AllHandsAstern

Believe it or not there were two medivacs this trip, RV's husband and someone else. Chopper was for another person.

Listen if I can't get a lounger you might as well stab me

This was the story going around the very next day, but I agree that I think someone would have picked it up. The holiday weekend isn't helping the news cycle.

Awk

Uhhhhh, I would sure hope so. Not trying to yuck your yum but are you cutting a lot of apples on your cruises? They have people who will do that for you... Having said that I walked on with a 12pack of beer bottles at one of our port calls, so maybe the security staff need to have a meeting

Coulda been a spoon Edit: no fr fr, like it could a been a spoon, metal is hard and people are squishy

Quite right, I say

I think the stabbing might be scuttlebutt, someone else had to leave the shop for medical in Victoria and there were a lot of really old people on the ship

I was on that cruise, captain made an announcement at about 9pm Friday night saying "we've made a course change for a medical evacuation" ended up running about an hour east towards the Oregon coast. Several staterooms below the winch spot were evacuated just in case. They drained the forward pool, too. We heard the hot goss about a fight later but checks out, it was a sea day so people are drinking, buffets are full of silverware, BUT we walked through the buffet later and it wasn't like there was a section that had blood stains or was closed off.

I walked on in Ketchican with a pint of moonshine, and in Juneau with a 12pk of beer, so I don't know that it really matters. No sneaking, no subterfuge, just walked right in.

Just got off Crown. OceanNow worked ok from a tech standpoint but had some quirks. I ordered a beer that got cancelled after 15 minutes because the bar that had that beer was closed, but I only found out after getting impatient and checking the app. We ordered fries at like 9pm? And they were the softest steamed French fries ever, lol We usually waited 20-30 minutes for drinks, wether it was busy or not. One time when it was busy we cancelled our food order after 30 minutes and got other food, our food order showed up about 20 minutes after that, so we had 2 dinners. Overall the execution feels like it's lacking a little bit, the medallion show your location in the ship so why the staff has to look through a whole venue to find me is kinda silly. There's no specific kitchen for ocean now so if the venues are busy ocean now backs up, which has the unfortunate side effect of slowing down busy venues too. Ymmv, it wasn't a waste of time but could have been done better.

I have a bachelor's degree in food science, and the butter we had on Crown these last 11 days could have had some real butter in it but frankly looked and tasted like whipped margarine. What's more, nobody serves unsalted butter in a restaurant, because it doesn't taste like anything.

I agree with this. We just got off Crown Princess, they had no cigar bar but the casino was the grossest of gross. It was so bad you could smell it from deck 7. People were just using the casino as the smoking parlor even though the weather was great and could've gone up on deck. Even when the casino was closed people were in there just to smoke. Princess could have handled the smoke better, like closing the doors, running some air purifiers, some something.

I didn't realize it was fictional, I thought it was like early reality TV

Yes, TV show was way before my time

What's a love boat?

Wow 50 bucks, that's like almost a tank of gas 🤠🤠

I feel like thats the root of the problem, the vast majority of people don't want to commit to a plan so it's impossible to anticipate accordingly

These lines don't exist in a vacuum, lol

Viva had the worst hand washing / sanitizing I've ever seen, ever. Hope it's not like that on Crown!

When we were on Reflection last year we did pretty much every breakfast in the buffet, late night drunchies, sometimes lunch. Food was 7/10 and even when it was busy it wasn't overwhelming. When we did Viva in March this year we did the buffet once for breakfast and once for lunch and that was it, food was mid to bad, always felt way too crowded, not sure who decided the food area pathway should be exactly two people wide, but that was not a good move. All that to say not all buffets are created equal

This isn't 100% on topic but I feel like the "anytime dining" concept has really hamstrung cruise dining rooms. I've done banquets and restaurant service, and everything is may easier when you know what time everything has to happen.

We do MDR the first night if only so we don't have to think very hard about dinner. My wife and I book a fixed dining time in MDR for the whole cruise and then adjust as needed. if we're not going to make the reservation we'll let the host know ahead of time. I think the MDR gets a bad rap, but a lot of people forget it's just a restaurant. If you show up as the same time as 1000 other people you're gonna have a bad time. We try to avoid the buffet until day 2 or 3, once the novelty has started to wear off for some people

We had the all inclusive beverage package on both of our cruises as well, felt the wines were hit and miss. We live a whole hour from Napa and have the hook-up with a local importer, so we're a little spoiled when it comes to wines. In hindsight, I should have brought some bottles but there were logistical challenges with that.

The consensus in the before times was that Alaska cruises tended to be more formal, but it's a whole new world now