twangster

Silversea has a hospitality desk in the hotel lobby. They sat me down and walked me through the next two days and presented some paperwork to sign including waivers for kayaking and snorkeling. An information letter explaining the next two days and the agricultural inspection process. A sightseeing tour of Guayaquil is included. Option private tours for just your party with an English guide are available to purchase.

Guayaquil airport was smooth and frictionless. Short line at immigration and outside in 15 minutes. I booked my own airfare so no transfer included by Silversea. The hotel has a complimentary shuttle instead.

I flew Business Class on Copa. I think the US airlines could learn a lesson in service from Copa. Compared to American, Delta and United domestically in the U.S. Copa was just a bit better. The meals were better than U.S. airlines and they took time to talk about the choices of wines and beer. No hard liquor though. Their newer planes feature lay flat seating. This is an "older" plane.

First time flying Copa Airlines. Orlando to Panama City then onto Guayaquil. Smooth flight to Panama. It was cloudy coming in but we crossed over from the Atlantic side to the Pacific and did a big loop around. Flying in to Panama gave me a whole new perspective compared to cruising here. On the Caribbean side: Somewhere over the middle of Panama: We did a big looping flight path to join the pattern of aircraft arriving. That brought us around on the Pacific side so I could see the Panama Canal and the Bridge of the Americas. Ships at anchor waiting their turn. New locks on left, original locks on the right. Culebra Cut in the distance. Panama City on the right is pretty close to the locks on the Pacific side. The Pacific coastal waters are more shallow and you could see the effect of the tide going out.

The itinerary:

The Galapagos Islands are subject to a lot of tourism restrictions for all the right reasons. This drives some of the approach to a cruise ship visit. As a result part of the fare includes a two night stay on the mainland of Ecuador and the flights to and from mainland to the Galapagos Islands. Basically you fly to Ecuador which becomes a staging area for the charter flight to the Galapagos islands and the return flight after the cruise. Normally they use Quito, Ecuador to stage the arrival of guests before the cruise. After the cruise guests return to Guayaquil, Ecuador for a port cruise staging area before flying home. As luck would have it the airport in Quito is being closed certain days this year for maintenance. Consequently my trip will use Guayaquil for both the pre and post cruise staging.

The Galapagos Islands have always fascinated me. I'm not entirely sure why I'm drawn there but it has always been a bucket list destination I wasn't sure I'd ever get to. Perhaps it was the remote location and overall difficulty getting that added to the attraction. Maybe it's too many National Geographic type episodes on TV or the idea of so much wildlife to see and photograph. Maybe it's knowing Darwin himself formed so much of his knowledge right there on the Galapagos Islands. To walk in the footprints of Charles Darwin. Can there be a better excuse than that? Many decades ago I once took a marine ecology course during my high school years. It was in the Abaco Islands of the Bahamas. Although life and my career went in another direction the exposure and knowledge acquired has stayed with me over the years. Perhaps that opportunity so many years ago lit a small flame that has piqued my interest in a small island chain several hundred miles off the coast of Ecuador. This is a reboot cruise for me. Originally booked in the fall of 2020 unfortunately the world had other plans. As a solo cruiser SilverSea was attractive at the time since they offered a solo fare on their ship specifically built for the Galapagos Islands. In the aftermath of the pandemic and immediate restart those Galapagos those solo fares disappeared, until I recently found one. Booked. This may not be as live as some of the trip reports I've done in other forums because I plan to be fully engaged in the Galapagos experience. Spending time on the internet won't be a priority while on board the Silver Origin but I'll try to keep an eye on this thread if anyone has any questions. I'm also not entirely sure how the internet will perform in this region.

Looks like SES, the former provider for Royal before Starlink, is planning to blend Starlink and their own MEO satellite service into a combined offering targeting cruise ships. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/13/spacex-starlink-partners-with-ses-for-combined-cruise-market-service.html

Call CAS to verify your kids are linked to you. ‭(800) 526-9723‬

If they have it in stock on the ship they should provide it on the ship. If it's out of stock they will offer to ship it. There was a phase they went through where they offered to ship them on a form in the cabin but I think they realized that cost a lot of money and was pretty labor intensive to manage so they only seem to ship now when they don't have them on hand. Drop by the loyalty ambassador when you board and confirm they have you down for one.

All it takes is a My Time reservation at zero cost.

Quality used to be better but now YouTube TV wants you to buy the episode to see it in better resolution.

At 5.1 knots it looks like she may be heading out of territorial waters to cycle her environmentals.

Not sure there is enough information to know. With a Viking and SilverSea ship arriving she had to get off the pier.

