chrisb74

It may depend on where you are in the world. It might have been a particularly busy area or some other need for the crew to concentrate on their work.

I really had no way to fight it because trying to contact the medical facility on the ship would have been next to impossible. I'm sure my insurance company knew that.

That's not entirely true. I needed a document from the ships doctor and i emailed them weeks after the cruise and they sent it through and the onboard doctor even called me to discuss it.

It is a joke - Mainly because the towels are so terrible who would want to steal them.

Two tips:

I think the problem usually comes from returning multiple towels and them not changing the number in the computer so clearly tell them how many you're returning.

Also, on the last night go ask how many towels you have out. If you still have any tell them its wrong and you want them to fix it. They did for me.

And just to mention this ... it doesn't seem fair to the adult passengers who do stay on the ship that your 16 yr. old will be running loose and possibly wreaking havoc.

Absolutely no difference to them running loose while the parents are on board.

If you want to implement a rule that parents and kids can't be more than 10 feet apart while onboard i'm down with that. :)

Where do you think all the water for your soda, coffee, ice, windjammer "juices" and slushy drinks is coming from. The same pipes as your bathroom.

Not to be negative but do you have insurance that will cover this (ie: it was taken out before it was diagnosed or you have specifically paid for cover?)

Lets say you fall down. What could happen? Who will pay for the medical evac?

No. RCCL will not tell you about any groups in advance no matter how large they are. As above, google it if you're concerned but that will only tell you about public events not private charters.

They will try to wait for you if possible OR they will accommodate you and get you to the next port if required.

Sometimes they can't wait. Schedules, tides, berth requirements, etc mean sometimes they can't.

Also some bikini wardrobe malfunctions

From memory the waiver suggests that ladies wear a tshirt.

Oh and they're not USD$25 towels. At best they're worth about $3 and should be limited to washing the dog.

I was very religious in returning towels every day and ensuring they scanned the card and checked them in and i still ended up with a few towels on my account. I think when you return more than one they're not entering the correct number - even though every time i explicitly said how many i was returning.

It's human error but the whole system itself just seems set up to annoy customers.

Cruise lines make it our business by insisting on using "gratuities" rather than just paying their employees. If the employees were directly paid by the company i doubt anyone would care.

I find the RCCL info on self departure a bit misleading. It seems to imply you must do it by 8am (in the case of the info posted above) but in reality if you're later than that who cares - They're not going to stop you leaving.

That said, be nice to your room steward and leave the room by the time indicated. They have a lot to do.

Some aerial footage of the helicopter evac:

Now I'm wondering exactly why the writer felt the "billion dollar" cost of the "cruise liner" had to be included in the story. :confused:

Padding the story. Plus Fremantle/Western Australia gets so few ships its an event every time something Voyager class or larger shows up.

Apparently it was a crew member.

Explorer - confirmed multiple punches for larger drinks. We didn’t get the card.

We purchased the surf and stream two device pack before boarding. On checkin they gave us an access code to use. This was entered once and our devices stayed logged in for the entire trip - I was really impressed with how well it worked. Even after being off the ship it was still logged in and working automatically when we returned.

If you need to swap devices logoff.com does work.

Latency is high as you’d expect but over all 95% of the time it was quite usable for web browsing. We only streamed a few things off YouTube and it worked well. Speed tests showed 2-3Mbps. Netflix worked and uses the USA library.

Over the week it dropped out a few times for 10-15mins. This is to be expected and it never lasted long.

Wifi was available everywhere I tried on the ship (and even on the bus waiting next to the ship)

I would do it personally. I feel that the twice a day cleaning is actually excessive and really wish they would go to just once a day while at dinner.

You could just request that.

Yes, i'd absolutely take up that offer.

The coffee card thing got us on Adventure in December. And it was very obvious that the drinks manager was manipulating something.

yeah, after reading up here i'm going to cancel ours for our upcoming trip. The maths just doesn't make sense if they do that and it's just not worth arguing on board if i don't have to.

After reading about the interpretation of what a "drink" is on the coffee card and the tipping/credit variations on the specialty meal packages it got me wondering - I assume ships are responsible for their own finances and I wonder if they are deliberately making their own interpretations of "offers" in order to cut costs.

Has anyone else seen this in relation to drinks or other services?

If my house was destroyed, I would not want to have you over for dinner.

Your attitude might be different if you had no job and everyone visiting your house was willing to pay you $50.

These islands need tourism - The governments are saying they're ready so the best thing to do is go.

I have a cruise booked on Explorer and the Coffee Card is listed for sale on the cruise planner.

They will turn on the onboard ship roaming and you phone will try to use it if you have roaming turned on. You can tell by the carrier name displayed.

Your phone can be set (on iPhone Settings / "Service provider" & Mobile Data Roaming OFF) to only use your provider when it's available. It will be hit and miss depending on who your carrier is, where the ship is and where you are on the ship. I've had coverage 90Km off the coast at times but at other times nothing 10-20Km out.

I think its demographic. People going to Alaska are older and are into experiencing the more traditional view of cruising. It seems Liberty just does short hops around the Bahamas so you will get a younger set of passengers just out for a good time.