seattledbrain

On 1/10/2023 at 6:23 PM, cuddylier said:

I was on NCL Sun in December 2022 and had the standard whole cruise wifi package, the premium package was not offered.

 

There is deep packet inspection (DPI) going on, well known VPNs like openvpn were just completely blocked on all ports, including TCP 443. It was possible to access http/https on any port, not just 80/443, which told me it had to be DPI rather than them simply blocking all ports except 80/443.

 

Wireguard sort of worked but was incredibly slow on multiple servers I have a wireguard server hosted on e.g. 0.05Mb/s - it was just my assumption that wireguard doesn't like high latency (NCL Sun latency was 500 - 700ms) rather than it being completely blocked.

 

A TCP VPN like v2ray that pretends to be normal web traffic worked perfectly as expected as it just looked like normal web traffic to the DPI firewall. I was able to max out the full 7Mb/s download and 1Mb/s upload.

I can confirm that v2ray does bypass deep packet inspection on NCL ships, and does enable full-speed access even if you don't have the premium / streaming package. Accessing your home network from the ship is pretty straightforward, you just need to run a vmess server on your home PC, setup port forwarding on your home router to that PC, then configure a v2ray client on the devices you'll use on the ship (I use v2box on my iPhone and MacBook) 

9 hours ago, drumming cruisers said:

Encore has the waterfront on deck 8, both sides of the ship. VERY nice. Never very crowded. Also outdoor dining areas. 

 

 I forgot about the waterfront! I barely used the waterfront on Bliss until the last day, thanks for reminding me!

3 hours ago, Brian V said:

I really expect the laser tag to be removed at the next dry dock, much like they did with Joy.

Any time we looked in on Encore or Joy it was deserted, much like American Diner and Galaxy Pavilion.

Expanded spa and Spice H2O coming? One can hope 🤞

More cabins / less observation lounge? Sure hope not 👎

I hope they replace laser tag with Spice H2O. As a regular passenger not paying for anything extra, it's a little upsetting to see that you only get to use about one-fifth of the total deck space on the top level. I mean, Vibe and Haven take up a huge area up top, and then to take away the remainder for laser tag and go-carts seems a little absurd. Why is laser tag even outdoors? Isn't half the fun seeing the lasers pierce through the artificial fog in a dark enclosed area? I also find the go-carts to be very underwhelming, you can't see the water at all from the track. I'd much rather have a tiny roller coaster like they have on Carnival, because then you get the thrill of realizing you're perched high above the water. Plus that would free up a ton of deck space.  

I'm sailing Encore in a couple weeks, and I was disappointed to see that there's no Spice H2o. On Bliss I enjoyed hanging out at the rear of the ship and watching the scenery go by. Looking at photos, there is a section with a rail that is outside the laser tag walls. Can I stand there if I'm not waiting to play laser tag? 

I do not doubt that cookies are the biggest source of *publicly visible* food waste, but if NCL bothered to do proper analytics on this they’d probably find that cookies actually prevent a huge amount of food waste. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been craving a small sweet treat after dinner, and I pace around the buffet, thinking that nothing looks very good. I grab a couple of items, take a bite out of each, and as suspected, they aren’t very good, so I waste them. I sometimes cut them up with my fork to try to disguise the fact that the entire dish went to waste. I end up walking up to the poor cookie guardian and begging for cookies. If they’re out of cookies, I might even make a late trip to the MDR to try a couple of desserts there, but they’re rarely good and are often wasted as well. Keep in mind I would never be this wasteful on land, but I have a serious sweet tooth and I will not stop until it’s satisfied. A couple of cookies is all I need, it’s not very complicated. 

I’ve run into the same issue with food. The non-specialty food on NCL is so hit or miss that I end up wasting tons of meat because I literally cannot swallow it. If they’d just make it right the first time, there would be much less waste. I find the F&B culture on NCL to be very perplexing. I think there are many cases of middle management striving greatly to *appear* to be achieving sustainable development goals set by corporate, but if a real numbers person took a look, they'd realize that it's mostly just for show.