Embowaf

I've worn jeans to waterside. Generally, they're nice jeans that aren't blue. And I've never seen anyone complain. It's not the letter of the wording, but the spirit is pretty clearly avoiding ripped or distressed jeans or anything heavily branded, and probably not blue. Black jeans or grey don't really looks like "jeans" they're just more like textured pants.

I don't know why they're showing that number as 93 CU FT, but I looked into it and it's delightfully more complex than it would seem... You've likely seen Gross (Register) Tonnage referred to for the size of a ship to compare them. GRT and GT are similar, with GT replacing GRT a while back. These are a bit deceptive as a metric for a cruise ship at all, and the guest to space ratio is worse. Nevertheless... Tonnage is a measure of a ships size, in either weight or dimensions, which has changed a lot over time and been redefined over and over. It comes from ton, which was originally the weight of the largest cask of wine, and ships were measured in the 1500s by how many casks of wine they could carry inside of them and taxed/assessed fees accordingly. This evolved into the weight they could carry, with a ton being 2240 pounds, which was the weight of one of said casks, to displacement, depth, etc. In the early 1800s as British shipping expanded massively, a new system was developed that became dominant. The idea was that taxes/dues/fees etc should be based on a ship's earning potential based on cargo and passenger capacity, and so they adapted what had been done in the past. The entire internal volume of the ship was assessed with some spaces excluded (such as areas open to the sea, double bottoms, etc, but includes deckhouses, internal decks, superstructure, etc; apparently some things like staircases, galleys, lighting spaces, etc were exempt as well) in cubic feet, and then divided by 100 to give you Gross Registered Tonnage, with a ton being 100 cubic feet. Then, spaces that didn't support cargo or passengers, such as fuel storage, ballast tanks, engines, crew quarters, etc were subtracted from this to give you Net Registered Tonnage. Both figures were recorded and used for various purposes to figure out various dues and whatnot. GRT became the most common measure for "what is the biggest ship" despite it apparently excluding some things like staircases(?) so that's why Titanic was bigger than Olympic. When completed, the Titanic was billed as the largest ship ever built, despite the one year older Olympic being effectively identical in dimensions to a normal person, and side by side they would look the same size. Olympic was 45,324 GRT while Titanic was 46,329. Titanic also had a slightly larger displacement. Why? Look at a comparison of the two ships: Olympic is on top, and Titanic is on bottom. The uppermost deck, the boat deck where the lifeboats were launched from, was not enclosed at all on either ship excepting the stairs, but the A deck had a Promenade that ran the entire length of the ship, and rooms recessed in a bit. Titanic had effectively the exact same layout, but the front half of the Promenade was enclosed with some openable windows; that's the difference you can see on that deck. That enclosed space added to the GRT, making it a "bigger" ship. Worldwide standards were set a few decades ago that replaced GRT and NRT with Gross Tonnage and Net Tonnage. GT and NT are very similar with some updated definitions, with NT being a fairly complicated formula now that includes a lot more variables. So, G(R)T isn't a great indicator of the size of a ship for passengers because it ignores things you might care about like the Grand Staircase on the Titanic or... the entire pool area on deck of the Serenity... but it also includes stuff like the boiler rooms on Titanic or the the Engine rooms on Serenity, which passengers never see. And then, you take that number and divide it by the number of passengers... to get the passenger to space ratio... which is a thing apparently, that shouldn't have any dimensions, since GT is actually now not a measure of volume directly and officially cannot be converted to cubic feet anyway. Serenity, 68,870 GT / 740 = ~93.1 Titanic, 46,329 GRT / 2453 = ~18.9 Wonder of the Seas 236,857 GT / 6988 = ~33.9 Seabourn Venture 23,000 GT / 264 = ~87.1 Silver Dawn 40,700 GT / 596 = ~68.3 Seven Seas Splendor 55,498 / 746 = ~74.4 So what does this tell us? Nothing? Mostly? Because the GT number is a flawed way of looking at the space of the ship from a passenger perspective and also a flawed way of saying how big the ship is. But, all the luxury ships will feel more "roomy" than the RC ones, big shock there, and the Titanic was cramped though it varied wildly on class, but also was probably more cramped than this makes it seem cus the power plant of the ship was waaaaaaaay bigger than on modern ships, so that reduced actual guest space. In conclusion, Crystal's number is accurate excepting that it should should not say cubic feet but if it does, it's sorta kinda off by x100, so it should be 9310 cubic feet per person, which would be roughly 37x36x7 feet.

