reedl

I have been on the Serenade and Jewel and love the Seaview cafe. The food there is actually pretty good, and the view is perfect.

 

I am saddened that they have removed that place for yet another premium revenue generating restaurant.

Fanta Peach Zero is my Favoruite :)

 

Try Mello Yello with peach. It is quite good.

Depends on the ship and the bar. The soda package includes fountain soda and soda from the freestyle machines. Soda in cans is not included in the package, though some have been able to find a bartender who will give them Sprite Zero from cans.

 

This has been my experience on three different ships over a three year period at every bar I went to. (Majesty, Liberty, and Jewel). What they do (until they recognize me after a day or two) is go to the bar gun to see if it is on there, and then fill up my cup with the can. It takes exactly 1.5 cans to fill up the cup without ice, so I bring both cups, and fill both up with three.

If you have the Soda package, you can get Sprite Zero with the package at bars. They will give it to you if you tell them that you want something diet without caffeine.

 

You do not get the can as they put it into your cup, but you can get it.

On AT&T at least, incoming texts are free.

If I turn my I-phone to airplane mode, can I still use the apps on my phone without using data (for instance, I have a carb counting app :))

If the app makes a connection to a server, then it will not work

 

Also, can we still text the kids back and forth, I guess it would be in "I-message" mode?

Nope. Since it uses a data connection, it will not work at all.

 

We are so dumb about smart phones! :rolleyes:

 

I just do NOT want to rack up any international data! :eek:

 

We have Sprint, by the way, not sure if that matters.

 

The price for data at sea is completely outrageous. You can use the WiFi in the phone on the ship if you pay for the internet, but that will also cost you much more than you probably want to pay.

I have never been visited by the free upgrade fairy. On one cruise they called me to change from one balcony to another with an ever so slightly larger balcony. It was on the Jewel and was one of the balconies where the cabins next door are larger inside. I still had a smaller room, but a triangle shaped balcony.

 

I did it, but it most certainly was not worth the $100 they charged me.

Royal Caribbean does other whole ship charters also. They have the 70,000 tons of metal cruise on the Majesty out of Miami every year which is a metal lovers dream cruise. You cannot book it through Royal at all. It is only available through the event organizers.

 

Even though I really am not a major fan of metal music, after reading about this cruise, I am impressed with the way it is run. They have over 40 bands on the ship, and each band performs twice, and is available for meets and greets, and is in general very accessible.

 

They setup a stage on one of the main decks, and have lots and lots of music. From what I have read, the passengers on this cruise are actually better behaved than a regular cruise. They may sell more alcohol, but people know how to handle it.

 

Now if they would just create a techno/electro/dance music cruise, I would be there!

I like visiting there on a cruise simply because we are back in the USA so I can use my phone without additional charges. Plus Key West has a "charm" about it that is nice to enjoy. American Money, Sort of American Ways, but of course that Key West influence!

The world is full of butt heads.

 

Occasionally, we will run into them. And sometimes, we will have a camera.

 

When the opportunity arises, I take their picture.

 

That reminds me of the movie Lilo and Stitch where Lilo actually took pictures of the tourists who visited Hawaii!

I went on a excursion where taking pictures was the whole point of the excursion. It was in Canada, and the excursion was a photo taking excursion where the guide was a professional photographer (nice work he had). We went to about 5 different very photogenic places, and I got a lot of great pictures.

 

One of the places was the reversing river in Canada, but the others were waterfalls, a boat dock with lobster boats, and real nice beach, etc. It was nice to go to places that were not the touristy places.

Sunset over Rockland Maine in 2010 from a balcony on the Jewel of the Seas in the Fall.

 

 

 

Just a simple shot with a Sony DSLR-A100 SLR camera

 

Nothing processed or edited.

I am on the Allure on the Oct 20 cruise, and am glad Ken Rush will not be there.

A Few More pictures.

 

 

I went on the Monarch in 2006 for a four night cruise out of California and had a great time. I happen to really like that ship and the Majesty also. For short cruises, it is a good size since you do not feel like you have missed everything on a bigger ship.

 

I went on the Majesty two years ago on the four night out of Miami and also had a great time. The crew is incredible!

 

Of course, now I am booked on the Allure. From the smallest to the largest. I am weird!

 

Here are some pictures taken in 2006 of the Monarch.

 

 

 

You're absolutely right, communications between wireless devices has to be enabled on the WLAN controller. So there's probably very little chance this app will work on the ship.

 

The only way it would work is if you run one phone in access point mode, and the other phone connects to it, or they both run in Ad Hoc mode, but again in both cases the distance issue is still in play.

