hel0013

3 hours ago, riffatsea said:

Have been playing around with EZ Air for our May2021 cruise. I know it my not actually set sail but am having fun thinking about it 

 

It seems that even if you book a business class seat on British airways itself(not code share with American)you cannot pick your seat.  

Has anyone been able to pick their seat before checkin 24hrs before the flight?

Just wondering

I have Premium Economy seats booked for May 2, 2021 through EZ Air on British Airways from Heathrow to Calgary and was able to pick the seats at the time of booking.

22 hours ago, MMDown Under said:

I agree there is so much beauty and history to see in the US and Canada.  We have done many long distance road trips across the US, and coastal trips, and enjoyed them all. 

Australia is a long distance driver's paradise also.  Lots of people look forward to driving around Australia.  Cruising for me is to exotic destinations I can't reach by car.

Couldn't agree more...

We can take or leave cruise ships in favour of our RV any day. In the RV we're on our schedule which being retired it's often no schedule. If we like a place we'll stay for a while. Being herded around like sheep to see something for few hours and then rushed back to the ship is not my idea of sightseeing. We prefer relaxing sea days over excursions any day.

We just got home from a 6 month 16,000 km loop around North America starting in western Canada with a stopover in Florida for the winter. 

I would love to put on the bucket list a loop of Australia and NZ. A nice slow sea day filled boat to AUS and rent a RV there is definitely doable one day.

On 4/10/2020 at 11:50 AM, oskidunker said:

Anyone care to venture a guess as to what the stock will open at Monday? There always seems to be huge movement while the market is closed. Put in a buy at 8. Anyone think that is too high?

I'm not Warren Buffett by any means so..... my guess is the stockmarket is in a dead cat bounce.

It's done its small rebound in the last week so be prepared it's going to fall further. <<<<< only my guess>>>>

I'm trying to stay positive but.... These dates being put out are arbitrary where they're going to continue to kick the can down the road a month at a time until more certainty is known. With the attention Cruise ships are getting, at the very least an effective vaccine will need to be available which the experts say could be/is a year away.

Another point is travel insurance... It's going to take more than just numbers dropping before any country will lift the cruise ship travel advisories already in place especially when the ships are known petri dishes. The company I use for travel insurance sent out this pretty much standard notice a few weeks ago so.... for us anyway, there's no way I'm going to set foot on any ship if I'm not going to be medically covered.

"As of March 9, 2020, the Government of Canada advised Canadians to avoid all cruise travel due to coronavirus (COVID-19). As a result, we now consider all cruise ships to be regions or areas with COVID-19 related travel advisories. If you take a cruise after this date, and there is an avoid “all” or “non-essential” travel advisory in place for cruise ships before you leave, emergency medical coverage will not be provided if your illness or injury is directly or indirectly related to COVID-19."

This too shall pass.... when is anybody's guess... It's going to interesting what changes the cruise lines will implement when this finally ends. I.e. Self serve buffets?

3 hours ago, kywildcatfanone said:

You can purchase any day of the cruise but it will be for the entirety of the cruise from that day onward.

How so?

According to their terms & conditions the PBP can be purchased onboard on embarkation day but NOT after embarkation day.

1 hour ago, ED49404 said:

My question is - Who is responsible for the injuries they cause and spoiling my cruise that I paid for???

Depends which one or both that was being negligent.

if you're (figuratively) not paying attention to your surroundings and turn around into the path of the scooter where he couldn't avoid running over your foot.... then I would say you are the one that was negligent. 

If he was carelessly booting along on his scooter where your foot was in his path  but instead of avoiding your foot he runs it over... then obviously he would be the negligent one.

Could be a combination of both being responsible... Both of you have equal rights to be there.

Make sure there's witnesses... otherwise it's your word against theirs... BTDT

16 hours ago, voljeep said:

it's for crew only and located next to one of the crew only bars … at least that's what I heard a couple of the crew talking about meeting there at 2 am after their shifts … 

You were duped...

