publicpersona

It seems to be a YMMV situation. On Voyager in September, they listed specific items for the boil 'n bake laundry bag and it specifically said any type of item not listed would be charged. I rolled up some blue jeans and had a couple other non-compliant items and they were laundered at no extra charge. I could easily see them charging if they'd felt like it on that particular day. I, too, have developed techniques for optimizing the bag. I do wonder how big the mesh bag is that they place (some of) your items into. It may be counter-productive to stuff too much. I realize that larger items get one of those neck irritator tags so they must not go in a mesh bag.

Was that in jest? Most of the benefits are for onboard, but are still listed in the C&A benefits. Some are not (like casino offers, the boil and bake laundry deal).

Same whether sugar free or not. The regular pancake syrup is, well, pancake syrup, which is primarily corn syrup.

Celebrity has no reciprocity with MSC. But MSC has a very generous status match covering a wide range of travel loyalty programs. In the other direction, if you were to ask Celebrity to match status from MSC, they would clutch their pearls and shriek.

Nope. Everything I said was correct. NCL does have specific cabins for solos. Nowhere did I make any comment about what staterooms you book. Once again, none of us see a very useful price on the search page. Would it be nice if you could enter number of pax, C&A status, state of residency, police/fire/EMT status, etc. etc. etc. into the search engine? Sure. But they don't, and the prices shown there are ample indicators of relative price levels if you are comparing cruises. It's not that hard.

With a few exceptions, Royal/Celebrity price for double occupancy, and solo passengers pay that for a stateroom (but only one port charges/tax). NCL has specific cabins for solos. MSC is great for solo as their single supplement is 50%. I can certainly see why there has to be something for single supplement. If there wasn't, couples would just book connecting staterooms and have twice the stateroom for the price of one. Singles also tend not to generate much onboard revenue.

You said you have to go all the way to checkout. That's not true. When you click on Book Now, select 1 stateroom and 1 guest and you'll have your price. If you want a price from the main search results, just double it. That will be the solo price almost every time.

I doubt seriously it will be either Dasani or Aquafina. It will likely be a brand you've never heard of that is nothing but municipal water in a bottle/can. Like @matj2000 said, it's water.

OK, good that you clarified that. I was concerned that you were thinking people who don't need connecting cabins should avoid taking one, which extends to people who don't have mobility issues should stay away from the elevators, and people that sleep soundly need to book exclusively underneath the Windjammer, or those that aren't prone to motion sickness must book as far aft or forward as possible, etc. I don't think there's any evidence beyond speculation that anyone intentionally booked a connecting cabin when they didn't need one (my money would be on those being result of a GTY fare), but even if they did .. I don't know .. maybe they want more metal surface to stick their magnetic doodads to.

You are too focused on your own interpretation to realize what is really going on (because connecting rooms is understandably part of your search criteria). How do you know that anyone "goes out of their way" to book a connecting room? After sailing with Royal 60 or more times, this is roughly how I choose a stateroom. I find a price category that I consider to be a value. Within that category, I look at deck plans - what's above and below, how close to elevators, how close to areas of the ship that tend to be noisy, how close to center of gravity, size and shape of the balcony (can vary within category), etc., etc. Once that narrows it down, all things being equal I would eliminate rooms with pullmans and/or connecting doors not for any other reason than they tend to have marginally more wear and tear. But if all was left were rooms with connecting door, that's what I would book. The only significant different to me is that it might have a love seat instead of a full couch.

Ah .. the good old days of cruising where everyone received a booklet with all the passengers' names and addresses.

But since it did, I'll take the opportunity to ask for a recommendation. I'm looking for a 21" carry-on spinner and "personal item" that mates with it well .. in terms of slipping it onto the 21" carry-on's telescoping handle. This is what you always see flight attendants and pilots with, but I've not found such sets online. I do love Swiss Gear stuff, but would consider any brand.

