Moonarino

Way back in the spring of 2020 I found two conflicting articles on the NIH web regarding cloth masks. That was and is the gist of the problem (for all of us) right there, not to mention even earlier conflicting words. But yes cruise pax make their own choices and at this point it's theirs (and mine) to make. Edit to add, just an FYI, the local VA hospital has never allowed visitors to enter the facility wearing cloth masks. They had (and maybe still have) people at all entrances checking the type of mask one was wearing. They had (and have?) their own approved masks ready to give to anybody wearing the wrong kind.

Exactly. We really don't know what we might be missing until we can see it before our eyes in black and white. If they want to confine the "daily" entirely to the app (although as @candersonalluded, can we trust the app that much?), there needs to be a dedicated "button" for it in the app. @PTC DAWG, I'm very much a wanderer too (often explore half the ship on embarkation day) but for some things we need a serial source of information, one day to the next, what's new today or tomorrow.

One thing (among a few) that I missed in my last cruise or two was "where the heck is the outdoor movie schedule??" I never could find that anywhere, no idea what I missed. I used top know exactly where to look in the daily paper thing. Of course I don't cruise to watch movies on the big screen(s) but I've caught a couple of really good ones over the past several years. For the time being I'm wondering what else I've missed because they didn't think to put it in the app yet, or maybe it's mysteriously/randomly hidden under one of the category buttons at the bottom of the app. Until they figure all of that out, I would really like to have the option of the paper schedule/info sheet.

Yeah I realized later that I should've mentioned that, as @candersonsaid somewhere up the page. Screenshots don't rely on anything except whether the phone itself is working or not.

I've been wondering if the app downloads copies of such documents locally to the phone. That would be a good idea, in case one can't get connectivity. But if the app misbehaves just because it can't get a connection or successful login, it might not matter anyway. Go Paper. (Heh. NOT "paperless".)

Renewals (not expired) are the quickest turn-around. But in no case should it be expected to take more than 2 months. A few months ago I had to get a replacement "consular report of birth abroad" for a family member, and even that complicated process only took a couple of months. In case you haven't seen this on the State.gov website, you'll need to submit your current passport with the renewal application. (I also renewed ours 3 years ago and had to do that.)

@dlh015, yep, that's exactly my problem. Thanks a bunch for the tip! And yeah I was thinking the same thing, about having to restore from backups. That would explain why my email address change "didn't work". Well it probably did till last night, when that change was (probably) overwritten from old backups. I'm sure you'll agree that IT life never gets boring lol . . . . . even in retirement it can still be a huge "adventure" for me. (Edit to add) I pretty much did at least a little bit of all of it, from design to cabling, programming, email server build-&-admin, to budgeting, contracts and risk analysis. Lots of job security in that industry, at least for those who can take the pressure.

There ya go. Witness yesterday's mega-corporate IT outage.

I think there are just a variety of lingering residual problems right now, after a massive IT outage that sometimes (more and more these days) takes a while to settle down again -- because of all the interconnectivity, widespread data replication and so on. I posted late yesterday that i wouldn't trust the X (or RCI) web for a while and I still think that's appropriate advice. Or at least go back tomorrow and confirm whatever was done today or last night. I did my check-in today but I will verify it all later . . . . . I noticed today in my Order History that one of my "AI" packages has been "cancelled". What?!? It's a freebie (well sort of), so I might need to call X to get that straightened out. Maybe next week.

And what happens when the phone breaks? LOL . . . although not funny because my camera mysteriously quit working 2 days ago. Paper always works. But for @ShelleyQT, yes the folks from baggage collectors to terminal counters can do pretty much everything for us as we need it. That's one reason why they're still there. And I want to say thanks for asking this kind of question.

Another scary thing is stuff like Amazon Web Services (there are many others like it), huge Internet services shared by lots of websites around the world. It's entirely possible for one corporate problem to get pushed to places outside that company. I'm guessing that didn't happen in this case, but who knows for sure because that kind of thing almost never gets publicized. "IoT", the Internet of Things, get more mysterious every day. Edit to add, sorry for the buzzkill lol . . . . .