4. CREW MEMBERS SOMETIMES MESS WITH PASSENGERS.

Life at sea can get a bit monotonous. “It got mundane really fast,” writes one former worker on Reddit. “It was basically the same comedy of errors each day of the week, with a different ‘cast’ of passengers each week.”

Some crew members shake things up by getting a rise out of passengers in the form of good old practical jokes. According to another former crew member, “a favorite was while in a passenger area say to another crew member, loud enough to be heard by passengers, ‘Meet you in the bowling alley tonight!’” Of course, there wasn’t actually a bowling alley on board. “Then we'd wait for the comment cards to come in: ‘Why do crew get a bowling alley when we don't?’”

I traveled to some places a few years ago where Americans are not universally popular. A colleague at work, who just happens to be Canadian, gave me a Canadian flag pin that I wore on my purse strap (at eye level). Not sure it mad e a whit's difference one way or the other, but my colleague felt better knowing I was using it. ;)

I have relatives who lived in Paris for several years in the mid 70's where American tourists were not to popular at that time so the odd one would wear a Canadian flag t-shirt, sometimes a maple leaf on their backpack or like you say a pin. :)

Sometimes the cousins would talk to these people at the touristy spots where the posers would always give themselves away when they knew nothing about our country. :eek:

Can't say I blame them... I have to hide the maple leafs when in Florida. :)

Heading out to SE Asia in a few days. I think I should watch a bit more of CBC (other than the winter sports) just to brush up. :D

Brush up on hockey and you better know what a double double is or you're doomed. :D

Ya there is a lot of debate on talk radio today in Toronto about what he has said over this whole past weekend. He is very charismatic to some and very dramatic to others. He looks good on camera though:) Regarding the attack in Quebec. They have the suspect. He acted alone. I'm sure that authorities are talking to him. I'm not exactly sure what differentiates terrorism and a hate crime. He targeted people of a certain religion. When Jewish synagogues are marked with graffiti they call it a hate crime so that's why I went with hate crime. It's all hate to me actually.

The media and Justin both sensationalize often.

Terrorism is defined.. It is the use of violence or threat of violence in order to purport a political, religious, or ideological change.

A Hate crime is defined.... A hate crime is a traditional offense like murder, arson, or vandalism with an added element of bias. For the purposes of collecting statistics, the FBI has defined a hate crime as a “criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity.” Hate itself is not a crime—and the FBI is mindful of protecting freedom of speech and other civil liberties.

I

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No? You sure? For years, Canada and USA are two of the countries specifically called out by Al Quada and ISIS as chosen targets to attack due to their military involvement in War on Terror. Does the name Khadr sound familiar to you? The Khadar family used to live in Toronto and old man Khadar was a high ranking AQ member with direct link to Osama Bin Laden.

Neither shooter have any ties to Al Qaeda, ISIS or any other organization. They're not tied to Omar Khadr or his family either.

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Most sadly,

 

 

Canada and U.S. havve already veen proven r to be terrorism targets.

Yesterdays', Quebve City shoorting and if I ercxall correctrly, the attack at Parliament was ruled terrorism?

No to both...

Parliament shooter was Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, a 32-year-old Canadian habitual offender and drug addict from Montreal. Considered by several acquaintances to have mental issues.

The lone suspect in the shooting at the Quebec City mosque Sunday night is believed to be Alexandre Bissonnette, a 27-year-old student at Université Laval who was studying anthropology before switching to political science.

Coutts, Alberta to Montana. There is a sign at the border instructing everyone to drive to a nearby town and report to US Immigration there. There are no Immigration Officials present at the border.

Wrong!

Coutts/Sweetgrass is open 24/7/365

I've sailed on race day in the past and I've never seen it on MUTS or anywhere on the ship. As load as some of the movies are I can only imagine what a NASCAR race would sound like if the cranked it up!