Well, I'm old too, so maybe I should put context around my point. At issue here is the value that a dining room worker would have receiving a paper photograph, taken as a snapshot hurriedly including strangers* to send home to family when that same person could at any time or any place take a photo of themselves in potentially in much more interesting and meaningful places, and be able to send it electronically back home. Given the plethora of opportunities to do the latter, I just don't see how valuable that paper photo would be. I suspect that gratitude shown was in the least embellished in an effort to be polite. * The idea that the ship photographers would take a photo of staff by themselves doesn't seem likely, and even if they would, the photo shop would have difficulty finding such a photo without your face in it, and then would have to be willing to overlook the policy that the guest receiving the free photo must be in the picture. I also suggest that the wait staff would love to get done with appeasing a passenger in this way so they could get back to their very demanding job.

Exactly my point. The so-called professional grade photos are limited to snapshots in the MDR (not even in the "studio" settings where the pictures are carefully posed) vs. the selfie which can be any time any place and of the subject's choice of composition. Seems like an easy choice to me. Also, as shown above, strangers in that MDR photo.

No doubt there have been instances where this wasn't noticed at the checkout, but in fact you do.

Let me see, send my family a photo of me in at landmark in a beautiful foreign port where none of us ever dreamed any of us would go, or a picture of me in my work uniform with people that none of us know from Adam's house cat.

Golden Eagle was always our go to for St. Martin .. probably done it a dozen times and loved it. However, our last visit in July 2021 we were very disappointed. We didn't feel as "pampered" as they always had before, and the snorkeling was just barely interesting. I don't know if we went to a different area because of weather or something, but it had many floating docks and a walkway built of PVC on the ocean floor. Coral and fish not great.

You are about to be ridiculed for your take on it, but I think you are the realist. I am thinking also of the people that bring their stateroom attendant some tchotchke like a rock with “Iowa” written on it, and swear that he or she was genuinely touched and grateful.

I wasn't clear. Of course, passengers must always stay on "ship's time". And that was emphasized when the ship would not observe time zone changes for ports of call. But the standard practice for years has been for ship's time to be adjusted to local time when there is a port of call. For DST changes, you have no choice but to adjust during the cruise if the cruise ends at a home port that observes DST. For a transatlantic, as another example, you'd have no choice. For time zone changes that change in one direction and then back during the same cruise, what I'm saying is there used to be a more common practice to keep the ship time unchanged even when the local port was in a different time zone. That's what I haven't seen in years. I haven't found a Cruise Compass for recent years that emphasizes to "stay on ship's time not local time". Instead this is the more typical practice. [All that said, it is still at captain's discretion and any given cruise may do something different. Just follow the instructions in the Cruise Compass and you'll do fine.]

If it is a closed loop cruise, how could they possibly not change with a DST change? On debarkation morning, there would be chaos as everyone realizes they are an hour off. It used to be more common when visiting ports in other time zones that a ship would stay on "ship's time" rather than local time. But it has been years since I've seen that on a cruise.

My guess is no. But I also guess that what they don't have is an algorithm to consider loyalty status when assigning gty cabins.

(see Park West)

Are you kidding? Everybody needs to see the "Queen's Staircase" and the "Water Tower"!!! Just kidding. Did that when we were young and naive. Now I realize you literally paid to see some steps and a municipal water tower.

You will miss practically everything unless you do excursions through the ship or independently. Alaska is nothing like a Caribbean cruise. It isn't going to be cheap. Hold your nose and pay for experiences you will never forget. Includes days prior to the cruise to go up into Denali and do other Alaska touristy things. No, not cheap. Take an air taxi to a Ruth's Glacier on Mt. Denali. Take a plane tour of the fiords. Take a train ride into Yukon. Go for a whale watch. All of these things will be very expensive, but you will remember them in ways a $79 beach break in St. Martin can't supply.

I would find the credibility of "curing" smoking with a single acupuncture session or ten thousand acupuncture sessions roughly equivalent.