 

Although if you were to get the unlimited internet plan which might be available on the ship, and always be connected, you could use iMessage on the iPhone or some other peer to peer messaging system that uses a central server.

 

But that assumes you pay for their internet access and it is unlimited.

It looks like a direct phone to phone communications method. If that is correct, it would have the same downside as the GMRS radios, i.e., weak transmission through all the steel in the ship. If however the app somehow uses the ship's WiFi to communicate directly to other phones, and it does not need internet access, then I could see it working.

But the ship will not allow your device to communicate at all until it is successfully registered. I have brought multiple WiFi devices on the ship, and attached to the WiFi on the ship on both of them at the same time, and they still could not see each other. This is a security feature of WiFi as in the access point controls all access between devices connected to the access point. High end access points (like Colubris now owned by HP) have the ability to block access between devices connected to even the same access point. There is a setting for example in my Colubris that I use which says: "Allow traffic between: (None/All/IPv6/802.1x) wireless clients. I leave it in all since it is my house, but hotels and the cruise lines do not allow devices to communicate with each other unless successfully connected and authenticated into the network.

 

I just get the idea that it does not use WiFi as it sounds to be some sort of emergency communications method from phone to phone.

It uses WiFi as the transmission method. Cool idea in the environment where you need a bunch of devices to communicate with each other without using infrastructure, but in the cruise ship case, unless you are close enough to connect to each other (which means you are probably close enough to see each other) it will not work.

It's an android app called Serval Mesh, designed as an emergency network. I don't really understand how it works and it is still in experimental stages.

 

I see how it works. It basically creates a WiFi to WiFi connection between the phones. The issues are multiple though on a cruise ship:

 

- The distance WiFi travels on a metal ship is probably less than 100 feet through walls, etc.

- If only you and he are using the app, then only you and he can communicate with each other if you are in WiFi range (see above)

 

Now if you had 100 people on the ship using this and running the app, and everybody was distributed all over the ship in equal distribution (not all in the men's bathroom ;) ) then it might work, but you would be relying on that being the case.

 

I am an expert in WiFi, having worked for a company that installed them for a few years, and also writing much too much WiFi client software in my lifetime. I am always amazed that they can get WiFi to work as well as it does on the metal of a ship considering the 2.4 ghz gets swallowed up by metal. Although the fact that at sea there is no interference helps alot!

I did the Behind the Scenes tour on the Liberty and was a little disappointed. For $150 I thought they would take you into more technical parts of the ship, such as closer to engine rooms, computer rooms, and other technical stuff (I am a technology and computer geek). I also wanted to see some of the crew cabins as I would love to see how "the other half lives" The places we went were:

- bridge

- crew buffet line (the food look much better there than in Windjammer)

- Main kitchen

- a crew lounge

- the prop/costume room of the main theater

- into studio B, but not backstage there

- many refrigerators and freezers, including the store for alcohol, etc.

- Engine control room including seeing the computer screens for monitoring whether someone has their balcony open.

 

I have a bunch of pictures of a lot of the tour, and it was interesting. I did like the fact that there were no restrictions for photography "backstage". The most interesting thing is that the props only turn at less than 150 RPM. I guess since they are so large, they cannot spin faster!

 

In fact I have had better tours on ships of the theaters by just getting to know the theater personnel. On the one Carnival ship I went on, the guy gave me a great tour of the backstage area of the theater, video production room, and a couple of other places for free.

James is investigating options for Allure in March and may have found an android app that allows you to communicate without having to pay phone or wifi charges. I'll let you know if it pans out.

I do not think that there would be a way to locate a device or communicate without some sort of data connection. The other method that might work would be what we have in the States called FRS radios which can travel over 20 miles so they might work on the ships. But without a data connection there would be no way for regular phones to communicate with each other. The device to device connection method would be bluetooth, but that is only good for 50 feet or so. Kind of pointless for locating each other on a ship!

 

Also, for the record, i have never been in the mens toilets on deck 17 but now i'm kinda curious what they are like.

I am sure it it looks a lot like the women's room of course, except it has additional device in it.

On my 50th birthday my wife put in the cruise compass a happy birthday to me notice, but they published it as a 50th anniversary. My wife was only 48 at the time, so she would have been married to me two years before she was born.

 

They credited the charge for the posting because it was their mistake.

 

Also on the 6th day, RCCL made a mistake in the announcement of the backstage tour. It said: "Your Invited.." It Should be "You're Invited.."

 

This bothers me.