Haboob

2 hours ago, Daniel A said:

So, if you were carrying the Medallion in the same pocket as your credit cards, there is a chance the medallion could demagnetize the strips on your credit cards?

Mag stripe card?  I would suspect so.  Pardon me if I don't run the experiment.

Chip card?  Not the chip.

On 10/30/2019 at 2:37 PM, Daniel A said:

Why does the Medallion have magnets inside?

To hold them in the wristband holders.

On 10/23/2019 at 3:35 PM, strobellayjam said:

@snoozecrooze thank you so much!  This menu definitely differs from the one posted on the Princess website. I’ll share this with my DD tonight. Hope you had a fabulous cruise!

Some of Princess' fleet sail with "Sabatini's" and others with "Sabatini's Tratoria":

https://www.princess.com/downloads/pdf/Onboard_Experience/Sabatinis-Menu-Sample.pdf

https://www.princess.com/downloads/pdf/ships-and-experience/food-and-dining/sabatinis-trattoria/sabatinis-trattoria-main-menu.pdf

The Grand sails with "Sabatini's Tratoria"

Curiosity question for you.  Grand made a mad dash to arrive in San Francisco 11 hours early and avoid winds that would have made docking impossible -- we got to play CBP Follies all the last evening, including getting awoken at 11pm with the cabin speakers blaring "Will the following passengers report IMMEDIATELY to the gangway..."

Did you folks get to sail on time?

BTW...  This business of frequent crossings between timezones is why passenger staterooms typically don't have clocks (that would need re-setting).

From Medtronic's website:

...[T]here is a small magnetically activated switch built into the electronics of pacemakers and implantable defibrillators. This internal switch is designed to close when a magnet of enough strength is placed over it...

https://www.medtronic.com/us-en/patients/electromagnetic-guide/frequently-asked-questions.html

I am not a physician.  Ask yours.

11 hours ago, TomOG said:

We are on a 15 day full transit Panama Canal cruise departing on February 29, 2020. We have never been on this long a cruise with so many at sea days (7). Any ideas on when the 'formal' nights might be? We are trying to plan on when we might dine at the specialty restaurants. Thanks!

If you're on board?  Simply ask the maître d', no?  😉

7 minutes ago, steelers36 said:

You can use an online fax service.  Scan your docs to a PDF and then use a service.  Google is your friend.

"If it's free on the internet, you [and the content of your docs] are the product being sold"

17 hours ago, denmarks said:

⋮

The credit is $250 for a cruise 14 days or longer, $100 for 7 to 13 days, and $50 for 6 days or less.

 

⋮ 

That's a tad misleading.  😞    "Dollar" might not mean what you think it does.

On Santa Clarita-controlled cruises, it's the US$. 

On Chatswood-controlled cruises it's the AU$, which runs about 75% of the US$.

Were there were still cruises controlled by Princess UK, SOBC on those would be £150, £60, and £30, respectively

The ship's internet doesn't care how long a text is or has been "pending" it's just sending and receiving TCP/IP packets.

Your cellphone provider may or may not.  Ask them.

The person sending the text is likely to get confused/frustrated if the text remains "pending" for more than a few minutes.  Tell them what's going on ahead of time.

The issue, as discussed a long while back, is that folks often forget to blank out their stockbroker account number.  Since email attachments can theoretically be looked at enroute between your computer and Princess' computer, there was a legal opinion that email posed a risk to them under Frank-Dodd.

For the lawyers out there.  It was Princess' Legal Dept's opinion.  I have none, IANAL.

On 10/11/2019 at 1:29 PM, pablo222 said:

About a year ago, you claimed that security would stop someone without a medallion.

 

A gentle poster here directly question John Padgett while on board, and reported that there is no requirement to carry a medallion.

 

Odd that you keep posting the same nonsense...

 

And, of course, my medallion might 'disappear' when I put it in an rfid shielding wallet.

