The Medallion tells Princess and whoever you're with, where you're at on the ship 24/7.  You use the Medallion to get in and out of your cabin.  Supposedly when purchasing drinks on board, waiter knows who you are just by the Medallion.  However, on the Royal, we were asked EVERY single time what our cabin # was.  So, other than you being a GPS sponge, there's no reason to have the Medallion.  Only good to keep track of you and nothing more.

Don't hold your breath that wifi will work like it should.  Just got off the Royal, purchased the wifi package, had 2 devices only, and the wifi was sporadic.  The second day, no internet, and everyday beyond that we were disconnected several times a day.  Friends just got off the Island Princess. and they paid for internet but it was the same poor service.  Princess reimbursed them for their wifi.

2 hours ago, Zou Bisou Bisou said:

As they aren't requiring any proof of vaccination to be shown, how would they even know if you were vaccinated or not?  They say a test is required where 'applicable' on their website and my reading and understanding of 'applicable' in their FAQ's is that they are referring to ports that require it. Anyone cruise lately and not be asked about their Vax status or testing?

Friends just got back from an Island Princess Euorpean cruise.  Because their cruise was more than 15 days, they had to take a PCR test in Copenhagen before boarding.  They both are fully vaccinated, and they both got covid onboard.  Apparently quite a few people had covid.  Our friends didn't tell anyone due to quarantine in your cabin.  Also, the mask requirements was set into operation.  They were not happy.

12 hours ago, movinout said:

Wondering....we have final payment tomorrow on a late May British Isles cruise.  We have Princess Platinum Insurance and our air through Princess Ez air.  Are we fairly well covered if this thing gets worse and we cancel closer to date?  Does the cancel for any reason return airfare which was added into our total or does that  also go into a future credit too w Princess?  Anyone help me with an answer here?  
Thanks, Debbie

We too had a cruise to Alaska in May, and we cancelled.  If we would have waited one more day, we would have been penalized $200.  If you cancel, don't delay.  We already got all of our money back.

On 2/26/2020 at 4:36 AM, FiftyOnePlus said:

It is...completely fear-mongering from many people....media included

 

Do you still stand by that statement - 27 days later?

First Brit dies from the coronavirus, he was aboard the Diamond Princess.  Fear mongering?  I cancelled our cruise to Alaska in May, I'm not willing to chance being sick again from the cruise crud.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/coronavirus-cases-surge-across-europe-hong-kong-dog-tests-positive-live-updates?utm_campaign=&utm_content=ZeroHedge%3A+The+Durden+Dispatch&utm_medium=email&utm_source=zh_newsletter

5 minutes ago, npcl said:

The sequencing was done a couple of weeks back, a couple of companies have announced that they have designed vaccine candidates from the genome.

 

 

 

Did they find out where it came from?  There's a lot of speculation going on. 

9 minutes ago, Aus Traveller said:

Maybe they were on the previous cruise on the Diamond and disembarked on 20th January, or even in Hong Kong on 25th.

No, that wasn't the case.  My sister knowing that we cruise a lot emailed me and told me about the quarantine on the ship and that their friends were onboard.  This was before it hit the news.  She emailed me asking for information on the ship, etc.  The Diamond Princess was our first ever Princess cruise.

9 minutes ago, Aus Traveller said:

The medical authorities in Japan will need to run tests on all passengers and crew on Diamond Princess before they are released and able to potentially spread the virus. We have to hope that most of the pax and crew are virus-free.

I'm not sure how this happened, but my sister has friends on the Diamond Princess.  She emailed me today and said that they were home now (in Texas), and getting ready for another travel vacation.  How did that happen?  I thought they weren't releasing anyone on the Diamond.  I'm quite confused now.

21 minutes ago, ilikeanswers said:

 

There was an interview with two Chinese virologists they had found the orginal Novel Corona virus in caves around Wuhan five years ago and already linked it to the Horeshoe Bat. The question is whether it jumped straight from bat to human or did go through an intermediatry animal like the Pangolin.

I read in another article by epidemiologists that they believe the corona came from pigs.  We just don't know, there's Level 4 biolabs in many places and who knows what they've been mixing together.  Did this virus get released from one of those Level 4 labs?  Is the sequencing done on this virus?  So many variables.  WHO is on their way to China finally with the permission of the Chinese government.  What took them so long to allow WHO to come?  The CDC has been there for at least a couple of weeks now.  Too little too late IMHO.  I'm waiting for the final word as to how, what, when, and where.

18 minutes ago, sfaaa said:

Include WHO to this list. Its constant praise of China and its leader Xi is both over the top and rather comical.

