fordan

6 hours ago, Happy Cruiser 6143 said:

I've never understood the whole passport card thing.  It's not good for much.  Spend the money and get the real thing which is good for everything.

I got one, but as an addition to the passport book. It's yet another legal form of ID in general, and on cruises it's what I bring with me off ship at foreign ports of call, leaving the passport book in the room safe. It's a more convenient size to carry around and actually proves my citizenship unlike most driver licenses. Also when traveling to get to the cruise I carry it in my wallet and my passport book in a backpack, so if one goes missing I still have the other.

I also usually give CBP the card vs the book on the way back into the US, but that's after having an officer decide to take 5 minutes to flip through all my entry/visa stamps and quiz me on them returning from a past cruise.

I heard this might happen. :(

It's to bad since the ship isn't equipped to protect us but block VPN's. I wonder if the blocking is due to their data gathering?

We use 1Password, so we have strong passwords. But still...

Pretty sure that most of the cruise ship blocking of VPNs is more about stopping people from eating lots of bandwidth visiting Netflix or other streaming video sites they’ve blocked or throttled than about gathering data.

I’ll say again that with the big push over the past few years to move almost all web traffic to use encrypted https, vpns aren’t nearly as necessary since the traffic is encrypted anyways. And if you are concerned about someone in the middle like the cruise line spying on your traffic, using a commercial vpn service only moves that risk from the cruise line spying/being hacked to the vpn provider spying/being hacked.

Keep your system up to date with patches, don’t click random links in email, use unique passwords for every site using something like 1Password and don’t install software/browser add-ons from questionable sources and you shouldn’t see much of a problem, at home or on a cruise ship with or without a vpn.

Why are you flying to Orlando (MCO) when Melbourne (MLB) is much, much closer?

Not the OP but I fly into MCO for Port Canaveral because there are a lot more direct flights, and hotels around MCO are usually cheaper than MLB, especially if the cruise is during the winter primetime when Cocoa Beach/Melbourne hotels are extra expensive.

I have it, but my program is spend $500, get $100 back. I'll need to check my wife's card later. :cool:

But for MSC? I'm seeing this offer (and not the OP's offer), but what mine says is for Carnival, Holland America, Princess, Seabourn or Cunard bookings.

DETAILS

 

Get a $100 statement credit by using your enrolled eligible Card to spend $500+ while booking cruise line sailings with Carnival, Holland America, Princess, Seabourn or Cunard by 5/31/2018. See wlcl.com/amex. Terms and exclusions apply.

 

 

OFFER TERMS

 

Enrollment limited. Offer valid only for reservations booked between 2/12/2018 and 5/31/2018 with (1) Carnival at carnival.com or via phone 1-800-764-7419; (2) Holland America at hollandamerica.com or via phone 1-877-932-4259; (3) Princess Cruises at princess.com or via phone 1-800-774-6237; (4) Seabourn at seabourn.com or via phone 1-866-755-5619; or (5) Cunard at cunard.com or via phone 1-800-728-6273; or (6) through your Travel Professional between 2/12/2018 and 5/31/2018. Excludes the following brands: Costa, P&O Cruises, P&O Australia, Aida and Fathom. Offer only valid for transactions made in US dollars. Excludes onboard purchases, transfers and transportation to the ship, gift and services, full ship charters, McKinley Chalet Resort (Holland America), Worldwide Emergency Assistance Services, Cancellation Protection plan (Holland America), formalwear rentals and charitable donations. Excludes gift cards. Excludes the following if not booked at time of reservation: airfare booked through cruise line, excursions, Prepaid food/beverage programs, prepaid gratuities, prepaid wi-fi packages, spa packages, photo & video packages, onboard celebrations, luggage valet services, Travel Insurance, Vacation Protection, motorcoach program, charters, meetings and incentive bookings. An “eligible Card” means a valid American Express® US Consumer or Small Business credit or charge Card that is issued by a US banking subsidiary of American Express. Prepaid Cards and products, Corporate Cards and American Express-branded Cards issued by other financial institutions are not eligible. Must add offer to Card and use same Card to redeem. Limit 1 statement credit per American Express® Card across all American Express offer channels. Statement credit will appear on your billing statement within 90 days after 5/31/2018, provided that American Express receives information from the merchant about your qualifying purchase. Statement credit may be reversed if qualifying purchase is cancelled. If American Express does not receive information that identifies your transaction as qualifying for the offer, you will not receive the statement credit. For example, your transaction may not qualify if it is not made directly with the merchant. In addition, in most cases, you may not receive the statement credit if your transaction is made with an electronic wallet or through a third party or if the merchant uses a mobile or wireless card reader to process it. By adding an offer to a Card, you agree that American Express may send you communications about the offer. POID: GACY:0001

