twangster

It may depend on your Sat phone provider but when I Iast used one it was sensitive to having a clear sky visible in all directions. From the side of a ship while on the balcony you have limited line of sight toward the sky losing 180° "behind" you.. Standing on the top deck would yield a better outcome. I had GlobalStar service using a GSP-1600 handset and it was very particular about line of sight to the sky. So much so I would need to go clear into the middle of my backyard to get reliable service. Standing on my patio next to my house would yield poor results. Standing near a tree would at times reduce operational service. Given the use of Starlink internet now on ships if my GSP-1600 experience is similar to what you experience I'd much rather just go with Starlink and buy a Voom plan using Wi-Fi calling on my cell phone.

Looks like it's been closed for new bookings or changes. Too early to know what that means. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

If you are hoping for something longer than 3 & 4 on Freedom beyond April 2025 you may be disappointed.

The new cruise terminal in Tokyo could enter the fray for a ship in 2025. https://uniquevenues-en.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/venues/metropolitan/12004/ I envision officials in Tokyo saying Kon'nichiwa and giving a standing Ovation to Royal in the Northern hemisphere's summer of 2025.

Royal has made a point of publicly putting down wearable technology. They made a point of saying the app is where it’s at. To do a 180 and embrace a medallion type wearable technology probably isn’t gonna happen and would require a massive investment in technology that isn’t present today.

No idea. There are a lot of moving pieces and the situation impacting the Suez Canal could cause them to wait more if they are even thinking about not sending Anthem to the Pacific. Even if that is a remote possibility they may delay decisions until they are more certain. Time will tell.

Anything is possible until (and after) they make it available to book.

Keep an eye on April 3 - 16. This isn’t official yet but a potential cruise that might be offered. 13 Night Sydney To Singapore, Ovation Of The Seas Apr 3 - Apr 16

Cabins are assigned to a muster station. Muster stations are assigned to specific lifeboats. Every soul on board requires a seat in a lifeboat. This design criteria impacts their ability to make cabins that can sleep large numbers and where they can be located within muster zones. It would be wasteful to make every cabin capable of sleeping four, or five, or six, but limiting bookings to satisfy the lifeboat criteria as different sized families book cabins. So they fix cabin capacity to maximize potential guests versus lifeboat seats distributing guests around the ship in what can result in an imperfect solution as it relates to large groups. The current outcome has been arrived at over decades of ship building with a lot of data behind the typical sized groups that book cabins. The need to accommodate a party of eight split between two adjoining cabins of the same cabin type must not be a design criteria they feel is a requirement that will be in demand often enough, or the few such possible cabins that can accommodate this have been booked and you don’t see them available, or perhaps the request has been more popular for interior cabins since large family groups might seek to save money.

Signs of Ovation Sydney to Singapore April 3 - 16, 2025 but with so many changes to her I can't tell if this is a remnant of a former deployment or signs of a potential new one.

Do we have Jewel going to Fort Lauderdale from April 2025 through October 2025? Potential signs of her joining the short Florida market with an occasional Key West visit vs. the standard 3/4 Monday-Friday-Monday Nassau-PDCC.

We only crossed the Drake near the end after leaving Antarctica. The route to the Falklands and South Georgia at the beginning of the cruise is not part of the Drake passage. The Insta360 and a GoPro are not, in my opinion, great still cameras. I use them for the unique perspective that can't be achieved with a conventional camera. I've all but left the GoPro platform. I have a hero9 but it rarely sees any use these days. The vast majority of my photos are from my Sony full frame camera with the smaller point and shoot accounting for the second most frequently used pictures in this thread. The point and shoot does fine at wide angles but in a place like Antarctica a long telephoto lens is king. There were computers (iMacs) next to the photo studio but since I brought my laptop I never ventured in to use them. I went to many lectures but not all lectures. Sometimes I needed some down time or time to work on my photos and running this thread pretty much live most of the time. How interesting the lectures are will vary by each individual. I learned something in every lecture I attended.