This is when I wish I understood the Chinese language.  I'm seeing many videos on Twitter where people are crying, going ballistic because of the lockdown.  Some are being dragged out of their homes, and some have never been seen again.  Anyone caught reporting what is going on is arrested.  It's not so much about the disease, it's about money and saving face.  It's hurting the travel industry, restaurants, and people are hoarding.  The news eventually gets out one way or another, news these days travels fast.  You have to wade through common sense and fake news.  It's all coming down to showing just how vicious a communist regime can be.  I'm not so sure that there's that much fake news in this virus reporting.  People are truly scared and they want the rest of the world to know.  This virus has moved fast and has killed more in 29 days than SARs did in several months.  Can't compare it to SARs any more.

 

1 hour ago, brisalta said:

 

Typhoid Mary carried a bacteria not a virus.

Apples and oranges.  Maybe I should have said a carrier of a disease that they infect others but are not affected by it themselves.

14 minutes ago, Pushka said:

Posing another question. Many of us are carriers of many awful diseases with no symptoms. Meningococcal is one of those. There isnt a vaccine for all strains. Yet no testing is ever done on anyone yet anyone who develops the illness will possibly die or lose limbs. People can be carriers of this illness with no symptoms. Are they sick or just a carrier then? And how long are they carriers? Maybe always? 

I don't believe that it is a Typhoid Mary type of virus.  I'm no expert, but like SARs and other coronaviruses, it will have to run its course.  This is why they are quarantining people to prevent the spread.  I think it's too late to stop it.

1 hour ago, kendon said:

Yes, imagine just sitting in your stateroom all day waiting for the next "bomb"

to drop.  

 

It's like sitting in jail or prison waiting for the grim reaper to show up.  That's how I'm viewing this.

3 hours ago, capriccio said:

 

Okay I bite.  What do the ellipses represent?

A lot of what if's.  Our President is asking that scientists look into seeing if this virus was a part of bio-warfare.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/white-house-asks-scientists-investigate-origins-coronavirus/story?id=68807304

3 minutes ago, NorthwestCruiser said:

While China, um, puts public order ahead of free speech in a rather brutal way sometimes, I don't really think that they could have stopped the outbreak given the characteristics of this particular virus.   A virus outbreak like this is inevitable in the human population (that is evolution), scientists have known this for a long time and the script was written as soon as the Wright brothers left the ground.    While there may still be time to stop this one, there will be another one and Murphy's law says that it will happen at the worst possible time.   (Happening on Chinese New Year when 1 billion people are on the move, and at a time when the largest superpower has been taken over by an anti-science virus is as close to the worst possible time as I want to see.)

 

That is why we have organized society, that is why we have science, and that is why we have taxes.    There are experts out there who think about this stuff a lot and we really don't have much choice but to follow their advice and give them whatever support that we can.   We must hang together or we will all hang separately.   Time to forget about nationalism for this one and focus on solving the problem, we can get back to hating each other once the crisis is over.

I agree, people right now seem to be in a panic mode.  BTW, I don't hate anyone, and don't make the mistake of watching out for yourself and loved ones with avoiding others as hating anyone.  It's that evolutionary thing called "self-interest."

13 minutes ago, NorthwestCruiser said:

Excellent questions, and the answer appears to be "yes", assuming that the tests we have are accurate.   There is some controversy about whether one can have no symptoms at all and still infect other people, one study from Germany that claimed to find such a case was incorrect.    Chinese authorities believe that people are contagious prior to having a fever and I tend to believe them, they are the closest to the problem and despite some assumptions westerners may make about China, the hospital system Hunan  (a rich city of over 11 million people) is excellent and the research is world class.    They have been obsessing about SARS (a close cousin to this virus) for a decade and have had the money to spend on it.

 

But no vaccine for SARs.  Corona has now killed more people in 29 days than it did with SARs in several months.  Doesn't matter how "excellent" or "world class" you are, when you sandwich millions of people into a small area, eat exotic animals, do not practice good hygiene, stuff happens.  SARs, MERs, Ebola, Noro, on and on.  Then there's bio-warfare to mix in there.....

8 minutes ago, kent9xxx1 said:

5 crew members infected + virus can live on surface up to 9 days.  Good luck to the rest of the ship.  Very likely a bunch more will get infected in the upcoming days.

 

quarantined on the ship will increase the risk for people on the ship.  Don’t know why people was arguing so much about it just a day or two ago.

In the Diamond Princess video above, people were touching the handrails and had no gloves on.  Even with gloves on, you are still transferring the virus from point A to point B and so forth.  Probably why they're still seeing people testing positive and some are still carriers but showing no signs of the infection - yet.

10 minutes ago, GeezerCouple said:

In terms of the "testing those with a fever" (and checking for fever as "the" symptom)...

Is it known whether someone can be sick with this virus and NOT have a fever?

Or how long it takes from first becoming infected to have a fever (if ever), and are those  people contagious prior to having a fever (or if never getting a fever, but still infected)?

