Haboob

*IF* you and they have an unlimited-minutes internet package (with decent actual bandwidth) logged in, phones that support it (modern Androids and iPhones do), and cellphone providers which offer a "Generic Access Network" port on the internet (most US providers do, but last I heard Aussies don't), then you can use "WiFi Calling" for incoming and outgoing calls and texts as if you were at home.

The basic way to set such up is

• Airplane Mode ON

• WiFi ON  (turning Airplane Mode ON turns WiFi OFF, but not vice versa)

• Log into the ship's internet and leave phone logged in

• Turn WiFi Calling ON

• If you're paranoid, periodically check that Airplane Mode is still ON  😉

Double check with your cellphone provider's support for gotchas and where those setting are hidden in your phone's menus before you sail.

PS: You may wish to turn your phone off while in bed -- spammers think you are in your home timezone.

"Physically restrained"?   Were it just a hand on my arm and a child in my care already on a moving escalator, I'd have simply kept going.  More restraint than that?  Methinks a police report alleging assault might be in order.

13 hours ago, lissie said:

Pretty pathetic from a major cruise line really. And laughable - you don't need to  be an expert on Maori culture to know how bad these crew members are! https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12290113

No better, no worse than the Photo Dept of any ship of any cruise line at any port on the planet.

1 hour ago, mtmorrisgirl said:

My husband was looking at our Ocean Medallions the other day and dropped mine into the side of his chair (insert expletive here).  We attempted everything other than ripping the chair apart but have not been able to retrieve it, so I called Princess and they said that I can get another one at the pier.  Has anyone else had this happen, and if so, did you have any problems getting a new Medallion when you got to the ship?  Thanks for your help!  

I lost mine last May, too, except it was into my *stateroom* sofa.

Told the Purser's staff that.  A few keystrokes confirmed: "Yep.  It shows as being in your stateroom", and it was a matter of about 90 seconds while they whipped up a new one, complete with Captain's Circle color and engraved with my name and voyage.

3 hours ago, Cruise Raider said:

😥

That's terrible! 

Not really.  UK passengers have to buy UK tickets because UK laws require that they get travel insurance benefits not figured into the price of tickets sold in North America.

34 minutes ago, HughMann said:

Since we're talking about the app, why does the app ask for microphone permissions? Is there any advantage to allowing it access?

Speech-to-text.   I'm too paranoid to allow it.

56 minutes ago, AF-1 said:

When you have the app open you should see a icon for travel documents.  When you open it you can then scan your passport in using your camera on your phone

You scan the page with your photo -- at least on Android, that requires the app to have permission to access the phone's camera.

The app will try to read the text at the bottom of that page.  My passport has spent a bit of time in my pocket, so getting the page to lay flat (and not distort the text) can be a bit of a frustration.

24 minutes ago, 47librarian said:

Trying to do ocean ready but it keeps having problem accepting my passport.8 have no idea what I am doing wrong!

It's trying to read the machine-readable text at the bottom of the page with your picture from a camera image...

Framing, focus, and --for me-- trying to get that frabjous page to lie flat without your fingers being in the image are likely issues.

13 minutes ago, weedpindle said:

This has been answered numerous times. Use the  obc anywhere on the ship, anytime, for anything.

...until, likely, at some uncertain time in the future, you can't.

Meanwhile, enjoy and don't give cause to bring that time closer.

3 hours ago, denmarks said:

Grand Princess has announced that MedallionNet internet is now available for a flat fee. Are the free minutes of slow internet still available for Platinum and above? I only have to check email once in a while. I do not need streaming.

On Grand last month, you could choose unlimited-minutes for a fee or limited-minutes as a Captain Circle perk.  Both ran at the same streaming-video speed.

However, YMMV.  There is a "market disrupter" -- SES's "O3b" satellites provide uplinks to ships at a much cheaper price so Grand was able to buy more bandwidth than in years past.  But those satellites can only handle only a limited number of ships and are not reachable from all popular cruise areas.  Our cruise snagged one of the limited O3b slots, your cruise might not.  We stayed within the O3b footprint, your cruise might not.

