RobInMN

Actually, no. According to cruise ship mapper, the capacity rankings of all Royal Caribbean ships are about the same, regardless of size. Yes, there are more passengers and more crew, but the ships themselves are just that much larger. 150,000/10000 is the same ratio as 75,000/5000. Everything from Radiance & Voyager classes up to Oasis and Quantum Ultra are all about 34-36, and the older smaller ships are actually worse (25-32). The site only shows max capacity (>100%) numbers, but using their formula, at minimum 100% capacity, Icon will actually have the highest rating (44) than any other RC class, Oasis (41), Voyager (38),

Used my phone's hotspot on the last couple cruises to share the wifi with multiple devices. I found it easier than logging in & out, plus I could stream podcasts on my phone while using the larger screen of my tablet.

Jewel does not have it.

Like I pointed out with Symphony, there can be cruises prior to the "inaugural" one. I believe that the "Inaugural" cruise and the "first revenue" cruise do not have to be the same thing. They can plan a specific date that they are close to 100% sure the ship will be ready by and do all the planning for the naming ceremony and all the press and vloggers and travel agents and the whole party. And if it's ready before then, there's no reason they can't add cruises prior to that and call them pre-revenue or test or whatever they want.

For Caribbean, I'm with you. Western Mediterranean, yeah, probably. For most of the rest of the world (for now), itinerary trumps ship. For Eastern Med or Baltic, Voyager class might be the largest some ports can take. Northern Norway or Panama Canal, it's Radiance class. A dream Trans-Pacific will continue to be limited to Radiance class unless the popular destinations back off their 2500 passenger max. etc. I'm sure that over time, some of the popular ports in the more "exotic" itineraries will build out for larger cruise ships just as the Caribbean has done over the years, but until then... At this point, we are sort of alternating. Caribbean for ship, then one for itinerary (some being river cruises).

We did Symphony in her "inaugural season" in 2018 in the Mediterranean after she was built, but before she TA'd to Miami. Pretty sure all the official launch, press and inaugural stuff, etc happened in November once she was in Miami. Pretty sure YT Vloggers were referring to those MIami sailings as the ship's "First" and "brand new" and other things references more or less indicating that they had no idea that Symphony had been sailing for 6/7 months already.

I am not sure about all ships, but on some (or at least Symphony), I believe they are billed as "Stowaway Piano Player", which explains the random locations and times, and why the piano is themed like an old steamer trunk, complete with destination stickers. All though I believe I recall seeing time windows in the CC.

We were on Odyssey at the very end of Feb early March. Showgirls was not running yet, so didn't see that. We found The Book to be technically impressive, but kind of lacking on story. I'd still see it again though. As for the Effectors, we found it very cheesy in about every way, all though the specially effects were good. I don't think we'd ever choose to watch it again. I would say that what they've shown in the MCU shows on Disney+ for the fake Rogers: The Musical has a better production value. For comparison, we've loved other productions on other ships, Hairspray, Hiro, 1977 on Symphony, not so much Flight. Chicago! (Allure pre-2015), etc.

There's a pier runner video on YT that contains a dock worker(admin/security?) acting like a pier runner and then stopping, and starting, and stopping, and starting, almost taunting the people are yelling to him like he's a real runner, and when he finally gets to the ramp, he just starts talking to the ship security. I think they shake hands, and I think he pulls out a radio from his back pocket that you can't see as he's approaching, and eventually wanders back. It was pretty funny.

Last fall on Freedom, I watched a football game on my phone with very little issues (YouTube TV) , other than when I went back to my room, then I had some stuttering. I did not change any settings. YTTV will change the streaming quality based on bandwidth. Surprisingly, on Jewel this last summer on B2B Arctic Circle and Iceland/Ireland, we were able to stream YTTV on the Firestick most of the time. Granted, the further north we got, the more the quality of the video degraded, even less than normal "SD". When we were well above the Arctic Circle, that's when YTTV more or less gave up. Not complaining, as it's completely understandable why. Just giving our experience.

My wife & I started the GE process in Feb, just weeks prior to the Pandy out break. It took 1 year before we finally got conditional approval and could schedule our interview, which we were able to do fairly quickly. We booked a couple cruises with our daughter and her boyfriend. Boyfriend had to renew his passport, so his was delayed for that, but my daughter was conditionally approved in a reasonable amount of time, but they wanted to wait to go to the airport for the interview together (makes sense - that's what my wife & I did). Boyfriend just got his approval a little over a week ago. But now try finding an interview appointment!!!!! Unless you want to go to a land boarder crossing with Canada, you can't schedule anything, anywhere that I checked. Not even just booked out 'x' months. It just flat out says "no appointment available". We're about 4.5 hours from International Falls. We might do that. not sure. The only other option appears to be that if you are returning from an international flight, you might be able to do the interview right then as you are going through CBP. What a mess.

The only thing we watch live is the news/weather. We DVR everything on network/cable, even if we end up watching it the same night, even the same time slot (just starting it after 11m for a 30m show or 22m for a 60m show). That, or we stream. This whole idea of needing to "kill time" between 2 shows is so 20th century. 😁

The big Crystal Block thread is here. Random pictures if you're interested.

I just emailed them about 2 cruises middle of the evening a few days ago, and got a response the next day.

Just got mine for Jewel from a cruise about 3.5 months ago. It's our first. It's shockingly heavy for it's size.

The only part of this that I watched was the opening theme song as it was shown on a local entertainment show that I like to watch. Not sure why I clicked on this thread, but according to a Google search Paolo is a real captain linked to a couple Carnival brands. https://www.distractify.com/p/who-is-captain-paolo-arrigo-the-real-love-boat Ezra bills herself as a social media "influencer" https://www.linkedin.com/in/ezraemilyfreeman https://www.ezrafreeman.com/blank-1 and while she links to IMDB, the only tv/movie acting credit she has is this show. And it's already established that Matt was (is?) a real CD for Carnival (and/or sister brands).

yes. LCDs Try Youtube videos.

This is surprising information to me! I thought every ship had them. It was bad enough that the only Freestyle machines on Jewel are in the back of the WJ. We will be on Navigator in a month. The Freestyle machine is the only way to get Dr. Pepper/Mr. Pibb. Bummer!

Pretty sure that @island lady picture can't be Enchantment or Grandeur, which means it's Vision (8588) or Rhapsody (8596)?

Are you confirming that the stripper pole room is on Enchantment then?

Jumping the gun a bit. Need to figure out which ship the stripper pole room is on first. And then we've been leaving it up to the person that figured it out. But I believe yours must be either Grandeur or Enchantment

I'm going with un-amp'd or pre-amp'd Voyager class. But no idea which one

Correct! You're next

Not sure how you found this short thread among all the other much longer ones, but this was a short lived COVID policy in response to one of the variants and a surge in cases. Unfortunately, they rescinded it after the cases subsided. This was "discussed" to death in the other threads.

well, it's been 12 hours. Let's go with this one: