Haboob

9 hours ago, SargassoPirate said:

 

We recently booked a Hurtigruten roundtrip coastal cruise out of Bergen to see the Northern Lights.  They offer expedition voyages which are more like traditional cruises and cruises on their coastal ferry boats.  We chose the coastal ferry just for the adventure of it.  For cruises after October 1, they even offer a Northern Lights Guarantee.

 

There are some good Hurtigruten videos on YouTube.

 

 

That Northern Lights Guarantee could be important.  Solar Cycle 25, lasting through 2030, is predicted to short on the types of solar activity that causes auroras.

5 hours ago, Bollycats said:

it was a California coastal cruise and we were off the coast of Catalina island. We weren't in the middle of nowhere.

4 hours ago, polmcs said:

This was the Thanksgiving Cruise doing the Mexican Riviera, so definitely MEO territory. 

Yup.  Both definitely within the MEO footprint.

The other issue is that there are only a limited number of slots on the "O3b" constellation (the particular set of MEO satellites with the spiffy uplinks).  There are only «mumble» O3b's above the horizon at one time, and only 10 dishes per satellite to point at a ship or an Earth station.

Do a 'ping' test, and if you're seeing  >400ms, you're on a GEO satellite, not a MEO.   Bummer!

1 hour ago, polmcs said:

I was on the Royal over Thanksgiving and the speed was awful. Less than 1 meg. All efforts to stream ended in failure for me.

Observations don't mean much unless you specify where they were made -- within 48º of the Equator (where fast-uplink satellites are available) or not.

For Stockholders' and Military OBC, there is no "exchange rate" involved.  Carnival specifies different amounts of SOBC based upon a cruise's onboard currency (e.g. US$ 100 / AU$ 100 / GB£ 60 / € 75 for 7 day voyages) and Princess awards MOBC "equal to the SOBC for that voyage".

https://www.carnivalcorp.com/static-files/50351a91-4dc0-4f6b-bfec-684647e6129f

Understand, there are two issues here.

A minor one: Will the cruiseline (rightly or wrongly) confiscate the item?

A major one: Will this be the voyage my surge protected device catches fire?

Two simple facts:

• Not all surge protected power strips are marked as "surge protected", and at least one brand that was marked as "cruise ship safe - Underwriters' Laboratories Marine 1449" did have surge protection. 

• You cannot tell if a power strip is surge protected without opening it up and looking to see if it has any MOVs or not -- not that the average cruise ship employee would recognize a MOV.

If it looks like a power strip, don't be surprised if a cruise line "errs on the side of caution".  Get an extension cord that looks like one.  Or a power cube like Ken's.

PS: Princess mounts it's 110v outlets very close together.  Plugging in that power cube will block the adjacent 110v outlet.

4 hours ago, skynight said:

Seems to me servers should scan the medallion before the charge is made. Should reduce this problem to very minimal. Small photos can be misleading. Passenger could also keep the medallion in an RFD protection sleeve, only remove it for use.

Keep in mind that one of the venues in which those drinks are being sold and served is the theatre, where the drinks are passed to a customer several seats out of reach.

The servers' tablets show the pictures of the folks in the area.  They click the picture of the person whom they're serving the drink.  ...or, apparently, the picture of someone else.  😒

At 179 days out, OceanReady shows both my info and my DW's info.

Interestingly, though, it shows us both as "Personalizer INCOMPLETE" although Personalizer itself shows both of us as "complete".  Glad there's no lives depending upon that software.  🙄

9 minutes ago, Bgwest said:

Do you recall the manager’s name?

On our October 2019 Mediterranean cruise the manager’s name was Maskim. 

Sorry, no.

Got my refund and considered it quits until I heard other stories about Emerald's internet.  Incidentally, as testy as the IT guy was, there was a passenger utterly incensed at all the folks "giving him grief".

5 hours ago, Bgwest said:

⋮

I stopped by to speak with [Emerald's] Internet service manager and ask him if he could explain to me why the speeds were so low. He got absolutely hostile, defensive and abrasive while telling me that no one else had complained. Whether that was the fact or not, I have no way of knowing. 

⋮

Seems nothing, but nothing, on Emerald has changed since last December, including the manager's attitude.

I even have a picture of a "Satellite internet is very slow due to the ship's geographical position" sign posted in her Internet Cafe on Dec 15, '18 while deep in the O3b constellation's footprint.

38 minutes ago, voljeep said:

just off the SKY in the Caribbean … couldn't even log on many times … went to the internet café about adding my wife's minutes, and another cruiser was getting a credit back for an internet package purchase because of the poor service connection ...

Sky was supposed to get MEO-uplink antennae last October.  But, in addition, she had to get a slot on the "O3b" satellites and actually point her new antennae at them.  Sounds like one or the other didn't happen, leaving her with oversold and overloaded uplinks.

Sympathies, and now you know why IT folks talk about the "(b)leading edge".

...or just turn "high accuracy" off for a higher accuracy location.  😉

5 hours ago, zitsky said:

 

What do you mean by "nervous-making"???

About what you'd think.

A year out, it wasn't as clear that Thomas Cook was going under after 150+ years in operation as it was a mere 70 days before.  But Brits with (ABTA protection) got their money back.  North America customers (without) did not. 

On 6/26/2018 at 6:47 PM, Heidi13 said:

 

While Viking may request final payment a year before departure, as others from N/America have mentioned, it is open to negotiation. We got 6 months, which is still more than other cruise lines, but frankly, for us final payment date is a very minor consideration when selecting a cruise. To put it into perspective, at today's rates for short term money and after the government takes their share, we are out $300 on a 6-figure World Cruise.

 

If you didn't negotiate a final payment date, most unfortunate and hopefully you will next time.

For North American customers and others not under ABTA out-of-business protections, a 1+ year lead time is nervous-making compared to 70 days.

On 12/4/2019 at 8:18 AM, just_dont said:

One side effect I noticed on Viking Jupiter's WiFi was that when my phone wasn't able to connect to land based cell service, its location service grabbed my location from the wifi, and that location was always Ancona, Italy, which is where the shipyard where she was built is located. I like to leave geo-tagging turned on when traveling so the photos identify where they were taken. Unfortunately, during my cruise of Norway and Scotland, I have a whole bunch of pictures that were apparently taken in Italy.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk
 

That's a frequent location services artifact on most cruise ships.  If you have "high accuracy" location turned on, Android will use the location of your WiFi network as your location.

One of the things Android does while your back is turned is to send Google your phone's GPS location and what WiFi network it is connected to.  Google combines all the reports it gets on a particular WiFi network to come up with the "high accuracy" location of that network. In doing so, it seems Google discards all the reports that are not near the most commonly-reported location.  Eurodam was always at Seattle's Pier 91 and Grand Princess was always at San Francisco's Pier 35 until I turned "high accuracy" off.

It's been a long while since I've used a real Kindle, but I had no problems downloading to the Kindle app on my smartphone last spring on Regal.

The issue might be your Kindle has been trying to download via cellular data rather than WiFi (yeah, now I tell ya), and the fact that my smartphone was logged onto Regal's MedallionNet.

3 hours ago, Haboob said:

TV remote controls work by flashing an infra-red (invisible) light and the TV seeing it.  To get a remote to control only one of your two TVs, aim the light so only one TV sees the IR light (or it's reflection).

3 hours ago, itf said:

They’re on opposite walls. One remote definitely doesn’t have line of sight to the other television. 

"...(or it's reflection)"

Often enough will bounce off even a painted wall to trigger the other set.  I've not sailed on Sky but closing a mid-cabin curtain (if you have one) should work  (and lower the audio cross-talk between the TVs.)

10 minutes ago, itf said:

We’ve got a mini suite with two televisions which is great as we’re travelling with my daughter. However both remotes control both TVs at the same time! Anyone experienced this and got a solution! We don’t want to watch the same thing and turning ours up doesn’t mean we want hers turned up!

TV remote controls work by flashing an infra-red (invisible) light and the TV seeing it.  To get a remote to control only one of your two TVs, aim the light so only one TV sees the IR light (or it's reflection).

17 minutes ago, Bgwest said:

One of the onboard internet managers told me just today that ships sailing through the Panama Canal typically keep the onboard antenna configuration set up for GEO even though MEO is available. 

 

He advised there is some difficulty (and maybe cost) associated with reconfiguring the onboard antenna array from MEO that is used in the Pacific to MEO used in the Atlantic (and back). 

 

You seem to be on top of this stuff. Can you comment on what I was told?

Three comments:

• Unlike GEO (geostationary) satellites, MEO (medium Earth orbit) satellites rise, move across the sky and set 5 times a day -- which is why a ship needs upgraded antenna mounts to track one across the sky then switch quickly from one setting in the east to one rising in the west.  In other words, there are no "Pacific" or "Atlantic" MEO satellites: they switch oceans back and forth each time around their orbit.

• Each satellite has 10 dish antennae for uplinks, so can only point at 10 ships a time.  I do not know, but it's reasonable that the satellite company might sell access by ocean to ensure they don't commit to 11 ships on a satellite.

• I haven't crunched the numbers, but it's also possible that the sides of the Canal's Culebra Cut might be tall enough and steep enough to interfere with uplinks mid-transit.

Even if your ship is equipped with MedallionNet, you may not get great bandwidth.  😲

The key is a constellation of satellites that orbit low over the Equator:  For technical reasons they can sell bandwidth to ships at a much lower cost.  If your ship within about 48º of the Equator (not north of Seattle / Southampton) and actually aims it's antenna at one of these MEO satellites, you get streaming-quality bandwidth.  Otherwise, otherwise.  Emerald Princess, for example, is infamous for having MedallionNet but aiming her antenna elsewhere.

Last spring, we sailed Regal trans-Atlantic.  From Ft Lauderdale to the Azores, we could stream. From the Azores, she switched satellites.

3 hours ago, Porsche Girl said:

Just wondering how folks go in the pools and spas with the medallions.  Are they waterproof?  Can you keep it in your pocket or does it have to be visible when drinks are delivered?

Thanks!

Good question.

They do not need to see your Medallion to find you:  The ship steers them to near your Medallion, and shows them your photo on their tablet.

You may need to take the Medallion out of your pocket to pay.  In the shops, you "tap" your Medallion on a point-of-sale sensor, but I dunno what the bars or runners need.

24 minutes ago, twodaywonder said:

Great but again. Why are they magnets?

Initially, Medallions did not have magnets and kept falling out of the wristband holders.  Now the wristbands have a ring of metal inside and Medallions have magnets to keep them from falling out.

Medallions contain a BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) radio and a very short-ranged RFID tag, both of which transmit just a built-in  ID number.  One is picked up by receivers around the ship to figure out where the Medallion (and you) are.  The other is picked up by a point-of-sale sensor you place the Medallion next to so the ship can figure out who to bill for a sale. 

48 minutes ago, Z3r0 said:

This will be my first princess cruise (I've been on 1 Carnival, 2 NCL's, and about 8 or so Royal cruises) and I'm always looking to compare experiences.

 

I'm a little confused with the gratuities on this ship.  The only info I can find only is that a balcony room is $14.50 USD pp/pd, which I'm totally ok with, however my understanding is that all charges on the ship are in $AUD.  Does Princess use their current exchange rate (at time or sailing or pre defined) to set what my gratuities in $AUD are each day, or will they fluctuate (which wouldn't make much sense, but I've seen stranger)?  I'm also trying to determine if it is my best interest to pre-pay my gratuities, but cant calculate that without knowing how they're calculated.

 

I see that there are self laundry services on board and was able to find that the price is about $3AUD to wash/dry and $1.50AUD for detergent, does anyone happen to know what the cost is to have the ship do a bag of laundry?  This will be the first time I'm on a 14 day cruise and I'm trying to keep the weight of my luggage down.

 

Thanks in advance,

Mike

If the voyage currency is AU$, then all billing will be in AU$.  When we cruised down under, some charges were simply relabeled from US$ to AU$ (IRRC Crown Grill had a AU$29 cover charge instead of the US$29 I am used to), and others (internet) were scaled up from US$ to AU$.  All I can give you is a definite "YMMV".

One item that confuses folks is stockholders' OBC.  Carnival sets SOBC by region, and the value set for Oceana is coïncidentally the same number as for North America, but in AU$ instead of US$.