Certainly. As a former IT Pro I'm just of the mind that there were residual issues after the site(s) came back up. And an email address change that I had done on X two days ago had never actually taken. My old email still worked. IT gets more and more intricate and (overly) complex as we move on. To me it's utterly scary.

This. It wasn't exactly "maintenance" (insinuating a planned event), it broke. Starting early yesterday I couldn't get logged in on either X or RCI (they share IT resources). According to one commenter who called, Royal tried to pretend it was an "upgrade" . . . LOL . . . nobody in a 24/7 for-profit business would normally risk doing an IT upgrade on a Friday. Celebrity is reportedly working fine now, via web browser and the app, and I never had to clear any cookies.

RCCL and Celebrity share IT resources. Somebody in the Celebrity thread called this afternoon and was told the site would probably be back up "sometime tomorrow". There are a few different sections in any large corporate IT web. One section or another might work or might just look like it's working. I would not trust doing anything important in the app or anywhere until the whole shebang has been restarted.

Jeez. Okay. Check-in opened up for my November 7 cruise today and of course Celebrity web has been down since early this morning.

My lady and I have sailed on "small" ships (Carnival Destiny, Legend), huge ships (RC Oasis, Allure, Indy OTS) and many between. Smaller ships might offer more destination choices, as opposed to a mega-ship that can only port at certain islands. Tampa only offers smaller/older ships, but I loved the one time we sailed out of there, beautiful departure. Just to mention. One thing I check for early (before booking any ship) is dining options. We love a variety of choices. Smaller ships won't have as many choices. Oasis class has about 25 different food venues (including doughnut shop etc), whereas many smaller ships might only have a third that many. As for shows, the best we've ever seen were on Carnival Triumph ("smaller") and RC Allure (huge). A toss-up. I won't sail on a ship that's more than 20 years old. I've seen too much rust on ships that were 5 years younger than that. When I can see it, I have to wonder about all the places I can't see.

$200 for a self- test? Heck no. If you're asking about brand, BinaxNOW is the most commonly available and recognized, any pharmacy should have it (for $25 or less). Walgreens also has at least one other brand, can't remember the name. That one is a little cheaper per test but there's only one test in the box. The BinaxNOW has two per box. My problem with the BinaxNOW test is the dropper for the solution. The tube is hard plastic and small and you have to be sure to get exactly 6 drops (all of each drop) into a little hole. Maybe another brand is a little easier to use.

No prob, same here, no big deal.

I made my point actually, which is exactly what you wrote there. Quoting myself, "I don't know why they even bother". Edit: I should note that a commenter's post on Page 1 that had the word "stop" in it was deleted. I tried to "like" the post but got an error, refreshed the page and the comment was no longer there. Just sayin'. I can't say for sure who deleted it, but poof, the whole thing disappeared.

And let's just hope they can get the skilled labor & expertise when they need it over an extended schedule. Well-written contracts, let's cross our fingers. . . . plus whatever you lived through (Great Depression, WWII, Great Society, Affluent Society . . . Millennials . . . Gen X, Z, etc). My first education on this subject was in Air Force leadership training, early 80s -- before Maslow's "Hierarchy of Needs" got shot down by too many over-educated people over-thinking the human psyche.

I'm sure I read last week that Solstice ships won't get it till early next year (maybe Spring), Edge being the first priorities. I could be wrong.

I had a nagging thought in the back of my head about that. Yahoo has gotten its hands into a whole bunch of stuff over the years.

Lol, okay. But AOL still is, and it's almost as old as Compuserve.

Take some of this as a form of protest if nothing else. I don't know why they even bother, and as I noted before it needlessly costs everybody time and money (one way or another).

Yep, US-based unvaxxed cruisers age 5 and older still have to test. https://www.celebritycruises.com/healthy-at-sea/updated-us-travel-requirements