CruiseLineDancer

On 12/20/2023 at 10:56 PM, jascritz said:

Just to confirm what others have experienced, when I submitted by email two months ago, Princess emailed me back telling me they no longer processed OBC, and that I had to use their subcontractor’s Stockperks app. I did this without giving access to my financial account.

Thanks.  I jumped to the end of this thread and what you said sounds great to me.  If I can upload a redacted statement without providing my financial account number in the app, then I'm OK with this new approach.

1 minute ago, POA1 said:

You can also set one of your custom activity streams as your default. It can then be reached by the newspaper icon in mobile or the shortcut in the desktop version. I djd a write up here:

 

 

 

Thanks!  Yes, I found that and made the roll call for our next cruise be my default.  That is good and will come in handy at times, perhaps especially on a mobile device.  My typical workflow on the desktop has been to use bookmarks on my browser to go to whatever roll call I need at the moment.  

1 hour ago, POA1 said:

Here's the basic Activity Stream setup.  You need to be following a roll call for this to work. In my case, I'm following a roll call on Holland America's Zuiderdam.

 

First: You want the Content, Comments and Reviews. (Without comments, I'm pretty sure you miss the replies in a thread.)

 

 

Second: You want to choose Topics from the Content Types drop down.  You're going to drill down here into Roll Calls > Your Cruise Line > Your Ship - To do this, you need to click on the little gear icon.

 

 

Third: After you click the gear (options), you will drill down to find your particular ship's roll call forum. You can only go as far as the ship forum. You can't actually find your specific roll call thread.

 

 

I couldn't screen cap the drill down process easily, but you'll know it when you see it.  When you get to your ship, Click it and it will appear just like Zuiderdam does in the example.  More than one roll call on different ships? You can choose multiple Communities

 

Fourth: Choose Following > Items. This get you your subscribed threads in the forums/communities you picked earlier.

 

 

 

And finally, choose Sorting > Newest first --- because that's sort of the whole point of what you want to see.

Got it to work!  I was not aware of the streams feature, although I had seen it in passing.  This will be helpful.  I created a new stream and bookmarked the URL.   That will let me simulate how I like to operate.  It is unfortunate that the Topics only drills down to ship and not to sailing.  The greatest shortcoming is the need to "load more activity" to get back to the past, rather than paging.   There's a good chance I will find "activity streams" useful in other ways, so thanks again for introducing me to them.   

1 hour ago, Shmoo here said:

I'm afraid I'm in the "why not just use the Go to First Unread Post" group.

 

Reading a thread with the newest post on top just seems backwards to me.  

I've done some research on this and found there are strong opinions on both sides.  That's all the more reason to have the feature optional as it was before.   Handwriting with the right hand seems strange to me.  One must reach all the way across the paper just to start the first word!  😉  Some here seem also to miss a key point.  This has nothing to do with whether a post is read or unread.  There are frequent reasons to return to the latest conversation (series of READ comments), but infrequent reasons to return to the OP post and subsequent "hellos" from years ago.    I can easily get to the most recent UNREAD post by clicking on the link in my most recent notification. 

39 minutes ago, POA1 said:

FWIW - There is a plugin to IPBoard/Invision Community that does this. It's a $10 plugin. Let me know if you can't see the info. I'm pretty sure that you can see it without being logged into the Invison Support site.

 

https://invisioncommunity.com/files/file/8848-post-sorting-in-topics/

 

Yes, I can see it.  Thanks!  I'm hoping CC incorporates the capability here.   I've contacted CC support and received a reply that the request was being forwarded to the development team.  Reverse sort is an absolute must IMHO for roll call threads that grow and evolve for years.  

28 minutes ago, POA1 said:

@CruiseLineDancer There's a way to do this using the Custom Activity Streams, but it's a little ugly. As long as you're following only one roll call on a particular ship, it will work fine. If you have several sailings on the same ship and you're following multiple roll calls, you'll get a mixed stream of all the roll calls you follow for that ship.

 

I just set it up from our upcoming Christmas Cruise on the Zuiderdam.  I can give you the steps if you want.  You wind up with something like this:

 

 

 

Thanks!  I'll look into this.  This could really help me.   I've never tried Custom Activity Streams, so I'll experiment.   If I get stuck, I'll come back with questions!  🙂  My typical usage has always been to click a shortcut (bookmark) on my browser to take me to the URL of the  roll call thread.  I always want to go the the latest posts (read or unread, doesn't matter).  In the past, the shortcut took me exactly where I wanted to be in one step.  @craig403 gave a simple and useful URL hack to get to the last page, but that still requires scrolling down to the bottom.   An ultimate interim coping mechanism would be a URL hack to get to the bottom of the last page.  I took a quick try and couldn't come up with anything.  Thanks again for tipping me off to this activity stream approach that can provide the posts in the reverse order preferred by many (most?) of us.

