NutsAboutGolf

Stumbled upon another youtuber who didn't like the X burger, this is a Margaritaville cruises which he said was a bad burger yet somehow (see below)

Congrats and thanks for sharing

I was told by two reps from the Capt's Club they're no longer stackable; I'm just one datapoint, let's see what others say

Must be because I do not have an active paid account. I do see an in app setting, guessing once you sign up for a paid account that system setting of location appears

I’ve never used YouTube tv but have been considering it…YouTube TV and YouTube Music do not have a location setting on the iPhone iOS 17 yet the regular YouTube app does. So it would appear it’s pulling the location from Starlink location or the vpn location if the vpn is enabled. Like @Jim_Iain said, popular servers can be blacklisted; it’s like a game of cat and mouse

It's super pricey if one is interested in saving some cash, on the morning of your cruise, do a beach wedding with a Justice of the Peace around Miami with your bare feet in the sand which can be done for well under a grand We met a couple who did this on a Carnival sailing, I would imagine its against most cruise lines' rules; join social media groups with your sailing and ask if anyone is a Justice of the Peace and see if they're willing to marry you for a fee on a port day when the ship is semi-empty. The couple told us they offered to do it for free but they ended up giving them $100 anyway

I cruise on X near-monthly and therefore am on a lot of FB groups including sail date specific. You can see complaints in real-time and some posts about the survey. Some indeed have gone out of their way to post glowing reviews because "despite food quality going down, I don't want to get anyone in trouble" and/or "the crew works so hard"

A lot of them are travel agents or are affiliated with travel agents and therefore focus on cruise news with daily/near-daily videos. I find former crew member Jay, from TheShipLife which is affiliated with a travel agent, gives the most honest review (he does a lot of cruise news videos as well). In his reviews, he calls out the cruise lines on anything. Those are the reviews that bring value. Some people apparently enjoy a half-hour long video claiming that everything is perfect

Always curious where the location is. On the Greenland and Iceland cruise, shortly after we left the Eastern Canadian Port of St John, it switched to the U.K. We expected the location to change yet the U.K. location was unexpected

When you do a speed test, what location is appearing?

Any idea if this REPLACED deal or no deal?

They have SOFT serve ice cream but not SELF serve in the buffet (crew served) and to add, the gelato is not free except for those with status receive one free scope per sailing

Never ate at Luminae but this has been the case in experience in the MDR and Blu on all ships including the Beyond this year. Poultry is always overcooked sometimes by a shocking amount that it made it out of the kitchen. In Blu, often the M'D comes by every table and they'll usually ask how dinner is going, if you mention any complaint about the food quality it seems their routine dismissive answer is something along the lines of "We have a lot of new crew in the kitchen this sailing". Also, if we find an entree overcooked rather than ask for another one we consider it a lost cause for that night and ask for a different dish

Feels like a "Expectation" vs "Reality" meme...lol

You can often save a bit if you use the site www.hotwire.com which is an Expedia site

Agree with @kwokpot on the hotel and shuttle. Most of the hotel-to-cruise ship shuttles are for a fee/per person and run by a third party. Uber or Lyft is the superior choice

Completely understood. If X removed the coffee, laundry, and wifi benefits a week before your sailing, would you pay for them? That's one of my points that people weren't paying for these benefits before they got them for free. The other point is how little it really costs X to provide these benefits. I hear at the martini bar time and time again from a bartender/server "We lose money on every drink package we sell". From an X revenue perspective, that's simply not true since X doesn't pay alcohol suppliers retail prices; what they really mean is compared to a pay-per-drink basis which very few heavy drinkers would be willing to pay for

A sailing over a major holiday

Or even better, invite her to join your party for a dinner in the MDR...She'll probably wince at that thought...lol

Of course, loyalty programs cost money the question is always how much should they spend (rhetorical)? It's clear Zeniths earned those benefits even if they booked insides exclusively which would mean they spent 4.1 years sailing on X (1,500/365). With Elites and above on X during happy hour, you could do damage but even if you manage to order a dozen well drinks per night, how much is that really costing X? 12 vodka-based drinks is like half a bottle of vodka that most likely costs X less than $10. Based on conversations with X cruisers, every elite I've talked to would never pay out of pocket for laundry service or pressing but utilize it if it's free. You would have to imagine the same for pax with elite plus free coffees and the 5-7 happy hour. So a person willing to slam down 12 drinks during elite happy hour most likely wouldn't have paid on a per-drink basis Delta is just one airline yet in your example with only 3 of 16 upgrades, the numbers are a moot point because even if a plane had 48 biz class seats and the airline had 10% pax load, if they're all purchased outright, then there's no seats left to upgrade. Part of the points/miles "game" is finding flights with availability whether that's booking at a different time/day or booking a flight with a layover. For example, LAX is my closest airport and I'm buried on the upgrade list for long hauls. I have far better luck booking a flight with a SFO connection as for whatever reason their business class always seems to be half-full

As I've said in another thread, upgrades are alive and well even if peasants like me who are #30 on the upgrade list don't get them, the airlines are still GIVING out upgrades to those with the top status. Airline upgrades often take their cheapest option like a coach and upgrade them to the most expensive option like business class often costing the airline at least 5x. Since X and other cruise lines do not have an inside room to sky suite free upgrade list, it's pointless to make it complicated to add status requirements like "spend" or an expiration. Additionally, folks knock inside rooms a bit but you only earn 2 CC per night meaning to make Zenith, you'd need to have sailed 1,500 nights which is under 5 years at sea. X has made enough profit off them to throw them a benefits package that costs them very little. However, I wouldn't be surprised if X changes their loyalty program to better benefit themselves

Pre-Always/All Included X offered various packages with a certain number of perks. However, if you booked an inside room, X would only allow you to buy one or two perks so AI touted that one could book any room with AI. X most likely removed tips from AI because if you buy the internet or drink package, X is selling that at "whole sale" but that isn't the case with tipping as it costs them the same amount a customer pays. Also, if one books a sailing a year or years in advance, they lock in current tipping amounts which are immune to increases. Yes, when cruise lines increase tipping amounts they give you a warning but I'd imagine not that many both to pay the lesser amount right now to save a few bucks

For whatever reason, most cruise lines including X, want to reward folks after their very first sailing so I do not see the lower status disappearing but perhaps there is a shuffle of statuses and there are now only two lower tiers vs three. Airlines make the most profit from business travel so it's understandable and a somewhat moot point what they think about regular customers. With that being said, airlines shoot themselves in the foot by offering low-profit products in the first place. I try to churn airline points/miles wherever possible but it is quite difficult with cruises since you have very little flexibility with the date range. Yet it is still possible to find some good deals/redemptions with a stopover

I was on the Beyond this past May, in and out of the Rome port, the shows were 730 and 930. While I was told that was always the case on European sailing, perhaps that's not accurate. Yet on the one sailing I was on it was 730 & 930

There isn't any deception, they hope some find their content valuable enough to subscribe. Kids these days no longer want to be firemen but rather full time influencer aka make enough money to live off of for making videos, can we really blame them? Personally, j made 45 seconds into the video and didn't like how it was presented