Seacruise

Well this is interesting. Since my old password had all the requirements I tried it as my "new" password and it was accepted. Go figure.... RCI IT at its best.

That is the policy. No exemption. International waters do not apply. It can be argued that why is the drinking age 21 on cruises to Alaska from Vancouver yet the drinking age is 19 in Canadian waters? It is to make things simple. Watch the signs go up as the ship approaches Alaska waters warning you if you buy/provide anyone under 21 a drink you will be prosecuted under State Law. If you want to further complicate matters the age onboard a ship from Europe to North America is 18 but going to Europe it is 21 even from San Juan PR (the drinking age there is 18) to Europe is 21. The cruise lines are trying to simplify things but many want the exceptions. I can further attest to this on a Royal cruise from San Juan to Europe I had my 19 year old daughter with me. I just assumed that since the ship left San Juan the age would be 18. About day 4 a waiter in the schooner Bar came up to me and said I better not be giving my daughter drinks or they will report me and have us removed at the next port. I was on the next cruise in Europe from Spain and the age changed to 18 and the top deck now was a topless deck. I made a point t buy drinks in the same bar but not from the waiter that had told me otherwise.

It depends on where you are sailing. Here it is: ALCOHOL POLICY The minimum age to consume alcohol on Royal Caribbean ships on sailings originating in North America or the Caribbean is twenty-one (21). The minimum age to consume alcohol on Royal Caribbean ships on sailings originating in South America, Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand is eighteen (18).

Just off the phone with my TA a few minutes before I posted this. If I had not told him what special I was looking for then he would have to price each one and in my case there were 5. In Canada we have specials you will not see in the USA such as CAD at Par or reduced rate. Resident rates for BC especially for Alaska that can be lower than GGG rates. So if one knows this help out your TA to save time. Since the question was asked by a Canadian I answered it as one.

You can either book online or through your Travel Agent. Tell your TA that you are looking at the Going Going Gone sale. Just remember this that your are booking a GTY Cabin in what ever category you see a price in.

For those in Canada in Canadian Dollars the link is: https://creative.rccl.com/Sales/Royal/Promotions/rci_sales_ggg_CAD.pdf

I think you missed my point. Yes everyone should have heard of him. The point is how many prizes have ever been given out for reaching 10000. I suspect none before.

This is likely that no one has seen one before because no one has reached 10,000 before. 😁

Simple solution here if doing a longer cruise: Starlink in Canada is selling refurbished dishes for $250 CAD. Buy one pack in your suitcase order an extension chord from the ship and set it up on your balcony and it will pay for itself. Really want to have it paid for take it up to the upper decks complete with extension chord and sell time blocks to your fellow passengers. I am sure it won't be long before Princess has this written in the cruise contract saying you can't bring a dish with you. 😮

This is not true for those of us from Canada. You see Princess has an Office here in Canada (Vancouver) and the Supreme Court of BC ruled a few years back that because of this cases can be filed in BC. The cruise contract does not apply as to Florida etc. The weird thing in this is HAL also has a Office here and Carnival does not. The one thing is you may want to check on this and see if something has changed. The downside it is very hard to sue for this type of thing in Canada.

I have been cruising to Alaska for almost 40 years. The Volendam is taking the true inside passage right now. HAL has not gone to the larger ships because of the ability of the smaller ships to take routes such as this where Sapphire can not sail this route. This morning I noticed Sapphire had slowed to 7 knots and had 5.1M waves. The webcam did not look well when it worked. My other half is currently on the Volendam and messaged me a short time ago and said the outside decks are still closed even though it isn't rough. I suspect this is because once they pass by Calvert Island they will be entering open water for a couple of hours. Very few ships today do the true inside passage. What the cruise lines call inside passage and what it really is are two different things. When cruises first started out of Seattle they called that first day inside passage. There was nothing inside about that route as the ships were in the open Pacific Ocean. In this case it is all about size and size matters.

I was in the Airforce also trained Flight Safety Officer. I took several videos of these rescues around the world. I used them to look at the technique used and to pass on the Pilots where I lived so we they are doing different and why they do it that way. It is used as a teaching tool. It further shows that you are in good hands if you ever need that service. That is what I do with the video.

