Mikamarii

I know its lowbrow but we got this camera off of amazon a few years ago and its amazing for the price. Weve taken it on 4 scuba dives as deep as 12 meters and pictures were great. We have an older verson but only about 130$ cdn.

Its crazy how much money is being spent on this. Post pandemic that is seeing inflation at an all time high, high unemployment rates, people choosing between heating their house or buying groceries, crumbling health care and other issues. Its gonna cost millions alone just to change our court houses to reference the new king and change the coat of arms. Our highest court is Court of Queen's bench, our laws and statutes are printed on the Queens printer, our civil servants swore oaths to the queen. All need to be replaced, rebranded, and reprinted at a cost to the taxpayer. So wasteful.

I just completed both Aus and NZ ETAs for our Oct transpacific cruise for myself, wife and 2 kids. Took less than 10 minutes each on the app. The longest part was convincing my wife and daughter their picture I took was fine. Both approvals arrived in less than 30 minutes. I spent more time on the phone with my bank as they flagged my card for fraud for completing two foreign transactions in less than an hour without the card present. ETA: i put my wife's married name first and then put her maiden name under the "have you ever used another name portion"

Thank you for this. We sale in about 30 days. I bought the dbp over a year ago and nothing under my profile is showing i have it and was even showing i could buy it again in my cruise planner. Was worried i waa going to have to spend time at guest services sorting it out. Just checked my set sail pass and DX is there so im relieved.

FYI Obesity kills 2.8 million people each year. How come people aren't lobbying cruise lines for change? This affects all of us regardless of my decision of what goes in to my body. https://www.who.int/news-room/facts-in-pictures/detail/6-facts-on-obesity#:~:text=At least 2.8 million people each year die as a,tripled between 1975 and 2016.

Curious what they do if you are not back in time for the 1hr break. We are booked on the Coral in November and specifically booked this cruise so my wife and I could Scuba Dive at the GBR. Our excursion is from 930am-430pm so says we will be back in time. Our kids are too young to sign themselves in and out. We specifically booked this cruise to utilize the kids club so we could dive the reef!! Here is what I found on the Princess website for those interested and lists the hours. https://www.princess.com/downloads/pdf/Onboard_Experience/Youth_Guidelines_Registration.pdf

Not quite. It meant most of the cruisers were covid free 2-3 days prior to the cruise.

When we booked the transpacifc from hawaii to Sydney it was originally listed as a 20 nighter (Oct 09 to 29). We booked a drink package and internet package. A few months later it was changed to a 19 nighter becsuse of the date line. RCI actually refunded us a days worth of drink and internet package! No change in the cruise price though. Actually i dont know. We did get a price drop and my TA called and got the lower price but i dont know if that was just a price drop or because they dropped the day.

I came out of cruise critic jail (covid discussion haha) just to comment on this as I was waiting for someone to mention this. I so agree with you; however, changing that act will do absolutely nooooothing..... Our province used to be like that where restaurant staff was paid significantly lower than minimum wage because of tips. A couple years ago they changed that and now minimum wage is minimum for everyone....I think right now it is 15$ an hour here. Even though the price of a burger has doubled in the last few years the 'suggested tip' has gone from 10-15% to 18-21%. I'm even seeing some receipts where it is 20-25%. So not only are restaurant staff getting paid more they are making way more on tips (bill is more and tip amount is more). A couple restaurants here tried the "pay a normal wage and remove tips". They were paying servers 25-30$ an hour....guess what....they couldn't get staff. Restaurant workers want to work for tips because they make so much more and it is tax free (they are required to claim but guarantee no one claims the full amount if any at all). So for everyone wanting tips to be included please think long and hard about that. Including tips won't change a darn thing. All it will do is raise the price of the cruise and people will still call you a horrid vile person if you don't leave the waiter an extra 1$ for bringing you an extra pop. Tipping is such a ridiculous notion where those with the means create a ridiculous criteria they deem fit to pass along their scraps to those they deem below them. Don't believe me? Look at who we tip. Teachers don't get paid well yet we don't send our kids with a five-er to school every day. Do we tip because because they work hard? Lot's of people work hard we don't tip. If I buy a can of pepsi at a gas station...no expectation....if i buy a can at the bar on a cruise....expectation....do we tip because of low wages? Lots of people make low wages that we don't tip. My wife works in education and only makes a couple dollars more per hour than a bus boy and makes significantly less when tips are factored in. If people truly cared as much for these workers as they tout on the internet they would fly him/her and their family to their home to live with them and support them. Lastly, for those saying when in America do as Americans please remember that when outside your own country. Go to the Australian/New Zealand page and take about tipping....see the type of response you will get. Alright mods....I had my day pass...send me back to jail!

