velocity = lower target orbit. Some Space Shuttle launches could hold because the External Tank was INCREDIBLY well insulated and kept fuel colder for longer, but also because some Shuttle missions were self-contained (not rendezvousing with another orbital object) and the launch window could flex. The other component that the launch customer can dictate is "azimuth", or basically the direction of the launch. When NASA/SpaceX launches to ISS, they basically launch up the east coast to intercept the orbit of ISS. More recently, SpaceX has been launching in a more easterly manner, and even directly south into polar orbits (polar orbits used to be exclusively the domain of the west coast launch facility, Vandenberg AFB). SpaceX has proven that they can safely launch the first stage over the ocean, then "dog-leg" the second stage over land where, if a failure were to occur, the ballistic trajectory would put it into the Caribbean. Here's a Google Maps overlay showing launch trajectory/azimuth. They really thread the needle here: https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?hl=en&mid=1Kl-SydwGM7KVkBIl_-88qIZeYPy1t7HV&ll=26.11030793705532%2C-79.11965267822265&z=7

I heard a report that MSC Meraviglia was stopped in the channel, waiting until it was clear to proceed. Harmony was well out of the channel. Aren't there pilot boats for these sorts of things?