Princess has been ...floundering for over a year on how to market internet afloat on a one-size-fits-all basis when their costs and available uplink bandwidth varies so widely.

3 hours ago, CaribbeanIsland said:

They can trip over anything - a back pack, cane, walker or a child's leash (yes they exist).

 

At the end of the day --- say a prayer that you are thankful that you don't have a disability. No one goes into this wishing they were visually impaired, hearing impaired, diabetic, or have severe allergies that having this type of dog makes their life easier.

Two comments...

1) We're talking about a man in a bar.  It might be that he tripped over his BAC, not the dog.

2) The crux of this thread is *not* that some people truly need forbearance and 4-footed assistance, it's that there are those who abuse the system, that their "Fluffy"s give well-trained and well-mannered animals an undeserved bad name, and in the case of a Delta passenger 28 stitches to his face.

In-transit procedures are a melange of Princess' doing, their port agent's doing, the port's doing, and CPB's doing   ...in order of decreasing control by Princess about what happens.  The last of those folks has the most authority, the least concern for passengers, and sets the path they take once they set foot on a gangway.  Can you spell "TSA"?  😞

Were I mobility-challenged and doing back-to-back, I would ensure I visited the Purser's and had a chat a day or so before turnaround.

31 minutes ago, satxdiver said:

The ship internet gurus can block specific services in the internet router for services they do not want to support or they can throttle it. 

Yup.   Well, except for the shipboard IT folks are rarely gurus.  😲

1 hour ago, Ferd Berfle said:

 

Did you have to be connected to the Internet to have WhatsApp function for calls and text?

Yes.

2 hours ago, MixerDave said:

Don't rely solely on a plug in Electric clock.  The ships power is not consistent and the clock will run slow.  I use an app called "giant clock" .  It is dimmable and has an alarm function.   We place it so we can see it from the bed.

The frequency of ships' power is quite consistent.  The problem is that some ships provide it at the standard European frequency of 50Hz instead of the North American 60Hz.

The problem, of course, with ship-provided clocks in staterooms is having to re-set them for all those pesky timezone changes.

20 minutes ago, zahav1 said:

I'm looking at a cruise to Hawaii round trip from San Francisco or Los Angeles.  Not sure about it.   If you've been on an Hawaii cruise what are your thoughts?  The multiple sea days both direction seem a bit much, was this cruise worth your time and money?   Thanks

That's kind of a "should I order chocolate or pistachio ice cream?" question.  😉

For us it was worth it.  I enjoy sea days, my DW tolerates them, but they are unavoidable for Hawai'i unless you want to sail NCL's Pride of America (and her tiny cabins) because of the PVSA law.

One difference between LA and San Francisco departures is that San Francisco departures travel more sea miles touching base at Ensenada to comply with that PVSA law.

15 minutes ago, coo359a2 said:

Could someone please post what the breakdown for the elite minutes are.  Can't find my paper on it.  Know that a 7 day cruise is 100 minutes per person  and over 20 something days  it is 500 minutes per person.   Thanks in advance.

Complimentary Internet Package¹³
Each Platinum Princess Cruises Captain’s Circle member will receive a complimentary Internet package to be used either on the computers in our Internet Cafés or wireless Internet on the guest’s personal wireless device. The amount of complimentary Internet is determined by the length of the sailing.

• Voyages 7 days or less, 150 minutes
• Voyages 8-20 days, 250 minutes
• Voyages 21+ days, 500 minutes

https://book.princess.com/captaincircle/membershipBenefits.page

56 minutes ago, Colo Cruiser said:

⋮

It May also depend on location in the world.

Yea and verily.

We sailed T/A on Regal this spring.  From Florida to the Azores, the speed was just-like-at-home.  At the Azores, the "O3b" satellites were down on the southern horizon and due to drop below it as we went north, so Regal switched to GEO satellites and internet speed took a significant tumble.  Still better than what was common a few years ago, but nowhere the speed we had FLL/PDL.

