TheOldBear

As a practical matter, the ship for each example will be 'zeroed out' at the NYC or SF stops. (all passengers and crew except for designated watchstanders must be off the ship).

So folks sailing [for example] Quebec back to Quebec will need to go ashore in NYC for the 'zeroing out' and only re embark once everyone is accounted for. Some folks will just wait in the terminal, others will use the turn around day for an excursion. The 'in transit' passengers can board anytime they want to after the zero out is completed, no need to wait for new passengers embarking for the NYC to Quebec sailing.

Probably that level of service would soon be replaced my Musk's Starlink service

37 minutes ago, ROYALBOY said:

We have a balcony guarantee for the Aug 15 TA. Does anyone have experience... are they generous or do they give you the dregs? 

The upgrade fairy works in mysterious ways. Back in 2017 [M733B] our table mates booked an inside guarantee, and were upgraded to Q4 [they still elected to have dinner in Britannia].

I recall back in 2010 on a  New England / Canada cruise, my wife and I were sharing a Kings Court table with a elderly British lady who missed all the afternoon teas on her westbound crossing -  and all the other Queens Room activities. No one for the past nine days had mentioned that the Queen’s Room was not exclusive to Queen’s Grill passengers.

It looks like singles now have a better welcome and attention from the hotel staff than ten years ago.

11 hours ago, iamtrustworthy said:

Hi TheOldBear,

 

What are your current ages?

 

Steve Dasseos

62 & 72

After a brief discussion with folks on your hotline, I decided to go with the SE plan - primary medical coverage .

Last year, I had Travel Insured cover my QM2 med center claims as 'secondary'. My primary carrier was [and still is Cigna] with a policy that will not cover outside of north america [they denied everything, needed to get the 'denied' paperwork to TI to process the claim]

Other than TI showing on the quote form of $25 for primary coverage, is there any downside for making it 'primary'??

I'm hoping to avoid any med center visits, but insurance is all about 'just in case' - $50 seems reasonable for less paperwork / expedited reimbursement.

34 minutes ago, drsel said:

How many grand production shows do they have on each transatlantic leg and are the shows repeated on the return journey?

 

So called “production” shows are usually only one or two nights, with other features for the rest of the crossing. When the NSO is on board, there are two live concerts.

Our only disappointment was for the 2017 westbound, there was an English stand up comic who appeared to have been a couple of decades past his ‘best used by’ date ( mass exodus about 15 minutes into his act”

1 hour ago, navybankerteacher said:

They both follow the economic great circle route- although Titanic’s would have been slightly different having sailed from Cork as her last port.   I believe there is som repetition on the menus - though they usually have a broader selection than other mass market lines - so I would not see it as a problem.

I recall hearing that the non wold cruise menu has a 45 day repeat interval for the main dining room. Some entrees may repeat more frequently but not the entire menu.

The standard routing is great circle, but when there are diversions for weather there is a magic of speed available to make up the time.

We used Cunard’s tour twice (American sector in 2017; Juno & Sword last year). 
 

If Princess uses the same operator, then I would recommend that.

The cost was about $20 higher than Overlord’s bus tour, but made up for that by including a very nice lunch.

3 hours ago, babs135 said:

On formal nights can you change into something more casual if you are simply visiting the nightclub?  

G32 is one of the ‘casual’ venues,

Our two most recent [2017 & 2019] were round trip transatlantic crossings - our upcoming cruise [Sept 2021] is another round trip, visiting Southampton, Rotterdam, Brussels & Cherbourg  

We choose this option as we are local to the Brooklyn terminal [no airplanes, rolls or bridges] and have always found the ship and other passengers the main attraction as a vacation.

Just booked today - -  450 days to go

8 minutes ago, bigrednole said:

The people I know that have had it had no fever, no coughing, no sneezing. I take their REALITY over anything the government or hospitals are saying. Yes it is a small sample size but it is a direct and factual.

Right asymptomatic ; no fever, coughing, sneezing - what risks to they present of infecting other folks in casual situations? 

If there is coughing or sneezing involved, it is symptomatic transmission [the sort of stuff that masks may prevent by trapping the liquid glop in the cough or sneeze]. 

Note that some activities [e.g. singing in a chorus or choir] has been implicated as singers typically move a lot of air. [Mrs Bear's Sweet Adelines chorus does not know when it will be safe to restart in person rehearsals]

On a lighter note, an XKCD comic [March 6th] on casual vs intimate contact  

2 minutes ago, bigrednole said:

I will wear a mask if it is required. This has nothing to do with self focusing. Do a test yourself and see how quickly your body temperature can get simply by mild exercise. A temperature check will do NOTHING to stop Covid 19. Most people have absolutely no symptoms from it. 

I would like to see some data about the COVID 19 'asymptomatic carrier' hypothesis.

Early in the pandemic [March] there was an anecdote about asymptomatic spread in Germany referenced in a few papers [that were in turn later used to establish policies] with one carrier infecting work colleagues before returning to Wuhan.

It turns out that they were not asymptomatic - and were self medicating with over the counter cold medication, but still occasionally coughing. 

USAA uses Travel Insured as their carrier [via USAA General]

For last fall's crossing, I bought TravelInsured via the TripInsurance Store web site.  I had a medical claim [QM2 med center] against the policy, and the Travel Insured web site displayed a USAA banner.

Back in 2008 I bought travel insurance from the USAA web site, and the carrier was Travel Insured - it looks like that account linkage is persistent.

5 hours ago, MCC retired said:

Last time it was $40p/p per day or  $105p/p for 6 days .

