twangster

Couple of thoughts... Starlink has outages just like any tech company. How's the weather? Starlink has rain fade like any satellite service and that includes where the downlink gateway city is which can be far away from the ship. Storms moving across the SE today. Wait a couple hours. Try a different device. From what I've seen they bind a device to a particular antenna/modem. My laptop often draws a different public address compared to my phone. Try his phone or another device.

The problem is people are paying the outrageous sums for specialty. Until reservations fall off the price goes up and up. So many new to cruise are booking ships and they don't know any better. Windjammer hours, show times, food quality are all new to the newbies on board. Until Royal starts to see reduced bookings the cuts and higher costs go on.

You can argue all day about smart money and debt but at the end of it all, if they are booking out the ship to maximize revenue successfully then they have set the price right. If they fail to maximize revenue and Star turns into a flop then they have failed. Royal doesn't care who books it, just that someone does.

A human might read the notes but the automated bots that sweep through the system looking for unpaid cruises will not. I've not heard of an account being in credit and they won't take a payment. I'd call again and ask for resolutions to get involved.

Nope. Those are luxury line rates and if I'm paying that kind of money it will be on a luxury line.

Star Class includes the drink package so you can drink whenever a bar is open anywhere on the ship.

There was "basic" and "advanced" snorkeling. On the advanced excursions on some tours there was more current depending on the waters that day. Generally speaking I didn't find any excursion to be strenuous or challenging. They have a range of guests and some may be not as mobile so the warnings and labels they apply are there to help those that aren't as mobile to make a decision to participate or not. It would be hard for me to advise about your tweens without knowing them. If they are comfortable swimmers and have snorkeled before I can't imagine they would have issues.

I was fine using the provided shorty wetsuit. If you tend to get cold you might bring some of your own gear.

Back on Radiance in a different cabin and my TP Link TL-WR902AC (AC750) continues to work. While it did slow me down compared to direct I'm still getting ~30 Mbps down and 22 Mbps up. Direct I was getting 129 Mbps down. For this trip I installed OpenWRT on the 902. Radiance uses 20 Mhz channels and in this cabin I don't have great proximity to the access point in the hall. I've been seeing between -65 dBm and -79 dBm signal strength. My primary reason for using the 902 is because I brought a Roku with me this time. It works great at the 30Mbps speed. The issue I'm having is that Radiance switches to Mexico City Starlink gateway just as we near Cuba heading South. That messes up the ESPN app on Roku which sees me as being in Mexico. My secondary reason for using a travel router is so that I can use my phone from the bed deep in the cabin far away from the access point in the hall. The TP Link TL-WR902AC is a 8/64 device and running the latest versions of OpenWRT is pushing it. With so little flash space available installing a VPN package is out of the question. While once great, the 902 is now old and outdated. I've ordered a GL NET Beryl AX which as a modern device has a lot more CPU, memory and flash space for running VPN packages on the router itself. It also features a WiFi6 radio. By using a VPN capable router I can have the Roku appear to be in the US so apps like ESPN and others will continue to function around the world from hotel rooms or ship. For my last Radiance trip a few weeks ago I had a friend on Mariner with the same itinerary so we compared Starlink notes. Mariner uses South Florida Starlink gateways and remained on South Florida even when she was in Cozumel and Costa Maya. It seems the Starlink gateways used varies by ship, I'm assuming so that no particular gateway city is overloaded by dozens of cruise ships with tens of thousands of combined passengers. Royal isn't the only cruise line using Starlink so from Starlink's perspective they have many ships in play and with Florida being the cruise ship capital of the world there will be many ships connected just about all the time. The Beryl AX runs OpenWRT out of the box so I'm expecting it will function just like the 902 running OpenWRT does. With much better hardware resources the Beryl AX should work much better. On a side note, I also brought my trusty but old RavPower WD03 travel router. It is strictly a 2.4G device based on the Hootoo platform. It worked fine but with slower throughput. Back in the days of 4 down and 2 up that wasn't an issue. I was getting around 6 Mbps down and 10 Mbps up using the WD03 this time. One last thing. In April while on Radiance I noted that all the access points in an area of the ship were all set to use the same channel. This is not how it is supposed to be configured and it caused huge performance issues. I'm happy to report they have reconfigured the channel assignments. Now the access points in a particular area of the ship are using different channels and they are not interfering with each other. While they haven't upgraded Radiance to Cisco access point like I was led to believe they would, the WiFi5 based platform is working fine for Starlink except in high density areas.

