Ep010835

20 minutes ago, Colo Cruiser said:

My favorite go to is its always time to eat.

+1

1 hour ago, twodaywonder said:

Great advise. For a long time now no life jackets are taken to it. On all the ships we sail on. Only the older not updated ships still go to the cabins and check to see if anyone is in them.

No worries. They will find you.  They make an extraordinary effort to walk up and down all the aisles multiple times to make contact with people who have their hands raised indicating they’ve not yet been checked. There is an army of credential checkers in the Muster Station. 

 I found this to be the case on both Medallion and non Medallion Cruises. 

2 hours ago, mjliss said:

BTW EP010835 - I'm just down the road from you in Garland.  See you on board if not around town!

Sounds good! 😃

6 hours ago, crystalspin said:

and @Ep010835 re: Golden Princess:

"Please note:

This ship will transfer to P&O Cruises Australia May 1, 2020 and begin sailing for them in October 2020."

 

So we'll be on her in the neverland of transfer.

This will be a first for us. I wonder what the real world implications of this transfer will be?

According to the Princess website, after our 7/25 Alaska cruise, she has only 13 more sailings scheduled through August and September ending up in Singapore on 9/24.

 Most if not all of the Owner’s suites I’ve observed on Princess ships are fully aft. 

 Preferring the fully aft Penthouse Suites, we’ve never booked one. Just an observation. 

1 hour ago, JF - retired RRT said:

We have a cruise on the Golden May 6 -16 2020. It will be interesting to see if they cancel us. Hmmm. $25 goodwill OBC??🤣

Interesting. We have one on her departing 7/2020.

1 hour ago, voljeep said:

 

Indeed

Have to agree. 

This is the reason Host CJSKIDS created the sticky thread in the first place. 

45 minutes ago, pinguy said:

I'm on the Caribbean Princess right now.  We boarded yesterday.  Here are my thoughts on the Medallions after 24 hours:

Good:

Love the ability to find shipmates.  

Love ordering a drink and having it delivered to wherever I may be on the ship

Liked the easy boarding.  From the time we got out of Uber to when we walked on the gangway, it was about 15 minutes.  This was at 11:00 AM

Like have having the schedule available on my phone.

Like having my door open when I get within ten feet or so

 

Bad

Heavy learning curve - at least for us.  You have to be logged into the ship's wifi.  It's free but we talked to so many people (mostly seniors) that didn't know that fact.  

We've logged into our wifi at least twenty times in past day.  My wife's phone drops it after three or four minutes.  This may be a phone issue - not a Princess issue.  She has a Galaxy Note 3.  My phone is better but I still have to continually login

Login takes too long.  You need to enter first name, last name, cabin number and date of birth.  date of birth is from drop down menus and takes a couple minutes each time.

No online help.  The help desk had about twenty people in line.  We waited almost an hour to get help.

 

I think it's a good idea and it's probably the future of sailing.  In my opinion, it needs more work.

 

By the way, i asked why there needed to be five apps instead of one.  I was told if it was one app, it would take to long to load and execute.

Excellent. Thanks for posting. Please keep us all in the loop on your experiences. Especially interested in knowing if the dropped connection issue persists and if the internet cafe folks have any ideas why this is happening to you. 

1 for $3 or 2 for $5. 

Mass marketing 101. Gotta love it!! 🤣

Work a deal with the Discovery Channel to pay PCL to print their info on the insert cards then charge people "a nominal sum" to throw those away in favor of something else they might choose purchase.

A while back someone posted some photos of them having made their own insert cards. Kinda clever. Now THAT really opens up some possibilities. I wonder who the censors are for that sort of thing? And to what standard are the homemade varieties judged? What about an NCL or RCCL logo? The possibilities are endless. 

Thanks for the wonderful review. We board her a week from today. 😀

Echo

1 hour ago, FlyerTalker said:

Road warrior, but also have been interested in aviation/airline industry for decades.  Never worked for a carrier.  Decided that I would gain as much knowledge as I could.  Sorta on the lines of forewarned is forearmed, because ignorance sure isn't bliss when something goes wrong when traveling.

Agreed!

Your wisdom and counsel here are both appreciated. 

32 minutes ago, FlyerTalker said:

 

Don't have it from one specific spot - learned and memorized over many million miles of flying, but you could always just bookmark this thread page....:)

 

Done!  

Just curious, are you a fellow "road warrior" or do you/did you work in commercial aviation? None of my business but only interested. 

1 hour ago, SargassoPirate said:

 

Why discount the letter to Cruise Travel magazine just because it doesn't fit your paradigm?  Isn't that person's opinion just as valuable as anyone elses?

Well, it is HIS cruise and HIS paradigm! 

We'll be part of the first group. Love OM and everything about it. Especially the MN component. 

22 minutes ago, Astro Flyer said:

 

 

In the OR app I was able see that boarding pass but despite their statement to print it there was no way to do it.  Instead I took a screenshot with the QR code to have it on my phone.

