cr08

As someone working from home from a call center position, I agree with the previous posters: There's only so much you can do. It's going to be a best effort scenario. Even with my employer highly encouraging people to connect wired to their router and softphones being VPN'd back to the office, we're are at the mercy of our ISPs and local network equipment. The latter can be handled but most of the employees won't know what to do other than 'buy <x> off the shelf router from Best Buy and plug it in'. And the former may still be sketchy these days. I know my ISP is still having somewhat of a hard time with network loads from people staying at home.

And it also doesn't help the vast majority of residential ISPs only offer asymmetrical bandwidth tiers and for work from home ideally you want a solid and reliable upload which is hard to come by for resi users. I do have QoS set up specifically on my upstream but it only helps up until the point my ISP can actually handle a set upload speed. Once it drops, QoS isn't going to do squat. It really relies on knowing you have a minimum reliable speed in either direction.

Also VoIP is very sensitive to latency and jitter so even if stuff like basic web browsing, file downloads, etc act fine and you can get good bandwidth, the connection can still be unreliable in terms of latency, packet loss, jitter, etc. that will easily interfere with VoIP and cause call quality issues.

All in all: Be patient with those working from home. We're all trying our best in these times trying to make things work as best we can.

10 minutes ago, Ourusualbeach said:

It’s in my cruise planner and I have reservations. It’s actually called Teppanyaki (sp?)

2 minutes ago, hallux said:

I believe that's correct.  Odd that RCI is getting one named that, NCL has a venue by that name on a few of the newer ships in the fleet...

Aha. So yeah, I have that on my CP too. Upon reading into it a bit further and the differences, this is what I have come to know (mistakenly) in the past as a Hibachi restaurant. Teppanyaki is more the actual term for cooking on the flat iron griddle that most of these restaurants use. So would make sense for multiple cruise lines to use it generically if not creating their own trademark.

On 6/8/2020 at 9:58 PM, Ourusualbeach said:

Listed on the cruise planner for sale are;

 

Wonderland

Chops

Izumi

Hibachi

Chefs Table 

Giovanni’s Table

Solarium Bistro (free)

 

 

The one odd one on that list that I can't find listed on mine is Hibachi. Can you confirm where you saw that?

We just recently rebooked on a Jan 2021 sailing on Odyssey after losing our late March sailing on Freedom this year and was really looking forward to going to the Hibachi restaurant as it is one of my brother and I's favorite restaurants. I do see Teppanyaki on my cruise planner but not sure what the similarity/differences are or if it is just something else entirely.

4 minutes ago, Biker19 said:

Freedom is on her way back to San Juan and I assume it will be added to the app soon.

I think it may very well be. We're going to be on Freedom on their 3/29 sailing and my RCI app after updating now isn't showing the telltale 'this ship isn't supported yet' but is showing a lot more like a deck map screen, options to show dining, activities, etc.. Granted they are all showing nothing and deck maps are unavailable.

Sorry, not the RCI app but Coke's own app.

Curious if anyone is familiar enough with the Freestyle machines on the RCI ships to know if they have the option to use the mobile app with them?

For those unfamiliar with it, it lets you scan a QR code on the machine with your phone and it sends a custom mix of your choice (I believe for each mix you can have up to 3 drinks with varying percentages and it mixes them in a single pour) to the machine to pour for you. Granted this requires both internet access on the mobile device and the machine itself so I am curious if RCI has possibly disabled this just to save headaches or if anyone has successfully used it?

12 minutes ago, fletch1027 said:

 

These are the current alternating itineraries. What changes for after 3/8/2020 is that the itinerary that does the ABC islands will be swapping St. Maarten for St. Thomas. Not sure if the other itinerary is changing. This is based on me looking at itineraries this morning for early 2021...

 

 

Apologies as I am new to all this. So if I am understanding correctly they simply have alternating itineraries from week to week for the same ship and likely the 3/29 trip will continue through the aforementioned ports I listed prior. I had originally thought it was just a single itinerary run every week and was getting these ports swapped out. 

45 minutes ago, cruiseguy1016 said:

 

Why do you think your itinerary is going to change? I have not heard of any itinerary changes after amplification.

Per the ***** post:

Beginning March 8, 2020, the reimagined Freedom will sail year-round, 7-night Southern Caribbean itineraries from San Juan, Puerto Rico and will include stops in St. Lucia, Antigua and the ABC Islands – Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao.

So not ALL ports are changing, but somewhere Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao are getting tacked on, likely taking place of something from the existing itinerary. Per our RCI account it doesn't seem to indicate any changes at least as of right now.

Interesting. So we are set to take our cruise on Mar 29. The itinerary has been San Juan, St Maarten, St Kitts & Nevis, Antigua, St Lucia, and Barbados. But now sounds like some of that is changing. Any specific confirmation? I don't think it'll change our decision to take this cruise but just something to be aware of as we are still in the middle of figuring out excursions.

19 minutes ago, Biker19 said:

Where did you find that chart?

 

An up to date one is being crowd sourced here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kZ1gCFtt1eiX1OWw9q-8tnEU5uQCWIjBwQt-w3t040s/edit#gid=1881900306

 

Oooooh. Nice find. Definitely keeping this one saved in my Drive.

Thanks guys. So ultimately it seems like it is a guessing game until Royal announces it themselves and very likely even when the app is supported the chat functionality likely isn't to be available in time for our cruise.

I'm the more tech inclined person in our group so I've been on the lookout for usable communication options that don't boil down to a whiteboard or sticky notes (especially given we are split between two rooms) and also don't rely on full WAN access (contrary to some of the more curmudgeony types, I do plan to take full advantage of this vacation and not be tied to tech but would greatly value a reliable and painless communication tool that we can stay up to date with each other as we roam the ship). As all of us are Android users it looks like most options are out as iMessage has been the only one that has been somewhat reliable. Hangouts may be a thing but not sure how that will fare on the FotS and haven't really seen any definite reports on the matter from other travelers.

Subject TL;DR here. We're actually scheduled to be taking a 7 night cruise on the Freedom of the Seas end of March next year right after they are supposed to finish the Amplified upgrades. Based on other ships getting their Amplified upgrades, any likelihood of this getting the FotS supported in the RCI mobile app? Specifically it'd be nice to have the messaging function as a known fallback in lieu of trying the various messaging apps out there without paying for the internet access on ship.