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Lovely report, thank you.  I think it's time for a rule in the Golden Lion- only an hour during lunch.  We missed out lunch a few times as there were 3-4 tables occupied the whole meal service time by those reading or looking out the window.  There are lots of lovely window seats forward on the ship outside the theater.     Or better yet, close at eleven for ten minutes to "sanitize tables" and issue menus to all new arrivals.   

We just got off a short test cruise- I could not wait any longer- it all felt pretty safe.  Elevators for eight and tables for eight and long indoor lines seemed edgy.  Singing and close in talking are still not recommended.  Our dance group uses large fans in the hall and we've been safe for months.   Bring your boxing gloves for the laundry rooms 🙂 

After 35 years of travelling to and sailing in the Islands- you really can't simulate being in a beach bar in the Bahamas, BVI, St. Martin etc. very well.  It will be interesting to see if this ownership group can get any closer to that goal.  One piece of advice- hire more locals.   I remember being on a cruise ship fifteen years ago off of Tortola and asking the bartender for a Painkiller- he had no idea.   I was on the Carnival Valor recently - a well-run operation- but a plastic palm tree and ship's wheel on the wall does not an epic beach bar make.  

A semi related question.  On the Zaandam, do they still have a combo in the Oceans Bar?  The idea is some kind of dancing.  

On 3/19/2022 at 10:01 PM, tlw440 said:

We had an awful debarkation out of Mobile once, did not get off the ship until 11 we felt like hostages!

I remember a cruise once- possibly on HAL into Boston- CBP was way understaffed, and we were in the aft outdoor buffet seating area, waiting patiently.  It was nearly 11, and we had a 4PM flight.  All I could think of was- in few minutes, we could have the welcome aboard buffet lunch 🙂  

Does anyone have any recent daily programs?  The Pride is a decent ship but we like dancing and there was little to none. 

I think the Kings Court Alternative Dining is pretty lame.  I mean you are still in the buffet.  If I am in the mood for Dan Dan Noodles (yes I know low class, non-gourmet street food got it) there is a place. 

And the attacks on the ship without seeing the deck plans seem contrived.  

So Wi-Fi Calling was designed for the use case where you are indoors, and the cellular signal is perhaps blocked by walls or metal tinted windows.  So the phone says- oh- the cell signal is yukky (i.e. in my stucco house) but the Wi-Fi is good let's try that.   The assumption is you are on unblocked home Wi-Fi.  (I remember now - some business /lobby "guest Wi-Fi" services block ports also). 

Anyhow, you might want to still fight City Hall, but think of alternatives.  If any Voice over Wi-Fi service will work, use that for outbound calls and forward your phone to that for inbound calls.   (Microsoft Teams is all the rage, what about Google Voice?)

This ship Internet port blocking thing is evil.  I remember I was sitting in the Internet Cafe on some ship that will remain nameless mid ocean and the hearing the angst of guests complaining to the manager who needed to reach some (secured) web site for some important, time-critical task- check on Mom's medications, etc.  

5 minutes ago, dfish said:

  Websites I could reach came up in Spanish, including the HAL website.  Fortunately, I can read Spanish somewhat.  And, yes, I am still working and needed to do a few minutes worth of work each day.  

My Wife had the Nordstrom web site on her iPad stuck on Turkish Lira since our lovely cruise there.  Clearing cookies fixed it.  

IMHO someone needs to remind the cruise lines some of us still need to work (or check on rental properties or our Beanie Baby online shop), and Wi-Fi is a form of onboard revenue.  

17 hours ago, Homosassa said:

Every time I have been on a cruise on a Southern Caribbean itinerary, no matter the cruise line , we have hit areas where the satellite feed for the TV programs and internet have dropped for a period of time.

 

This is often more related to rules or contracts - what we call in the tech world "Digital Rights Management"- so the NFL might say - ok you can show a game on your ship, but the rights to show the game in the port of (Miami) are for the local TV station or a cable company.  And when the ship is docked it is in the city limits.   The same might apply for the Internet.  

I did a little more poking around.  This whole VPNs and port blocking thing seems semi common at sea.  One reason for it- the lines might want to block certain sites or traffic types by port number - the ship uses a limited, slow, shared satellite link with significant (.5 seconds or more) extra latency (per packet round trip delay) vs being on fiber or 5G at home.  As ChengKP pointed out, on older satellites, uplink can be slower than downlink.  This is laws of physics stuff.  

There are some work arounds - there are lots of flavors and types of VPNs.  One, an SSL VPN, looks to the Internet and any firewalls or policies like encrypted web site traffic.  Since many ordinary web sites use this port, often 443, it is harder to say- oh they are on a VPN- let's block them.   

Visitors to certain countries face site and traffic type blocking.    

Soon, newer satellite types - see Starlink- have lower latency (lower orbits) and better performance.  Having these dishes "roam" - they work best in one spot now- is under development.  These might be good on a cruise ship.    

