why cant you hear announcements in cabins?

[Hlitner]

This is one of those policies that varies among cruise lines.  One irony is that there is a basic "rule" that the more expensive/luxury lines all have far fewer announcements than on the mass market lines.  On some lines, there may only be a single PA announcement per day which is usually the Captain's daily report done around noon.

 

As to the cabin announcements, this is fully controllable from the Bridge.  They have the ability to turn on various groups of speakers and can broadcast into cabins if they so choose.  But most cruise lines limit cabin announcements, since they do disturb many folks, interrupt sleep/naps, etc.  Most cruise lines do give passengers to ability to monitor just about any announcement in their cabin.  They might have control of a speaker, but more often they can get announcements over a specific TV channel.

 

Having cruised on 16 different cruise lines (17 and 18 are now booked) we do find the differences between cruise lines quite interesting.  On Seabourn, for example, you will seldom get any announcements other than the Captains daily thing which is sometimes immediately followed by a short Cruise Director update.  But the cruise directors on the luxury lines seldom to never make those silly announcements where they basically read the daily schedule.  One Seabourn CD told me they figure that folks on their ships are capable of reading the daily schedule (printed, on their Apps, and on TV).  And promoting various "sales" is just not the style of luxury lines (where they seldom have any kind of "sale."

 

Hank

[Honolulu Blue]

13 minutes ago, Hlitner said:

the cruise directors on the luxury lines seldom to never make those silly announcements where they basically read the daily schedule. 

To bend this point around a bit, I remember a few years ago, Carnival had a TV channel that was dedicated to reading the daily schedule verbatim (more or less).  I kind of miss it; some of the voices were kind of cute. 🙂

[Hlitner]

9 minutes ago, Honolulu Blue said:

To bend this point around a bit, I remember a few years ago, Carnival had a TV channel that was dedicated to reading the daily schedule verbatim (more or less).  I kind of miss it; some of the voices were kind of cute. 🙂

Perhaps Carnival figured that some of their customers could not read 🙂

[Honolulu Blue]

26 minutes ago, Hlitner said:

Perhaps Carnival figured that some of their customers could not read 🙂

I can see it being another option for their blind passengers, though I assume they did and do have newsletters in Braille.

[Heidi13]

52 minutes ago, Hlitner said:

 

As to the cabin announcements, this is fully controllable from the Bridge.  They have the ability to turn on various groups of speakers and can broadcast into cabins if they so choose. 

 

It isn't only the Bridge that can access pax cabins, that is available from any of the main control stations, with the Bridge being one of them.

[CruiserBruce]

16 hours ago, ontheweb said:

Well I for one hope to never have to hear an emergency announcement!

Cruise long enough, you will. We have had 3 in 25 cruises over 33 years.

[frantic36]

On 5/31/2023 at 7:33 AM, Ashland said:

It's nice to have the "option". If you don't want to hear the Captains daily announcements...easy...turn that dial "off".

 

On the ships I sail on there is no "dial"  in the room so I can't turn it off. I prefer to have quiet in my room unless it is an emergency.

[luckyinpa]

there are things that most passengers want to hear. last week there was a message not to go near the gangway until we were called to disembark at coco cay. my head had to go out in the hall to hear that message. the message said when you hear the theme song to coco cay you can get off the ship. impossible to hear that unless you were in the hall. if you can really hear them on the tv channels there needs  to be a notice on the desk in the cabin. things like when it's ok to disembark at ports is universally wanted.

[capriccio]

11 minutes ago, luckyinpa said:

there are things that most passengers want to hear. last week there was a message not to go near the gangway until we were called to disembark at coco cay. my head had to go out in the hall to hear that message. the message said when you hear the theme song to coco cay you can get off the ship. impossible to hear that unless you were in the hall. if you can really hear them on the tv channels there needs  to be a notice on the desk in the cabin. things like when it's ok to disembark at ports is universally wanted.