You can get a shared mini bus from outside the airport building, there are small booths with a person who can get you where you want to go, at Xmas we paid $27 for us both and luggage to the Bayside area, had to wait about 10 to 15 minutes.

A taxi would be $35 fixed rate (plus tip) from the airport to Essex House, with the benefit of not having to wait for other passengers. The shared shuttle to Essex House would be $32 plus tip for 2 people. (all per http://www.miami-airport.com/library/map-taxis-supershuttle-rates.pdf)

It'll probably be around $25 plus tip for a taxi from South Beach to the cruise terminal, though that is a metered rate, not flat rate.

Hi can you please tell me how they match the loyalty level we was not aware about this and have cruised many times with princess befoer. Thank you in advance

Here's the info from the MSC USA website: https://www.msccruisesusa.com/en-us/MSC-Voyagers-Club/Loyalty-Match-Program.aspx

There's also a couple threads in the group here about the match program.

So if I have a drinks package do I have to pay 15% on the drinks I order?

nope

Is some portion of the Classic/Deluxe drink package given to staff as a tip, or do bar staff not get anything for package drinkers that the drinkers don't add themselves on the receipt?

Lauren is absolutely correct. Put your phone in airplane mode BUT there is more....

 

( Wifi Will work in airplane mode)

 

I returned from a cruise and saw a lot of usage fees... i called my cell provider and the charges were all 1-2 minutes on the phone cruise ship charge per minute 3.9

 

I explained but, i had my phone off the entire time OR in airplane mode

 

BIG mistake! dont ever turn your phone off... if you do.. it will go to your voicemail and thus the excesss one minute charges.. every time my phone rang when it was off.. it went to voicemail and was considered a 1 minute call

 

in reviewing my bills for a year.. noticed this happened on every cruise! They went back 8 months and gave me credits ( i had done 14 cruises)

 

since then, i havent ever turned off my phone, and never a charge.

This is pretty odd if you really had Airplane mode on. The reason you can get the charge for voicemails is if your phone registers with a cell "tower" on the cruise ship or in another country, they'll tell your home carrier and your home carrier will forward the calls to that provider for a period of time (a day I think, or until you register someplace else). If you don't answer, the cruise ship/foreign cell system needs to forward the call back to the voicemail system in your home country, so you get charged even if you didn't answer because the call was answered by the voicemail system back home via the foreign carrier.

If your phone is registering with cell towers while in airplane mode even when just powered on, it's breaking all sorts of rules. In the US it'd definitely not get FCC certification, and I can't believe Industry Canada (or whatever they're called now) would let it through either. Any chance your phone registered with the ship's cell system before being put in airplane mode/turned off?

For the OP, as everyone is saying, airplane mode (before out of range of home carrier), then turn wifi back on and connect to the ship's wifi (and you can turn bluetooth back on if you have bluetooth devices you want to connect to).

Public Wifi is fine if the connection is (as was previously stated) https. The little lock icon in the address bar. The encryption in that case is between your laptop (or phone/tablet/etc) and the server, so going through unprotected Wifi isn't a problem since no one in the middle can see the contents.

Don't do it from the cruise line's computers, since they could have malware on them set up to steal passwords and accounts; only from your own devices that you trust.

What is considered 'fun' for those booked with this group, might be considered total nonsense and disrespect for the crew.

:rolleyes:

I don't call what you like to do to have fun on cruises "total nonsense," perhaps you could extend the same courtesy to me and to the other people who enjoy music cruises?

