chengkp75

Which is your muster station, and at which you would remain until the Captain decides it is necessary to get into the boats. If I remember correctly from my cruise on the Dawn in 2006, most of the muster stations were indoor stations. It is very expensive for a ship to change muster locations, and these locations must be approved by the classification societies as meeting the safety requirements of a safe muster location. I have never heard of a ship changing muster locations from the time it was built until it is scrapped. If you are directed to the dining room on the evacuation plan, then that is your "defined muster station".

Interesting that the author did not reach out to the USCG for clarification or attribution of the comments about "positive feedback". Were the comments about the effectiveness of the training, or the compliance with the drill? And, ultimately, the USCG is not who will determine whether the e-muster stays, it is the IMO.

Interesting that the author did not contact the USCG for attribution of the comments about positive feedback on e-muster. And, ultimately, it is not the USCG that would make the decision on whether to approve the e-muster for permanent use, but the IMO.

They would not experience a panicked passenger, but they routinely see intoxicated passengers. And, what is the major complaint about the traditional muster? That they take too long because there are absentees. Don't you think these absentees are recalcitrant, sometimes belligerent? So, those who remain onboard during a port day would be the ones inconvenienced? But, hey, you're not one. How do you verify that someone staying onboard is not in the shower or doing something in their cabin that is private? Does the cruise line absorb the cost of this cadre of personnel? What do they do when not conducting onboard training? Again, when does this training take place? This is the key argument, that it interferes with their valuable vacation time. In your training, if you trained one component at one time, and another component at a different time, did they always work well together when either incorporated into a combined training, or in a real situation? That's what you are suggesting for the muster drill. And, don't think for a moment that the crew don't know that the passengers feel that they, like you, have no interest in training for saving the passengers' lives. And, who decided that the training was a waste of the troops' time, the troops or the commanders? Those with experience, or those without?

How effective are scripted scenarios in reflecting a real emergency response? Not well, from my experience. Are you going to discipline crew if they don't act convincingly panicked? If they just want to horse around and make a joke of it? If they find their roommate or boy/girlfriend on the other side of the scenario? Even when we would script a crew member to be a "casualty", the response both from casualty and response team were not what you would expect in an emergency. And, when would this drill using hundreds of crew (to simulate the passenger muster realistically) take place? What passenger services or areas of the ship would you inhibit to be able to have this drill? Does a real emergency on a ship require 4000 passengers and crew? If it does, then the realistic way to train is to use 4000 passengers and crew. And, were the areas away from the muster stations crowded and chaotic? Were the elevators shut down? Were the stairwells packed with people? I fail to see how someone who says they've designed training for the military can think that the e-muster is in any way realistic training. Did you just design the training, or did you apply it, was it for emergency response, did it get repeated?

Yeah, during embarkation you typically see a hundred people going down a stairwell at a time, right? And, how many people use the elevator to get to their e-muster location? And, in a traditional muster, not everyone is going the same direction. A passenger who is aft at the signal needs to get to their station which is all the way forward. Another passenger is forward and needs to get aft to their station. Don't know what musters you have observed, but my observations are quite different. Come on, just admit that you don't want to be inconvenienced by a muster drill, and that is the only reason.

As another poster stated, the fresh water system and the vacuum toilet system are two different systems, though the fresh water system does connect to the toilet to provide water. When you press the button to flush the toilet, it is actually a valve that allows vacuum from the toilet piping to a mechanical timing device. The vacuum activates this timer, and it in turn activates (using vacuum) the "discharge" valve that opens (causing the noise) and empties the bowl. It will also activate (also using vacuum) the water valve that introduces water to the bowl. After programmed times, the discharge and water valves will close. If you have a delayed flush (you've pressed the button and nothing happens for a few minutes, there is either a partial blockage of the septic piping causing reduced vacuum to your (and likely other) toilet, which needs time to build up, or the timing mechanism is partially clogged and needs service. Turning on the sink taps will have no effect on this. A "ghost" flush happens when you push the button and nothing happens for a very long time, because the vacuum has been removed from your toilet by a clog down stream, and when the plumbers clear the clog and restore the vacuum, the timing mechanism has been activated and will commence a flush, sometimes hours later, when you are fast asleep.