Radiance is on the move from the Seward pier. Likely to make room for the two other ships arriving into port today. Her AIS destination is Seward tomorrow so she isn't going far.

Starlink on Royal was pretty dreadful at the start of the migration but it's night and day better now. Keep in mind that older ships are getting their infrastructure updated over time. They are moving from older vendors like Meru to Cisco as their standard WLAN vendor so it's not just a firmware upgrade. This will however take time and in typical Royal fashion it's not discussed publicly. They aren't waiting for dry docks to get this upgrade done. When done it's likely the older ships may work better than ships that are 5 to 10 years old including Quantum class and the first four Oasis class. At the same time Starlink has reached the 5,000 satellite mark which is vastly better than even one year ago. The point is - it's evolving rapidly. Both Starlink's performance and global reach as well as ship technology are changing quickly. Yes nine months ago it sucked on this ship or that ship but like investing, prior performance may not be indicative of future results. It should be much better every month to month.

If one device is connected and you attempt to sign in on another device you will be asked if you want to kick off the first device. Alternatively you can sign out on the first device then the next device that signs in will just connect. When sharing one login it becomes partially an etiquette thing as the other device may not know it's been booted off. If that is your spouse elsewhere on the ship and they are waiting for an important text, email or call, when you boot them off that important thing will never come. At that point you may have explaining to do. 🙂 Unlike MSC who locks your plan to the first device you log in with, Royal lets you sign in and out multiple devices on one plan. One connected at any given moment for a one device plan.

There is a floating dry dock in Vancouver but I've only seen small ships use it. At 200m it's too short for Radiance. The Esquimalt Graving Dock appears up to the task but availability is unknown. If there is already a ship being serviced or once scheduled to be it's unlikely they would be able to accommodate Radiance on short notice. Who knows? Maybe they have an opening.

Understand that CBP policy and cruise line policy aren't always the same. Same goes with airlines who have been known to be more strict that actual immigration policy to avoid fines if they make a mistake. The people doing the validation in the terminal are low level entry position and generally contractors. Across the US and the world there are thousands of them and it's very difficult to expect low level 3rd party entry positions with high turnover rates to understand complex rules. If US passport on a closed loop then this policy, if Canadian on closed loop then that policy, if UK on a closed loop then another policy, if WHTI passport then some other policy, if not, and from this region, some other policy and so on. It's just easier to train low level positions six months validity or raise a flag. Raising a flag doesn't mean you can't sail, it just means escalate it so that someone who can understand complex rules can made the call.

It is nice to see more and more of what appears on the cabin letters published in advance for all to see. This will likely mean they can stop printing the in cabin welcome aboard CAS letters that state the same.

All I can take away from your post is that you don't like activities for younger travelers and families which is the what defines Royal Caribbean at the moment regardless of the ship. Royal is a family cruise line. However some older people love that so without knowing what you are looking for it's difficult to know if you would enjoy cruising on a family cruise line. What activities for people over 60 are you interested in?

It was a little breezy here on the Central East coast of Florida today but no impact. A few palm fronds down like with any sort of wind. Clear tonight, little wind. Super moon tonight. Got this a few minutes ago from my backyard.

For Port Canaveral this is mostly a non-event. I'm South of the port and my consumer grade wind gauge topped out at 15 mph at ground level. We had one rain band come through around dinner time for about 20 minutes. That was just some brief heavy rain. I imagine USCG closed the port out of an abundance of caution but it's also a great training drill for themselves, the port and mariners in the area. That's how we treated it at work, a training exercise. Rainfall projections from NOAA show the Florida East coast hardly getting any rain from Idalia. Port Canaveral should open pretty quickly once they run through the motions. Thoughts and prayers for folks elsewhere in the state that are being impacted. Idalia is strong but with a concentrated core. The space coast dodged this one but the peak of the season has yet to come.

I knew who Messi was from watching the World Cup. Hadn't I not watched the last World Cup I'd have zero idea who Messi is. International football doesn't make the evening news here. You have to make a point to find news about soccer domestically and/or international football to know anything about it. It's much like hockey here, or golf. I watch a lot more golf than I do soccer. However golf probably wouldn't be a good target demographic for a family cruise line. Golf isn't the type of sport that most families are going to make a point to sit down and watch as a family. US football definitely is both at the pro level and college level.

Beckham may be a household name around the world but not so much in the US. He could fly on a domestic US airline in coach and people wouldn't recognize him, not that he would ever do that, but he could. I know the name but couldn't pick him out of a line up at the local police department. "Number 3 step forward and state 'football is life'". Yep, probably not Beckham. 🙂