publicpersona

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.

There's no evidence that not tipping will result in mishandling of your luggage in any way. However, that intimidation is something I've experienced multiple times as the stevedore says, "I'm the one who makes sure your luggage gets safely on the ship." Besides being untrue (the stevedores will again handle your luggage, but not necessarily that individual), what purpose does such a statement serve than to pressure for a tip?

More like ... No, you don't. Yes, you do. No, you don't. Yes, you do. No, you don't. Yes, you do. No, you don't. Yes, you do. No, you don't. Yes, you do. No, you don't. Yes, you do. No, you don't. Yes, you do. Welcome to CC.

You seem to be digging yourself a bigger hole. You say *you* haven't had a problem with showing up without tagged luggage, and you are only interested in what pleases *you*. Yes, that's the problem. Getting thousands of people and their luggage onboard in just a few hours is already a challenge. It wouldn't kill you to try to do the little things that make it smoother for everybody. Play along.

The answer is right there on the luggage tag page: 3. Make as many copies of this tag as you require, preferably in color. So if you have a color printer, great. If not, don't give it a moment's thought.

I have AirTags in each piece of luggage. It came in very handy last trip when someone in my family left a carry-on at the check-in counter and we got a notification after we'd gone through security. We knew not to waste time asking security if it was there. It isn't as useful once on ship at sea, of course. And sometimes knowledge of where your bag is can induce stress. We boarded at 11 AM and became concerned that our bags were showing still in the terminal (and updating frequently) at 4 PM. But the bags got loaded. As to Tile vs. Airtag .. With Tile you are dependent on someone also having the Tile app on their device nearby and there are about 40 million of them in the world. With AirTag, you have over 2 billion devices that can report location on behalf of the AirTag.

Thanks for the reassurance that eastbound from MCO to Port Canaveral has a cash option. I rarely use cash for anything, but in a rental car I just don't want any opportunity for something to go wrong. Yes, I can close the provided transponder (if there is one), and yes, I could use my E-Pass instead. And yes, I will pay about $1.50 more and take a few minutes more in the cash lane. But all of that is worth it if I'm not subject to the hassle and big expense that pay by tag would entail. Not going under the cameras in a rental car means that even if something went wrong with vehicle registration to E-Pass, etc., I wouldn't have that risk.

MSC is the best bang for the buck. The status match is very nice (I got matched to Black/Diamond) a few years ago. Their private island is, in my opinion, much, much better than Labadee or CocoCay .. precisely because it is new and they haven't had time to mess it up yet. Except for food venues and restrooms, it is just beaches and a lagoon .. what Labadee and CocoCay were in their prime. Entertainment excels in the singers/dancers in the shows. And on bigger ships, they do a condensed version of an opera that is wonderful and unlike anything on Royal. Music in public areas is hit or miss. The music for the shows is always canned, which I dislike. Food is not amazing. But you won't starve.

There was a discussion in this forum not long ago where someone posted a phone number and the responses to trigger getting the current Cruise Vacation Receipt sent via email. I'm not able to locate that and would like an updated copy but not enough to wait on hold/talk to someone/etc. Note this is the Cruise Vacation Receipt (invoice) I'm looking for. I know how to easily get the SetSail pass and Guest Vacation Booklet.

Any time someone says "business days" you know you are being jerked around.

I satisfied the remainder of an AMEX spend on a similar offer by booking shore excursions late in the cruise, which I promptly cancelled day one onboard. I made sure that my credit card for onboard purchases was not the AMEX.

The Origins of Tipping | Snopes.com

Most notable "pier runner" incident I've seen on a cruise was on Splendour in 1998. The ship had already sailed away from Venice when a motorboat with two elderly passengers arrived. If they wanted to get on the ship, they'd need to get over any fear of climbing a ladder to get onto a ship at sea. They made it.