Yes, those are things like stevedoring (handling baggage and stores) and security services. So, NCL is charging hundreds of dollars more per person to have non-existent longshoremen and security personnel? And, those third party concerns are required by the port authority, not NCL. I really love how everyone gets on the hate FDR bandwagon and makes everything a way for NCL to make huge profits. Done here, had enough tin foil hat for now.

Sorry to burst your conspiracy bubble, but "port taxes and fees" cannot include charges to other than governmental or quasi-governmental agencies (like a pilot's association, that has a governmental license to operate). Many people think that things like line handlers, garbage removal, water, and so forth are part of "port taxes and fees", but those are operational costs, and cannot be part of the "taxes and fees". Since the private islands are part of the Bahamas, the only entity that sees income from "port taxes and fees" is the Bahamian government.

And when you are trying to get to your muster station, from a place you never thought you'd be coming from, and there is a cross traffic of several hundred passengers trying to get to their stations, how has the e-muster trained you for that?

The old style muster is the only permanently approved method. The e-muster has conditional approval, pending review of effectiveness, and has not been rescinded yet. So, cruise lines can choose to use either.

It fails to provide realistic training for the passengers, in that they are not going to their muster stations while another thousand passengers are trying to get to theirs. It fails to provide realistic training for the crew in how to handle large crowds of recalcitrant passengers, and how to search a ship properly. As I've said many, many, times, the most effective training is that which is closest to an actual emergency (train how you'd fight, and then fight as you trained, is the mantra), and an e-muster is about as far from a real emergency as you can get. As one poster on several threads has said, he is not interested in being a "training aid" for the crew. On a ship, everyone is on one team, and if that team fails, loss of life will be tragic, having the passengers participate in a realistic muster, shows the crew that the passengers are at least a semi-willing member of the team, and deserving of the crew's best efforts to save their lives. Many who claim the old muster is not effective have never been in a maritime emergency, where everyone who has maritime experience will tell you that the maritime environment bears no resemblance to any other place on earth. I've had firefighters from port fire departments come on and comment on how hard it would be to fight a ship fire, compared to their job, many times.

I find it interesting that those who have no maritime experience, and no safety training experience, are against returning to the old muster format, while anyone who has had maritime or naval experience understands the lack of training provided by the e-muster, and recommend returning to the old muster.

It prepares you to follow the orders of the crew who are there to guide you, and who know where the unusable exit routes are.

People who watched the Concordia documentaries need to balance this by reading the official report by the Italian Maritime Authority. The real problem, and what caused the confusion, was the fact that Schettino never sounded the alarm for the passenger muster, and so the crew followed their orders and sent passengers away from the muster stations, and the boats were never prepped and lowered until too late. The ship did not start to list more than the limit the boats could be lowered at (20* list), until it touched bottom again on Giglio, and the grounding point became the fulcrum for rolling over. That was more than an hour after Schettino was notified that the ship was flooding. Had muster been sounded at that point (at that point he knew there was nothing that could save the ship from sinking), passengers would have been mustered and accounted for, and the boats prepped and ready to load long before the ship rolled over. Whether or not the passengers adhere to the safety procedures, this is why the crew training aspect is so valuable, so that the crew know exactly how to handle situations like having the kids separated from parents, etc. The e-muster takes away any chance for realistic training of the crew in handling large, unruly crowds.

Will any cruise line do this? Considering that there was a class action lawsuit a couple of decades ago regarding port taxes and fees, not sure against which line, but from that there is a strictly defined list of things they can include in the "port taxes and fees" category. If you think NCL is skimming this "to their coffers", then here's your legal angle to get them.

