peety3

I'm confused. I booked this itinerary as three separate cruises so I am doing Vancouver to Whittier and then Whittier back to Vancouver and then staying onboard again for Vancouver to LA. I don't want to find out late in the process that this itinerary is illegal. Help!

Also note that you should most likely climb mountains and scale valleys to get aboard the ship in Vancouver. If you miss the ship, you've most likely caused yourself to sit around in Vancouver for two weeks as you can't board until Vancouver then.

I'm confused. I booked this itinerary as three separate cruises so I am doing Vancouver to Whittier and then Whittier back to Vancouver and then staying onboard again for Vancouver to LA. I don't want to find out late in the process that this itinerary is illegal. Help!

Your voyage is Vancouver to LA and is therefore legal, but ONLY because you board in Vancouver. I suggest you get Princess up to speed and have them issue confirmation that you're A-OK, as their systems most likely have alerts for anyone who tries to do just Whittier-Vancouver-LA (as that's illegal).

Assuming you're successful, expect a laugh and a lot of disbelief at your third muster drill. The muster captain will ask if anyone was on the ship for the last cruise and the whole room (or at least those who think they know) will say "WE CAN'T!", and you can say "I DID!".

All five security checkpoints at SEA are "in a row", and passage through any one checkpoint grants you access to the entire "secure side" of the airport. The N and S satellite terminals each have a train to bring you back to the main terminal; I think N connects to C and D while S connects to A and B, but even if I have those backwards, you've got free access on foot A-B-C-D.

Try it in flowchart form:

1) Does my cruise start in the US? If no, you can disregard the PVSA.

2) Does my cruise end in the US? If no, you can disregard the PVSA.

3) Does my cruise start and end in the same US port? If yes, you can disregard the PVSA.

4) Do I travel to a distant foreign port? If no, your cruise will likely violate the PVSA. Read in further detail to confirm.

In this case, "my cruise" concerns an entire voyage on one particular ship. Stepping off one ship and onto another ends one voyage and starts another. Stepping off one particular ship (legally in the eyes of the flowchart above) for more than 24 hours also ends one voyage and starts another.

I vaguely recall some of the self-service laundry rooms being closed in Alaskan waters "due to environmental regulations". I can't understand why half of the rooms are compliant and the other half aren't, but it's not my job to understand that.

You have a lot of experience on Ruby Princess. Could you tell me if Deck 12 forward will feel a lot of motion? I am NOT prone to seasickness, but I've never been on a deck that high or that far forward. Just would like some input/info. Thanks. :)

I don't think it'll feel all that much more than what you might be used to. On a few of our Ruby cruises, it's been rather cross-windy, and that might be a scenario where you'd feel a little bit more up on deck 12 compared to 8 or 9, but not bad per se.

In the grand scheme of things, you've got two choices. Behind door #1, you can accept that Princess isn't going to tell you where you're going, and sign up for the excursion. Behind door #2, you can think it's bull and not sign up for the excursion. Which one is it going to be? Reality is they don't have to tell you were they're taking you, but you don't have to take that excursion.

I've read all the hoopla about the the "Club Class" and find nothing inviting about any of it. Gee I'll upgrade for more money so I can have a different shower head! Entire program sounds like smoke and mirrors to charge more for the same stateroom. We haven't done traditional last 10 cruises, but as I recall, there was no "wait" to be seated for traditional dining.

Club Class exists to fix Anytime Dining capacity issues, not TD, and in most cases does impact TD capacity thereby pushing more passengers out of (early) traditional and into anytime. It also exists to fix the perceived service difference between TD and ATD: all too often, the best waiters end up handling TD, or maybe just life as an ATD waiter is so harried and hurried that those folks are less detail-oriented.

Was D701 an adjoining suite?

Uh, to be honest I don't really remember. It was definitely a mini, but I think it was adjacent to a handicapped mini (and adjacent to a junction point between modules of the ship).

I was going to say, we did the ship's excursion, but we weren't squished in there. It was the 3 of us with either 2 or 3 others, drawing a blank right now. My son and myself sat up front with the pilot and my husband was in the back with the others. He said it was absolutely fine. They also have to be careful on how they put passengers on the helicopter, so it's balanced. They ask your weight, and that's how they balance people around. We did Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau.

Who was the operator? If it was Temsco, you got lucky. They can get pilot+2 in the front and 4 in the back, so if you had less than that, your excursion had less than a full load for that helicopter so you got some room.

As someone else said, it's about $2000/hour of flying time for the helicopter to yourself. You can then load it up to max allowable weight, or not, as long as everyone is belted in.