This.

Just answer the health questions. That’s it.

Since you mention Coastal Kitchen you must be on Oasis, Quantum or Icon class. https://www.royalcaribbean.com/cruise-rooms/royal-suite-class https://www.royalcaribbean.com/faq/questions/what-are-the-benefits-of-royal-suite-class Grand Suites are "Sky" class.

Think about Sundays from Port Canaveral, subject to change.

Everything I've seen points to 7 nights Caribbean with Perfect Day, alternating east then west week after week. There may be an initial inaugural 4 night cruise but until they officially release the ship and open up bookings we won't know for sure.

I emailed a crew position today for a different ship and immediately got an out of office reply. They will be "gone" for 5 days starting yesterday. They will return on day three of the next cruise. It's not a 3 day cruise. This is on a different ship but I suspect there are some crew needing to be by themselves not in a crew corridor for a few days. Five days to be specific. I'm thinking maybe a group of guest cabins at the end of hallway were allocated for this purpose.

Who is shifting blame to the passengers involved? How are they getting double revenue? The jilted guest will get a full refund and a paltry 25% FCC. That's a loss of some revenue. Royal isn't keeping double revenue. There is no winner in this game they are playing. Stockholders should be concerned that they are losing revenue, a minimum of 25% FCC plus one heck of a lot more in lost good will that will be very difficult to get back. Royal loses money, guests lose faith and trust in the company. Terrible outcome.

This is from two weeks ago on another ship. Full voyage plans are prorated and decrease with each passing day. Considering most ships don't leave port on day one until 5pm if you can wait until day 2 to buy it on board you won't pay for day one when you can't even use it for the full day on day one.

Note to self... avoid GTY. It seems like they used to count on certain numbers cancelling or upgrading last minute but now that isn't happening. Maybe with higher fares folks just don't cancel like they used to. Ships are full with fewer upgrade opportunities. Time to update the GTY algorithms to be more conservative.

Origin does anchor at times, when it can. Saves fuel. It was at anchor when we boarded her and was at anchor at certain stops on our itinerary. Ship motion is largely a function of the very small ship size (6,365 GT) but also the currents that run through the Galapagos Islands. With three major currents that vary at times it can lead to unpredictable motion. It never got to me but I certainly was aware of it at certain times along the itinerary. Some of it is luck depending how the currents are running any particular day/week/month. It doesn't take visible large waves to create motion when strong currents are encountered. Some folks are more susceptible to it. The avian flu is very unfortunate but that is what they have to deal with. The Galapagos Park decides if they can land on any given island. Regardless it is very sad and hopefully won't last very long but no one knows how long it will take to run its course.

Last night I found a Liberty rate of $374 all in solo in a connecting promenade cabin, four nights leaving Monday but couldn't make it work. Hoping this is a sign of things to come (back).

I don't know about GGG but last minute deals are a thing again. Jumping on a ship this weekend at "old" rates, saw Liberty next week at $50 pp per night for 2 in a GTY cabin. Saw some decent rates on Indy too. It's that traditional slow period between US Thanksgiving and Christmas and there are deals out there. For some reason though only a TA can find some of them, some aren't appearing on the public website. My deal wasn't coded GGG. For Florida residents that have flexible last minute availability to cruise, it's almost like 2019 again, at least on a few ships. Not so much Port Canaveral though.

It may not be an IT issue. When a particular discount code isn't available that may be intentional. That's on revenue management. Can't blame IT when they don't want a discount to work.

Hmmm. Radiance had 159 old style blocks on the ship two weeks ago. When I was on in April they had over 300 on hand. The LA told me they had the new style on board but they needed to hand out the old style before they could start providing the new ones.

Martha Poulter is their CIO. It's a bit of a stretch going to the top but that seems to be the only way with Royal. Guessing at her email address: mpoulter@rccl.com Or contact the executive offices by email mbayley@rccl.com. This address is monitored by a team of executive assistants that can forward emails to respective departments.

No. They can't be used between brands.