 

Rumor has it that the Spa is due to be redone @ Nov 2020  drydock. Really needs it as nothing was done to it during the big drydock a few years ago.

 

Hopefully more than just rebranding [canyon ranch is still the concession - but 'Mareel' [or something like that] is the planned brand name].

As far as I could tell there were no updates since my first QM2 sailing in 2008 [another passenger said since 2005 as we were trying to find a working/empty locker].

• This past fall, the normal steam room was out of service - turns out there is another, smaller one via a normally locked door. 
• Back in 2017 there was a pool closure on the westbound crossing while the overhead near the hot tun was replaced.

The spa day pass is mostly for the pool and surrounding ‘thermal suite’ spaces. Pricing is tiered - I recall in 2010 it was actually cheaper for a three day pass than a two day pass.

If you are planning on other spa services (massage) use of the pool is included for the day of the service.

10 hours ago, bunny76 said:

We are considering booking the Canyon Ranch Spa on QM2 for Transatlantic voyage in winter as we wonder if the swimming pools would be open /too cold,? .... but does anyone know if the  Spa hydrotherapy pool is deep enough to actually swim in please? (We wouldn't want any  Spa treatments so won't book if the hydrotherapy pool is not suitable for swimming)

The hydrotherapy pool is not really suitable for swimming - there are water jets, aeration & fixed structures (loungers) in the pool.

The deck 12 'Pavilion' pool is enclosed and heated. 

On a 2017 crossing, a few hardy souls were using the deck 8 hot tubs - despite force 11 winds closing the deck 7 access to the promenade. This of course was much warmer than I would expect for a winter crossing.

Typically, a crossing will have three Gala / formal nights, with two of them “theme” nights. Themes include “Royal Ascot” (fancy hats), Masquerade, Black and White, and possibly others.

The voyage personalizer should list the theme nights - so folks on the Roll Call may already know what is scheduled.

1 hour ago, ren0312 said:

So why are a lot of US Navy ships like the Arleigh Burke, OHP, and Ticonderoga classes COGAG? They do not do 30 knots all day and more often cruise at a slower 15 knots or so, from what I know.

The FFG-7 and DD963 and its derivatives [and I assume the DDG51 - but that is after my time] used two gas turbines [GE LM2500] per shaft, coupled to reduction gear to controllable pitch propellors. Since the turbines only provide propulsion, there is no 'CO' acronym.

The FGG's had four, one megawatt diesel generators for electrical loads, including a pair of 350 hp 'outboard motors' or APUs that could be extended from the hull just beneath the bridge. These did not work quite as intended, so I normally had the port one facing forward, and the starboard one facing right and just started and stopped as needed to position the bow for docking.

An interesting feature of the controllable pitch propellor is that by flipping the propellor's pitch from full ahead to full astern, you can bring the ship from flank speed to dead in the water within the length of the ship. Every new FFG7 skipper seemed to try that at least once 😉

I think the DDG 1000 [Zumwalt class] have an integrated electrical system, allowing for future directed energy weapons. This would be a good thing as the Navy decided to not buy any ammo for the so called 'advanced gun system'.

2 hours ago, donaldsc said:

CODAG????   COGAG???  Please provide a translation for those of us who are ignorant.

 

DON

CODAG = COmbined Diesel And Gas turbine

This is for ships like the Queen Mary 2 - both the main propulsion diesels [four big engines ] and the LM2500 gas turbines directly drive generators. This provides power to the ship's propellors [Rolls Royce 'Mermaid' pods] and all the 'hotel' loads [air conditioning, water makers, lights, elevators, galleys ....] via a husky electrical switchboard.

There are advantages to having multiple prime movers - during an eastbound crossing a few years back one of the diesels was offline for scheduled maintenance - but the only impact was burning the more expensive gas turbine fuel ['marine gas oil'] in one of the gas turbines instead of the cheaper fuel used by the big diesels .

There used to be some ships that had direct geared CODAG configurations - these were mechanically troublesome. The only one  I recall in US service was the Hamilton Class 'High Endurance' Coast Guard cutter.  

I followed a few links this morning and found https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/05/15/good-news-on-the-human-immune-response-to-the-coronavirus

So, it appears possible that there will shortly be an effective vaccine.

As a baseline as to what is possible, the 1957 "Hong Kong" flu vaccine went from start of project to 40 million doses distributed in about 4 months [likely because there were not as many lawyers back then]

14 hours ago, calliopecruiser said:

I believe there are fewer vaccines against bacterial diseases than against viral diseases, but there is a "plague vaccine" against Y.pestis. 

In was in the list of shots I received as part of a Navy 'pre deployment' package in 1981 & 82 [three shot series]. These were done with a needle, most of the 'shots' were air injector.

47 minutes ago, navybankerteacher said:

The post to which I responded stated only that “... 16.7% of the RESIDENTS tested positive...”— it said nothing about the percentage of the TESTS which were positive, which leaves the meaning unclear.  If everyone had been tested we would have a meaning: that 83.3% tested negative.   If only 16.7% of the residents  had been tested - it would mean that 100% OF THOSE TESTED were positive and none OF THOSE TESTED were negative.  

 

So, I would say that showing that anywhere between 0% and 83.3% tested negative is kind of meaningless.

On demand antibody testing just became available this week. This test [along with a NY State testing effort] focusing on the asymptomatic provides a measurement of what sort of 'herd immunity' is developing. 

What has been discovered is there are orders of magnitude more folks exposed [have antibodies] than have tested positive for the virus. This is actually good news. [I will be getting a test at LabCorp or CityMD this week or next]

Step one is checking with the cruise line.

While your desired stop is a major port, they may not have made any arrangements for disembarking passengers.