waldreps

Well, it's continuing into the Alaska season.  Someone posted this.  I'm going on her on July 3rd.  I'm hoping it's fixed by then.  What are the chances of that happening?

Try setting up an account with UPS on line. After you register with them, you will get tracking updates and estimated delivery times. There's an option to electronically sign for the delivery as well, so UPS can just leave the pkg. if you won't be home, but I haven't done that for any valuable deliveries, like these cards.

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I just got 2 $500 cards last week and they didn't send a tracking number. I remember reading somewhere that gift cards and magazines would not have tracking numbers sent. Luckily, I was home whenUPS showed up for a signature.

I ordered a $500 card from AARP last week and got an email saying that it would be shipped UPS signature required and a tracking number would be provided once it ships. Never heard anything else until UPS delivered it a few days later. I just ordered another $500 card a couple of days ago this one from Allstate and got the same email but no tracking number. I guess I'll just have to hope I'm home when UPS delivers it.

Welcome to your initiation of CC's regular Carnival bashers. Idk the *why's* of what they do. Lol, maybe they're just lonely. I DO know that on no other CC board do people go and constantly bash the other lines. Hahaha gotta love them, AND the Princess/HAL/ect loyalists that must not be realistic too often, especially since they're bashing the *motherboard* of THEIR own cruise ships of choice....

Whew, that felt refreshing! :)

P.S. I believe that you will quite enjoy the Guy's burgers. They really are amazingly good. Same with Guy's Pig & Anchor.

There's actually not a single thing about Carnival that we do not like/love even... Except those that constantly complain. Oftentimes about nothing whatsoever...

Anyway, pay the naysayers no heed.

We don't...

 

[emoji924]️ Cruisin Trkrs [emoji597]

Thanks!

Plus, I don't really believe that people LOVE them.

I'm a new cruiser so haven't had Guy's burgers, but I've been watching a lot of YouTube videos, reading forums and Facebook groups and the overwhelming majority of people rave about them. Except for this forum, everything I've seen says people love them. This forum is the only place I've seen negative comments.

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Message retracted since someone already replied what I posted...Sorry!

I had to post after hearing about J. Heald saying that they are going to stop giving out the "ship on a stick". I haven't seen any posts yet (but I have to admit, I didn't look too hard;p).

 

It got me to thinking about all the people who are constantly complaining about the cutbacks. I don't know about ya'll, but I can live without the chocolates, table cloths, "ships/stick" etc. The one thing I never see mentioned is all the upgrades that have been done.

 

So with that said.... how about a positive post for once! :D

 

Name your favorite upgrade you've seen on the ships. I'll start it off ..... Guys Burgers!!!! Absolutely love them!!

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Rewards For Good, AARP's rewards/loyalty program.

Duh, ok, I should have figured that out.

the exact match is likely due to their card processing agreement in that RFG gets a lower charge rate in exchange for exact data matching. RFG is likely weeding out fraud. as an online merchant, RFG holds the liability for fraudulent charges as any charges refuted/contested are charged back to RFG.

What is RFG?

I've used BOTH our Cap One Journey and Carnival M/C to buy 5+3 $100 AND 2 $500 gc's since the beginning of June. The only problem I ran into was with the Cap One, I had to add the back 4 numbers onto our zip code. Lol, strange but it kept kicking it back for incorrect addy... You might want to try that and see if it takes. I hope it gets worked out for all that have been having problems with the purchases. That 10% is a great perk. Imo anyway.

 

[emoji924]️ Cruisin Trkrs [emoji597]

Thanks, I'll try that. I'm able to use my debit card from my local bank on the AARP site with the same address with no problem so I'm not missing out on the 10% perk. I just wish I could use my Capital One card for it.

I had this problem. I called capital one, they had me make sure the address matches exactly. It didn’t. They told me to wait 24 hours and try again. In the mean time I also received a fraud alert in my email which asked me to verify the purchase attempt. I did that, waited the 24 hours and then was able to purchase without issue.