The O3b constellation is available within about 48º of the equator, but each of its satellites can only handle 10 ships (or other customers) at any given time.

10 hours ago, MixerDave said:

 

That ruling only applies to Cruise ships that visit US ports.  It does not apply to foreign ports.

Yup.

...and on cruises that don't touch US waters or ports, every service animal I've seen aboard has been well-trained and well-mannered.

2 hours ago, damiross said:

I'll be purchasing the AT&T cruise package.  It includes Internet, voice, and text.  Does anyone know if the Internet piggybacks on the ship's Wi-Fi? Thanks.

Unlikely in the extreme.  Figure the data will arrive as "cellular data" via the ship's cellphone tower on cellular frequencies to your phone's cellular radio.

That only pushes the peanut down the road:  The choke point for shipboard internet is not the WiFi LAN.  It is the satellite uplink, and the question becomes "Does your ship's cellphone tower and its WiFi LAN have separate satellite uplinks?"  I'm not sure that info is publicly available or is even the same from one day to the next.

2 hours ago, JimmyVWine said:

Cite?  I’ve heard dozens of reasons for the disappearance of promenades but never this one. Lifeboat placement. Revenue generation. But passengers falling overboard? Never heard this before. Presumably you have some industry literature to support this theory. 

Probably better, we were chatting with a Princess captain while he took a smoke break up on a Sun Deck.  Somehow, conversation wound around to the comment, "You'd make quite the splash from up here."  His reply, "You'd never hit the water.  That's the way they're making them now."

You mention "revenue generation".  Think of all the foregone revenue from stepped-back balconies and smaller Lido, Sun, and Sports Decks.  Princess lost 48 folks overboard between 2000 and 2017.  MoB search costs are seldom divulged, but the cost Norwegian Star's search last summer was in the papers at $600,000.

Promenades are out of favor for new ships for the simple reason that too many folks fell from them into to the sea.  Newer designs have it so that if you do fall, it's onto the ship, avoiding the 7-figure cost of searching for someone who hadn't been noticed for 12+ hours.

That's the reason for the wedding-cake setbacks on balconies, too.

57 minutes ago, mk-ultra said:

 

Did you have to purchase the package once onboard?  All I see in my cruise planner under internet access is ship-to-shore calling (10 minutes for $49.50... eek).

Princess is ...fine tuning --cough, cough-- their internet packages.  It has been common for none to be offered for a cruise until fairly close to embarkation date.

5 hours ago, WallyNDiane said:

We are sailing on the Caribbean Princess on Feb 2. We are retired so no internet work issues. But I am addicted to my iPad and I play a M-F civil war trivia game. So I am considering getting the internet package.

 

The Princess website has a daily one device internet fee at $9.99 per day. But they say there is a 50% discount if you book that precruise. Is that $9.99 per day before or after the 50% discount? $5 a day for a 14 day cruise isn't bad. But $10 for something I m trying to get away from is pricey.

 

Lastly, if you get the Internet package, how fast is the wifi? I would not stream anything, but I would be googling a lot to find my trivia answer, I would get pretty frustrated if it takes a long time to perform 1 google search.

 

Thank you.

If you log onto https://www.princess.com and go to your Personalizer page for that cruise, it will tell you the exact price of whatever options are available for your cruise.  (They vary by ship and cruise)

North of about Seattle or Southampton, satellite uplinks are significantly more expensive (it's a matter of orbital geometry), so our internet package dollars don't buy as much speed up there.  South of there, Regal ran a test in '18 and simultaneously had a video-quality stream going to each stateroom.  That's not going to happen up north; they're working to improve it, but when last I sailed that far north, it was common up there for shipboard internet to get overloaded and crash.

5 hours ago, scottca075 said:

 

Cruise lines are no more subject to the ADA than they are to federal minimum wage laws, overtime rules, etc.

The US Supreme Court thinks otherwise:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/04pdf/03-1388.pdf