6 hours ago, boze9999 said:

I am still working too and have a lot of booked cruises in 2022. My biggest problem with the internet is blocked wifi calls in or out. I never had a problem on HAL pre-covid while on the sea or in port, but now (even with Premium) they won't go through whether we're on sea or in port. HAL says it's Verizon's problem - yet when I'm in port connected on wifi, the Verizon wifi calls go through....

https://ratil.life/verizon-wi-fi-calling-firewall-config/  It looks like the Verizon Wi-Fi calling feature opens a VPN tunnel (port 500) to tunnel the calls securely.  If that port is blocked by HAL policies, no calls.     

I would like to see the deck plans.  The Golden Lion looks lovely.   You would think if they had someone in charge of the brand they would remember you need to have as an example ballroom dancing.  But if tastes change and as on HAL nobody shows up and the band plays to furniture, then what do you do?  They got rid of smoking rooms- where is the indignation?  

11 hours ago, chengkp75 said:

I'll defer to your professional knowledge here, but from what I read, using a VPN on a satellite internet connection will be significantly degraded, due to latency, not bandwidth.  Also, that satellite internet has a much slower upload bandwidth than download (streaming a movie), and the VPN requires high bandwidth for both upload and download.  Finally, the satellite internet provider uses IP spoofing (no idea what that is), that can prevent VPN connections.  Can you comment?

Always good to hear from you.  I did forget about latency.  I have not heard of a problem per se with VPNs and latency, but a VPN would be a bit pokey on a satellite link due to the overhead.    And IP spoofing is the idea that the earth station convinces TCP that yes it already got the return packets next in line and go ahead and send some more even if they are late.   This makes the connection seem faster.  A VPN just is a tunnel or wrapper on underlying traffic. 

 IPsec - Wikipedia

VPN traffic flow probably has been mostly outbound from the Internet, as you are reading emails as an example, or viewing a web site, vs. typing or uploading data from your laptop.  But it does not have to be.  If you are "on your office VPN" you may have a lot of reading and think time.  Which uses very little to no bandwidth.  

Remember also the Internet was designed to be reliable but not secure.  So the assumption is the "Public Internet" is more or less open, and as we have seen security protocols (like SSL or TLS for e-commerce, or VPNs) run over the Internet to secure your traffic or encrypt it.  

This all feels still like policy not technology to me.  I remember over the years hotels or Internet service providers would block a TCP port needed for VPNs aka business use.  This was silly at one level- for many years, business use did not mean more use.   UDP Port 500 is often needed for a VPN - this was blocked.  Customers would howl,  or pay the extra for "Business DSL Service" as an example.  

HAL would have to go out of the way to add filters to block VPN (encrypted tunnel) type traffic or any specific web site.   The idea is "plain" (USA) Internet blocks nothing.   It is IMHO not due to bandwidth concerns- VPNs can add a bit of extra overheard- in the range of 20% due to the added packet headers needed.  Note- most (75%+) Internet traffic is encrypted already.  There is no comparison between a typical VPN session (i.e. checking email) vs a streaming movie.  The movie is a lot more bandwidth intensive.   I used to design large work at home VPNs- unless you were doing a lot of video calls it was a light network load.  There was a moment of panic for businesses and network providers when COVID hit and people shifted to work at home.  Traffic went up a little - but it was not from VPN overhead.  More movies and more video calls were a lot of it and gaming.  

I can think of one possible explanation - the use of encryption protocols is regulated and varies by country.  So in port in say France, they might have rules. 

The early ocean liners and cross country trains had onboard radio rooms and stenographers to take business memos.   Important people went to sea and had to stay in touch.  This is not a new thing. 

This is a good question for HAL Customer Service.  

On 1/17/2022 at 1:47 AM, Matelot70 said:

We will then be able to conduct a clinical trial to see if the quinine in tonic water prevents Covid.

 

 

New data suggests red wine not G&T's- but you can still test that.  Red wine wards off coronavirus but not beer, according to new research (msn.com)

4 hours ago, Matelot70 said:

Doing this update on my mobile as we enter Lisbon as I cannot get reliable Internet in my cabin on my Dell laptop, my wife's iPad,  her iPhone or my Samsung. I think the Internet has also been problematic because of the late change to Lisbon.

 

>>> So the Internet on a ship has two parts- the Wi-Fi and the Satellite.   Ships are mostly metal and Wi-Fi signals are effectively blocked by metal.  And the Wi-Fi service was added on later.  You might find some random spot in the cabin that gets coverage.  Leaving the door propped open a bit (possibly unpopular) can help.  Or find a nice seat someplace on the ship else with good Wi-Fi signal.  The satellite link on the QM2 is for some reason quite pokey.  

 

We will then be able to conduct a clinical trial to see if the quinine in tonic water prevents Covid.