I've changed addresses with both places, copying and pasting to make sure they were the same, waited days, and it still doesn't work. I've tried that several different times with various versions of my address like Southwest instead of SW. They always match but the card always gets declined by the AARP card processor.

Totally get what you are saying. However, I also read JH posts and have seen him respond in a similar mean, spiteful, attack sort of way. JH just deletes those posts, I guess after he realizes how bad he sounds. Whether ParrotRob is JH or someone else, what I mainly find telling is that JH felt the need to address this in an actual FB post. I don’t recall seeing him do that before.

Now that you mention it, I don't think I've ever seen him actually include a username in a post he's made about Cruise Critic before. He normally just blanks it out or something. That part is interesting, but I think I'm still inclined to believe it's not John. Who knows though. It seems that a lot of people are somebody else on internet forums these days.

So when I first read your accusation that ParrotRob was John Heald in another thread, I didn’t give it much thought to be honest. But seeing as how John Heald chose to address this issue by creating a post on his FB site solely to address that he is not ParrotRob...I am now thinking twice. Why create a whole post if this is false? Hmmmm....I do have to say that if ParrotRob is John Heald, he is not representing Carnival very well with his mean posts and tendency to call others names.

I read John's page daily, and I don't see any similarity in their writing at all. I could be being duped, but I don't really think so. I've seen several people on here accuse anyone who sticks up for Carnival of being an employee, John Heald himself, or a "cheerleader" of John. I just don't see it, and I hope nobody accuses me of being John or any of the others I listed for saying this.

I would go more for one control converter (takes the 10,000 volt 60Hz power the generators generate, and change it to 6,000 volt variable frequency power for the motors) going south and they needed either some power SCR's or a circuit card and possibly some technical advice from the manufacturer to get it back up. It could have been two generators, but even then there would have been less than a 25% reduction in available power to the propulsion (the numbers I used above are some conservative numbers that come from Carnival, the manufacturer, Wartsila, rates the engines higher than what Carnival states).

Thanks for the info and your educated speculation. It's really interesting to me to hear about the inner workings of a cruise ship.

For the hot tubs, no.

 

The ship is designed to operate with one generator down for service and still maintain full power to propulsion. This happens all the time, as small maintenance procedures are done weekly on each engine. Major overhauls will happen for one or two engines a year, and will take 3-4 weeks to complete, so the ship operates without one engine for extended periods without anyone knowing the difference. If two generators were down, then they could be limited on power to propulsion, but you have to again look at the difference in power consumption by the propulsion and just the AC load. Running on 4 generators, you would have about 75% of power available to propulsion (roughly 33,000 kw) giving you about 16-18 knots. Since the power required to generate speed for a ship is not straight line, but exponential, the missing 11,000 kw that you don't have for propulsion gives you only the last 4 knots of speed. The AC load for a ship the size of Magic would be around 4,000 kw, so if you shut this off completely, and used this power for propulsion, you would get between 1-2 knots of speed. The problem with doing this is that every time you restart one of these huge AC chillers, the motor starting surge, would require the ship to slow down to 7-10 knots to give enough cushion to allow each chiller to start, and then speed up again, which would most likely result in lost average speed.

 

And, no, while there are 3-4 chillers on the ship, they don't each cover one section of the ship, they all communally chill water which is then piped throughout the ship to cool the air. So, if they were leaving one or two AC chillers off to provide power to the propulsion, it would result in a shipwide increase in temperature, not a spotty, or zoned rise in temperatures.

 

And, finally, it would make no engineering sense to reduce AC power to try to increase propulsion power, since it takes more power to allow a space to heat up and then cool it off, than it does to maintain a constant temperature, and balancing that against the possible 24-30 extra miles that the increased propulsion power would provide for a full 24 hours of steaming (not sure of the itinerary that was changed), but given that the itinerary was shortened, they would have based this new itinerary on what the ship could do without either the partial propulsion motor or two generators, without having to resort to shutting off the AC or turning off the hot tubs.

