markeb

A lot of people pay for experiences. That's what we're doing by cruising, isn't it? You cook it steak places were pretty popular a few years back. Haven't looked for one in years. It wasn't about the steak; it was the experience. Cook your own steak, paint and wine shops, cupcake decorating, and art classes have nothing to do with the product or not knowing how to cook a steak or frost a cupcake. It's the experience. The cupcake experience on RCL's Freedom and Oasis class ships was always booked solid. People sign up for the mixology classes on Celebrity. And wine tastings. The glass blowing is a lot of fun. It's all the same. People are buying an experience and maybe they learn a little in the process. That's actually a recurring theme in most marketing to Millenials in particular; they buy experiences over products. No issue if you don't get it. Just means you're not the target market. But they're successful enough that there is a target market.

Thanks! I was looking at a trip planner, either TFL or Google Maps, and it was giving a much longer travel estimate than that. Maybe time of day, or it was planning a long slow walk to and from the Tube. Don't recall exactly, but I'm thinking it was over a half hour total travel time, and the Abbey's posted hours are an early closing time.

The App Store still says iOS 17 or higher. Curious if anyone on 16 got it to install.

Assuming everyone has a unique logon, and not everyone has an iPhone, WhatsApp should be fine. If everyone has an iPhone, just use iMessage. In either case if you have alerts on you’ll receive an alert.

Boulud is the Executive Chef. He designed the menu. It’s prepared by the chefs onboard. Which is mostly true of any restaurant.

Did you look in the app? That’s your best source. Per the app, for my Summit sailing next month, Whispering Angel is $17. There’s a Le Bel Olivier, also French, at $10. There may be others.

Where? Generally open all night if docked. I've never done it at a tender port, but pretty sure they run at a reduced frequency all night.

Marriott, United Airlines, Target, REI... Every app in the iOS store that allows in app purchases has had this almost from the beginning of iOS. If that's all the wallet is, then there's no good reason for it to require iOS 7! App development on the cheap? EU requirements? Some other driver of iOS 17? Understand. But every app in the iOS store that allows in app purchases can do this and could do this probably going back to the first version of iOS. I don't expect a cruise company to be a great IT company, but this one should be explained. Or fixed... The major change in their upgrade notes is the wallet. Maybe that's not the driver here. But if there's no real driver...

Do you mean the old Celebrity app? In the other thread people found they could no longer use the previous app. That’s what started that thread. Don’t expect the old app to continue to work fine.

I'm not going to disagree with that. But do you seriously think anyone in Celebrity management understands that? This version says it added a "guest wallet" which must only be available onboard or after check-in; I don't see it in my app. They're probably either leveraging a feature of iOS 17 for their security, or maybe didn't want to validate the security on older versions. The app development was probably outsourced. To a group that doesn't know anyone with an iPhone earlier than iPhone 11, and maybe even 12. They probably all have 15 Pros/Max. Why would being able to run iOS 17 be an issue? This smells of a classic case of requirements creep coupled with continuing beyond the good idea cutoff point. Since probably no one has used the guest wallet yet, I can see a new release on the app shortly that runs on iOS 16. Without the new toy...

Uber is fine in NYC. In fact, many of those private drivers are also Uber drivers. Carmel and Dial7 are the most common private car services mentioned around here. Taxis are a flat rate of I believe $70 plus any tolls and tips to Manhattan, but that's from JFK itself. Test book on Uber and see what you're looking at. It should be a lot better than $330.

Me neither. If that's using an iOS 17 unique feature, that would (like it or not) explain it. Whether a guest wallet is really a necessity is a different question. I guess I'll see next month...

Are you going to skip the wine pairing? I know it gets ridiculous at some point, but I want to believe it's curated for the menu. Which unfortunately the standard wines won't be. But the wine pairing can also be a LOT of wine, and at some point you stop appreciating it. (Years ago on I think Brilliance of the Seas we did a Chef's table that automatically came with the wine pairing. It was a great dinner. I rarely do wine pairings, even though I understand the theoretical benefit.)

Arrived today. Haven't had a chance to use it yet. The infamous FW50 batteries were dead (haven't shot for awhile). Slapped it on the a6500 and just focused across the house. Even that was impressive. I think the longest lens I've owned was a 55-250 "kit lens" for a Canon Rebel. I can already see this will blow that out of the water! Have a road trip next week where it's probably the absolute wrong lens, but I think it's going anyway. Need to play with it and check its limits before trying to turn that brown spot on the spring snow into a bear...

Apple pretty much defines any iPhone model that hasn't been sold in at least 5 but less than 7 years "vintage". They can theoretically be repaired (subject to parts availability) and receive major security upgrades. They're a little unclear on version (whole number, if you will) upgrades, but I don't think they receive them. iPhones become obsolete at 7 years. No official support. The 8+ seems ancient to me, but it was discontinued in 2020. Apparently iOS 17 requires an A12 chip or higher; the 8 has an A11. Odd, because it's not even "vintage" by Apple's own definition. No idea what's different in iOS 17 (probably from a security standpoint) that Celebrity doesn't want to make its app backward compatible.