effinaround

On 10/14/2023 at 4:44 PM, Ken the cruiser said:

 

This is a view of Toronto off in the distance once we landed and were heading towards the gate. 
 

 

Hey Ken,  Loved your review of the trip as I have this cruise on my list for some date in the future. The photo above is actually Mississauga - a city of almost a million people just west of Toronto and where I live. The city has undergone rapid growth and most of the buildings in your photo are all residential. Here's a photo of it I took last weekend after my return from the Antarctica cruise.

17 hours ago, Ken the cruiser said:

Thanks! My DW checked the deck plan on the web site and it appears there are laundry rooms on decks 5, 8 (with entrances from either hallway), 10 (one on each side), and 12 (one on each side). We went and took pictures of the one on deck 10 on the starboard side. Unfortunately, that’s all we know as we get unlimited laundry so we don’t use them.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

I made extensive use of the laundry facilities on deck 5 FWD.  They worked quite well although I usually had to run the dryer twice to fully dry some loads that were denim heavy. For a long itinerary that covers both winter and summer like this trip, the laundry facilities allow you to pack less and stay within the baggage weight limits of most airlines. 

Ken, thanks for the great photos. even though I was on the first leg of the trip, I refer to this thread frequently for some of the place names and other reference items like the windy maps.  I wish you safe travels home and I'll also be eagerly awaiting your April 30th B3B thread!

15 hours ago, Golden Gater said:

Ken - We will be on the March 4th cruise from BA to Los Angeles in a port side cabin.  Will we be able to see many glaciers from our cabin or do we need to go out onto a forward location?   Thanks for posting all your beautiful pictures!

GET

OUT 

OF

THE 

CABIN!!!!

I can't say this loudly enough.  There is so much to see on all sides of the ship. You'll gain a better appreciation if you are mobile and move around the ship. I enjoyed every second of our cruise and there was just so much to see. There were some mornings where I walked bow to stern from promenade deck to the upper decks to get a different viewpoint. The lighting and the angles changed every few seconds it seemed like and I have so many fabulous photographs.  For me it really was a trip of a lifetime and I really wanted to make the most of it. I'd encourage anyone taking this cruise in the future to dress appropriately, get outside, and move around the ship when passing such breathtaking scenery.    

1 hour ago, Ken the cruiser said:

But at the same time, if you were on your balcony or in your cabin and went to lunch a few minutes after the Captain spoke, you would not have heard him mention anything about Glacier Alley nor probably have any idea what Glacier Alley was let alone that it was somewhere along the Beagle Channel. I know we didn’t until I accidentally woke up at 5:30 am that morning and looked outside.

 

That’s why it should have been posted in the Patter, which I’ll be making reference to in our post cruise surveys.

That's a good point.  I know many people missed Deception Island because we were about an hour later than planned and I guess they didn't look at the Antarctica voyage map that was distributed to the cabins for the timing. I kept racing out of the dining room and going up to deck 7 to take photos since it was lunchtime when we passed by.  I mentioned in the survey that it should be mentioned in the patter. 

10 hours ago, Mary loves to travel said:

We were on the first part of this cruise, from Santiago to BA.    I’m trying to remember how we knew when we were going through Glacier Alley.     We tended to be outside often, so heard most of the commentary from the naturalists, and anytime we were in our stateroom we had the tv tuned to the Bridge Cam so we’d hear any announcements.     

But we knew Glacier Alley was coming up early, and were up before 5 am.    Watching the sunrise, then the sail along Glacier Alley was an amazing experience!

People in the next cabin also knew, as they were out on their balcony at 5 am, too.   
 

I think the issue might be that some announcements from the captain and the naturalists were made in the early evening, and of course couldn’t be heard by folks in the shows.     Not sure how to solve this.   
 

Mary

I know I set my alarm for some ungodly hour like 430 or 5am and I think I may have done that after learning from a post on the Facebook group about the timing. I'm glad I did as it was worth getting up early:

2 minutes ago, Ken the cruiser said:

That’s too bad. Hopefully there wasn’t any issue with the PCL transfer getting you to the airport well ahead of your flight time. But with 3,000+ passengers having to process through that temporary building, I can imagine it was quite chaotic, especially if some folks had scheduled relatively early flights back home.
 

I wonder if the folks like my BIL and his DW that went on an excursion on the way to the airport had to deal with the same chaos. But they left at 6:45 am, so they might have avoided much of what you had to deal with.

 

In any event hopefully you made it to the airport in plenty of time to get on your flight and had a smooth flight home. 😁

Fortunately, we are staying in Buenos Aires for a few days and fly back to Toronto on Thursday afternoon.  For those that have mobility challenges and were of an advanced age, it must not have been easy for them. I can't imagine disembarking 500 passengers in that small space outside the terminal, let alone 3500! If Buenos Aires is serious about attracting cruise traffic, that need to become serious about building a facility to handle them. If that was the experience today with an arrival, I can't imagine how the departure with a damaged waiting lounge went!

Ken, you were lucky to stay on the ship.  That disembarkation was a complete cluster.  We left the ship at 10:00 and arrived at the terminal at 10:15 and waited in a line of nine other buses for 32 minutes.  Once we got off it was a cauldron of chaos and confusion.  There was no place for the flow of people upon exiting the building.  The building used today is wholly unsuitable for any type of pax handling operations. 