FWIW, there's a lot of discussion about Crystal needing to do something to appeal to a demographic that will be supporting them in a few decades... well me and my friends that I finally got on Crystal right before the pandemic (younger millennials for the most part) are definitely discouraged from resuming with Crystal due to the lack of the casino. There was often not a huge amount for us to do after dinner and the casino filled that gap for at least an hour or two most nights.

One would hope these get more flexible with these things as they get more experience operating the new ship layouts. No one will know or care if there's a handful of cabins with a third person for whatever reason, or if someone on the WC in a solo room adds an extra person for a segment or two. Especially considering that there will be at least a few double occupancy rooms that are booked for one person at any given time. We already know the ship doesn't feel crowded at the old capacities.

This is correct yes.

Have you done the Vintage Room on Crystal before? It's not really just a wine paring dinner. It's served in a single table private dining room with up to 12 people and is far more decadent than the other dining venues. The wines are pretty top notch too. I'm not a wine aficionado by any means, but my dad is and has found the value pretty decent for the wine alone, and I'd compare the food to a meal of a similar price on land too, so the value isn't bad.

It is $300 now. It was $250 in 2021, but I think it varied. I've seen some articles noting $200 or $300 over the past decade or so. Not really notable, imo.

I have never once on Crystal seen anyone "strongly encourage" you to gamble if you were passing through instead of hanging out and talking to them. If you were hanging around and talking to them... of course they would do that, you're showing interest in the casino.

I'd hazard a guess that they had a large stock of them (they were originally intended to be given out to guests at some point iirc) that they're finally nearly out of and likely won't reprint them. I've made a couple of things from this book and it's been fantastic.

We don't know, and we probably won't for a while. The renderings are just that; renderings. They can't be assumed to be exactly how things are going to be.

Pretty unlikely, imo, that you're going to get much from Moecker. New Crystal may not have all the information, but I suspect they have a decent idea of what will happen there. They do obviously know what they paid for the non-ship components of the old company (the ships were not owned by Crystal itself), as in the trademarks, passenger lists, data, possibly some inventory on the ships (lots of wine?) depending on how that shook out. If they suspected most people would be made close to whole, around the time they were reopening up sailing, I don't think they'd be doing this initiative, as that would go a long way to mending the wounds that this is targeting.

I would suspect that if this was sure to happen they'd be advertising it. So I would assume the internet infrastructure on the ships is not being updated or any plans to do so aren't finalized. So far, they don't seem to be holding anything back. Seems pretty likely that they were trying to finalize the details on Umi Uma, for instance, and announced it as soon as they could. So I would presume the same here.

Interesting discussion point actually. I'm a millennial and while I vaguely remember a time before i had an email address, I did essentially grow up with one. The concept of sharing one seems so completely invasive to me almost akin to sharing a toothbrush.

Yeah those are renderings not real photos.

I have not, though I've spoken to some people who have. Generally the feedback has been excellent. Quality, attention to detail etc. The only negative I've heard, and I don't know how much this will play out on New Crystal, is that someone I trust, making a direct comparison to Crystal in terms of the style of how things are done, painted a picture of A&K being very planned out and not particularly flexible, whereas Crystal was, as we all know, exceptional at responding to any sort of special request you made. They'd do whatever they could to say yes to anything you asked for, and that is very much not the A&K style. Or so I was told. But, this is a large expansion for A&K, with a lot of Crystal's people coming back and the culture mixing in.

