chengkp75

Each cruise ship is required to have a pest control officer, whose only duty is the pest control program. This goes beyond rodents to roaches and fruit flies. The rodents would not be in the cabin areas, they would be in the food prep and storage areas. And, if there were rodents in the passenger cabin areas, this would have been a long term problem, and this would have been found by USPH inspectors long ago. Not sure what a "disconnected" vent (between the rectangular and round) would be (not an AC return), they are never near the floor, and they don't go "outside".

I'm not aware of any microwave, anywhere on any NCL ship. Possibly the Captain has one in his suite.

Hair care appliances are the exceptions to the rules about things with heating elements. However, I have heard reports of Dyson products not working on ships. This is likely due to the "digital motor" which uses electronics to convert the power, and it likely doesn't like that the "neutral" and "ground" are not at the same voltage, or that the AC power is "dirty" (small voltage spikes) due to the propulsion system. Some have no problem getting them to work, some do.

Actually, this is not correct, either. RCI does not allow any extension cords, or are you going to debate that a power strip is not an extension cord?

The electronics in the straightener don't like the way that ship's power acts. Both the ground system, and the "dirty" AC power caused by the propulsion can make the electronics switch off.

Hair straighteners are allowed, but just be aware that I have seen several reports that the ceramic type straighteners (most likely your expensive one is) don't work on ships. And, anything confiscated on boarding is available to be picked up at the end of the cruise.

And, again, I am not talking about an insulation failure between wires, I'm talking about a failure between one wire and the case of the appliance. You stated that "the safest power strip" had a single pole breaker inside it. I said, that the "safest power strip" for a ship has a dual pole breaker, because even if you interrupt the hot leg, you could still have potential stray current flowing to the case from the neutral leg, as has been found with typical commercial power strips on ships causing fires (there is a USCG safety notice regarding this) because the neutral leg continued to conduct. I won't continue to argue whether a power strip breaker has a faster trip curve than a molded case breaker, but a dual pole breaker on the power strip is still safer than a single pole one, due to ship's grounding system.

Further, under the Submerged Land Act, while the Federal government controls the navigable waters of the US, the states regulate the "submerged land" (ocean bottom) under those waters, and can determine whether or not ships anchoring in places disrupts the ecology, and commerce of the waters, and could just as easily close the anchorages to all but small fishing boats, and pleasure craft.

You may want to brush up on maritime law, even though you say it doesn't apply, as there are many precedents of closing ports to foreign flag ships. And, just as during covid, US citizens were denied re-entry into the US, as they were not on US soil. Once a citizen reaches US soil, they cannot be denied entry from a foreign country (and that is what the cruise ship is), but until they reach US soil, they can be denied entry. You have the common misconception that US law protects you everywhere, when in fact it does not, and a foreign flag cruise ship is one of those places.

Not to mention the humidity you allow into the cabin.

And, you would be the one causing every cabin around you to call guest services and complain that their cabin is hot. Yes, opening the balcony door does shut off one AC system, the one that merely recirculates your cabin air (like a window AC at home). However, you have just unbalanced the fresh air supply AC system, that is not shut off when the door is open, and your cabin gets more fresh, cool air, as the system tries to rebuild the overpressure in your cabin (it can't overcome the huge opening that is the balcony door)(the overpressure is to keep smoke from entering your cabin from the passageway), and everyone else in the block of cabins (typically everyone on your deck between the fire doors, so 40-50 cabins) gets less cool air.

Oh, please. That movie is so full of crap. In fact, the place where the shaft goes through the hull is the strongest part of the hull. It is typically a casting, not plate steel like the rest of the hull.

Again, you will be called to muster long before the ship is sinking, or the Captain is thinking of putting you in boats. Its good to know where the boats are, but in an actual emergency, please do not go anywhere other than your assigned muster station. As I've said, it will only mean that personnel will have to be taken from other duties in the emergency, to go looking for you.

By this logic, I should have stopped doing weekly fire and boat drills decades ago (at least 26 a year for 46 years). If you don't exercise that muscle memory, you lose it.

Sorry, ships don't sink that fast. Even the Concordia would have lasted a couple of hours longer had she not grounded a second time, and that is considered to be a completely unique and rare case where 4-5 watertight compartments were flooded.

Passenger muster is really not about the boats. There are far more times that the passengers have been mustered in an emergency, and the Captain never once considered abandoning ship, than there have where the boats were actually used. The muster is to get all the passengers to known, controllable locations, where accountability can be taken, so that crew can be dispatched to find missing passengers. Muster should be signaled long, long before the ship is sinking. Even in the case of the Concordia, if Schettino had signaled for muster when he was informed the ship was flooding, the passengers could have been mustered, and loaded in the boats long before the ship started to roll over. It was over an hour before the ship grounded again, and used the grounding point as a pivot to roll over. Up until that time, the ship never listed more than 12*, and lifeboats are designed to launch at 15* at a minimum. No, going to any muster station will render accountability useless, and the crew will not know who is on the boats, or who is left to go, or who is missing. The problem with this, is that you could achieve "gold" status on a variety of ships, and therefore you may not be as familiar with where the muster stations are on your present ship. As I've said, it is "muscle memory", actually going to the station that causes you to retain it. Also, wandering there, or being escorted one on one to the station is not giving you the "drill like its real" aspect that you get when everyone on the ship is moving to their stations, as they would be in an emergency. Also, the crew have lost the training experience of "herding the cats" in an actual passenger muster, recalcitrant passengers and all, so they will be less prepared for assisting you in the real thing. I know that there are about 3 of us here on CC that feel this way (all professional mariners or USCG personnel), which is why I considered it a 'controversial" opinion.