I would expect zero consequences from doing so.

 

Times change.  At the time, there *was* a such a requirement, and I even quoted for you from the [since changed] Medallion FAQs showing it.  ::shrugs::

Now?  I'd not normally expect a visit from Security for shielding a Medallion.

But if they still send MOB alerts to the Bridge when a Medallion disappears from a weather deck, and you made a habit of waiting till you were out there to put yours into an anti-RFID  wallet?  Yeah, you'd probably get a "please put it away first or wait till you come back inside" visit.

37 minutes ago, john_galt said:

$1,079 per person for a inside cabin on a 4-day cruise. October 16-20. 

 

'Shakedown' pretty much sums up that pricing. They'll be sorting out the new ship, too. 😂

 

https://www.princess.com/cruise-search/details?voyageCode=Y941

::nods::

There's a reason that "leading edge" is often spelled "bleeding edge".

Stuff happens.  Stopping to rescue a sinking fishing boat, searching for a man overboard, "propulsion issues", fog, or just new regulations on slowing down to avoid whales.

Leave a generous pad of what-if time, or make it Princess' problem with EZ-Air.

3 hours ago, CDay said:

I see you can pre-purchase a Multi Device Internet Package for up to 4 devices. If my cabin mate and I purchased one package, would we each be able to use both our phones and IPADS with it? The cost would be less than buying the 1 device package each. 

Thanks for any insight on this topic. 

With a 4-device package, you receive a login that works for 4 devices simultaneously.

If whoever buys the package logs the other's device(s) in, the system doesn't care; and it's apparent that "4" was chosen so cabin-mates could each do phone and tablet.

1 hour ago, Colo Cruiser said:

🤔  They would turn it into traditional if they showed up at the same time everyday. 🤔

Yeah... "not" was missing  🙂

You can turn CC dining into AT dining simply by showing up at the same time each day -- well, except for sitting in the AT dining area and occasionally (usually?) waiting for a seat there.  😉

8 hours ago, caribill said:

 

I do not understand how the Medallion can possibly help in man-overboard scenarios.

 

If someone has the Medallion with them when they go overboard, the ship will not be able to detect them in the water.

 

If somehow it detects a Medallion falling from the ship, it cannot tell the difference between a person with the Medallion or just a Medallion that someone cast into the ocean.

 

For determining who is still onboard, it is useless because it can detect the medallions onboard (unless hidden in a case that hides its presence), that does not mean the persons associated with those medallions are onboard since it detects the medallions, not the persons.

 

 

If a Medallion was last detected on a weather deck, it either was tossed overboard (which will earn a chat with Security) or carried overboard.  The idea is to avoid "Well, the last time anyone remembers seeing him was yesterday evening at desert".   Search time is the major expense.

16 hours ago, JimmyVWine said:

 

Man-overboard scenarios cannot possibly occur frequently enough to support the introduction of a multi-billion dollar initiative.  I don't doubt that accounting for the whereabouts of passengers is made easier through OM.  But the cost savings associated with the electronic accounting system times the number of situations each decade that this is necessary cannot possibly move the financial meter.    

Make that multi-million dollar, then remember that Medallion is being developed for the entire Carnival Corp & PLC fleet (http://ocean.com), and their 10 brands have had something like 130 MoB incidents since 2000 -- well north of $50 million when you include the costs of having to stop and search the sea for folks who hadn't been seen for 12 hours.  Nevermind the bad press or the chance of saving a few of the folks who survived the fall itself.

9 hours ago, geoherb said:

 

The ship has been below 48 degrees N for nearly a week. We're now below 32 degrees N and heading practically straight across the Atlantic, with just a few degrees farther south to go. And it doesn't explain why the internet speed was working at a speed where I could download the newspaper in Zeebrugge, which was the farthest north we went, but not since then.

 

 

ACK!