Kids club is great.  My four year old daughter is thoroughly enjoying it on the Sapphire Princess right now.  I don't know about the other ships but it is a large space on the Sapphire and they run it three times a day 09:00 to 12:00, 14:00-17:00 and 19:00-22:00.  No appointment is necessary and they have fabulous activities for those that want to participate.  It really has helped us on the Antarctica cruise where she really didn't want to spend a lot of time outdoors looking at scenery.  

I didn't notice a lot of wildlife aside from the penguins, turkey vultures, sheep and geese.  If you have limited time, or any type of back or osteo problems, think twice about taking the Volunteer Point excursion. My wife and I are early fifties, and in good health so it was ok for us.  Our four year old certainly enjoyed the ride but it is bone jarring!  

This was tacked onto the washroom and is certainly outdated:

If you like Kings, Volunteer Point is a good place to be:

20 minutes ago, Boatharbour said:

I have enjoyed following your trip so much. Thank you for taking the time to share.
Could I ask if you know anyone onboard who took the Volunteer Point excursion instead of the Bluff Point one? I believe there are more king penguins at Volunteer Point but it involves at least two hours each way over rough terrain. 

We did Volunteer Point.  What would you like to know? Lots of Kings at Volunteer Point and we had a great time! 

No trouble tendering for us.  We left at 08:00 for Stanley and came back at 16:30.  It was not as choppy as I expected.  It was a long day for me, my wife and the little one but totally worth it to see some of these guys in action:

This was my 4 year old daughter's reaction to seeing the penguins:

By the end of the day I felt like this:

1 hour ago, BlerkOne said:

nikon p950?

Indeed.

3 hours ago, Ken the cruiser said:

Thanks! Please feel free to post pictures of any of the penguins and sea lions you saw cruising around in the Antarctic waters! But you must have had quite the zoom lens on your camera as I don’t remember coming anywhere that close to seeing them just by looking.

True. I was using a 2000mm equivalent zoom lens. There was a lot of stuff that I shot on spec where I thought there might be something and zoomed in.  Once i captured the image I played it back on the camera and then had a better idea where to focus.  If I was better organized I would have had the binoculars with me more frequently. Still, I shot a number of frames of the National Geographic Resolution expedition ship yesterday and only after the fact realized that there were penguins right behind it.

From a berg in Charlotte bay the other day:

Just started going through my deception island shots.  Another low res (so it will actually upload) penguin shot. I will have more if folks are interested but don't want to hijack Ken's excellent thread.

I shot these little guys riding a berg on the port side just before 1700hrs today.  I've been enjoying your live updates, Ken, and your thread is very useful to so many of us onboard that don't always remember the names of the places we are seeing.  I'll be reading your continued travels when I leave the ship on the 5th and head home to Toronto a couple of days later. 

For those interested, once we arrive at A23A there will be running commentary from the bridge that will be broadcast on the Bridge Cam channel and all exterior speakers. Sure hope the fog breaks!

I ate in one of the main dining rooms (can't recall which one, Savoy perhaps) and I noticed many people dressed up.  In the piazza I took a photo for a lovely British couple in gown and tuxedo.  I must confess I didn't see a single hoodie but perhaps it was timing.  

What I have noticed are many service and food safety failures right from the very first day.  Service has been the worst in the main dining rooms during breakfast (do they put the newest and weakest staff there in the mornings?) and on point generally for lunch and dinner.  Food safety problems have been endemic during all three services.  Lots of apologies but nothing else.

I can answer this.  There was a table just past the security screening point before exiting the building to take the bus to the ship that was collecting corkage fees.  Once on the ship there was no additional screening other than tapping our medallion.

I had a can of beer in the outside of my backpack but the security people didn't question it.  

Safe travels, Ken.  We're leaving tonight from Toronto on the non-stop to Santiago.  I guess we better have our sea legs ready!

Looking forward to this Ken! My wife and 4 year old daughter (as well as yours truly) will be on board for the first leg on January 20th. We've also loaded up on mosquito repellant. See you on deck! 

If you really need to work you might be able to do the following:

Leave your work laptop at home and connected to your home internet.  Remember to disable sleep or hibernate so it doesn't go offline while you are away.  Depending on  your IT Department policy it might not work if you can't install software but get an account for something like RemotePC.  It's been a while since I installed it so it might even work just installed in the user's profile and not require admin rights to install. Take second laptop or tablet on the cruise and connect to wifi and launch RemotePC connection to your work laptop.  Connect to work with the VPN like normal.  

This is my plan for an upcoming cruise. If my sonicwall GVPN client is blocked I'll just connect to a desktop at my work and login using remotePC. 

There was a great secure remote access USB hardware solution made by a company called Route1 called Mobikey.  Not sure if they are still around or not but I used it to get around "The Great Firewall of China" when I was there many moons ago using internet cafes.   

I just checked and apparently they still exist https://www.route1.com/mobikey but seem to be government/Enterprise only. 

I guess the key is to find a solution that runs over port 80 and/or 443 - ports that need to be open on the Cruise ship internet system. Without those ports open, people aren't able to browse much. 

Just remember, where there is a will, there is likely a way! Good luck!

Nah, it's harder (but not impossible) to sniff over a wire than a completely unprotected wireless transmission which is truly open season. It falls under "staff need to get stuff done" and acceptable risk. That TV LAN port, if active at all, would likely be connected to a restricted guest network.