Your should try having 2 middle names and cruising and flying. There are not enough spaces to add my second middle name, it just cuts it off. So the solution to this is to put my names in all as one name putting capital letters for the middle names. This causes problems because those pesky document readers refuse the passport because it doesn't match the name on the ticket. I can't check-in for a flight because they now want you to scan your passport with the "app" and thus no go. The next problem for me is with my Nexus Card. You see the different government systems shorten my second middle name as well. Scan my Nexus card and proceed and I am always asked for further documents. Once I tell what the problem is they say oh yea heard about this and away you go. You would think in this day and age it would be an easy fix but nooo. I started to notice this problem just prior to covid, it was not like this even after 911. Oh yes a TA is almost of no help because they never really understand the problem. I had a problem 13 months ago flying to a cruise. The TA called and the airline said we do it this way and so the TA allowed it. Got to check-in and was denied boarding. Thankfully I have family who works for said Airline and the Base Managers name. After I asked the agent to contact the Base Manager the supervisor over heard me and came over and over rode the system to allow me to continue. They don't make it easy.

I have run a page on the Panama Canal for 25 years. This is how I understand the problem as of now NCL contributed a large amount of money to help build a dock in Fuerte Amador which would allow them to base a ship year round in Panama. The new cruise terminal was not finished when NCL started the sailings. Passengers used the Convention Centre to check-in and were bused to the dock. Now this cruise a cruise that would start on the Pacific side and head up the coast then come back down to transit the canal and end in Colon. The next cruise would start in Colon and then finish in Fuerte Amador. During this time the President of Panama apparently told NCL they had to use a certain company to get fuel services from not the company they had contracted from. The prices were higher and it was said that there was possibly some sort of exchange of money going on. This extra cost and the higher Port fees caused NCL to pull out earlier this year and not return. I suspect that NCL took a hit on money paid for the new port as a result as well as all the cruises that got cancelled. I suspect that RCL will be able to get fuel in the ABC's weekly and not have to get fuel in Panama to avoid this. In some cases the port taxes for a Panama Canal cruise is almost the same cost as the cruise.

I get most of my emails from the cruise-line itself. Recently Princess has had CAD at Par with USD which makes it 35% off for us. The next one is there has been 0% to 10% single supp as well. I got an email a few days back for Alaska in August for $199 PP which had NO single supp for an inside. On top of this there was $100 OBC plus $100 Military Credit as well. The only thing I was paying for was port taxes minus $1. I would have taken this one but it got back the day before I needed to be to board to board a ship I already have booked. Oh yes this price lasted about 1 hour before it was gone. When this happens you have to be able to book now as you are into final payment. The real interest9ng part of the email was Princess wanted about $1300 PP to do the 14 round-trip or $199 each way. The downside was you had to change cabins in Alaska.

I have been going to Alaska for 40 years now. Since I live in Vancouver I can board a ship on very short notice and very cheap. I am known to book 2 days before the cruise, this does pose it's own problems when you get onboard the ship. When ships were much smaller the ships route would take the true inside passage that follows the BC Ferries Route passing places like Namu, Bella Bella, Denny Island up to Prince Rupert. If you were lucky and got to sail by Alert Bay you were in for a real treat as this place the most Totem poles around. There was the young native guy that would come out along the ship with a Canadian Flag and play the trumpet. The larger ships of today can not go this route. When ships started out of Seattle the original routing would say first day sail the inside passage. I am sorry but sailing west of Vancouver Island is the Pacific Ocean not sheltered at all. It can be damn rough out there at anytime of the year. So does ship size matter, Yes it does. There is a move to try and get a ballot measure in Juneau to limit the size of ships. There are many reasons for this such as residents not being able to cross the Bridge from Douglas Island in a timely manner for residents to get to work or shop. There is also the matter of the day when a major accident happens either on land or sea as there just isn't the capacity to deal with it. It is even worse in Skagway as the only way into there is from Whitehorse almost 2 hours away. The airport is too small to deal with things like Coast Guard C-130 to help. Holland America had the right size of ship to do the true inside passage. Princess followed with Island/Coral and then NCL was a close behind with the Norwegian Wind then Royal came out with Radiance Class and Celebrity with Millennium class. This year I have only see a couple of voyages from HAL that have gone up the inside passage. Here is a photo from a few years back that shows the ice in Glacier Bay while I was on the very first cruise of the season on Carnival Miracle. Two ships the week before coming from Asia had to bypass Glacier Bay. That is a lot of ice and trust me we even went further in the bay to turn around. The larger ships of today are doing a disservice to the Alaska Cruise and it's true beauty.

