Snaefell3

Regatta sails out of San Pedro, not Long Beach. I wonder how a cruiser with 100 cruises wouldn't know. Had a room service take an hour on Regatta this week. After I mentioned it, the Restaurant Mgr stopped me in the hallway to apologize the next day. Stuff is going to happen, but Regatta, in my experience, was into making it right.

Oh yeah and verily bring your "Boarding Pass" and watch it be checked. "Ticket Contract" not so much... until you don't have it, so says Murphy's Law.

You won't need the contract unless for some strange reason (don't ask) you do, and then you'll likely *really* need it. They probably emailed a copy to you as an attached PDF file. Copy that PDF file to your smartphone? That said, no one on Regatta asked to see ours this week.

Could be... No newbies' party on 7-day, M/S Regatta, 11 May 2023.

Knowing what everyone else aboard was doing at the time is crucial to a speedtest's credibility. Your and everyone else's traffic is merged on the ship's uplink, which is a choke point. 3am will give you delightful speed. That said, TV-quality audio+video takes 5Mb/s. (by convention, "b" is bits and "B" is 8-bit bytes).

"Bait and switch"? Nah. Just a matter of it's gonna take a bit for the uplink market to settle after a new entrant, plus StarLink is still pricing off hoped-for costs, not actual. Enjoy the Vista! ::mutter, mutter, you lucky dog, cuss, cuss:: ;^p

Yup... *IF* you mean "how much is on offer by the satellite companies". The cost per MB/S of satellite uplink greatly affects the " 'offer to guests' " part, no? ;^) My point was that we really don't know where StarLink's uplink rates will settle yet, so we don't know how breathless to be.

Before one and all get too excited about StarLink, the important question is "how much will StarLink charge for bandwidth?" The O3b medium Earth orbit satellites were a great improvement because their operating costs (and hence what they charged ships) was much lower than the legacy GEO orbit satellites. StarLink is enough different than MEO- or GEO-orbit satellites that I'm in the hope-but-wait-and-see camp.

Face it, once a ship slips her lines and she's allowed to switch on her tower, what's the closest tower for anyone aboard? WhatApp (if those ashore have the app, too) or WiFi calling. Both are, however, at the mercy of whether the ship has bought enough satellite bandwidth so you can stream audio.

Do not expect the shore excursion PDF to be the last word, however: Our booking-time PDF showed "Solvang on Your Own" on 17 May to leave at 8:30am or 11:15am. Today, O's website shows changed to noon or 2:15pm

Some coastal cell towers can reach up to 40 miles, *BUT* your cellphone latches onto the nearest tower, which once at sea and they switch it on will be Regatta's own tower, leaving you paying Cellular At Sea's piratical rates. "WiFi calling" might be an option if (1) your cellphone provider offers it, (2) your cellphone is equipped with the option and you enable it, (3) there's enough bandwidth from Regatta at the time, and (4) it's not blocked as "streaming" (or you pay for the "WaveNet Prime" upgrade). A caution: WiFi calling dials and rings just like normal, so if it gets de-selected by accident you're back to paying Cellular At Sea rates. See you aboard!