baltodave

My wife and I are both "Diamond" and trying to figure out if it's worth it to prepay for Voom Internet for our 2 upcoming 8-night cruises.  Both cruises are out of Florida and they each stop at Perfect Day.  I know that one of the perks of Diamond is 1 free day of Voom so I'm trying to figure out if it makes sense to prepay for it ahead of time or get in on the ship (to take advantage of the free day for Diamond C&A members). 

Thoughts?

We booked this one as well.  Originally, we were on Rhapsody the same week in the Panama Canal but when Rhapsody's itinerary changed, we "jumped ship" to Odyssey.  

Just got email from RC. New itinerary: Colon- 2 sea days- Curaçao- Aruba- sea  day - Colon. Same ship. 
 

I’ve seen some articles that because of a drought in Panama, Canal is limiting boat traffic there. 

I emailed Michelle from MEI and she's looking in to it.  We're hoping it's some sort of glitch and they pop back up.  Currently, if you search for cruises departing Colon you only see some round trips that go to Southern Caribbean and one repositioning that goes from Colon to Ft Lauderdale (via So. Carib.)  

Fingers-crossed this is another mistake from RC's crack IT team. 

WTF!?   We had already booked hotels!

We use A2S when traveling out of the US.  Otherwise we usually fly SWA since they have so many flights from BWI (our home airport) to Florida and the Caribbean.  Here's the one bad thing about A2S: We wanted to make a slight change (to get a shorter connection) on an outbound flight but leave the return alone.  The only thing A2S could do was to rebook everything so we had to leave it alone.  On the positive side (as another poster mentioned), if there's a problem they will rebook you.  On our recent flight to Vancouver, Air Canada screwed us (long story) and at around 2am, A2S was able to rebook us on another airline.  Basically, A2S saved the day!

On our recent Alaska cruise, we used A2S and flew to Vancouver via Toronto.  Looking back, the only advice I would give is to avoid Air Canada.

We are taking Mariner 9/29 - 10/7 and booked Cruise Control Transportation to take us from MCO to Port Canaveral and back.  We are staying at an MCO-area hotel the night before the cruise so they are picking us up at the hotel the morning of 9/29.  Our flight home (out of MCO) is on the afternoon of 10/7 so they are taking us from the cruise terminal to MCO that day.

Since it's just the wife and me, this option is way cheaper than Uber/Lyft and gave us the flexibility of picking us up at the hotel the morning of embarkation and taking us back to the airport on disembarkation day.

16 hours ago, LandstromCruise said:

I love the idea of using a different company besides RC for the land portion.  We had just booked it through RC and it was good, nothing wrong with it, but probably can get cheaper and maybe better options through someone else.  At the time I had just booked that cruise through next cruise, but now use Michelle at MEI.  Hoping to go back to Alaska in 2025 so will have Michelle help hook me up! 

To be honest, Alaska Tour & Travel was not cheap and Michelle was not familiar with them.  That being said we had a great experience with them.  2 full days at Denali a wonderful  "Wilderness Express" train to Anchorage.  Alaska Tour & Travel arranged all the hotels.   Since we had a night flight out of Anchorage, we just booked a separate one-day tour through Viator on the last day.

We took the reverse in June and loved it (7 night Radiance northbound Vancouver to Seward).  We booked a 4 day land tour with a different company (Alaska Tour & Travel) afterwards and it was great.  If your TA is the great Michelle C. from MEI, that's who we use, and she's wonderful.  Anyway, to answer your question, Alaska Tour & Travel arranged for us to pick up a bus at Seward that took us to Anchorage (long ride).   When we arrived in Seward, we were surprised that there wasn't anyone there yet to board the ship for the next cruise.  We were told they were either still on buses or the train.

Have a great time and hope the weather is a great as it was for us.  Radiance was a great ship for Alaska!

3 hours ago, ROCHELLE15 said:

IS IT TRUE ROYAL CARRIBEAN WILL SAIL FROM NORFOLK VA IN 2025?

Where did you hear that?  If true, it would be awesome! 

49 minutes ago, F1guynz said:

Hi,

I was wondering when sailing from the United States do the roulette tables have a single 0 or are they double 0?