From a recent Mariner cruise compass:

Also keep an open mind towards a side-to-side, changing ships. Much of Europe has a mature train network so you can easily spend a night off ships and ride a train to a different ship in a different city pretty easily.

Maintaining the same cabin is desirable but at the same time sometimes when I am on the same ship for long periods of time I like to move cabins to change it up a bit. Moving cabins isn't that hard so it's not really a big deal, it's a few hours on turn around day when you are stuck in port anyways. Being in the same cabin for more than a month can get old. Because there are no booking incentives or discounts for consecutive cruises you can sometimes find that a particular cabin type is a good deal for one and a terrible rate for the next. I've sometimes had a balcony then moved to an interior then into a suite. I shop deals and I won't pay outrageous fares just to keep the same cabin. All consecutive cruises are treated like individual cruises by Royal. Each onboard account has to be closed as a cruise completes. New seapass cards for each cruise. Make sure to call once all consecutives are booked and have Royal or yout TA note that you are a consecutive cruiser.

That is a Carnival thing, assuming they still do it. I used to do the Carnival steakhouse on night one every cruise because of the wine offer. Royal doesn’t do this, except on a very rare occasion as noted above.

There are many types of FCC and for a brief period they allow some FCC from pandemic cancellations to be transferred. Since there are several different types of FCC there is no blanket statement that applies to each type,

I didn't find boot cleaning process to be a problem or require the use of fingernails or toothbrushes. I brought new boots with me just like the ones they rent. Boots are stored in the mud room where the crew will go over them overnight when required. The Wind had a boot wash machine you walk over while rubbing your boots in the machine. There was also manual boot cleaning brushes and water to rinse them after the boot wash machine if you had something stubborn on your boots. After that you were in the mud room where you take off the boots and put on the footwear you used to walk from your suite down to the mudroom. This live trip report has photos of the boot wash machine and mud room on the Wind: Boot wash machine: https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2979890-live-from-the-winds-of-antarctica-dec-19-2023/?do=findComment&comment=66617765 and the mud room: https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2979890-live-from-the-winds-of-antarctica-dec-19-2023/?do=findComment&comment=66672033 Expedition cruising isn't for everyone. Personally I love nature of expedition cruising and the opportunities to see things you can't see on a non-expedition cruise while staying in luxury accommodations. If that isn't your thing that's okay too. To each their own. Antarctica and The Galapagos are my top two cruises ever and it would be very difficult to experience these destinations on anything but a ship.

When NCL Breakaway+ class stop in Cabo they consume all of the local tender boats leaving other ships to tender using their own boats. Great if on NCL, sucks if on any other line. Maybe a Q class will negotiate the same treatment.

Sorry to hear about your mother. Good call buying travel insurance.

He went on to say (under his breath) "... and we are dreaming of the biggest prices the industry has ever seen."

I imagine a luxury line being Royal-ish would be the grounds for a complaint thread. “I booked luxury line xyz and it was just like Royal!” “Bait and switch!!!”

I was hoping to win the lottery this week. Didn’t happen. That’s about equal to the opportunity to expect CK added on this class.

Basic maritime maintenance, the true purpose of all dry docks.

I had a TA do something similar. Then the crane fell on Oasis. What I discovered was that from Royal‘s perspective my cruise fare was that lower amount that the TA had identified as being the cruise fare and the sales tax amount was basically the agency commission, markup, profit and maybe a few other things. This became important because when it came time to issue the 100% FCC that Royal offered for canceling the cruise when the crane fell on Oasis, my cruise fare was that lower amount and that was the basis of how Royal determined my FCC. Everyone else who booked on the website or a reputable TA received a much higher FCC while my FCC was lower because of the wholesale or whatever funky rate the TA used in obtaining my cruise fare. The overall cruise total was correct, but the portion that Royal decided was the cruise fare was lower through this TA, and therefore my FCC was lower.