I'll jump overboard if I ever hear DW bleat out boogity boogity boogity on a cruise ship.. :D

And I'm a big fan!

Wyoming is a great place to live. Alberta sounds lovely too, from occasionall pictures I've seen of it. My condolences on being near the Stampede, our annual rodeo is "The Daddy of 'em All" and we try not to have to go into town that week. ;)

Funny you should mention the Stampede. We haven't gone for many years now... Way too commercialized for us.

Last July we stopped at a campground in Ontario where a nice gentleman who saw our Alberta plates walked up to say... "We're heading to Alberta for the Stampede!" I replied. "we left you room because we left Alberta to escape the Stampede!" :D :D :D

A good laugh by all. :)

I'm guessing you are retired. My DH is still working (and will be for at least another 15 years). He can't get off work long enough for the several days it would take us to drive there, plus exploring time, plus time to drive back. The cruise will let us sample Alaska without worrying about transportation and only take one week of DH's vacation time.

 

You will certainly see more of Alaska, but the cruise lets us see one part of Alaska within our time constraints.

 

(I am working on DH to buy another RV, but probably still won't drive it to Alaska. Maybe we can do some exploring in Canada, though.)

Yes we are retired so we do have that advantage & luxury... :)

I didn't mean to come off cruising to Alaska was a waste of time or anything like that. That wasn't my intent at all. I only mentioned Alaska because the DW and I are currently discussing this trip so it was fresh in my mind... The first thing we decided was that we were not going to do it on a ship. Another advantage we have we're closer to Alaska than every lower 48 resident but I was amazed on the number of people who make the trek up there from all over down there... even from the East coast and Florida. :eek: If we were restrained by a work schedule we probably would be doing the same as you. :)

We really enjoyed a trip near Wyoming to Deadwood, Black Hills, Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse etc. :)

I'm struggling with the word "hate" in this discussion. I rather use "Prefer" for the choices people make. I feel like the OP intended this discussion more as "I love to cruise and it is hard for me to understand why other people prefer a different type of vacation."

I was thinking the same thing. To say "hate" means an intense emotional dislike for something. I don't think there is anyone that has that kind of emotion for a mode of vacation. IMO, I feel the word is borderline offensive but that's just me.

We are take it or leave it kind of people when it comes to cruising. When we do cruise we do enjoy it for the most part but there's portions that aren't for us. People have asked us why we cruised where my answer was usually a quick... "you can do as much as you want or as little you want on the ship. It's all up to you."

Some of the downsides are..... Being herded around like sheep when it comes to boarding, disembarking, excursions, etc. The limited time at port and you're limited to just port cities or close to them. I have anxiety issues and at times I don't do well with crowds.

When we get to the Yukon and Alaska it won't be on any cruise ship. We'll be doing it from the freedom of our RV without an itinerary where we can stay at any location for as long as we like and leave when we decide. Alaska is a huge state where you don't see much of it from a boat floating by for a few days. We plan on staying for a couple of months... Another plus is... I've never had a meal on a cruise ship that can compare to my beef ribs off the grill or Dutch oven peach cobbler cooked over the open fire... :D :)

Not following the tip policy can result in the employee being sent home at his/her own expense.

I can't believe the cruise line can legally leave someone high and dry in another country if they're dismissed. Yes if they quit they must find their own way home but fired I believe the cruise line would be responsible to immediately pay them and to get them home.

Found this snippet where an employee wanted off the ship but decided to get herself fired so she wasn't on the hook for the ticket home.

Millions of tears were shed during my stint on the ship, absolutely hating my predicament. So, I came up with a plan. There were two ways to leave the ship.

1) Resign and pay for your own air ticket home

2) Get fired and they pay for your air ticket home. Because traveling to the ship was a personal expense, I decided that it wasn’t worth to cover the return flight myself. I started scouring the Internet and LinkedIn for job opportunities, and spent my late nights writing resumes and sending them out with the ship’s extremely slow wifi. Home never seemed so far away.

