canderson

Silversea's 'Standard' service is more than adequate for all but streaming services. The service provided at the 'Standard' tier service level is still much better than what we had pre-Starlink. The drop-out issues, slower speed, and latency issues are apparently quickly forgotten. They're clear about the two tier system: https://www.silversea.com/travel-informations/wifi-packages.html Bandwidth availability shipboard is likely a large factor. By not automatically providing 10Mb/sec access to all guests, the anticipated resistance to purchasing the extra bandwidth limits demand on the system. Land based, and with a special antenna system, Starlink offers 'Starlink Premium' with up to 500 Mbps service. That's enough to support a 10Mbps stream to 50 concurrent passengers. However, I don't know if there is a special Starlink Maritime package for cruise ships that provides service at that level. The standard maritime package is only "up to" 220Mbps. It would be interesting to know what bandwidth the ships are actually seeing.

Along with free laundry and dry cleaning?

FWIW, on the 'premium' plan (came with the suite) I was getting a consistent DL speed of right around 10Mbps right across the Atlantic on our TA, and with worst case of only about 65ms latency -- which is fantastic, when you consider the number of inter-satellite hand-offs required to reach a Starlink ground station from the middle of the Atlantic.

No, having had luck with the UDP (not TCP, which didn't want to play nice) option, I didn't continue. Didn't take time to play hunt and peck with various servers to see which of them might cooperate. For my purposes, anything 'foreign' might have proved problematic anyway, since I needed a U.S. based server to get certain servers to cooperate (e.g., Comcast/Xfinity). I stuck with Denver with no issues.

Yeah, I was looking for a 'duck and cover' emoji, but didn't spot one!

Big, black dress? 😁

I can help with that. No traditional display, but lots of chocolate martinis and chocolate nibbles being handed out.

Yes, count finally zeroed. Seems a lady somehow crossed up 2:00pm departure as 'all aboard for pax' time, which was actually 1:30. Her husband was up in the Arts Cafe, hoping she would make it in time! We were surprised to be, apart from her, the last 2 aboard at 1:22.

The joint (Antigua) was hoppin' today. Even Beyond appeared sometime while we were out and about. Oops.. count didn't zero out. We seem to be missing 1 pax and they're busy trying to locate aboard.

Much depends upon the airline, the airport, and in some cases, the cabin class. As an example, we were able to use curbside check-in in Denver for a DEN>LHR flight a couple of weeks ago. Back in the day, international always meant putting in an appearance at the ticket desk to assure all was in order. Now the curbside folks will ask to see your passports, making the extra trek to the counter unnecessary - a significant convenience.

Miguel in Atlantide has been right on top of things for us when we've dined there. Efficient and timely service each evening. He has a table for 2 that he saves for us each evening that's off to the side and allows for an elevated leg on an extra chair. We sit next to Larry and Marilyn many nights since Miguel saves the adjacent table for them as a convenience to Larry.

Ah, right! Should have remembered the handle. Have really enjoyed our first SS cruise, and have nothing further booked on Celebrity. That said, with the right itinerary and suite, we would still consider it, but I believe SS has become our first choice now. I've promised to take care of a major project at the Mt. Cuba observatory in Delaware this coming Spring, and have an ongoing government contract haunting me for just a little longer, after which I'll be retired (again!) and we'll get back to cruising more often. Plan to start booking heavily starting Fall 2024, and the way cabins are disappearing, looks like I'd better get on that pretty soon. Our preference for square feet on longer cruises (or B2Bs) puts us in a RS for Celebrity, and Silver for SS, and have found that those get snapped up pretty fast.

Yikes. Mrs. C Anderson talked me out of Atlantide last night in favor of S.A.L.T. so I missed the prime rib. Sounds as though it would have been hit/miss anyway! Sorry it went poorly for your party of 5. What time did you arrive?

@Port Power Saw that on tonights menu. Originally hailing from K.C., I'm a BBQ sauce snob (e.g., anything whose 1st - or even 2nd - ingredient is corn syrup gets a hard pass - K.C. "Masterpiece"???) and the JD recipe avoids that, so the prime rib may be my entree tonight.

Much appreciated! Who'd a thunk?

I can't think of a reason it wouldn't. The space is certainly there, and as I noted, the monitors seem to autodetect the HDMI connection and switch sources automatically. Not owning one, I can't speak for how the WiFi setup will go. You'll want the higher end service for streaming.

As for speed, Ookla has been reporting 10mbps d/l pretty much all the time since we left Lisbon on our way across the Atlantic, with latency around 66ms, which is good considering the Starlink satellites are having to hand off data from one to the next to reach a ground station on one side of the Atlantic or the other. FWIW, I have the 'premium' plan that comes with the suite, so can't say whether the 'regular' plan is offering comparable speeds.

For the techies out there, I'm posting a few notes of my experience on Silver Dawn over the past days. First, the controller for the TV is truly minimalist - not even a mute button! These Samsung televisions aren't just in 'hotel mode', they have no external buttons at all, therefore lacking a 'source' button. That said, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that our monitors would automatically respond to a live signal on the unused HDMI port. You'll want a 'straight' cable, not one with a right angle connector as is true in some situations with wall mounted screens, since the connector panel in the rear runs cables parallel to the screen. Plug the HDMI into a live source, the monitor detects it, and voila, you're in business. Moving on to connectivity: I had a couple of choices for VPN service, and we've all heard about the issues that some have had with these, depending upon the protocols available and what's being blocked by the ship's IT dept. To my additional surprise, I have Nord working on my notebook using the "Open VPN (UDP)" option, and I'm using a Denver server (choose whatever is needed for your purposes) to connect. To manually select, you'll want to turn the "Auto-Connect / Choose a VPN server and protocol automatically" = off, then set the "VPN Protocol" to "OpenVPN (UDP)". Mind you, with the VPN running, you will NOT be able to use the MyCruise.com shipboard site on your notebook. For that, you'll need to turn the VPN off. If you don't, you will get some weird support page in Dutch - that's your clue. You may need to restart your browser after shutting off the VPN to access that site. However, there's nothing there that doesn't show up on the TV if you need that information. I had zero success using either Nord or Tunnelbear VPN apps on my Android phone. Wasn't able to find a protocol setting in either of those that would get me past the ship's server.

I love lemongrass, too, but you had to be there. It totally walked all over all of the other flavors. Have never tasted anything like it. Had to have been a goof.

Ouch. First dud meal of the cruise .. in Atlantide. Green curry chicken would have been fine except it positively SCREAMED lemongrass. Overpowered the entire dish. Even the ginger couldn't be detected. Oh well. All else has been splendid.

+1 on the Ropa Vieja! Simple but very tasty. We discussed the "chicken stock powder" he used, and agreed that a bit of Better Than Bullion was a good option.

Your bigger concern is whether the ship will leave FLL on time. Provisioning may take a bit longer than normal. We've made sure that it's going to take them a while to replenish the wine stock! FYI: If you like a super Tuscan, they still have the 2018 Tignanello (Antinori) for less than stateside retail.

Boarding always starts when it starts. They target for 2pm, but we were aboard at 1pm for lunch at the buffet in La Terrazza (in cabins at 4pm) on the cruise right before yours (TA ex Lisbon), but there's no telling how things will go from FLL. I would expect a bit more going on with customs/immigration re crew/entertainment changes, etc.

Yes, randomly, 6 at a time. The other RCG systems show ALL cabins within the selected class that are at that moment available for booking online. As for "why bother", I was addressing only the viewing of inventory.

Dummy bookings with SS only show a handful of options in any class at one time. Other RCG systems show all cabins available for online booking.