 

That's what bothers me about "testing those with fever"...

 

GC

Not everyone gets a fever.  You can be a carrier and not show any symptoms at all for up to 14 days.  This is why it's spreading so fast.  People are sick but showing no symptoms.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/about/symptoms.html

1 minute ago, fragilek said:

 I think the boat was missed in this by the time China admitted there was an issue.  Not even sure if the market had been "legitimized"- if you could ever call it that before the world outside even knew about the issue.

The Chinese leaders tried to hide the outbreak until it was too late.  Millions left Wuhan and that's how it has spread throughout China and beyond.  We saw what happened to the doctor who tried to warn the world.  Now it's beyond panic time, it's time to make some wise decisions about yourself and family.  I got sick on our last cruise to Hawaii 2 days before debarkation.  There's no guarantees in this life.  DH and I were discussing it last night, and our upcoming Alaskan cruise in May might be our last.

5 hours ago, fragilek said:

 That's now been disputed disputed by scientist in the west as they have more time to study the virus- the culprit now thought more likely to be  the pangolin

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/07/pangolins-might-have-spread-coronavirus-to-humans

What is the most puzzling is that there have been no reports on the testing of animal samples collected in any epicenters in Wuhan, especially at the Huanan seafood market, to identify what animals might be the host or intermediate hosts of this novel Wuhan coronavirus.

An Animal Origin of the Virus

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/mysterious-origin-wuhan-coronavirus

7 hours ago, in rod we trust said:

I would think its way more than that , maybe ten times that .  the Chinese communist party officials have a pretty poor record on telling the truth.   I heard on the news the original doctor which was a young fella had died . also heard the Chinese officials also punished him when he broke the news of this coronavirus to the world..

It is way worse than anyone can imagine.  There's lots of videos that some Chinese people are posting via VPN to get word out as to what's going on.  This virus has past SARs deaths and infections in just 29 days.  SARs took months to reach the same level.  Some say "well people die from the flu every years - thousands."  True, but there's a vaccine for Influenza Type A and B.  Type A was given out but it was actually Type B that took over.  So, people can get reinfected with Type B.  Same as with corona, you can get infected twice.  Travel by people is what spreads it.  I'm not at all surprised that people on ships and on land are coming down with it.  I'm watching what they do and not what they say.  It's always in the back of my mind that it's a business and it's all about the money.  On the other hand, if it's between my health and cruising, I'll pick my health.  Cruising is suppose to be worry free right?

BTW, the coronavirus can stay on surfaces for up to 9 days.

https://www.journalofhospitalinfection.com/article/S0195-6701(20)30046-3/fulltext?mobileUi=0

10 minutes ago, CarolineAtSea said:

How do you get "cancel for any reason" insurance? I wish I had that now, cruise leaving in 31 days. 

We have Travel Guard which we always get and pay bucks for it.  We got the Gold plan.

P.S.  I would hold tight on cancelling.  We don't know if travel restrictions out of the US and into the US is going to happen.  If WHO declares it then your cruise will be cancelled regardless.  I don't even know if they have declared it a pandemic yet.  It only took 29 days to get to this point for the virus to spread.  It took SARs much longer.  They cannot stop it, they might slow it down by quarantine, but too little too late.  JMHO.

On 2/6/2020 at 8:38 AM, KL Smith said:

After 50 cruises on many lines I find myself for the very first time actually hoping they cancel our cruise due to the potential quarantine issue. 

Even though we are probably in the most likely age group (65) to be infected, I have no worries about getting sick. I do however have a great fear of someone else getting sick and the ship being quarantined with us locked in our INSIDE cabin for 2 weeks. 

 

Our cruise leaves Los Angeles for Hawaii in 6 days and I have no cancelation insurance, so it would be a 100% loss for us.

 

Has anyone else canceled on this cruise or considering it?

 

Has anyone heard of any potential no-charge cancelling policies from Princess for upcoming cruises other than the ones in Asia already announced?  

If Princess doesn't cancel, I would go.  We were on this same cruise for Thanksgiving.  Some people on board had what I call "the cruise cough."  If you have no worries about getting sick by all means go.  I never plan on getting sick either, but 2 days before getting back into port, I started getting the dreaded cough.  The woman in the cabin next to us from the day she boarded the ship until she debarked, she hacked, coughed, and barfed the whole 14 days.  Did our cabin steward bring her creeping crud over to our cabin?  Despite washing my hands constantly, it wasn't enough.  I was laid up for a month after we got home.  Worse creeping crud I ever had and got it on the ship.

We already planned an upcoming Alaskan cruise in May, like you, we would like to cancel.  We have trip insurance and cancel for any reason.  DH and I decided that this will probably be our last cruise on any ship.  We no longer find it relaxing and fun like we did in the past.  50 cruises for us is enough, we're done.