twangster

14 has a door to the general elevator lobby with card access.

Yes they are. Discussed in this thread.

It depends on the scenario and the timing. In many cases after final payment due date there is no advantage to canceling one person on a booking but there are some cases where that is leaving money on the table.

Currently on Meraviglia with an included browse plan. Choices on board: Getting roughly 2 x 2. Slightly less during this test. This is a 2 night cruise and they aren't being kind with drink package upgrades either. My cruise came with Easy Plus.

PCN today:

Diamond drink vouchers and drink packages work at Labadee. Full suites have access to Barefoot Beach.

It's a sign to me they don't fund IT properly. It happens in lots of companies especially when IT reports to the CFO.

Alianz fought me at every step. I eventually prevailed but it took months. They try to make it difficult and they contradicted themselves multiple times. They wanted me to give up. I didn't.

Splurging may not be an option for many years to come. Survival comes first.

Most bills start with one representative submitting them. It took both houses to pass it. Hawaii wasn't included in ATRA. All ATRA did was instruct CBP not to enforce the penalties for breaking the law. ATRA didn't change the law. It would be telling police not to issue speeding tickets for two months. That wouldn't change the speed limit, there would simply be no speeding tickets written. It's a small miracle ATRA survived without a legal challenge. Plus ATRA was no use to anyone who sought to do a B2B between Seattle and Hawaii, the subject of this thread. To change the law would require a massive effort and it involves international maritime conventions that make it very difficult to change anything without significant ramifications. There have been attempts to reform laws related to shipping from both sides of the aisle and every attempt to introduce bills to change either Jones or the PVSA have quickly died. I stand by my statement, there will no changes to the law anytime soon, cruise lines are not seeking changes and foreign companies carry little weight to lobby for change.

Odyssey shows include The Effectors and Showgirls in the main theater with The Book in Two70. Wonder has the sequel to The Effectors which carries on from the version shown on Odyssey. During the shutdown Nick Weir hinted that Chicago was coming back to a ship in the future but so far that hasn't happened. I suspect Royal got tired of paying millions to license Broadway shows and decided to sink that money into producing in-house shows like The Effectors and Effectors II. Odyssey Entertainment: OY Entertainment Guide 2021.pdf

On the ship visit https://minio.rccl.com/compass/cruisecompass.pdf Doesn't work on land, it will return an error, but on any ship that has the feature enabled this URL will give you the daily cruise compass for that day when connected to ship wifi with or without a paid Voom plan.

Royal doesn't charge a fixed amount to have the option to pick a room. Royal has automated revenue management that sometimes does crazy things like making interior higher prices than ocean view. It varies by each and every sail date as that particular cruise sells out. No rhyme or reason.

Royal Entertainment Guide https://secure.viewer.zmags.com/publication/8d5cc72f#/8d5cc72f/1

Yes

Foreign companies operating foreign flagged ships who pay very little US tax don't have tremendous lobbying power. For the same reason they received zero in bailout money during the pandemic they don't have a leg to stand on to lobby for change in US law. With 332 million people in the US Congress is not going to put a lot of effort or spend millions to revise law impacting a few hundred people every year, some of which who aren't even US citizens, just so a foreign company operating a foreign flagged cruise ship paying little US tax can sell those few hundred people a very specific vacation. Royal Caribbean is a Liberian company. Their ships are flagged in the Bahamas so they don't have to pay US tax on those assets. Having a headquarters in Miami doesn't make them a US company. Cruise lines know the current setup is a license to print money while evading US taxation. They don't seek change because they know change will come with other conditions that will break their golden egg.

It happens. There is a JS on Q class that is known for hearing the sound of water flushing down a pipe. People complain their neighbor must be "...taking a shower every five minutes". I avoid this cabin. The forward most loft suites on the original O class have smaller balconies. Go figure, I won one in a RU. I can confirm the balcony is smaller. Suite was great, balcony as a solo was fine but given a choice I would have moved. On some older ships there can be support poles in the cabin. Not an end of the world problem but there is a reason why that suite was empty. If you are good or lucky at RU the downsides can be dismissed on the promise of saving lots of money. If you end up paying full rate for a RU that is a different story.

The legacy satellite providers have to focus their signal where there are customers to buy satellite services so they focus their signal at land masses. They have no coverage in the middle of oceans. There is saying in the legacy satellite business... "You can't sell satellites to fish:". Newer satellite providers like O3b and Starlink use satellites that move around the earth in an orbit. Consequently they have satellites over the oceans on their way to fly over land masses where they make money. Rhapsody was never upgraded to O3b so she could only use legacy satellites. That is the only reason you had no signal away from land. Not enough fish buy satellite services.

With the switch to Starlink occuring right now we are in a bit of uncharted water when it comes to TA internet. In the past O3b ships, mostly Oasis and Quantum class had normal internet on TAs while non-O3b ships (most Vision, all Radiance and Voyager class) had terrible internet on TAs. Today, at this moment, Starlink doesn't cover middle of oceans. However that is changing in the coming months. Once they have built out their solution and added more of their next-gen v2 satellites there will eventually be Starlink coverage in the middle of the Atlantic. 2023 may be a year of mixed results. Spring TAs are on the bubble, I'm betting fall TAs will be better. 2024 I'm betting will have good TA internet all the way across.

Lately the GGG hasn't had the deals it used it before the shutdown. Sometimes the deals are there on the list but the one cabin at that GGG fare is long gone before the GGG ink is dry.

The overnight at OC are really nice. Sunset from the beach, nightly laser show and sunrise from the beach in the morning. It's also nice not going to Nassau on the 3 nighters.

Mine usually post on day 6 or 7 after disembarking.

No change will be coming any time soon. Like many laws the implementation has evolved over time to adjust for attempts to evade the law. If it was so easy to piece together a longer cruise by making it multiple segments to evade the law then cruise lines would do just that, selling cruises that evade the PVSA by breaking them into multiple segmented bookings. CBP sees past that thinly veiled marketing attempt by cruise lines and considers the initial embarkation point and final disembarkation point for a ticketed passenger as the end-to-end journey. Without a night off the ship between two cruise bookings on the same ship it is exactly what CBP looks for as an attempt to evade the intent of the PVSA.

Just be aware it isn't offered in July, August or holiday dates. However if you book early you can often get reduced single supplement fares during blackout dates that are available to everyone making DP340 inconsequential. In other words sometimes you don't need DP340 so if using the website check pricing without it.