Definitely a double edge sword! Covid refunds were because of covid rules. If covid rules go away then presumably covid refunds go away too! We always booked refundable deposits anyway backed up with insurance. The stress of travel in the covid era isn't worth the easy refund haha.

i don’t know if this is old or new but I like this wording…. “Should consider” consider it considered Pre-embarkation COVID-19 Testing To reduce likelihood of onboard transmission, cruise ship operators should consider requiring travelers to get tested for current infection with a viral test as close to the time of departure as possible (no more than 3 days before travel) and present their negative test result prior to boarding. Testing within 1 day of embarkation is highly recommended. Cruise ship operators may also consider conducting embarkation testing for all or a subset of passengers.

Thanks arxcards and miccanberra for the clarification. Just wanted to be sure. And I have the Australian app downloaded for our electronic visas, a couple power adapters (not bringing anything that needs a conversion), and AUD haha.

Are there testing requirements upon entry? I thought they were all removed in Australia.

To be fair it's just the cdc saying we won't be forcing you in to rules. Its up to cruiselines to decide. I just hope pre departure testing is what gets axed.

Sorry to hear that. I dont think there is a perfect system and I'm not against socialized medicine. The problem being neither is perfect and we have to accept their limitations. In our system there are only so many tax dollars to go around so a government run hospital should be operating at at least 90% with the capacity to go over if needed unless you want your taxes to skyrocket. I dont want my hospital to be at 10% capacity (year over year)because that means it is way over funded and not efficient. Public hospitals are in no way designed to take on mass casualties like a pandemic. When they started setting up auxiliary hospitals here people yelled a failure of government when in actuality its a limitation on public hospitals. When something is government run they are ALWAYS vying for more tax dollars and what better way to do that then to scream understaffed and over capacity. A local journalist published an opinion piece where he showed headlines in our province for the past decade. Every year doctors "sounded the alarm" on hospital capacity. That they were typically running between 90 and 120%. Our provincial health care is so bloated at the top. Our director was making more than our premier and PM combined. That's insane and needs to be shaved in a tax run system. But anytime anyone questions these budgets they get Labelled as anti nurse/doctor and the debate gets political. Government run entities always need their budgets questioned whether it be hospitals, police, ems, etc. Reviewing/questioning the budget does not mean you are ant-that thing and most people will always agree to more funding to the front lines. *steps off soap box*

Or vice versa, We are on a transpacific leaving honolulu ending in Sydney. Neither country requires a covid test to enter by air. Cruises seem to be the last industry requiring this. Hopefully this is the beginning of the end of pre departure testing!

It is for us!! Haha And I look forward to not having to deal with the tipping.

Relax there....No where in my post was I 'making a point" I said it was an interesting conclusion. You can take from it whatever you want.

The jaw dropping moment for me was when passengers on their balcony were looking out and seeing the groups of officials in full hazmat suits. At that point, knowing something was wrong, being isolated, and hearing people have died; to look out and see that would be so traumatizing. Images like that have been so engrained in us over the past couple years that I don’t know if people would have the same reaction, but, at the time…..what a horrific scene.

It is fascinating to hear first hand accounts of the 'early days' of covid and how it was handled. There is a documentary on netflix of the Diamond Princess. All it is is cell phone video of various passengers lumped together. No commentary, no added text so it was pretty raw. With complete understanding that the virus was new and authorities didn't understand any of it; it is still interesting to go back and see how it was handled and how the blame was shifted to the cruise ship. When Diamond princess first learned of the infections they began isolating and testing people. What was interesting was that they would only test about 1-200 people per day (then increased it) and report the numbers. So day 1, OMG there are 20 cases, Day 2, OMG there are 100 cases, Day 30 OMG there are 400 cases and they concluded that the virus was spreading through the air and they actually sealed off vents and openings. In actuality it was likely that all those passengers already had it and the testing was revealing it. The reported numbers were cumilative. If they had tested the entire ship at one time (impossible I know) they likely would have had similar numbers. They hypothesized that 'patient zero' had been infected about 3 or 4 days earlier at a port stop and brought it to the ship where it was business as usual as nobody knew. What was even more hilarious (for lack of a better term) was that every authority person was in a hazmat suit but they escorted all the passengers off in groups in their regular clothes and they boarded planes that were basically cargo planes. They boarded the plane together With the exception of the confirmed infected who were in the middle of the plane with a plastic wrap as a barrier that didn't even go to the roof. So they were screaming deadly and air born but really did nothing to protect the people at risk. So the cruise ships get so much blame but as we've seen our governments had laid out restrictions that were so poorly implemented but put the blame on different groups for the rise in cases.