When sailing out of Australia they are just a single 0 table and the casino is smoke free as well which I know is not the case in the U.S.

Thanks

Wow, I've never seen a roulette wheel with just a single 0.  I believe they have single and double 0's.  Much to my shagrin, I've been to casinos that also have triple zeros (but don't think I've seen that on cruise ships).

15 minutes ago, twangster said:

The problem in Alaska is the sparse population means there is less opportunity for Starlink to deploy gateway cities in Alaska.  Instead Starlink relays the signals between satellites to connect Alaska (and ships while they are near Alaska) to gateway cities that are more Southerly.  

The intention has been for Starlink to deploy the 2nd generation of satellites to better perform this satellite to satellite relay function.  The v2 Starlink satellites when they launch will greatly assist with this and other advanced communication capability.  The problem is that the v2 satellites are too big to fit on the Falcon 9 rockets that have been launching the v1 satellites all this time.  Instead, the new Starship rocket is required to send v2 satellites into space. 

Starship is a whole other topic of conversation.  It was supposed to be flying by now but it isn't.  As a result there are no v2 satellite in space yet.  

Given the delays with Starship, Starlink created a v2-mini version of a 2nd generation satellite that could fly on the Falcon 9.  As the name suggests the mini version isn't as feature rich compared to the full v2 satellites but it has allowed Starlink to advance some connectivity and features.  

Once Starship is flying in production the Starlink constellations will improve dramatically.   Until then there will inconsistencies with Starlink service.

@twangster  I learn so much reading your posts!  Thanks!  and hopefully, I'll get a chance to meet you in Panama in March.

58 minutes ago, twangster said:

Starlink is vastly different technology compared to the previous satellite technology.  As a company Starlink is very young and their satellite constellation is even younger.  It is only a few years old.  The first beta users connected in 2020.  The thing about Starlink and the satellite constellation is that it's only about 15% built.  

Starlink is so new that user reports are valid the day they are posted but not much long after that those users reports are old and dated information that doesn't apply anymore.    

I mean no disrespect to anyone who posts about their experience with Starlink but their experience means very little a month later.  

Unlike previous satellite technology used on ships for internet, Starlink uses local resources to connect a ship to the internet.  When a ship is sailing along the coast of the US Starlink uses ground stations close to the ship in the US.  When the ship moves away from the US and is sailing along the coast of another country, Starlink uses gateway cities in that other country to connect the ship to the internet.  A ship sailing an itinerary may use dozens of different gateways cities as it sails, in many different countries.   This is wildly different than previous technology.  It  also varies one itinerary to the next. 

Someone can have a great Starlink experience one week on one itinerary and another person on the same ship a week later on a different itinerary could have a terrible Starlink experience.  The average person doesn't think of all the tech and geography involved, it just works great or it sucks, for that person, in that moment in time.  

This constantly changing gateway city can yield constantly changing results.  Someone watching Netflix probably won't care.  It just works.  Someone trying to connect to corporate resources to work remotely will face different challenges.  Federal employees, defense contractors and similar high security environments typically block foreign access.  These environments typically work from anywhere in the US but the moment you are in another country you may find yourself cutoff and denied access.  

New gateway cities are added over time.  More satellites launch every month.  There are also different types of Starlink satellites, the newer ones work different than the older ones.  So many factors in play for newborn satellite constellations.  

How will it work for you and your family members?  It all depends.  

Great post @twangster !  I've also heard that the further north you go (e.g. Alaskan cruises) , the weaker the signal.  @twangster: care to comment?

Here's my advice:

It's certainly "R" rated and not for kids.  Amazes me how many times I've seen parents bring their kids.

It's hilarious.

It's usually late (around 10:30PM).  On Voyager (or larger) classes, it's in Studio B (the ice is covered).  On smaller ships, in the lounge.

If you need to, take a nap so you can stay up for it. You'll thank me later.

What pisses me off about Air2Sea. We booked Delta BWI-ATL-PTY down there and PTY-BWI on Copa for the return. I want to change the outbound Delta flight w/o touching the return. However A2S has to rebook everything at a higher price due to increase in Copa’s fare. 

