Cruise Line Paper Waste?

[scchasgal]

...and I choose not to as frequently as I can. :D

 

PE

 

Us too actually, hardest part if the gangway in port but we bypass it with a polite no thank you.

[boaterette]

This thread cracks me up. If you OP are concerned about the environment you wouldn't be cruising in the first place. Cruising is not eco-friendly in the first place. Kind of like being concerned about your health so you order diet coke with your McDonalds meal. The cruise lines burn all the trash and use the heat for other purposes. So while yes you can do things to make it better it is still inherently bad for the environment. Silly thread.

[goldmom]

I disagree that this is silly. I have often wondered what happened to all the paper onboard and have found everyone's comments quite interesting.

 

I also immediately pull out all the flyers from the Daily and find them to be a waste. If recycling cans were in the cabin, I would use them but realize that this would probably not really be feasible.

 

I also agree that the photo package was a great idea and was sad when it was discontinued. We very rarely buy any photos, but did get them when the photo package was offered. Less waste and I have to think a lot more people purchased the pictures. Guess it became a wash though economically or I would think they would have continued to offer it. Less purchases at higher price or more sales at lower price, who knows.

[OceanDreaming2]

We would like to see NCL bring back the Photo Package. We normally don't purchase photos because of the high price to buy by the pic. If they offered a $100 package of all your photos that were taken for the week we would be more likely to purchase that. We also wouldn't be as upset to have our dinner interrupted by the photoghapher.:rolleyes:

 

They did have a photo package available on the Panama Canal cruise. I think it was $149. Since it was a 13 day cruise, maybe a normal 7 day trip would be $100?

[jackieodonnell]

I'm more appalled that they simply throw out what they charge you $20 a piece for.

[Drizzo67]

Disney, a few years back, started implementing a hard card systems for the pictures you take at the parks. Instead of handing you a slip for each picture you took with one of their photographers, upon taking your first picture at Disney you are handed a hard card, like a key card, to use each time. You hand the card to the photographer, they scan the information in their camera and when you return from the trip you use the data on the card to check your pictures on the computer and order the only the ones you want.

 

I like this idea.

[terrymtex01]

Us too actually, hardest part if the gangway in port but we bypass it with a polite no thank you.

 

LOL.. Funny thing is.. the last few cruises we did not purchase any of the ships photos, however this time we did. They would have a buy three get one free or whatever it was so we did that twice, I think. Sucker I know.. but oh well.. Anyway.. I wish we had bought this one, but we didn't.. but there was one where you could literally see my mouth saying the word "no" as I was saying "no thank you" as they grabbed me and took the pic anyway.. LOL

[WinnieinWA]

This thread cracks me up. If you OP are concerned about the environment you wouldn't be cruising in the first place. Cruising is not eco-friendly in the first place. Kind of like being concerned about your health so you order diet coke with your McDonalds meal. The cruise lines burn all the trash and use the heat for other purposes. So while yes you can do things to make it better it is still inherently bad for the environment. Silly thread.

 

I don't think any question is silly. I'm finding it very enlightening. Perhaps a more interesting thread for you would have been "Can I smuggle booze?"

[Jamisonke]

On our last cruise I actually spoke to the manager of the photo area about the idea of them leaving the pics as digital images until someone was ready to purchase them. The biggest problem with that idea is that most people, us being one, would not spend their time standing at a computer screen looking through 1000's of other folks pics to find their own. I barely have enough interest to look through the gallery as it is. I spend my entire work day looking at a computer screen, I am certainly not going to spend my vacation time doing the same. According to the manager if they could find a way to associate the actual picture taken with the guest so that the guest could easily find the digital picture, they would do it in a heartbeat. The only way they have come up with so far is for the guest to wear a bracelet with a bar code that is scanned every time they take the guest picture. There again, nothing I'm going to do, walk around a cruise ship with a bracelet on just so they can take my picture and I can find it on a computer.

 

As far as the Freestyles, I do agree. Although I enjoy the Freestyles very much, it is all the other paperwork you get with them that drives me insane. Unfortunately until all that extra paper stops making them money by people buying in the store or whatever the sales paper is advertising, they will continue to print and distribute them.