Maybe it's an east coast/west coast thing haha. We do everything we can to avoid Pearson and if we have no choice we stay the night at the attached hotel. For us westjet offers connections through calgary when going to the eastern states where as AC usually connects through the US (typically denver or utah). Our leg from Canada to the US is always on one of those gawd awful two seater plans. As some who is 6'6 I can't stand them!

We fly exclusively with WestJet. We’ve never experienced delays, cancellations, or lost luggage. Not to say it doesn’t happen with them but we love them. When we used to fly air Canada one leg of the flight (usually a connection in the USA) was always oversold or delayed. on a side note the Wj Mastercard is one of the best travel cards on the market imo. Between the 99$ companion flight (in NA) and free checked bags it’s worth it. Even if you never use the card, simply having it gives you the free checked bags and annual companion flight. For our family of four that saves us 200$ alone in bag fees every trip. If my family comes with us I’ll book their flights on my card when I book mine and they get the free checked bags too (up to eight). Annual fee I think is 120. No I don’t work for WestJet haha.

We are almost 3 years into this with well over a year into vaccines and available treatments. Ultimately if you don’t feel safe now you may never will. It will never be as bad as it was. There will always be a new variant, some worse than others. According to Health Canada we are on our 17th variant of concern and that does not include all the sub lineages. The media will keep it at the forefront because re-opening is new and there is still a fear of the unknown. Very few people buy a paper or click on an article when everything is great. We just go about our day. But when there is a threat to livelihood people tune in for the latest update regardless of the side you are on. Media is a business and fear is the best money maker. They are masters at it with virtually no accountability.

This same thing came out here with our hospitals at the very end of 2021 which sparked changes. We were told every day the deaths and it sounded horrific. But what was finally admitted was that terminal or severely unhealthy people were being transferred to the icu and because their immune systems were virtually nothing they’d contract the virus shortly before dying. They estimated upwards of 50% of deaths were due to this. What really sparked outrage was when our childrens hospital reported a death of a terminally Ill 11 year old died of Covid when she had been suffering from a brain tumour. Parents were outraged that they had to deal with a media blitz for this false reporting. its not to minimize death. Death is tragic and unfortunate especially when preventable. But as you said the risks are different based on your health, for some of whom, ignored it and the latest thing pushed them over the edge. But people aren’t protesting fast food chains or convenience stores that sell cigarettes.

We will be on one of those ships! I am far more worried about the response to cases than the actual disease. Watching what is happening in our country I'd like to think that any type of lockdowns or severe restrictions will never happen again. The public response has shown that people don't want it. At least in our small little corner of the world it really looks and feels like life is back to normal and not once was our healthcare system ever overwhelmed despite the constant doom and gloom reports. Toronto Pearson airport was recently rated the worst airport in the world for delays/cancellations which is absurd for a highly developed 1st world country. While there are several factors that come in to play, a major contributor is a lack of staff. When airports were shut down for 2-3 years those workers had to get different jobs. It is not like they were just waiting around for their job to come back. Now, not only does the mass amount of staff required not exist in a short period of time; they also need to train them which takes time. At least here, we are feeling the after affects of all those decisions that were made and the immediate demand for travel was instant that apparently our government 'didn't anticipate'. Thankfully we are on the west coast and don't go through Toronto on our way to your neck of the woods so all those airport issues shouldn't affect us and the only tests we need to take are before our transpacific and domestic Queensland cruise. I did read that NCL dropped their testing requirement and will only require it in Countries where the Government has mandated it. So it appears no more pre-covid testing in Europe for NCL. I imagine other lines will follow suit.