No question the "T-word" is misused and overused. But there will always be a segment of regular posters who are 100% convinced and intractable in the thought that a brand new screen name starting a thread on a controversial topic is ALWAYS a long-time existing member that opened a second (or third, fourth, fifth etc) account just to have fun stirring the pot.

Fair enough. :)

With literally millions of posts in this forum I can't disagree there would be some doing that. :)

I've noticed some newbie posts asking a question (sometimes a sensitive subject) where he'll get several different opinions which sometimes morphs into a debate that each other is wrong. Then eventually someone will post "where's the OP? I suspect a troll!" That's not the definition of a troll... the proper definition of a troll is:

In Internet slang, a troll is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal, on-topic discussion, often for the troll's amusement.

Or... the newbies question might provoke responses accusing the OP they might have some sort of an agenda particularly if its a sensitive subject like tipping where he's sometimes (again) accused of being a troll. Might be a "where can I smoke" question that then morphs into a smokers vs non-smokers thread.

So the newbie will say to himself... "to heck with this! I'm outta here!" IMHO

One thread that comes to mind was on the RCI board where a lady was asking about leaving her young kid at Adventure Ocean on a port day than dragging him around the Caribbean island.. didn't take long for the thread to turn into a You're a terrible parent thread so it quickly was deleted.

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But news outlets nowadays prefer the sensational' date=' rather than the informative.[/quote']

 

Agree and if I may add... Controversy

 

The goal for newspapers is to sell newspapers. More papers means more advertising $$$. :cool:

Water skiing... :eek: :D

Somehow us and our friends were in different restaurants and requested this be fixed as soon as possible.

 

There was me, hubby and daughter and we were seated with another family the same the first night. Our daughter's looked around the same age. We looked about the same age as the couple. I was excited to meet another family and make new friends!

 

They were BORING!! The conversations went like this...

Me - Do you have any excursions planned?

Them - no, not this time

Me - So you've cruise before?

Them - This is our 3rd cruise

Me - Have you been to these ports before

Them - No

 

This is the way the entire conversation went until I finally gave up. No asking us questions, no trying to interact in any way. It was weird and extremely awkward!

 

THANKFULLY they fixed our reservations and we were seated with our friends who are lively people the next night!

They don't sound like nightmare tablemates to me? :confused: Sounds like they may have just been not too social. Perhaps they could have written a post that went like this.... :)

There's always another side to the story.... :)

What did we do before wipes were invented? :rolleyes:

The world is full of germs... There's no way of getting away from it. Isn't this why we have an immune system? Yes, there are exceptions e.g weakened immune systems but that isn't the norm here.

Isn't the function of the mucus membrane to stop pathogens and dirt from entering the body and to prevent bodily tissues from becoming dehydrated?

It's been our experience that the ship's AC (or most any AC system for that matter) is overly dry where it dry's up the mucus membrane in my nose thus allowing germs to enter the body so I get sick. I used to wakeup all stuffed up because it was so dry in our cabin so we usually carry saline nasal spray to keep our mucus membranes moist and when we do, knock on wood, we haven't gotten sick! Didn't take it for all of last cruise and came down with sinus infections when we got home but that may have been a result of the plane ride home.

Like others have mentioned in this thread.... We're also part of the camping crowd who have camped with outhouses, cooking and eating outdoors. Going days without a shower smelling of campfire smoke and I can't recall ever been sick out there... :cool:

YMMV

Izumi, modeled after a traditional Japanese bath or “onsen” features indoor and outdoor Japanese bathing experiences, including steam rooms, saunas, and hot tubs with spectacular ocean views. Exclusively on Diamond Princess[emoji768], it is the largest Japanese bath of its kind at sea and offers guests a chance to experience a little of a popular Japanese pastime. Men and women have separate facilities, except for one outdoor hot tub where suits are required.

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