 

I also printed my Cruise Personalizer’s boarding passes as a backup & to show we were on B2B cruises so both of us could bring two fee free 750ml bottles of wine during embarkation.

Great plan. I agree and always take screen shots from OR to save in photo favorites on my phone (backup plan A). Then go to Personalizer and print boarding passes (backup plan B) to put in my folder of paperwork. Thus far never had to resort to either back up plan but my moto is better to have and not need than to need and not have. 

I went back to OR to look again to see if they enabled a way to print from the ap as is implied on the page. Like the OP observed, no way I could see to print it directly from the ap. The only work around I could find was to save to photos then print from photos. With all of that, seemed easier to me to print directly from the cruise personalizer.  

3 minutes ago, BarbinMich said:

 

Thanks for the sentiment, but currently we're unable to cruise due to health problems. 😥

So sorry to hear. Wishing you a speedy recovery!

1 hour ago, SinbadThePorter said:

The satellite system that MedallionNet uses for high speed internet is not designed to work above about 50 degrees of latitude.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O3b_Networks#/media/File:O3b_satellite_constellation.png

 

Beyond that you are stuck on the slower geosynchronous satellites.

Other 3 billion. Fascinating piece of information. Thanks!!

50 minutes ago, shopgirl151 said:

Anyone know how to print off the Ocean Ready pass from the iPhone 6s?  Went into Ocean.com but nothing there to print it either.  

By OR "pass", do you mean your printed boarding pass? If so, don't believe your boarding pass will be available on OR. You'll need to go to your Cruise Personalizer for that. 

17 minutes ago, voljeep said:

the 'insert card' is not the OM itself ... j/s ...

No Sir/Ma'am, It is not. Below is a photo showing how the insert card fits into the plastic holder. One is for their current Shark Week promotion. The other is their "standard" blue card. 

The actual OM device nests into the hole in the insert card.

I suppose they could easily provide an insert card to match one's loyalty level but by doing so, they would be depriving themselves of a revenue opportunity. 

8 hours ago, FlyerTalker said:

 

Not quite correct.  Here's the nomenclature:

 

Non-stop - means that there are no stops between point A and point B.

 

Direct - means that there is no change in flight number between point A and point B.  There may be one or more stops, or it might be non-stop.  There may or may not be an equipment change at any stop (known as a change of gauge).

 

Connection - means that there is a change in flight number between point A and point B, with at least one stop.  Most always, this involves a different aircraft, but it is rarely possible you have the same one (but still must deplane and reboard).  Sometimes referred to in fare rules as a "transfer".

 

Stopover - means that you have a connection where the time exceeds the allowable maximum for that connection.  In most cases, this "breaks" the fare, so that you no longer have a through fare from A to B, but rather A to stopover point added to stopover point to B.

 

Layover - an unofficial term for a connection or stopover.  Not found in any fare rules and should be avoided since it doesn't clarify which you are talking about (and these have cost implications).

 

So, all stopovers have a connection, but most connections are not stopovers.

 

And...all non-stop flights are also direct.  But not all direct flights are non-stops.

 

And for example....Southwest actually has a flight from Baltimore to Oakland that is a direct flight.  But makes SIX stops along the way.  Since it keeps the same flight number...it's direct!!

Fascinating information. I've certainly learned something this morning!

Would you please provide a link to the source of this information so I can bookmark it? 

8 hours ago, Colgate59 said:

Are the OMs colour coded the same as the cards for loyalty level?

The insert card into which the OM device nests within the plastic case will be either blue or printed to match the promotion du jour. The ones we just received for next week's cruise are advertisements for Shark Week on the Discovery Channel. 

Of course, if you want the insert card to match your status, the kind folks at PCL will happily provide you (for a fee) any loyalty color you want or an insert card that speaks to your nationality, your orientation or any number of other preferences. Aren't they nice??!!

9 hours ago, MissP22 said:

Only that you can carry it to the check in table but they won't let you on the ship with it. 👮‍♂️ 

🤣

5 minutes ago, Dani24 said:

 

As I understand it, for Club Class Anytime, you don't need any reservations at all. They should be able to seat you right away, or within a few short minutes of your arrival.

Absolutely correct. Just show up. The only times we've ever had a delay in seating was when we requested a specific server and/or a specific table or section of the dining area. Even then, the delay was only a few minutes. The host suggested we go sit in the Piazza and he/she would come find us when our table was ready. 

Worked flawlessly. 

Call the DINE line to make a reservation on one of the specialty dining venues. 

1 minute ago, MissP22 said:

Nothing to confirm it but it used to be that way the last time I checked it ilast year. 

Let us know if anything has changed.

I would love to have that tone. 

Will do. 

12 minutes ago, MissP22 said:

I find that their messaging system to be useless anyway since there's no audible tone & everyone has to keep checking their phones all day long. 

It's a very poor design. 

A couple of months ago someone reported that this had been fixed and the system now has an audible tone to announce messages. 

Did you have a different experience? We'll be on the CB next week so very curious.