We had a similar experience on our last cruise:  a delayed arrival with an announcement in the cabins but then no further cabin announcement of when disembarkation began.  I mentioned that to a security officer as we were leaving and she just said "you should have been listening to the bridge channel on the TV."  It would have been nice if "listen to the bridge channel on the TV for further announcements" had been part of the original cabin-wide message.

[Honolulu Blue]

1 hour ago, luckyinpa said:

the message said when you hear the theme song to coco cay you can get off the ship.

I didn't know PD@CC had its own theme song.  Thanks for sharing!  You learn something new every day.

 

And now, to take this thread on another tangent, here are my modest suggestions for theme songs for some destinations I've been to:

 

• Grand Turk - "Young Turks" by Rod Stewart (you can rework the lyrics here)
• Amber Cove - "China Grove" by the Doobie Brothers (lyrics definitely need a rework)
• San Juan - "Jenny From the Block" by Jennifer Lopez
• Mahogany Bay - "Theme From Mahogany" by Diana Ross
• Ensenada - "Mexican Radio" by Wall of Voodoo

 

As for Coco Cay's theme song, does it perhaps sound something like this? 😁

 

[cruisemom42]

1 hour ago, Honolulu Blue said:

Ensenada - "Mexican Radio" by Wall of Voodoo

 

Love it!!!  

 

"I wish I was in....Ensenada....eating barbequed Iguana."

 

 

[Aquahound]

On 5/30/2023 at 1:52 PM, lenquixote66 said:

I have been on many RCI ships and do not recall a switch but perhaps I was too busy doing other things.

 

I think it's the Vision Class ships.  I remember the speaker being located near the vanity with a volume knob.  On newer ships, you can hear the announcements on either the bridge or forward/aft camera channels.  

[mrgabriel]

We sail on Celebrity and there is normally only one announcement each day. Since that announcement usually includes the weather forecast, I'm in the habit of turning on the TV and leaving it on the Navigation channel. Announcements come through there and it's innocuous enough that it can stay on all day. 

[luckyinpa]

another related item that i dont know if is across all lines is last year i was on princess in the casino and we were having a bad week. missed 3 ports on a canada cruise!  when the captain came on to make an announcement about more bad weather, it was not only IN the casino, ALL the slots instantly muted. took a second to process what was going on. never heard a full casino so quiet.

 

the fact that the captain controls all the slot volumes also gives credence to the fact that there are elves in the back room constantly playing with slot payouts and when they see me sit down they lower the odds..sigh

[Heidi13]

On 6/5/2023 at 8:41 AM, luckyinpa said:

another related item that i dont know if is across all lines is last year i was on princess in the casino and we were having a bad week. missed 3 ports on a canada cruise!  when the captain came on to make an announcement about more bad weather, it was not only IN the casino, ALL the slots instantly muted. took a second to process what was going on. never heard a full casino so quiet.

 

the fact that the captain controls all the slot volumes also gives credence to the fact that there are elves in the back room constantly playing with slot payouts and when they see me sit down they lower the odds..sigh

 

The Bridge has a master control head that can over-ride all other audio sources. If the zone with the casino is selected on the Bridge, once the Tx button is pressed, all audio in that zone is muted. It would be the same in the Theatre when a show is taking place. If the Bridge selects that zone and hits the Tx button, the show audio is muted.

 

If another station is using the P/A system, the Bridge system also has priority. You may have heard other announcements taking place and are cutoff, then an announcement comes from the Bridge. All per design and regulations.

[Aquahound]

On 6/5/2023 at 8:41 AM, luckyinpa said:

another related item that i dont know if is across all lines is last year i was on princess in the casino and we were having a bad week. missed 3 ports on a canada cruise!  when the captain came on to make an announcement about more bad weather, it was not only IN the casino, ALL the slots instantly muted. took a second to process what was going on. never heard a full casino so quiet.

I like that feature. I find it slightly irritating when people don’t shut the heck up while the Captain is talking. 

[luckyinpa]

i wonder about the intricacy to wire each slot machine's speaker to turn off like that. im sure they have their own system designs to take care of it but still pretty wild thinking about it.

 

no wires to anyones mouths, they can keep talking