 

That seems a less than satisfactory suggestion from the Photo Manager. All passengers have a key card that could be scanned or swiped, thus associating the photo with the individual. I would much prefer to look at only the pictures of us than have to play "Where's Waldo?" and try to find our photos in a sea of printed photographs, but that is just my opinion.

[gcdogwalker]

I hate to admit it, but I really love going down to the gallery and looking for my picture, I guess you could call me a ham!

[InTheCruisingYearsOfLife]

....and have to pull out your key card every time a photographer sticks a camera in your face. No thank you. They are annoying enough as it is.

PE

 

With only the slightest amount of technical effort, key cards can be made to scan at a distance, without even having to be pulled from the pocket. Indeed, in addition to allowing the photopimps to get your ID and associate it with their product, the FOB could also serve them an NCL-approved generic warning such as, "Passenger is photo-allergic; save your digits", or maybe in trade for another small revenue stream to NCL's ever-thirsty bottom line, something more personal like, "If you cram that lens in my face, prepare to develop a whole camera's worth of pictures rectally."

 

If you don't like the smart-FOB approach, it so happens that I work for a small semiconductor firm, and my expertise is in the realm of digital image processing. If NCL takes ONE picture of each cruiser as they board the ship, and associates a stateroom number themwith, digital face recognition software would be able to correlate probably 90% of subsequent photos with the correct cruiser. That 90% could be made available directly to the cruiser when they walk up to a friendly digi-kiosk, and the remaining 10% could either be scuttled or splattered all over the wall like they presently do with the whole 100%.

 

Of course, whether cruisers WANT to be digitally recognized, may be another issue. I would think that well-crafted privacy policies, disclosed in large, friendly letters, might go a long way toward alleviating most of the fuss about that, and the friendly drop-dead FOB messages might go some more of the way.

 

InThe

[boeckli]

According to a recent Seatrade Insider article (http://www.cruise-community.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1697:a-photography-revolution-on-oasis-of-the-seas&catid=906:newsheadlines&Itemid=67), the photo gallery on Oasis of the Seas has photos mainly in un-printed form. They apparently use facial-recognition technology to match photos taken with the security photo taken at embarkation. This gets assigned a number, printed on the passenger's key card, by which matching photos can be found. Photos they have been unable to match are still displayed in printed form and can also be linked to the passenger.

 

Let's hope they will have something similar on the Epic and can retrofit the other ships in due course.

[InTheCruisingYearsOfLife]

According to a recent Seatrade Insider article ... the photo gallery on Oasis of the Seas ... apparently use facial-recognition technology to match photos taken with the security photo taken at embarkation.

 

Just what I was talking about. Would you believe I hadn't seen the article? It's just the direction the whole world is going.

 

For extra credit, instead of having to go to a kiosk to see your digi-pics, they could custom deliver 'em digitally right to the boob-toob in your stateroom. And just to cram 'em down your throat, they could put 'em on the channel that gets auto-tuned whenever you turn the damn thing on (assuming you squander valuable cruise time on such a mundane thing as the idiot-box).

 

InThe

[dtiger]

I think it's such a waste of paper and ink to distribute all the flyers, everything is stated in the daily.

[WinnieinWA]

That seems a less than satisfactory suggestion from the Photo Manager. All passengers have a key card that could be scanned or swiped, thus associating the photo with the individual. I would much prefer to look at only the pictures of us than have to play "Where's Waldo?" and try to find our photos in a sea of printed photographs, but that is just my opinion.

At least that's on the right track!

 

I hate to admit it, but I really love going down to the gallery and looking for my picture, I guess you could call me a ham!

 

Nice to meet you, Ham! :)

 

With only the slightest amount of technical effort, key cards can be made to scan at a distance, without even having to be pulled from the pocket. Indeed, in addition to allowing the photopimps to get your ID and associate it with their product, the FOB could also serve them an NCL-approved generic warning such as, "Passenger is photo-allergic; save your digits", or maybe in trade for another small revenue stream to NCL's ever-thirsty bottom line, something more personal like, "If you cram that lens in my face, prepare to develop a whole camera's worth of pictures rectally."

