JamieLogical

Here's a video of similar rooms in Deck 10:

Yeah, if you go back and read my earlier posts in this thread and my Live Blog from the Emerald Princess, you will see that I have a long and turbulent past with Princess shower curtains.

Four days to go! I managed to get a few cruise prep tasks accomplished last night. I charged up my Kindle and downloaded my latest books. I ran Windows Updates on my Microsoft Surface, which I only use when I travel, so it hadn't been updated since my last cruise in February. And, I packed all my medications and the toiletries that I could. I still have some toiletries that will need to be packed at the last minute. Today I plan to get to the bank to get cash out, since I didn't accomplish that yesterday. I also need to buy my Princess Gift Cards from AARP to use for my casino spending. I want to buy them today, since it's the last day of the month and I will need to buy more to make final payment on our August cruise if we intend to go on that. You can only buy five per month, so I want to save my May five for that sailing. We have trivia tonight, so I don't imagine I will get much more done tonight. I will really have to kick it into high gear tomorrow!

I drink 1-2 drinks a day in my real life (still probably more than my doctor would prefer), but drink upwards of 10 on vacation. A few mimosas in the morning, a boat drink or two in the afternoons, a shot of Bailey's in my coffee, a pre-dinner drink, a few after dinner in the theater, casino, or a nice lounge listening to music... Pretty easy to get up around 10 without even really trying on a sea day.

Five days to go! Honestly didn't do much cruise prep over the weekends at all. As mentioned above, my husband worked on configuring his travel router so he will be able to test that out on this sailing. We cleaned the house and did our last grocery trip over the weekend as well. I have a growing (not shrinking) list of things I need to do before Friday. I am hoping to start some packing tonight. I was supposed to go to the bank on my lunch break today to get cash out for tips and such, but ran out of time, so that will have to wait until tomorrow. Work is going to be incredibly hectic through Wednesday and I may need to work late tomorrow night, so that's another wrinkle in trying to get all my cruise prep done.

He got this router: https://www.amazon.com/GL-iNet-GL-AXT1800-Pocket-Sized-Extender-Repeater/dp/B0B2J7WSDK/ On Saturday, he spent some time getting it set up with the VPN to just test it out with our home wifi network so that, theoretically, all he will need to do on the ship is connect it to the ship's wifi. You have to subscribe to a personal VPN service like Nord VPN. He subscribed to one called Proton, which is a little cheaper. Whichever VPS service you choose must support the OpenVPN or WireGuard framework (many support both). He found that the WireGuard configuration ran much faster. I won't say it was super easy to configure, but there are YouTube videos that will walk you through it. The next hurdle will be connecting it to the ship's wifi, since that uses a captive portal interface (which this router does support). Captive portal is the type of wifi connection interface that most ships and hotels have where you have to navigate to a web page to log into the wifi network. He was able to get it to connect to our home wifi just fine, but of course, that is not a captive portal. Sorry that is a lot of technical info. I don't think this sort of setup will be very useful for people who aren't tech-savvy enough to handle all the configuration that goes into it.

Edit: Sorry! Wrong thread!

Not to derail the thread, but I found a trick to still search for one passenger. If you reduce the size of your browser window down enough so that it flips to the "mobile" version of the site, you will then see two menus: Filters and Options. Under the Options menu, you should see the option for 1 passenger. Once you have selected that, you can make your browser big again and the selection will "stick."

Why were you surprised it had a shower curtain? Every Princess ship, except the brand new Sun, which is a whole new class, has shower curtains. It's one of the main reasons I was reluctant to sail the line in the first place and one of the main reasons I haven't sailed the line again until now.

One week to go!!!! I made zero progress on cruise prep last night other than to help my husband flesh out his packing list a bit. His new travel router arrived this morning. If we go on our August sailings he will need to work from the ship. His employer has a VPN that cannot be accessed from foreign IP addresses. So he would be unable to simply connect to his company's VPN from the ships's wifi. In order to do that, he basically needs to double-up on the VPN-ing. This router was recommended by his boss who travels internationally a lot. It allows him to connect to a personal VPN like Nord VPN or OpenVPN and then connect from THAT to his company's VPN. We want to test it all out on this sailing to make sure it works before making final payment on the August cruise.

@jhoover69, my brother, will be sailing in a YC on MSC for the second time on May 4 but has sailed Haven on NCL several times in the past. He might have some notes for you about the differences between the two.

They will have paper menus in multiple languages available in the MDRs. Since she will have an assigned table with the same staff every night, she should just have to request a paper menu in her native language on he first night and they should be prepared with that each of the following nights.

I believe all of the current sailings on the Encahnted before it repositions in August are sold as both 7-days and 14-days, so I am sure there are a LOT of B2B passengers through the summer.

I have definitely seen full bands on my MSC sailings. This band played a lot on my February Divina sailing, including a lot of rock. They were great! This band was on my Meraviglia sailings last April... sorry I don't have a better photo, but there is a drumkit with a drummer back there. You can kind of see the left half of his shirt/shoulder, but his head is behind the iPad.

I did go ahead and rebid. I don't have high hopes of actually getting upgraded, of course, but it would be nice to have the better room layout, wrap-around balcony, and Reserve class perks.

Not much news on cruise progress this morning. I got in touch with our petsitter last night to make sure she is still able to check in on the cats and lizards. My husband set out his suitcases last night. He always gets them out a week or so ahead of our trips as a "warning" to the cats that we will be leaving soon. I don't know whether or not they comprehend it (he insists they do), but they seem to like to have some new and different surfaces to lay on for the week...

I believe all of your examples pre-date the upgrade bidding system. I imagine that has impacted when they assign GTY rooms and the likelihood of free upgrades.

MF is just the lowest mini-suite category.

All I can say is that I hope things have DRASTICALLY improved on the Emerald since I sailed her so you can have a good cruise.

Brooklyn to JFK is a shorter trip than Manhattan to JFK... plus that was Marathon day, so that's why I was pointing it out specifically. Can't really expect traffic to be an WORSE than that on a weekend.

We booked a GTY MF on the Enchanted Princess. We sail May 4 and just got our cabin assignment on Tuesday night, so under two weeks out.

I just looked back at a few of the menus from my February cruise and I do not see any notations on the menus about items containing lactose. However, I do know that your servers at the MDR as well as every server in the specialty restaurants will ask you if you have any dietary restrictions. I do not recall seeing milk onboard at all (maybe in the buffet?), much less milk alternatives....

Definitely not. The last cruise I canceled with Princess, I saw the refund on my credit card account the next morning!

I have had Lyfts canceled by the driver when they were at the pier. The issue has been they accept the ride to pick me up at debarkation while dropping off a passenger who is embarking. If they go in the lanes for dropping off embarking passengers, they across several lanes of traffic and a median from where they would pick up disembarking passengers and there is no simple way to loop back around. Last time, I had my first ride canceled for this reason as they began driving away from where they dropped off the embarking passengers and realized they couldn't get back to where I was. The second time, I realized this was just going to happen all over again, so I literally chased my driver to where he was dropping off his previous fare and flagged him down.

I will have to keep that in mind if I ever end up back in a Balcony or below and don't have the tub/shower combo.