And I saw no one disrespecting the crew and I have seen text messages from crew saying they missed our group and our energy now that it's back to a regular cruise. And I'm sure the crew appreciated the increase in (mandatory) tips from the large jump in alcohol sales. Do you have knowledge that the crew was disrespected?

Welcome back from your cruise! Hope you had a great time! I know we've enjoyed all of our Flogging Molly punk charters so far. And no - ours wasn't $3500 per person - even I have to draw a line somewhere! :eek: It was over $3800 total for my husband and I. For a 3 night cruise on the Sky. But at least ours included alcohol! :)

It was awesome. Lots of great people partying for 4 days. And if ours included alcohol... :eek: we ran the first cruise this year out of champagne, at least the reasonably priced bottles, and that's presumably with the charter company warning Norwegian of our taste for the bubbles.

I just looked at the Holy Ship website. I saw you needed to be 21 to sail. For all of those that hate the kids on the ship, Next year is your chance.

Absolutely. Come join us, although I'd recommend people considering it to watch one of the past year's recap videos to make sure it's the quiet, mature, kids-free environment they're looking for. :D

Hi. I just returned from Holy Ship 8.0 and 9.0 (they did two charter cruises back to back and I did both). Sorry if we delayed your departure: my assumption about the delay would probably be more about tearing down the stages and offloading them then partiers taking a long time disembarking (although I'm sure there were a few feeling the sleep deprivation and didn't get out of their cabins on time). We actually got back to port early and started disembarkation an hour earlier than scheduled, and it was honestly the fastest disembarkation I've ever experienced. I thought on the previous Holy Ship cruises (not on NCL) they planned a day of ship downtime to remove all the gear and stages but I may be wrong.

Arrived early and a bunch were laying on the ground napping. Heard they had to tie down the furniture on the decks so it wouldn't get thrown overboard and that they drained the pools to clean them. I also overheard that supposedly 20% were arrested before they started to disembark.

 

On the iconcierge app I was able to see what the people who were in my room spent for 4 days. The one had the drink package and still spent over $700 [emoji33]

There was no furniture tied down that I saw although they did cover the theater chairs and eventually the rugs in plastic. Some of the pool area was drained to provide dance areas. And no standard NCL drink packages were available either other than an ability to buy "drink tickets" where you get 13 drinks for the price of 12 purchased all at once (and also don't have to wait for the bartender to run your card and get a signature, an issue when the bars near the stages are as slammed as they are on Holy Ship). $700 actually seems kind of mild for a tab, especially if it was a cabin where it was shared between a couple.

And yeah, some people who didn't listen to the repeated warnings to not try and bring controlled substances across an international border (especially the US') were arrested. I guarantee it wasn't 20%; 20% of the Epic's 4000-ish capacity would have been impressive. Holy Ship is a sold-out and packed cruise, with every cabin capable of being a quad or triple setup and sold as such.

and if it was, the ~$3500 I paid for a 3 day cruise should cover it. :eek: That being said, if there was ANY vandalism or destruction of property on the Epic, the perpetrators should have been confined to quarters, or put off the ship. No call for that - charter or not.

Holy crap, $3500? per person? Holy Ship 4-night cruise pricing ranged from $899 to $1649 per person, depending on category and number in cabin. Haven not included in that range since it was set up as an area for the artists.

Also as to being surprised that Norwegian would do this: they're old hands at EDM cruises. The Mad Decent Boat Party was on the NCL Pearl in 2014 and 2015 I believe, and Groove Cruise has used the Pearl and I think other NCL ships although this year it's on the Carnival Victory (and sails next week).

I got an email today matching me to Silver. The attachment includes my MSC number. However, I have no idea how I am meant to log in on the MSC website and see my new status, as I don't have a password or anything. Can anyone help?

You would do a password recovery from the login screen.

However, I'm not certain they will actually credit you that many points. They may, but they may also just grant your status level, but you still start from 0 points. You just get the higher 'benefits' for longer, while you work your way up.

I was status matched from Marriott Platinum to MSC Black, and I now have 10k points in my account. I had a MSC Club card previously but only a few sailings which I don't think accumulated anything since they were chartered music cruises.