Well, besides being S of 48º, the ship has to actually aim their antennae at the faster satellites -- D'oh.    That `ping` time is typical of speed-of-light up to and back down from a satellite in GEO orbit.  The `ping` using the "O3b" satellites in their lower MEO orbit is about half of that.

More likely explanation, then, is that they couldn't get a booking on an O3b until the 4th.  

On 9/29/2019 at 8:33 AM, 1025cruise said:

I would assume that if there were an emergency, that yes, the medical center should be able to assist. I would also assume that the next stop for the patient will be the local hospital at whichever port you happen to be in or en route to.

Yup.

I would also assume that if he needed defibrillation at sea, he would likely not still be on the ship when it docked.

5 hours ago, geoherb said:

I'm currently on the Crown's transatlantic cruise from Southampton to Fort Lauderdale (September 22-October 8). The internet speed started slowly and has gotten horribly worse. The first day, I decided that we did not have enough free minutes to do everything we planned to do--read our hometown paper, check our emails, check Facebook, and keep a live thread. So I purchased unlimited internet for one device. It's gotten to the point where that is almost useless as well. Sometimes my emails won't load. Sometimes Facebook stops after loading a few posts. Our hometown newspaper won't download at all because it's too large. I'm about to give up attaching photos to my live thread because it's taking too long.

 

On the first day, the speed was around 2 Mbps. It went up to 7.21 Mbps on our second day, but has degraded down to less than 1 Mbps. Today at the Internet Café, it was 0.52 Mbps. One of the MedallionNet folks had suggested I try to download my paper on a computer connected to the internet by a cable rather than through Wi-Fi. It's not living up to the promise of "The Best Wi-Fi at Sea." There's no way I could Facetime with anyone or stream a video. https://www.princess.com/ships-and-experience/ocean-medallion/medallionnet/

 

The internet manager has promised that we'll have fast speeds after October 4. That means suffering through four more days of unacceptable internet. I feel like asking for a refund.

No great surprise here.

North of 48º latitude (Southampton-ish), satellite uplink bandwidth is up to 10x more expensive, so the money we pay for internet packages simply does not buy as much of it.  The problem isn't aboard the ship so a cable rather than a WiFi link will not help (except for helping him by getting you to go away).

What the internet manager is implicitly admitting is that the ship is now too far north to use the low-cost satellites in Medium Earth Orbit over the Equator, but after the 4th you'll be far enough south again to switch back to those "good" satellites.

9 hours ago, tip said:

Am I the only one who is questioning the value of the ocean medallion program?   I don’t find the need to have all the latest technology at hand 24/7.  Yes, it may save a minute or two here and there, but what other value does it really have?  It would seem that you would be more apt to lose it than you would a key card.  Of course Princess would be more than happy to sell you a special wrist band or lanyard at an additional charge.  As for using your cell phone, we turn it off and lock it in the safe as soon as we call our loved ones to let them know we are on board safely.

I've been saying this for a couple years now, and haven't changed my opinion:

Ocean Medallion is not for us pax, it's primarily for reduced operating costs (especially in man-overboard scenarios) and secondarily for more sales opportunities.  The hype is to get us to wear the thing.

1) Don't bet his life on a CC answer.

2) Don't bet his life on an answer except from the Holland America Group medical dept -- which I doubt they'd give.

3) It's a preexisting condition, and a helicopter evacuation is *expensive*.

14 hours ago, pablo222 said:

 

 

Well, which is it?

 

You have posted a lot about the cost...

 

If someone is receiving a true emergency message like:

"your kid was in a serious accident, and we need to decide whether to continue life support..."

 

...people probably care little about the cost.

 

 

 

1) We've already agreed, upthread, that Princess needs to update the phone numbers as ships change oceans, but that Princess is Princess.

2) I've already said, upthread, "yeah, I'd pay the fine [for debarking early on a US roundtrip cruise] in a potential deathbed case, but not for a broken arm".   Extend the concept.