8 minutes ago, Jim_Iain said:

I also found this option to be very useful and am sure it is only a parameter setting the administrators need to make to enable it.    The option of pressing a blue button next to the title doesn't work for me as it is only available if you do it from the full list of subjects. 

 

I would really like to see it back myself but have been using the >>> button next to the post to take me to the end of the post instead of the beginning.   Not perfect but I can live with it until they bring this feature back.

 

I totally agree with the workaround.  I do exactly the same.  Go to last page, then scroll the browser to the bottom.  Good for the short term. 

Posted this initially under a help thread.   Have concluded the option to change the display order by date no longer exists.  Reposting here as a bug.

This is a popular feature, almost a necessity.   Please restore the option to display the newest post within a thread (particularly a roll call) at the top and the oldest at the bottom.

Thanks!  Any feedback on the disposition of this request will be greatly appreciated.

1 minute ago, wishIweretravelling said:

To be clear, the problem is not with respect to the order in which the threads appear; it's the order in which the messages within a thread appear. (the question was misunderstood by the answerer in the "Ask Here" forum)

Thanks for adding clarity. Yes, messages within the thread.   

Can't find a way to set the message display to order from new to old.  It's very unwieldy having the newest message at the bottom of the last page.   

Several alternatives .................

 

1. Consider a private transfer (recommendations elsewhere on this thread) which takes you to your London hotel via Stonehenge. You need about 90 minutes at Stonehenge. You are strongly advised to pre-purchase timed tickets to Stonehenge - you choose a half-hour window & if you arrive outside that time window entry may be delayed if the place is up to max numbers. Disembarkation (not to be confused with ships arrival time) is usually around 7am to 9am but I'm guessing that if Int. Friends don't offer a service you're on a small ship, so those times may not apply.

The drive to Stonehenge takes 60 to 90 minutes, depending on route, time of day and day of the week, but be guided by your transfer operator on pick-up time and Stonehenge booking time - they know the routine better than I.

..

 

JB :)

Whew! Thanks! Lots of important details. Greatly appreciated. According to the published itinerary, our ship "arrives" at 8:00am. It is the NCL Breakaway, which is not at all small. :D The way I think I understood International Friends was that they can serve either embarkations or debarkations on any given day, but not both. Whatever the reason, our arrival is on a wrong day for them as they are "not operating any tours on this date". They did offer that we could join the tour the next day if we could stay overnight in Southampton. Unfortunately, we are on a very tight schedule and have to come up with some other plan that will get us from port to London hotel by that evening.

We are also looking for transfer from Southampton port to a TBD London hotel in late April of 2018. Ideally, the transfer would include tour stops (e.g., Stonehenge, Windsor). We had originally arranged to do the International Friends transfer/tour, but a change in ship itinerary has forced us to arrive two days later. Our back luck is such tours are not available from that operator on our new date. We are researching alternatives but would welcome any expert thoughts here. Thanks!

We were on the canceled cruise. Big bummer! Fortunately I was able to cancel my return flight. DH had to cancel a trip to Italy he was planning post-cruise.

 

We are still taking the April 13 Jade Transatlantic cruise (we love sea days), and from there we'll punt. Not ready to fly right home after the cruise; we have some ideas. I'll keep you posted. I know cancellations happen but this sort of soured us a bit on NCL. We are Platinum, have only ever cruised NCL. Will probably start trying other cruise lines. Do Princess, Celebrity, Holland cancel as frequently (and as late in the game) as NCL?

We once had the Pearl chartered out from under us. Not fun. As a result, directly and indirectly, we ended up on other brands for the next two years. We are now back to NCL and it remains our favorite for various reasons. The charter practice is ugly, but an unfortunate business reality. It's very painful to the victims, but apparently the shareholders benefit even in the long run.

Topi is onboard the serenade have a friend onboard chatting with him now

Great, thanks. :)

Can someone verify with certainty that Topi Ylonen is indeed the CD for the Serenade sailing of 2/15/2016? His web page currently does not show that sailing. Thanks!

Awesome collection! Thanks!