Only a few more days to go. I’m not crazy about the 35 for some reason but I think I’ll go for it as my 4th lens.

I'm not familiar with the Nikon (or third-party) 35, but I'd almost guess you "need" a 24 so that after crop factor you're getting (about) a 35. I find 35mm to be so much fun on full-frame: you have to be decisive on what to include/exclude in the frame, but you can tell so many great stories. With a 50 on a crop behaving like a 75, or an 85 behaving like a 130, you're (in my opinion) a lot more in the "singular theme" zone, which nails home that one theme but runs the risk of omitting the rest of the story.

Now that I own the Canon 35, a lot of my other lenses are collecting dust.

Crop sensor? My vote is the 35.

Canon Rumors is your place to get the most consolidated scoop. In a nutshell, 7D3 not expected in 2018, 90D anticipated in 2018. That said, I caution you to seek a particular unannounced camera model, as you don't know until announcement what features it'll have, nor do you know how noisy/not the sensor will be. In my opinion, the 7D and 7D2 have been relatively noisy cameras, and the 7D2's autofocus was surprisingly weak given that it was often described as a baby 1Dx.

http://www.canonrumors.com/were-not-convinced-an-eos-7d-mark-iii-is-coming-in-2018/

http://www.canonrumors.com/the-canon-eos-90d-is-coming-later-in-2018-cr2/

14 on the ones we were on; I hear they now have slightly larger boats (20pax?) as well.

14 pax for the "Photo Safari", 20 pax for the other tours as I understand it. 14-pax boats have a forward viewing area opened while stopped, 20-pax boats have a forward and aft area opened while stopped. (Plus of course the windows.)

Am I doing something wrong, when I put my iPhone 7 in airplane mode it turns off wifi?

IOS 10 and prior would turn off Wifi and Bluetooth, but you can immediately turn those back on while in airplane mode. IOS 11 altered airplane mode so only the cellular is disabled.

Our personal preference is Gastineau Guiding, as their boats hit the sweet spot for us - bigger than H&Ms 6-packs, but dedicated whale-watching vessels designed from the proverbial ground up to be optimal for that purpose with outdoor viewing areas and huge windows that fully-open so everyone inside can still get great photo ops without shooting through glass - but also without being rained on if the weather is ropey.

One thing I would look for is sailing on a very small vessel. We did that several years ago and it was just six of us (four in my family) and the Captain and his assistant.

I'm sure there's a neat intimacy to being on a small boat, but from what I've seen and experienced, boat stability and "passenger density" matters more to me. Those Gastineau boats are amazing, and I would pick those any time over the six-passenger boats I've seen in Juneau, even at twice the price.

Note that ship "Wifi" (or to be more accurate, ship Internet access) is almost always subject to extremely high latency due to the satellite systems used. That means it'll take an extra long time for what you say to get to the other party, and vice versa. Better technology is still several years away.

The difference in price is attributed in great part to a difference in demand. If you want to be guaranteed of seeing a glacier (actually multiple spectacular glaciers), take an itinerary that includes Glacier Bay. I've never heard of a ship missing Glacier Bay whereas most seasons there are reports of ice blocking Tracy Arm Fjord. One year someone posted on cruise critic that they were on the first ship that made it up Tracy Arm Fjord and that was in late June/early July!

I'm not here to argue the reasons for the fare difference. GBNP probably has much higher permit fees than TAF. But the fact remains that ships headed for TAF deviate to Endicott Arm if TAF is blocked, so there's still a "glacier viewing stop" regardless. My point was merely to broaden the OP's mind about other options out of Seattle: four ships come and go from Pier 91 every weekend during cruise season, others come and go from Pier 91 on other days of the week, and NCL keeps Pier 66 busy as well.

Open up your choices a little broader. Ruby Princess does sail out of Seattle, but so does Emerald Princess. Similar ships, but different itineraries. The "Saturday ship" visits Glacier Bay NP on what I see as a slightly more relaxing itinerary with a higher price, the "Sunday ship" visits Tracy Arm Fjord at a lower price albeit with a bit more slow-FAST-slow-FAST itinerary (in my opinion).

I often see people posting to find out who is the Captain, or Cruise Director or the Maitre 'd. I have never seen the fascination. None of them has ever ruined my cruise and none have ever made it wonderful

Maybe not for you, but a Maitre D Hotel made a cruise wonderful, we've stayed in touch, and it's gotten us to book three more cruises just to cruise with him again.

