Karaboudjan

Canada still requires testing so that is probably a big reason why pre-cruise testing is not going away immediately. This is high season for Alaska so lots of ships calling in Canada. I believe there are still some very good reasons for limiting unvaccinated passengers, so I think it's not surprising that lines are making similar decisions (and going slowly) even if they are determining them independently.

All things considered I don't think there is a 'better' testing solution, and I don't see them putting any more effort into coming up with one. I think it will just go away soon enough.

Whenever this current wave that the US appears to be in abates would probably be a good time to try rolling back on vaccination.

My money would be on testing going away but vaccination requirements staying around for now. I am also looking forward to crew masking going away.

This is just a recommendation within a guideline. I would be shocked if any cruise line adopted this as a policy.

Maybe at the Indulge bar? Variety is the theme there and there will be lots of traffic so plenty of drink offerings would make sense.

It seems like the craft beer boom is still going strong so I would expect them to have a better selection available somewhere on the ship. Unless, of course, their experience with the District on the other ships is that the more unusual beers are really not that popular with the NCL crowd.

The problem is that North America is seemingly in another wave, and there is definitely COVID on every ship sailing to/from the US, so I don't see too much changing too fast.

Do you know how much it costs them to administer that program? I'm sure it is not free and maybe it is not that much of a money-maker. Furthermore, how many tourist dollars are staying away because they don't want to deal with the hassle or pay the fee?

An outdoor extension of the observation lounge seems most likely to me.

I believe the only Haven amenity/perk at GSC is priority boarding on your return tender trip.

Doesn't 100% FCC mean 100% of the fare they paid for the cancelled cruise?

This topic has been inactive for 2 years until a post a couple of weeks ago. I suggest using this active one instead:

If it is undetectable how do we know that it even exists? 🤔 Can you post a link to the source for that?

So?

I would hope every pharmacy has a Doctor working.

It doesn't really matter what the R number is. If you filter out even half of the infected people then you have accomplished something. Yes, there are plenty of infections on ships now, but it would probably be significantly worse with no testing. Maybe the virus will mutate to the point where pre-cruise testing is pointless to prevent infections, but I don't think we are there yet and I expect that testing will go away for economic reasons long before that.

True, but just because testing is not infallible does not make it worthless. Even if you only filter out some of the infected people that can still make a big difference in the eventual number of cases on the ship.

I agree that it's only a matter of time, but it seems unlikely that anything would change while only 5% of the ships being tracked are in a Green status. It looks like the 'forthcoming' bit is CruiseHive/CLIA's editorializing, not from the CDC statement.

According to the CruiseMapper screenshots the destination was listed as Trieste even before she left Venice, so it seems quite possible that this was planned and not a result of anything that happened during the trials.

I'm sure that specifications are well defined in the contract and there are penalty clauses if the ship fails to meet the specs and Fincantieri is unable to remedy something.

NCL transfers are no bargain, so it's probably not going to cost you anything extra to arrange your own transportation.

Just to add, if you don't already know you may request a deviation to arrive one (or maybe two?) days early. I believe that they used to charge a bit ($25?) for that but when we booked a few months ago they were actually giving a credit for the deviation.