No, you are ignoring that the life jacket demonstration has been allowed to be a video, watched in the cabin, not at the muster station, for about 15 years now. Not sure how many times I'll need to repeat this. This is your key argument. No, they don't. The cabin stewards have way too much to do on turn around day, to worry about whether all the passengers have departed. That is security's job. So, the realistic training is that instead of all cabins being cleared at one time, they are cleared as stewards get to them in their cleaning? Sounds just like the passengers sauntering to muster over hours. Very close to an emergency. Guess what, in addition to learning where your muster station is, the drill provides you with knowledge about what to do in an emergency. I guess strolling to the muster station when you feel like it, is what you'd do in an emergency? You claim to have done training. Your philosophy does not point to any need for realistic training. It merely points to not wanting to disrupt a vacation. Okay, I'll remind you of what I've said to you in other threads. The e-muster has conditional approval (meaning temporary), and while it hasn't been removed, the two lines who have gone back to it see the writing on the wall, that within the next couple of years, at the latest, the e-muster will go away. They just want to get rid of the extra time involved in the e-muster, and get back to proper training.

As I said in my post, the cruise lines were allowed to substitute a video of life jacket donning for the actual donning, about 15 years ago, and most that started not storing life jackets in the cabins did that. Now, if you never watched it, that's a problem, but most ships had the cabin stewards turn the TV to the safety channel when they turned the cabin, so it was on when you first entered your cabin. So, there is no benefit for the e-muster over the old muster, if that is your main argument. Does the e-muster provide a realistic training on finding your muster station? Nope, not a bit. Another negative for the e-muster. While the old muster would not be exactly as it would happen in a real emergency, it is far more realistic than having passengers saunter in over 3-4 hours, singly or in pairs. And, I won't bother to argue with you over "using" the passengers to train the crew. It is all about teamwork, something you don't seem to think is important in emergencies, everyone on the ship is on one team, or we all die.

Actually, this has changed. It now depends on what the ratio of PC/UMS (Panama Canal/Universal Measurement System tonnage (usually close to Net Tonnage) divided by the passenger capacity is. Small ships pay by the passenger capacity, but ships of the 150,000 GT and above, pay by the PC/UMS tonnage. And, the last time I looked at the tariff per passenger berth, it was more like $140-$160. Now, there are also ancillary costs like tugs, inspections, line handlers, etc, but I think the Sky would be closer to the $500k range, under the new rules (which are higher for smaller vessels than before, while the larger ships pay less than before). But, any Panama Canal cruise will have far higher taxes and fees than any other cruise anywhere in the world. That $500k I mentioned for the Sky would be just the taxes and fees for the Canal, other ports would add other taxes and fees.

It boggles my mind that someone puts "comfortable" into the equation for safety and life saving. Even if you did the e-muster drill, in an emergency you would be herded together, and typically for a lot longer than the drill.

If you can demonstrate one potential training benefit (which is what a drill is all about) to either passengers or crew with the new e-muster, please, I'd like to hear it. And don't bring up the distractions from the demonstrations, since even when the old muster system was used, ships could forego any demonstrations during drill by having it on the TV's.

The decision will be made by the Maritime Safety Committee of the IMO (staffed by maritime safety experts, who are only interested in passenger safety, not passenger comfort), and then must be accepted by a majority of the 175 nations that are signatory to the IMO. Unless the cruise lines can show a safety benefit in the e-muster, the MSC isn't really going to consider their pleas. And, yes, as I've noted many times, in the new e-muster drill, the crew lose all realistic training of a passenger muster (thousands of pax moving at once, recalcitrant pax), and the passengers themselves lose the training of getting to their muster station at the same time as thousands of others, rather than a serene saunter to the station at a time of their choosing. It is certainly not a cheaper alternative.

Where the "easy-peasy" muster eliminates the training of both passengers and crew, that are designed (and tested successfully over many years and emergencies) to save your life.

Was the first cruise booked through a travel agent, and the second look booked directly? If that is the case, the travel agent took the "non-commissionable fare" portion out of the advertised fare, and included it in "port taxes, fees, expenses". They are allowed to do this, it allows them to advertise a much lower fare up front, but the bottom end looks pretty much the same.

As I've said on every thread on several forums, about NCL and Disney going back to the traditional muster, is that they see the handwriting on the wall, where the IMO will remove the conditional approval for the e-muster, and require all ships to do the traditional muster.