Cruise ships are required to have Type I lifejackets, ones that are designed to keep an unconscious person upright and face up. It would be even better to learn how to get to your muster station from various places on the ship, and even by different paths, in case the one you know is blocked. Its called "muscle memory", and also "train like its real", which are the best ways to learn something.

And, as another attempt to steer this back to the OP's question, I'll chum the waters with this: What I love that others hate: Old muster drill What I hate that others love: New muster drill Enjoy

Actually, SOLAS does not ban smoking on balconies. What SOLAS did, in the wake of the Star Princess fire, was to require either a sprinkler on the balcony, or all balcony furniture to be flame retardant. It was also the reason that balcony dividers open, its for safety, so fire teams can proceed from one balcony to the next, not for passenger convenience. And, the blog linked makes many mistakes, common to people who have not read the actual investigation report of the Star Princess fire. She goes into detail about how "someone was smoking on a balcony, and the cigarette butt found its way onto another balcony, where it smoldered for about 20 minutes". The investigation board assigned the probable root cause of the fire as a cigarette butt, since no definitive cause could be determined. Under laboratory conditions, the investigators attempted to light a Princess towel using a cigarette, but were unable. (Though she does, at the end, state a disclaimer that it was never proven to be a cigarette) She also claims that the cabins are "big metal boxes" and this stopped the spread of the fire, which is false, as the cabins will catch fire, and only the wall facing the passageway, and the door have an A60 fire rating (meaning it takes 60 minutes for a fire on one side to start the paint on the other to burn). She also makes it sound like Carnival alone decided to change the balcony furniture and add sprinklers, when in fact it was mandated by SOLAS, and industry wide.

I am not talking about a short circuit. You still don't seem to understand that the "neutral" leg (and there really isn't one in marine electricity) and "ground" are not at the same potential, and that even if the breaker on the power strip cuts the "hot" leg, if there is an insulation failure of an appliance plugged into the power strip, current will still flow from the "neutral" leg to ground, at 60v. Are you saying that residential circuit breakers won't trip on a long, excessive current, that is only a small amount above the rated trip? I beg to differ, as residential breakers use a class C trip curve, which will trip at about 2 times rating in 100 seconds. Nearly all breakers will trip over time, at low over rating current, and will trip instantaneously at high over rating current.

If one were discussing interstate travel, you would have a point. That would require transportation on a US flag vessel (domestic). Once you set foot on a foreign flag vessel, you fall under the jurisdiction of international maritime law, and you are no longer on "interstate" travel, but international travel, and this is established in law and precedent both in the US and the world for decades. This is the point that most US cruise passengers fail to understand, that just because a cruise starts and ends in the US, the cruise and the ship do not fall under US jurisdiction when outside territorial waters. International law says that coastal states (meaning nations) have the right to restrict access to foreign ships, and this has also been established for decades. When you throw in the US states' rights to jurisdiction over their territory unless specifically reserved to the Federal government by the Constitution, then you find that the states do have the right to regulate international traffic into seaports. Barring any treaty between the US and the flag states of the cruise ships granting specific access to ports, and barring any contract between the cruise line and the town/city port authority, the cruise ship doe not have any presumtive right to access to the port.

What "sites" are you hoping to see? There is a whole lot to do in Portland without taking an excursion.

Even the Navy has problems keeping their vacuum toilets working on the two nuclear carriers that have them, and they only have less than 500 toilets on the ship. And the Navy is resorting to a $400k "acid flush". Gee, we did this on merchant ships using a machine that cost $5000, was used at 6 locations around the ship (for about 30 toilets), took overnight at each location, and cost about $100 for the acid, and we did it once a year. I'd like to sign up to provide this service to the Navy for $400k. And, on the cruise ships, we've been doing this for decades, using a dissolving packet of citric acid in each passenger toilet every week. The Navy just has to do things its own way.

Whether or not the passengers got dosed with radiation or not, the liability would be there, and in the US's litigious culture, the lawsuits, whether justified or not, would be rampant, and set before a jury of lay people.

A "closed loop" cruise (one that starts in a US port, and ends in the same US port) only requires a stop at any foreign port. However, a cruise that starts at one US port (Juneau), and ends at another US port (Seattle), requires a port call at a "distant" foreign port, regardless of whether it has a port call at a "near" foreign port (Victoria). A "distant" foreign port is defined as one that is not in North America, Central America, the Caribbean, the Bahamas, or Bermuda.