 

If you don't like the smart-FOB approach, it so happens that I work for a small semiconductor firm, and my expertise is in the realm of digital image processing. If NCL takes ONE picture of each cruiser as they board the ship, and associates a stateroom number themwith, digital face recognition software would be able to correlate probably 90% of subsequent photos with the correct cruiser. That 90% could be made available directly to the cruiser when they walk up to a friendly digi-kiosk, and the remaining 10% could either be scuttled or splattered all over the wall like they presently do with the whole 100%.

 

Of course, whether cruisers WANT to be digitally recognized, may be another issue. I would think that well-crafted privacy policies, disclosed in large, friendly letters, might go a long way toward alleviating most of the fuss about that, and the friendly drop-dead FOB messages might go some more of the way.

 

InThe

 

Now that's what makes this "silly thread" really interesting and informative. Thanks! :)

I like hearing about technilogical advances.

[BruceMuzz]

I think it's such a waste of paper and ink to distribute all the flyers, everything is stated in the daily.

 

You are absolutely correct.

Now if we could find enough passengers who read, we wouldn`t have to repeat it.

 

Why do you think we always repeat the public announcements at least twice??

Nobody is paying attention.

[hat776]

Just to put you in the picture (sorry) I am very dumb where IT is concerned.

But when we go to the picture gallery we look out for the headings eg

"Grand Pacific Dinner Thursday" . If there was a digital photo kiosk, wouldn't it be on the same principle ?

Obviously the company employing the photographers has calculated that it pays them to keep the prices high rather that lowering them in order to sell more but I really can't understand how this pans out. They also know that it pays them to print them all out even though they are going to destroy most of them , again I can't understand that.

[jame_g]

With only the slightest amount of technical effort, key cards can be made to scan at a distance, without even having to be pulled from the pocket. Indeed, in addition to allowing the photopimps to get your ID and associate it with their product, the FOB could also serve them an NCL-approved generic warning such as, "Passenger is photo-allergic; save your digits", or maybe in trade for another small revenue stream to NCL's ever-thirsty bottom line, something more personal like, "If you cram that lens in my face, prepare to develop a whole camera's worth of pictures rectally."

 

If you don't like the smart-FOB approach, it so happens that I work for a small semiconductor firm, and my expertise is in the realm of digital image processing. If NCL takes ONE picture of each cruiser as they board the ship, and associates a stateroom number themwith, digital face recognition software would be able to correlate probably 90% of subsequent photos with the correct cruiser. That 90% could be made available directly to the cruiser when they walk up to a friendly digi-kiosk, and the remaining 10% could either be scuttled or splattered all over the wall like they presently do with the whole 100%.

 

Of course, whether cruisers WANT to be digitally recognized, may be another issue. I would think that well-crafted privacy policies, disclosed in large, friendly letters, might go a long way toward alleviating most of the fuss about that, and the friendly drop-dead FOB messages might go some more of the way.

 

InThe

 

UGH! No way. I don't want anything that is going to digitally recognize me, nor anything that will scan from a distance. What a privacy nightmare. I know, it's going to happen eventually anyway, and it will end up being misused. We will be tracked everywhere we go on board, they will know when we are in our cabins and when we aren't what we are doing, and then we will be inundated with fliers and television messages customized to what they think we want because of it.

 

The sad thing is this is already taking place in our cities and on our highways with facial recognition software being added to airports, city cam systems, police cruisers, toll cameras that recognize license plates, not to mention the easy-pass/smart toll passes and electronic parking passes. And it's already being misused by law enforcement and the courts because privacy regulations haven't kept up with this. Just what we need is to have more businesses jump on board to misuse the various tracking data.

[startraveler]

 

I lke the idea of digital images with kiosks to view / print them. If Wal-Mart and Walgreens can do this, why not cruise lines???????????????

 

Two things come to mind: what you see on a monitor is not always representative of what is actually printed, in terms of colors.

 

The other: Remember all them people looking at pics in the photo gallery? Now picture as many waiting to look at them on even a dozen monitors.

 

Personally, I like the system on Mariner of the Seas, where each cabin had a folder and the photos were placed in there (as well, the photo gallery was in an out of the way space.) But even that wasn't foolproof: we constantly got someone else's photos and had to tell the staff, no not our cabin.