grouchomarx

It’s also amusing to me how people don’t realize a LOT of people want to post to their social media while traveling in real time, it’s quite a common thing and I imagine it would suck if you can’t. Personally I don’t but we did find some rubber duckies around the ship and I imagine a lot of them didn’t make it online lol

Once again I will ask, if you had taken 10 cruises and internet was always reliable to get whatever business you needed done, why would you assume the next cruise would be a total disaster and live in fear of cruising? It’s no different than traveling on land. It is expected there is wifi in any hotel and in most public places including shacks on the beach. The precedent has been set by the cruise industry and is widely advertised as a desirable and reliable amenity. When the ships fail to provide an expected and advertised (and paid extra for) service, it is on them, not the user, to look like a fool. We are simply using our experience as a rule of thumb for what to expect, which is human nature. Not everyone can afford to be disconnected from life for extended periods of time.

The problem is, if you’ve had good internet on all your other cruises, you would tend to think another cruise wouldn’t be terribly different, especially on a newer ship.

It prompted both of us separately on our apps with the choice to upgrade, no indication it was for everyone in the cabin. Once my spouse did it, it didn’t automatically upgrade me so you should be fine with just one upgrade.

HAL is the first cruise line I’ve experience this bad of wifi. I have been able to scroll internet, including Instagram, Reddit, all news outlets with no issues on every other cruise in recent times. On Celebrity Edge in Feb there were a few hiccups but it was by far the exception not the rule. ETA: Princess, Royal, Celebrity, and NCL are past lines

I saw some people trying to conduct business on their laptops and I felt really bad for them, it must have been painfully slow. My husband usually conducts huge amounts of business while traveling because he has no choice and this time thankfully he didn’t….had he needed to, we would have been in serious trouble.

It was a $30 flat fee per person, not per day. Honestly, we were only a few minutes into day 2 (didn’t have time for internet on day 1, too busy learning the ship, unpacking, etc). After a few minutes we just say let’s do it, so I can’t tell you how much worse it would have been without the upgrade.

Yes they will be listed in the daily paper.

We had the suf package included in our fare and upgraded to the premium one for $30 pp. I can only imagine how awful it would have been had we not upgraded! Don’t have anxiety, just plan to work around it. If you are patient, you can connect to things, I just can’t imagine spending that much time staring at a frozen screen waiting for a download to happen. You’ll never be “disconnected”, just slowly connected. Things may time out, you must click reload or retry to get it back. Email was ok, I don’t recall any real problems. Didn’t try much texting but that should be fine. Just web content and anything streaming is the real problem. Nav app works seamlessly at all times. Switching devices was always very easy.

That is very smart, we were screen shooting all kinds of stuff just to be safe and in case there was no internet at some point. Nav app did get a little crazy in the terminal and decided to log us both out while waiting on line to board! We got logged back in ok but you never know what will happen.

Just spent a week on NS (Caribbean). Trip was pretty good except wow, the wifi was woefully inadequate the entire cruise. We were desperate day two and spent the money to upgrade to the faster package but it did little to help. I could not load basic web pages without significant waits. Things like Cruise Critic, NY post, etc. Long load times. Forget anything involving video. Instagram was basically unusable unless you wanted to have every video play for a few seconds, stop for a while then continue playing. For everything in my feed. It was a problem for me because my past time on vacation is sitting with my iPad scrolling the internet for news and my favorite social media sites etc for entertainment. I could not do that and was often bored. Luckily it gave us enough juice to do online crossword puzzles. It didn’t matter where we were on the ship or if in port or not. It was always really bad. I’m just warning those like me who truly rely on it for daily entertainment perhaps bring yourself a paper book or already downloaded media on your device. If I had known I would have done so myself. Been on many ships and never had a wifi problem quite like this. Also note that the wifi drains your device battery like you’ve never seen. My iPad would be at like 70% before noon when I can do hours and hours continuous of use at home and never get below that by night time. There is a thing the wifi does where it is constantly making your device authenticate itself nonstop and that’s what causes the battery drain. I do recommend having a power brick with you, it helped us out a few times. (My husband is a CIO and extreme IT expert so he is the one who explained to me what was happening.)

When we were boarding last Saturday 10/22 in Port Everglades paper boarding passes were not working and you had to go somewhere and get them to print you out a receipt type thing with a barcode on it. So just be aware you are better off with the app on your phone to get through faster. Lots of people with paper passes that were very confused and running around.

There were two comedy sets last week on NS. One night was one 8pm performance in the theater and the other night two performances in BB Kings.

I did fine with the signature package with one exception. Made the mistake of asking a sommelier for a wine by the glass recommendation to pair with food and she chose an $18 Pouille Fusse (sorry cannot spell that.) My bad for not asking the price. Paid full price. Otherwise, stayed within the price range and only went above my 15 drinks on one day of the cruise. Overall it’s quite doable and I drink quite a bit.

On NS this past week our room steward asked day one do you want once a day or twice a day, we requested twice a day and got it every day.

Even if you could get it I would hesitate…we were just there yesterday and they ran out of all beer by about noon or so, all liquor was gone by about 1:15 and the bar was shut down. Even though we were not all aboard until 2:30. So get your drinks early! I was very surprised they actually ran out and closed up shop so far in advance of us having to leave. Never seen anything like it before.

I feel like I learned better methods of preventing illness from years of cruising. My biggest fear is to get noro while on a cruise. I was on a ship that had an outbreak but I did not get it. I made a concerted effort to not touch my hands on the arms of chairs when sitting in lounges, always so careful after using the restroom, don't touch my face etc. I was already ready for covid when it hit!

We sailed Edge in Feb, there were photographers all around every night. We bought a package on board and also had a professional shoot done and ordered an album. I think it's just something you do once onboard.

Anyone know the gym hours on NS? I like to go real early like 6am. Thanks.

8pm closing! That’s really early!

We thought the included Celebrity champagne in our room was quite good. We got a second bottle no charge, it was no problem. Often free sparkling wines on cruises or in resorts is just awful so we were pleasantly surprised.

YES! This has also become the case with us. My firsts cruise was Crown Princess in 2007. I thought our ocean view cabin was great. Looking back, I could never deal with that now! I've been too spoiled in too many nicer, bigger, more adequately furnished cabins to ever go back to such basic accommodations. It is surprising to me Princess hasn't done anything to remedy the situation, they are in very poor competition. With Princess we will only do the newest ships.

I sailed once on Halloween. I recall a lot of very elaborately carved pumpkins and seasonal decor in the atrium, and they had pumpkin carving classes and stuff like that. Sorry my mind is a little fuzzy, it was quite a while ago. Princess does a good job with all the big holidays, in general.

I would really want no part of that. Even if it's minimal filming of me just "in the background" I'm still uncomfortable with that and would not want to be on a tv show. At least you can op out though, and it's not forced for you to be filmed. I was once waiting to disembark in the Platinum lounge and they were running a loop of videos from our cruise and I looked up and saw myself doing the champagne waterfall and I was mortified! I didn't expect it and don't like any attention on me. It was funny though.

We did chef's table on Princess a few times and it was always very enjoyable. The food is amazing. It is a HUGE amount of food. Don't eat much that day. I honestly couldn't handle that much food at this point in my life. One thing that stuck in my mind, I remember they told us you must have closed toed shoes and I didn't have any. I tried to find them in the ports but couldn't. Ended up it was canceled due to norovirus. So if that's still a thing, make sure you have the right shoes. (It's for safety in the galley). It was fun to meet new people and talk with them, we made friends for the rest of the cruise and met up a few times for drinks.