 

>>> Keep us posted on your results.  You will need to have a control group that only drinks ale to use as a baseline.  You could set up a study- divide the passengers up.  More medical paperwork would be popular.   

 

>>>Lovely review and we are all following along.  

42 minutes ago, castlegetaway said:

Thanks for your review. It all sounds great. We are scheduled for the Meraviglia January 23 rd and are doing the 4 day back to back following. This is also our first time on MSC. Glad you enjoyed your trip and thanks again for sharing.

Sandy and Rick

Lovely review.  What did they say on back to backs- how hard is it in terms of testing?  

There is a new, excellent big-name literature review out on COVID transmission.  Breathing, speaking, coughing or sneezing: What drives transmission of SARS‐CoV‐2? - Stadnytskyi - 2021 - Journal of Internal Medicine - Wiley Online Library  I was reading away, and it said this:  "Indeed, the literature appears devoid of SSEs in settings such as libraries or movie theatres..."  SSE= Super Spreader Events.  The idea is loud voices and singing seem to be risky.  But two of my favorite Cunard things- lectures and the library seem entirely safe.  The article goes on to say droplets and aerosols are a range and not separate things. 

The unfairly IMHO maligned buffet is again spared.  Elevator buttons are fine.  But shouting in a noisy venue - not so much.    The big lecture hall on QM2- the speaker is way at the bottom of the room.  Watery particles mostly fall.  If I was in charge, could meals be served under an awning up under the funnel on QM2?    Outdoors, the famed tables for eight could possibly be OK.  It says the risk of spread outdoors is an order of magnitude lower.  

1 hour ago, LGW59 said:

If so, then that is funny!

Yes we are just about shut down- but don't worry 🙂 

The new 8.5/11 NCL brochure arrived in the mail.  "Feel Free to Take a Peek at Your Next Vacation."  I notice no one in any photo is wearing a mask and the black stack smoke has been carefully airbrushed away.   I get it these were printed in October, but my reading of the Lanham Act of 1946 Lanham Act - Wikipedia would seem to indicate these should have gone to the recycling and not the post office.     

On 12/30/2021 at 3:36 PM, Fayecruises said:

ok so why don;t they care about the airlines and hotels  I am sure people are getting sick on the airlines and the airlines do not require vaccines or test when you fly domestically   Only an Id

Airlines require masks and have highly filtered cabin air at each seat.  This has been highly effective in reducing droplet and aerosol (?) spread.   MSC has stated they have now shut off A/C recirculation in public areas.    We went on a driving trip and found avoiding crowds in hotels was very easy.  I used to complain about the noisy, drafty single unit A/C / heating units commonly found in each room- no more 🙂 

Maybe Cunard could find a supplier of KN-95 masks with the logo in the colors of your loyalty level.  The ones I have found this week look like you have been out chipping paint or sanding bulkheads.  

Thanks for all you do to maintain civility and decorum.  Ideally, Cunard views us a supportive fan club, and we can gently coach them in some areas.   The modern rules of public relations state the more you tell your online followers the more they will rally around you in times of crisis.  

2 minutes ago, chengkp75 said:

I think you are taking the idea of a "free port" too literally.  There are no ports that are not part of a sovereign nation, and subject to their laws.  There are "free ports", but this simply means that there is a "customs free" area, where cargo can be landed for transshipment on another ship without paying customs duty for landing the cargo.

I was thinking of your favorite rant, the crews stuck on ships who cannot get home.  But yes the term "free port" is most related to trade restrictions.  

The cruise industry faces a few problems this week.  One is that the current generation of ships are designed to pack a lot of people and crew into limited space.  This is at odds with trying to battle airborne droplet-based illnesses.  There is no practical way to social distance in the crew quarters as an example, with double cabins etc.  

The other is there are few if any "free ports" - you always have a government.  In a few cases these have been established by treaty or force- Gibraltar might be one.   If the cruise or shipping industry had one or two someplace, they could get passengers and crew off and on more readily.  This way they could operate, and not worry as much if XYZ government wants no possibly sick people to approach.    You would think some island or coastal nation someplace would sign a lenient port /airport lease in return for cash and jobs. 

The third is setting unrealistic expectations.  Will, this week, everything be perfect and back to 2019?   If I was watching ads and had a six-page list of activities and amenities I was paying for, I'd be upset or to use our favorite loaded word out here, disappointed.  

The next few weeks are going to be bad for cruising, despite every effort by the lines.  I have to commend Cunard- it sounds like they are doing their very best.  I would say it is time for Cunard to suspend an important industry practice.  I am not talking about formal nights or Edwardian Internet service- but the whole 120 day locked-in booking payment system.  If it is a bad idea to board a ship for the next three (?) weeks- cancel at will is a good idea.   If you announce the experience will be degraded - they may decide to stay home.  In a month or so, it should be back to the new normal.  

This is a version of what is done for NORO outbreaks- if it is bad- there is a bit of a pause then carefully resume.