Al Miller

Youtube is an awesome tool for this. Ship tours and cruise vlogs abound for basically every ship at this point. Only you know what you will like and stuff you don't care about.

Definitely a your milage may vary situation. Give the piece of meat they are slicing from a good look beforehand. Look at the previous persons serving if you can. If the hunk of meat sits for too long under that heat lamp it gets dry. If they slice it with the grain, it will be tough no matter what. If it looks dry to me or they are slicing it wrong, I'll get something else. If it looks okay, you can ask them to slice it thin. They may not have the knife skills to do it, but you can ask. It's better if they cut it thinly. They also seem to want to skimp on the amount, so you can ask for another slice. They could say no, but usually they will oblige. It's not a very authentic Kummelweck, but it okay when the stars align, you get a good carver, and the beef is not overcooked and dry.

These last few "Sales" are really underwhelming. I can find one thing that got any discount at all over what it was last week. I guess they need to make up for the lower fares somewhere.

I do slacks, not jeans and either collared button up shirt or polo. Or just skip formal night.

Shipmate app is great for seeing people have meltdowns over the smallest things. I am not going to give a cruise one star because Sorrento's Pizza is not as good as a local pizzeria. Or because I got charged the $25 towel fee for my kid throwing a towel overboard. Or because I did not know how expensive X or Y would be on board.

I get the whole "getting sued aspect" I guess. But when your security is just plain not physically strong enough to pull apart several drunks engaged in a brawl, maybe you need to reevaluate. Somebody is going to die or get seriously hurt one of these times and then they will get sued for their lax security for that situation. So I acknowledge its a fine line to walk.

Also, if you have a later version of Android on your phone, the "Messages" app will use wifi as well. You could test it at home before you leave. Turn off cellular data on all phones involved and see if you can send texts between the phones in question.

Jay over at the Shiplife lamented that he's never seen any imposing looking security on a cruise ship. I've got to imagine at least part of that may be due to the super small crew quarters. I've seen the behind-the-scenes videos and if you are over about 6-2 ft, I can't even imagine how you'd ever even fit in a crew cabin, let alone those tiny beds. Those recent fight videos show the "Security" getting thrown around like nothing by the passengers.

Research, research, research... Our cruise in April had all but one headliner show cancelled and we were well aware that could happen before we ever got there. If the shows were our main draw, then we probably would have canceled rather than take the chance. But we decided there was enough to do on board to make for a good vacation. But we made an educated choice. And were also aware that this is a problem across all lines. The way things are right now it's not the time to "Book it" and "forget it until the day before boarding." If that's what you are looking for, then yes, maybe wait a couple of years before returning to cruising.

Even with the shields, Starlink's latency beats geosynchronous sat Internet all to pieces.

A side benefit of the low earth orbit satellites that Starlink uses, is the latency that is so important for any sort of video collaboration tools is drastically reduced. IMO, once this gets rolled out it really will be a game changer for those that want to work from cruise ships.

I think we also need to keep in mind that Freedom is a test. I can't imagine they will keep the tap wide open once it rolls out in earnest. I would imagine they'll have to revamp their tiers of service. I am going to venture a guess and say that once this goes official, no one will be seeing the speeds folks are getting on Freedom right now. I could see them still having some sort of social media tier, only suitable for low bitrate video. Say 1-1.5 Mbs. A Streaming tier which would cap out at around 7-10 Mps and some sort of power user tier at 25-30 Mbps.

In April on Anthem the only thing we did not like was the Mac and cheese. It was utterly tasteless. I don't even know how to explain it. It looked normal, but had no flavor at all. My brother thought maybe he had come down with Covid, but then I confirmed it was tasteless. It did not ruin the meal. We just didn't eat any more of that. Everything else was good to great.

Then make that clear in the cruise planner. The emails I get come across like an attempt to fool the me into thinking I am getting a better deal than I actually am. Which I suppose is expected in this day and age. Which is a sad commentary but I guess its where we are.

Still not the "50%" that the email touts. I know it says "Up to 50%" but I've never seen anything even close to that. And they say it every sale. I am just saying 6 months ago "Sale" seemed to mean a little more than it seems to mean these days. I guess that's the price we pay for the fares continuing to be pretty low. It just irks me that these "Sales" almost seem like a scam anymore.