So, I know you weren't on board but if you would speculate for a moment, what would be your opinion as to what caused the propulsion problem? A couple of diesel generators down? An electric motor down or partially down? What do you think is most likely? I'm just really curious.

One last thing... everyone is always very quick to declare “the cruise line is hiding something, I wish they would tell,us the whole story”... for good reason as historically they are not forthcoming as they should be... so thankfully this is a case where from the get go, CCL said they are working on the engine and they fully expect it to be up and running with no changes to the June 30 itinerary... and that WAS the full story... even as some wanted to dramatize how their travel,agents had emails to send out cancelling a port etc... in this case, CCL seems to have been transparent about when it would be fixed... so not EVERY problem is a massive cover up, for that I at least give them credit. Just something to keep in mind. I shall report back after my cruise on her next week and let everyone know. But I am sure I have fun regardless, I always do!

I agree and please do report back to let us know how things are going on your cruise!

Just out of curiosity, I tried to purchase a gift card from Allstate with my Capital One card and it ended with the same result. I give up. Capital One just doesn't play nice with the AARP rewards or Allstate rewards. Everything matches exactly but their card processors just won't approve it. I'm pretty sure the same company runs both so that didn't surprise me. Anyway, I give up. I've tried everything I can think of. I wanted to use my credit card instead of my debit card. My debit card works fine with the same address. Thanks for everybody's suggestions.

I hate doing it as I have to sign into everything again

I agree but it's good to do every so often.

have you tried clearing your cache and cookies, usually works as your computer remembers your last entry.

Yes, and I do those regularly anyway. Thanks though.

This happened to me in December. I called Capital One to ask what format my billing address was in. It was my apartment number on the first line and street address on the second line. I officially changed my billing address on the card and waited a few days before trying again. The card was finally accepted. I think the Capital One rep said to wait 24 hours to try again. I was pissed off so I waited for a couple extra days.

 

I hate how the apartment first/street address second format looks, so I know I didn't tell Capital One to use that format. I also don't like that they put my middle initial on the card instead of my middle name. I don't like the looks of just my middle initial. I think the formats they used were pulled from my credit report.

I don't have an apartment so my address is just XXXX Xth St SW all on one line. I've copied and pasted to make sure the address in both places are the same. It just baffles me cause everything looks identical. Capital One tells me it's the AARP card processor that's canceling the transaction.

your RFG "ship to" address must match the mailing/billing address on the card you're using.

 

even if you select "email delivery" of your GCs, the ship to address must match the card's mailing/billing address.

 

also the name on your credit card must match the full billing/mailing address of the CC card you're using.

 

hope this helps.

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After 43 years of working on HVAC systems on ships, including 4 years on cruise ships, I think I might have an idea about how they work, especially more than John Heald. Here is a post I made back in March, but I've done dozens of them over the years, specifically about balcony doors:

 

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/showpost.php?p=55435571&postcount=42

Thanks for posting this and sharing your knowledge. I love reading your posts cause I know they're based on fact and real world experience on the ships.

Awesome! I'm so glad for everybody cruising soon on the Magic that it is fixed. Let's hope it stays fixed for those of us cruising on her later, like in December.

Was not implying that, just the first I saw it mentioned, hopefully they can correct issues without a dry dock.

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I haven't read all the posts in this thread today but I know Chief was mentioning the difficulty of getting dry dock space on short notice due to limited supply of those facilities and cruise lines scheduling them out months and years in advance for required maintenance. Just a guess on my part that's what the person you quoted was referring to. ;)

That's exactly what I was referring to. I'm not an expert at all but was relying on Chief's experience on the drydock scheduling thing. I was just saying that if it required a drydock and that couldn't be scheduled for months then it would drag on. Not trying to start any rumors or claim I know anything special.