Maybe worth noting though, that Waterside's concept evolved to the point where there was more choice than a standard MDR, with a selection a several always available menu items, more always available things that were not listed, and two complete (classic and modern) menus that changed every night. That's certainly more choice than you get in a mass market MDR. I don't know how it compares to the other three luxury lines. And we don't know how that's going to be going forward though it seems they're rehiring a lot of the same hospitality leads so, you'd think it will be similar.

Also, there's plausibly cases where they hold back some inventory for some period of time for some cases?

Dark-wash jeans with no rips (only when accompanied with a jacket) So a jacket isn't required with nicer pants, but is with jeans. I interpret this to mean that the average level of formalness is what matters. less formal pants, need a more formal jacket. Tails and a speedo it is then.

I will say, it’s easy to say that 5 months ago. Was he saying that publicly in summer 2021? Do we have any evidence he would have cruised on crystal if not for that epiphany?

I’m a younger millennial and I’ve been going on Crystal since I was a young teen and have always loved it. But then again, I’ve also always been weird so. Whatever. But, in the past few years, I was able to get some of my friends to go instead of it just being a family thing and we love it. Really hoping the rebooted Crystal will hold up in comparison. I haven’t found the entertainment too “old”. For one, some of the artists they’ve done featured shows on like Billy Joel are not unknown to my generation, so it’s enjoyable. The broadway stuff is more cross generational. And the artists that play in the cove are often classical anyway, which is pretty cross-generational, or sometimes when it’s a guitarist or whatever, they tend to be roughly millennial age anyway, so when I’m sitting there they’ll take a more modern request from me anyway. Pulse has always had a fairly up to date selection too, so that works out well.

Use Google Flights to scope out prices without signaling interest to things like Expedia, etc.

Three things that generally require flat ground lol. I know they make gyroscopically stabilized pool tables, but I don't know if that exists for air hockey and pretty sure it does not for pinball.

Symphony has two rooms on the port side of deck 5 that are specifically accessible and still shown on the deck plans. Serenity had rooms on deck 5, though I don't know if any were accessible, at one point. They no longer sell them, and may have stopped under Genting, I don't remember for sure. I do know the deck 5 rooms were commonly used for some of the guest entertainers from time to time and were less and less used for passengers. The two rooms on Symphony that are on deck 5 are marked the same way as the 4 deck 7 accessible rooms (same color, etc). And based on the old deck plans for the ships: the Serenity deck 7 accessibles look the same size and specially marked as they did before. Based on that, there is a decent possibility that they have similar features as the ones on Symphony did. This is a big assumption, but IF it's true, I've been in the ones of Symphony briefly as I was walking by one with my TA family friend that was unoccupied and being cleaned, and she wanted to check it out for a client, and I took some pictures. https://share.icloud.com/photos/05f7hBcrCqjqcE0c10fHjzTDw Again, this was the other ship, in a different location, in 2019, but may indicate roughly how they used to set the up, but it does look like they have not gutted them, so they may have the same shower.

My first Crystal was in 2005 (Symphony, Baltics) when I was 14... so I barely remember it. I have no recollection of the specialty restaurants, but I was a far far pickier eater back then. And then we didn't do Crystal again until 2010 (Serentiy, Mediterranean) at which point it would have been Silk Road right? I have pictures on my iPhone from then and can see that the majority of the menu hadn't changed from that point The Umi Uma name switch came with the overhauls of the ships in 2017/2018 right? Did anything else change then besides the name? What was Jade Garden vs Silk Road? Was that when the Nobu partnership started? Did the ships have Jade Garden from the beginning? And I guess for that matter, was Prego effectively the same from the beginning?

Eh, he himself says it's not fusion. It's Japanese with a few Peruvian ingredients and influences. And what I was talking about was specifically getting a large plate of nigiri and rolls and realizing I liked that, which is pretty standard sushi fare.