canderson

Think 'candlelight dinner for two' (only with LED candles - being aboard ship limits things a bit!). Beyond that, we'll just call it TMI!

How/when is it appropriate to make the request? I know that on Celebrity, we've had contact from a shoreside concierge a few weeks before the cruise to manage things like this. How is it done on Silversea?

Also a 1st timer. Wondering about Irish Whiskey. Any of the older Bushmills available? Redbreast? Knappogue? Teeling?

If you're interested, we're over here >>

I can assure you that Celebrity does not.

Depends upon the aircraft. You should SEE it in a 787! Just did a Polaris on a 787 on our last cruise, flying to Barcelona. Sweet.

@Host Jazzbeau I always run into the same kinds of issues with codeshares between United and Lufthansa. Has been an industry wide issue for years.

I agree with that! I was happy to see that there were some evenings where there was an early show. It will be interesting to see how they split things up on a TA with a lot of consecutive at-sea days. Later shows are easier when there's no special reason to get up early the next morning.

So you're joining us for the Dawn Nov 2023 Lisbon to FLL TA run?

That's how I read it for our case, yes, BUT ... Don't yet know what 'GV benefits' are (V as in Venetian?), so can't say what it means in that context. This is our first trip with SS, and am only noting what they posted regarding our trip with D-D service package which includes business air. We're headed one way to Lisbon from Denver. Apart from 'GV', it seems that business is an international thing only. I suspect we'll be in economy from here to Dulles (which we'll upgrade ourselves), and then business from Dulles to Lisbon, or something similar. In fact, I'm REALLY hoping that routing is an option since it puts us in Polaris on United, which is the same as 1st, as United has combined the classes. Great sleep flat arrangement on the 787 to Lisbon. Based on what I read here, it's hard to know if they'll go with a reasonable routing like that (13-1/2 hours) or one of the dirt cheap ones that takes 33 hours to complete!

Just received pdfs from a kind soul here who just completed a voyage on Dawn. I was very surprised to see that four nights of this 10nt cruise had film in the Venetian for the evening's entertainment:

Noted earlier that someone was trying to sort out when business and when not. This, from the bottom of the initial invoice from SS for our next cruise. We picked D-D service, part of the cost of which includes the business class air. This (below) seems to clarify things: Business and Premium Economy Class air upgrades are capacity-controlled, apply to international flights and do not apply to U.S. domestic or intra-continental flights within North America, Europe, South America, Asia or Africa, in which case economy class will be substituted.

Looking at Les37b's helpful PDF files, I see 8:45 every evening (Blue Rose Jazz Duo) of that Dawn cruise. Perhaps it's just a Dawn thing, or something specific to that cruise?

So it appears that each evening's primary entertainment starts at ~9:45pm each night. Good to know. Looks like entertainment in Silver Note doesn't start until ~8:45pm each night. With one 'show' per night, are there ever seating issues in the Venetian?

Perfect. Thanks, Les.

Resurrecting this thread briefly to ask, as someone who will be taking their first SS cruise this Fall, where in all of these threads one can find a post showing a few typical 'Chronicles' for one of the newer SS ships. Trying to get a sense of onboard activity on a typical day for Dawn. My searches thus far haven't turned up any of them, but am sure that those who frequent the SS forum may recall where they might have seen them.

Ah, I see. So that doesn't show up in the 'activity' section. What I'm seeing must be the airport to hotel transfer on the 22nd. This will be our first SS cruise, so we're getting adjusted to a few new procedures. I assume Blacklane won't know to be expecting our call until after SS Air has finally delivered the air itineraries so we know when we'd likely need to be at the airport and picked up to be brought home?

Hmm.. that's not a good direction. From what I've heard here, you often don't know what they have in store for you in the way of a flight itinerary until it may be too late to make better arrangements. It's not as though there are a lot of seats going empty these days. The cheapest flights possible for business class, Denver to Lisbon, are 33-1/2 hours in duration whereas all of the 'normal' routings would be more expensive, but in the 12 to 15 hour range. Credit, shmedit. If they wait too long to inform the customer of their take-it-or-leave-it itinerary, the credit isn't worth offering.

I'm trying to figure out how Blacklane works with airline flights. I suspect a mistake has been made. For this (below) to work out, I'd need to be at about Warp 2.5 to make it to Lisbon the same day that the car will be picking us up at the house. It's an overnight flight from Denver, and we do plan to check into our Lisbon hotel on the 22nd. I suppose I should call SS to be sure the car doesn't arrive a day late. Or are they describing the transfer from the airport to the hotel here (the abbreviation 'pre' may be an indicator)? The description is just to cryptic to know for sure.

Were you also in charge of 'the rabbit ears'? Unlike the volume control, that adjustment was more art than science!

It's been my impression so far that your service may not be any worse than it was prior to the Starlink installation. Starlink provides an upgraded performance in its service areas, which covers a great deal of where a cruise ship goes, but I'm betting that most of the lines are leaving the legacy equipment in place to use as a fall-back when a particular itinerary (like a TA or TP cruise) puts them where Starlink isn't getting the job done yet. They ain't fast, but that big band of geostationary satellites around the equator still provides at least a modicum of service as long as you don't get too close to the poles.

Not sure whether she's a SS moderator or not, but she posts in various threads here. Could be the fact that she cruises with SS rather than being a moderator. Never thought to ask.

Mod Lois may remember it from many years ago - and the suspension of privs for a while for a whole group of us here back then. It all had to do with a Ms. Brenda Moran who was 'excommunicated' by RCL back in 2007, and a court case, unrelated to cruising, having to do with use of pepper spray. WD-40 was said to become her new defensive tool of choice at that time.

Had to bone up on this a while back. I accidentally 'un-retired' when a good friend called me about 2 years ago when his electronic/software guy gave two weeks notice. That good friend is in the telescope business - and not the amateur stuff - the current job we're working on begins with a 51" (1.3m) diameter primary mirror, which he will proudly explain has been ground and polished in our own in-house optical shop. I think the thing weighs over 500 pounds, so you can imagine what the supporting steel structure weighs. The customer has a pic of the mirror being worked on their web site: https://www.mountcuba.org/copy-of-mirror-progress Part of our business is involved with the optical side of the U.S. government's 'space situational awareness' program (a.k.a., GEODSS) that searches for and tracks whatever is up there in orbit, which is how we got wrapped around the satellite end of the axle vs. our more traditional business in celestial and solar telescopes. My job, in either case, is to supply the control system that allows the customer to direct the telescope with both great accuracy and precision. Low earth orbit satellites are a good bit tricker than stars. With a star, you can put it in frame, go get a cup of coffee, and it's probably still there when you get back. Well, almost anyway. LEOs like Starlink, zooming overhead at 17,000+ mph (~95 minute orbits), are a much bigger trick, and require MUCH faster telescope accelerations and velocities, but it's really fun to watch the telescope dance (if you don't mind the math it takes to make it happen!)

To clarify, Starlink has been launching satellites with more enhanced features in 'blocks'. Everything they've launched since September 2021 (Blocks 1.5 and 2.0 models) has theoretically been capable of the laser 'cross-link' that I was describing earlier - what someone earlier related to a 'mesh network'. But they had already launched about 1,500 (of the total 4,100 launched, 3,200+ that are presently of 'operational'; status) of the older Block 1.0 version by then, and still haven't nearly filled out the full constellation that would assure that these later models (block 1.5 and block 2.0) had visibility to another at all times.