This is an interesting topic I raised with the captain of Radiance during our recent sailing.  The issue is that the Voyager class ships (and larger) won't fit under the bridges in places like Baltimore and Tampa.  In addition, (as @bobroo pointed out) there are some ports the larger ships can't go to.  The captain of Radiance did point out that there will be another class (currently named "Discovery class") that will be built in 2025 or later.  These will be smaller (but I don't know if small enough).  

On our recent Alaska cruise, we took Radiance and loved it.  Last year, I was on Rhapsody (Vision class) for a Greek/Adriatic cruise and it was also great (one of my favorites was Montenegro).  I'm not that interested in an "amusement park on water" and would rather experience the classic cruise experience and visit interesting destinations.

24 minutes ago, Marc Van Niekerk said:

We booked Crowne Plaza post cruise for same reasons.

I wonder how many other folks are staying at the Crowne Plaza after the cruise. Maybe we can share a ride. There are 2 of us (wife and me). 

On 6/25/2023 at 11:54 AM, teddy said:

We have an annual travel insurance plan that covers us when we travel 100+ miles from our house.  It’s through Allianz.   This isn’t an endorsement of Allianz, they simply have a plan that fits our needs at a price we are happy with. 
 

We used to insure each trip individually, but once we started doing 3+ trips a year, and annual plan made sense. 
 

On our third ever cruise, my wife and I watched someone get taken away by a Life Flight helo from the pier at Labadee.    We both looked at each other with the same thought….. damn, I bet that’s expensive.   We started researching travel insurance once we got home.  

 

We get a very similar policy with Allianz and also don't necessarily endorse them; just their service is very good.  If you get insurance for each cruise, the annual policy is a better deal then insuring three separate cruises.  So, even if you go on 2 per 12 months, it's a good idea since it will cover any trip that's at least 100 miles from your home.  With one child in NY and another in Chicago, it's a no-brainer (we live in Maryland). 

On 7/4/2023 at 6:27 PM, PPPJJ-GCVAB said:

Absolutely!  It’s fun to do and helps you find your room after a few drinks!    On our last cruise our friends hung up a magnetic board with an outline of the US States.  There were very tiny sticky dots in a baggie next to it and people stuck the dots on the state they came from.  By the end of the cruise there were over 75 dots which filled at least 60% of the 50 states!  
Of course, it helped that our rooms were near the top of the hallway so there was lots of traffic to stop by!

I love this idea!

Agree with the others about using a travel agent (TA).  We used to use cruise.com (one of the big boys).  Since they are so big, we got some extra perks like extra OBC.  But a year or so ago, we switched to a TA with MEI and haven't looked back.  With MEI, you might not get the extra perks, but the service is just fantastic.

We used Air2Sea to book our flights for this cruise.  Our outbound is BWI-ATL-PTY on Delta and the return is PTY-BWI on Copa.  We'd like to modify the outbound flight so our connection is not so long -- on the same airline-- (plus it appears that Delta has reduced the price slightly).  The problem is that Copa has increased the price of the return a lot.  We don't want to touch our return flight on Copa but A2S claims they have to rebook everything (which would cost us a lot more money).

I looked into cancelling everything and booking on my own but the price would be even higher.

Any suggestions?

We decided to book the Crowne Plaza close to the airport for one night after the cruise.  (since we have a morning flight out of PTY on Sunday, March 24).  Therefore, we are looking for a tour of the city that leaves from where we disembark in  Fuerte Amador and drops us at the Crowne Plaza or airport (of course, with our luggage).  

Anyone have any suggestions?

Looks like for transfers we have options.  I did an Uber estimate from the PTY airport to the Waldorf Astoria (WA) and it should be less than $20.  It's a bit longer from the end of the cruise (Fuerte Amador) back to the airport so that RC excursion that @smokeybandit mentioned might make sense.  It seems the longest ride would be from PTY or WA to Colon and hopefully, MEI or RCB can arrange a van or bus.

3 minutes ago, AshleyDillo said:

I was going to ask my agent about an airport transfer at the end of the cruise. They have the 2 excursions for flights after 3:30pm and 4:00pm but I imagine they sell the typical straight from the cruise to the airport transfers as well.

They typically do but I usually plan my own ride ahead of time; RC's prices are usually way out-of-line. In the case of this cruise, I'm waiting to see what others are doing (since so many are staying over)