Think outside the box. Every single cruise line is a professional training organization - they train new staff probably on every cruise. They could easily add additional staff to CC and maintain the same level of service; you and I both know it can be done. They could also add additional staff as support staff, and not disrupt the relationships already formed between the "permanent" CC staff and passengers.

 

Sorry you had to wait. That said, the Princess complaint department is NOT this forum, contrary to popular belief. None of us are empowered to fix the problem(s) you encountered.

The ship heads into Tracy Arm Fjord almost as far it's going to, and the excursion boat meets the ship there. They open a tender platform and you board the boat from there. It's been three steps up to get into the boat every time that I recall. There are several ship's crew standing there to help you into the boat.

Here's an overhead view just after the last passengers reboarded after the tour:

Here are some additional views:

Not directly related to your question, but may also explain why you're seeing things like this at this stage of the calendar. A few years ago, we took a truly beginning of the season cruise that had only one stop, Ketchikan. We did the Misty Fjords tour via Allen Marine, and at the end of the tour, I asked the AM gal who seemed to be corralling all of us onto the tour boat how it worked for reservations, as clearly they don't want to assign an entire 150-pax boat to one cruise line/ship.

Her answer was intriguing: Princess might "claim" 75 seats, and HAL might claim 75 seats when the original contract is signed the year before, for a given tour. As the booking systems gather guest reservations, the cruise lines adjust their estimates, and either stick with their current estimation, give back some seats, or request additional seats. The cruise line essentially ends up with a wholesale commitment as it gets close to a given tour, based on what their numbers were. If the cruise lines begin to ratchet back their commitments, the tour operator can sell those seats privately or through any other means they wish (that isn't in conflict with the contract).

Or as another example, last September we went to Alaska and in Juneau had planned to do our usual whale watch, but we wanted MORE. I knew who the tour operator was, and called to see what our options were. Long story short, even though we set it up completely in advance, we had to call them at 11:00am as we docked in Juneau to get a preliminary check of capacity, we had to hunt down the dock rep and get "paper tickets" pre-written, which they handed to us. They let our guide know what the plan was, but it wasn't until we were out on the water (and when the HAL ship arrived with "final" numbers) that they knew they had 2 open seats on a second tour that was only 15 minutes after our first tour ended (we were on the very first round of tours for the day). Moral of the story is that I think the contract terms make many of the operators quite loyal to the ship contracts, so they hold off on capacity until they have reason to believe it won't jeopardize their ship-sourced business.

Flickr reduces the pictures down to 100 kb/photo or something similar while a jpeg image can be 9 mb/photo or more. It takes a lot less bandwidth to transmit 100 kb than a 9 mb file (1 mb is equal to 1000 kb). The slower internet on the ships are not conducive to large files of any type. Only visit text only websites and only send small text files if you don't want to spend a lot of internet time/$$$$.

No it doesn't, or at least it only does that if you select that. I just looked up some of our recent cruise pictures on Flickr and the first one I checked is 18.5MB.

If you're using a Flickr uploader, see if you can shrink the file size during the upload. Otherwise, learn how to downsize your images in your editing software, so you can at least upload some sample shots without consuming a lot of bits (and potentially costing you a lot of money), then perhaps update the uploads from dry land (with higher-resolution editions) when the opportunity presents. I almost always do two exports from Lightroom: one with 100% quality, sharpened for screen (high), at full resolution, and another with 100% quality, sharpened screen (high) at a max of 980x980 pixels.

Oh my, this is supposed to be a happy place! Cruiselines use the term dry-dock when a ship is out of service for extended repairs and maintenance whether it is literally out of the water or not. Here is how Princess describes it:

 

"Minor, freshening" refers to soft element upgrades like carpets, linens, wares as well as painting, polishing, deep cleaning. Ship system maintenance is also performed during these dry dock periods, something akin to a tune-up for a car.”

 

It is not unreasonable to expect the chairs and tables in Horizon Court to be upgraded.

It's not unreasonable to expect that fixtures and chairs could get replaced, but it's silly to think that Princess would intentionally wait until a drydock to do this. If you want Princess to replace the tables and chairs, just ask them to replace the tables and chairs...they can do it anytime. Same goes with the mattresses.

A couple years ago, I saw a TV documentary about what happens with a cruise ship on turnaround day. One of the things they did was exchange 150 mattresses, and they really did exchange them: 150 came on the ship, and 150 went off the ship. That was probably a truckload, so an effective size for them to handle. It'd be silly for them to ask their vendor to store 3300 mattresses just so they could send 22 trucks all at once during a drydock when they could more easily do a truck per week/10 days. Same with the tables/chairs.