rmalbers

Do you an iphone and the imessage app for texts?

Yes, thanks, very interesting. I thought O priced out a lot higher than VO but I guess not. Not sure about others but the retractable roof over the pool on VO I think is a real benefit, it makes that space usable even on cruises in the far north.

If you don't eat fish from fish farms you will not be eating much fish these days.

Not sure if it's changed (again) since Feb. but the shrimp cocktail then only had three shrimp so he might have to order 4 of them.

You can ask them stock gin, I think they'll do like four a day, maybe four, twice a day. They use the little airplane size bottles. They didn't have diet tonic anywhere on board, not sure if that's normal for VO or not. So, if you really 'like' gin and don't want to make trips to the bar bring a bottle. They stock what you ask them to stock.

I'm not sure I would say that hotel is 'outside' of Revk, but it is away from the downtown area that's for sure. I can see why VO uses that hotel because that's fairly close to the cruise port they use. Reyk airport is a, well I better not say. It seems to me that the VO extensions are more about convenience and luggage handling, etc. than anything. You can always DIY it cheaper and have more flexibility, it's more of a personal choice.

The supply chain issues are long gone, this is all about reducing debt load, and RC has some serious debt. The current interest rates are NOT what these companies need when refinancing debt. It's really that simple. If food is really important it's not the time to sail X. RC/X put up their E class ships as collateral and RC has to do everything they can to keep going.

Sounds like the starlink location is reported as where the ground station is located at.

I think that might have changed in the last year or so.

Interesting, I didn't see a single one a month ago, that's why I thought they were banned. But it was an NYC- Iceland cruise and it was challenging for mobility issues so seasoned travelers probably avoided that cruise.

On the last day of the Great Lakes cruise I was standing by the 'meats' and a guy came up and asked how it worked. I told him and he had the biggest look of disappointment on his face. He hadn't 'used' it the whole cruise. Anyway, I think they had a great chicken sandwich there also, on the GL cruise a little over a year ago.

I think part of it is they don't allow scooters right? I was surprised, the average age was lower than I expected.

To help with decision making we took a taxi from the ship to central downtown Reykjavik (3 weeks ago), same block as a gray line office, and it was $33 (US). This was at around 9:00 am.

They have stuff to make any drink you can come up with.

One thing they said on the last VO cruise I was on, a couple of times, they gave numbers on who was taking the included tours and it was around 2/3 of the passangers each time. I thought that was interesting, I had always kind of wondered what the numbers were. More people take the included than I thought.

Yes, I was thinking about that, that would be another benefit for sure with global. Now that I know more about it I'll be doing global 'everything' for sure next time. With travel these days, you really never know what's going to happen and this is another way to be prepared. The multi SIM ability was one of the reasons I bought the phone I have, I just had the first chance to test it on the last trip (Iceland).

That's good to know. One thing I didn't like is that I really had no idea if my regional plan was installed correctly and going to work, until I got to the 'region'. I should not have been worried because it worked (except for the SMS stuff I ran into) but anyway, now I know. Hopefully, this thread helps some others understand it better also.

Interesting, I'll have to remember that, that sort of makes since after having hearing about it now.

Ya, tmobile sent me a text warning me about charges like that, I disabled my tmobile sim right away. Now that I know it works I won't be without a esim for the areas I'm traveling in for sure, it's real convenient. I never thought about the SMS text problem with purchases until it happened.

OP: Don't get to hung up on the marketing each cruise lines puts out there. There are so many different cruise lines that the thing to do is try different lines and see what you like and don't like. I really think you'll find a fit along the way and you'll visit a lot of neat places while doing it. VO is not for everyone, that's for sure, but VO is a great fit for some people, they run full ships just like most cruise lines.

Ya, now that I know it works I guess I'll probably just go with the global 'everything' next time, that's probably the way to go. It really isn't that much more money than the regional one I bought. This was the first time I used it and wasn't sure if I could get it to work or not.

They look fairly close to each other. Do most of the excursions head west? Are/were they both tender stops? My sister lived there for years, it is a great area for sure.

I know that some people here use airalo ESIM's for data because that's where I first heard about it. I used their esim on the last trip and it work great and I'm really glad I had it but: I had several cases where I was buying (trying to buy) an excursion or tickets and to pay at their checkout required sending an SMS message with a 'code' to my phone number, which, being data only I didn't have (and of course, didn't have access to my US phone number). Do any of you users of data only ESIMs have a work around for that? My google searches and airalo don't really have any answers. Oh, and I'm android so apple imessage is out.

Also to add, they way they do the kayaks takes a lot of the 'difficulty' out of it. They tow the empty kayaks to a small bay or 'feature' and take you to them in a zodiac so there isn't any real rough water paddling/crossing from the ship to calm/er water. But I agree, even with the ease at which they handle their toys, if you are not going to use them you do probably want to pick VO or VR rather that VE.

Yes, split the insurance (or whatever the term is), that is what our TA did for us on the last cruise, it can save a lot of money on costs for longer cruises, especially with a room upgrade, etc.