We've cruised on the same ship with & without Starlink and I honestly couldn't see the difference in the early mornings.
Possibly during the busy parts of the day it might be more advantageous.
Much of the time depends on how many courses you order + how quick you actually eat. We us it involves at least 2 appetizers, soup, salad, main course, coffee & desert. All of which take 1 1/2 hours if the waiter is quick to serve everything.
The main DR's are included in the base price of your cruise but they now include the casual restaurants (2 free with the plus package & unlimited with the premiums package) as an incentive to sell people the more expensive packages.
If course you can not buy into the package at all & pay the $14.99 for a casual meal if you feel it's worth the price, we don't. It's just another thing taken away from everyone to make it more appealing to buy their package. We can live without their casual meals very nicely.
I'm not sure of the percentages but there are quite a few who choose to skip it. It's not the best beach day, so why bother when you've got the ship almost to yourself with the same lunch served at the buffet, without the flies.
You've got that right. ✅
A few occurrences such at that would put them out of business.
They may have gotten away with it 30 years ago but no longer as people tend to give negative reviews almost the same day.
If Elite, there both free. We use "cleaning" for lots of items like delicate tops, jackets & sweaters and "laundry" for the rest.
In the last few years I've been specifying cold wash and cool dry for laundry & have had good success. If you don't dry articles at home in you hot dryer, they'll shrink them on the ship unless you specify otherwise.
I haven't seen that yet but I guess they're learning that in order to stay profitable and compete with the cruise lines they have to give some assurance to potential customers. I'll bet they haven't had to utilize that guarantee yet.
Most of the tour companies are reliable.