The second one was new Zealand to Vancouver. The first was San Francisco to Fort Lauderdale.

It was May of 2022 and April 2023. I would consider either of these covid times.

One was with Princess and one was with HAL. Both had the same results.

Consider yourself lucky. I have done 2 cruises in the past year and one that was 40 days. I had one choice and that was morning. The room steward explained it like this, the number of cabins he now cleans went from 21 to 31 so there is no time for twice a day service.

How is it different? Not enough crew means a supply problem. If there isn't enough food then it means a supply problem. The way to deal with it is through cutbacks such as less service or smaller portions or charge for an item.

Something like going back to morning and evening Room Attendant service....😁

It amazes me that many have not learned a thing about covid and supply problems. The supply problems still exist today especially in the cruise industry. Having my other half who works in the industry supply two of the major brands with food/supplies I have heard the stories. There are many factors that play into this. If the supplier can't get it then they can't send it or if they can get a small amount they send that. Food orders have to be submitted 88 days before sail date. This is in order so the company hopefully has enough time to get the requested items. I will give you examples. Bird Flu went through Canada and the US recently. Eggs could not be shipped from the US to Canada or Canada to the US because of this. This would include items onboard a ship. Now that the new California Law on Pork will soon take effect this will cause Pork problems onboard ships from California. There has been Beef problems as well due to low cattle count because of high prices. I recently did a transpacific cruise where we ran out of many food items 5 days before our next port. The reason was 3 or 4 containers of food never made it to Sydney due to shortages. This past winter Yuma AZ which is the lettuce capital of North America in the winter had to give up planting 2 crop cycles due to shortage of water. How do we replace that? All Salmon fishery on the west coast was put on hold until a week or so back. The only Salmon available was farmed. King Crab fishery is closed for at least another year. King Crab from Argentina/Chile has been brought north but people are not liking it because it is more spiny than the Alaska crab. The Lobster fishery is the same on the east coast. So how does a cruise line solve this, either stop it all together or charge for it hoping that discourages passengers from asking for 2. This is just a small sample of what is done to replenish a ship.

This link you provided shows personal information that you may now want on the internet. Most emails are linked to ones account no matter what it is. With the information on this email I can get your address etc with a couple of minutes.

I just returned last month from the Noordam 39 day TP cruise Because of this policy we bought water days before the cruise to be in the cabin. It was suppose to be in cans but was in glass bottles. The problem came that the bottles had a high salt count which we tried to find out prior to leaving what the contents of the water was they were selling. Having said this the bottled water with the salt was horrible. The water on the ship also tasted "off" even from the water fountain in the Lido. Since the Noordam was last inspected was July 2019 it was interesting when we arrived in Hilo we were due for Coast Guard inspection and the CDC inspection at the same time. The Food and Beverage Manager managed to have the CDC inspection put off until the next day in Honolulu. The Noordam scored it's lowest score ever at 90. While I would not normally be bothered by this score it was what the fails were. They were related to dish-washing and water. What was interesting was going up to the Lido that morning brought a few surprises such as paper plates, paper coffee cups. The reason turned out that the lido dishwasher was not up to the task of dish-washing. All dishes had to be rewashed by another dishwasher. The other thing that was noticed all the water being sold at the gangway when we were in port was in plastic bottles. This wasn't left over water because of the policy change, as we were told that it is very hard to get water in cartons, tins or bottles in some countries. Having said all this a few years back I listened to a presentation here in Canada about bottled water. There is almost no jurisdiction North America that regulates bottled water. There are no rules on how often filters should be changed and what amounts of salt and other minerals can be added to bottled water. What I am saying you are dammed if you do and dammed if you don't try and look after your health bringing water on-board. It is also a simple money grab for some cruise;lines like HAL.