ahecht

At least in 2013 when we were last there they had WiFi. We didn't have any Jamaican currency when we went so they must've either taken credit cards or USD, but I don't remember how I paid.

FYI: You can usually get used copies of these books in very good or "like new" condition from Amazon.com for about $4 including shipping.

Volume 2:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0979728207

Volume 3:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0979728215

Carte du Jour:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0979728223

It really depends on what you are looking for. We had a great time just wandering around the city, especially the waterfront area. There's a tram tour that you can take from Fort Amsterdam that takes you around Willemstad for about $25, or you can just walk yourself. Willemstad is very picturesque. If you're docking at the Megapier, you'll have to walk through a large outdoor mall area that has all the standard port-of-call shops (Diamonds International, Del Sol, etc.) to get to downtown, but once you are downtown there are much better shopping options.

If you want a real "locals" experience, I would highly recommend lunch in the old market (now called "Plaza Bieu"). It a semi-open building with a bunch of food stands off to the left. The stands are cooking a variety of local food over wood stoves. The menus will be in Papiamento, but most have a paper menu in English they can show you. You typically sit down at one of the tables in their section, and they will come over and take your order. We entered from the side near the round market and had an excellent whole fish at the first stand (along with a bunch of great sides)and a very good iguana stew at one of the stands in the middle. The highlight, however, was the pumpkin pancakes from the very last stand -- we got two, and really wished we had room for more. The place has fans but no air conditioning, so it gets hot if you don't go early in the day, and you're likely to be the only tourists there.

Voyager class do

Not all of them. Currently, the ships with virtual balconies are Quantum, Anthem, Ovation, Harmony, Voyager, Explorer, and Navigator.

If you're interested in a particular ship, you can always check the deck plans. They show up as a separate category (category "J").

It is possible the Voom engineers (third party engineers) have been able to come up with a software modification or internal circuit/hardware modification that allows the existing satellite hardware to connect to Voom without requiring the new satellite receivers to be installed. That could allow Voom to be retrofit into older ships without having them go into drydock/etc. Maybe it just took a while for that solution to be found and tested. Just throwing darts here as to a possible explanation.

 

Of course another possible explanation is that Voom isn't really going active on these ships in May. I guess we'll find out soon enough...

VOOM install never required a drydock. The new dishes and receivers can be installed during a normal port day.

the 45 degrees will handle the Med OK, the real question is the beam tracking.

How many ships can it track at one time? If you have 5 ships out there, which one gets the beam?

Each "spot" can be up to 435 miles in diameter. Rather than have one spot follow each ship in busy areas like the Caribbean and Mediterranean, there will likely be a strategic layout of spots to cover all ships in the region. For example, this picture shows how they plan on covering the Pacific islands:

I learned this trick here on CC. Sign up for Mlife. It's the Vegas rewards program. The only number I could find was 866-761-7111. They will give you an mlife number. Then call crown and anchor, give them your mlife number, and you will automatically be gold in Royals Crown and Anchor program. Then all the gold discounts will be loaded on your seas pass account when you board.

 

We did this on our first cruise. Took 5 minutes and was completely free. We had no issues.

 

Edit... There have been conflicting reports on here about when you are assigned your crown and anchor number. In our case, my number was assigned immediately over the phone. Also, you can do this for every member of your party over 21. Then the discounts will show up for all of you that sign up.

They've closed that loophole. You can either get Mlife benefits on your first cruise (which is basically nothing if you're a Sapphire Mlife member) or get a status match after your first cruise.

If you are a member of Mlife or join (a chain of casinos) and give Crown and Anchor your Mlife number you automatically become gold without having cruised and get the same gold perks as everyone else gets after their first cruise.

They've closed that loophole. You can either get Mlife benefits on your first cruise (which is basically nothing if you're a Sapphire Mlife member) or get a status match after your first cruise.

As soon as Elvis Pinto was appointed as Empress' cruise director, it was pretty obvious that Royal Caribbean was planning to use the ship to go to Cuba.

Looks like she got up to 23.9kts during the sea trials. That just beats the official maximum speed for the Oasis class of 23.8kts:

http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/oldshipid:372127/oldmmsi:311000396/olddate:2016-03-11%2001%3A36%3A34/zoom:9

I have posted this in other threads, but you will not be able to switch inputs on the tv's as they are in "hotel" mode to prevent people from being able to switch inputs. Reasoning behind this is so people can't bring their own movie's onboard and use the ships equipment to watch them vs buying PPV. Same as most all hotel environments.

On Brilliance last fall it worked fine. I didn't need to change inputs from a button, the HDMI input showed up as one of the channels (either the highest or lowest, I forgot which). Also, if you have a newer DVD player that supports HDMI-CEC (sometimes called Anynet+ or Link), pressing play on the DVD player will actually turn on the TV and switch to the HDMI input. Both methods worked for me on my last cruise.

The buffet is open for every single meal, from embarkation day lunch through debarkation day breakfast.

http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/shipid:375440/zoom:10

Very strange, they got within about 10-15 miles of Key West and before turning around. AIS still listed their destination as KEY WEST when they went out of range three hours ago.

We just used Choice Air a couple of months ago, and still had the $25pp fee for international travel. That and the $15pp fee for domestic travel have been in place continuously.

 

You might be thinking of something called the Choice Air Plus fee which was waived for Platinum and higher C&A level. I'm not sure what "Plus" offered, but I believe that fee went away a while ago.

From the FAQ:

Complimentary Air2Sea Plus fee will only be waived once per reservation. The non-refundable $15.00 for travel in US/Canada and $25.00 for International travel for a Air2Sea booking is not refundable. Fees for guests outside of North America are determined by the local Royal Caribbean Cruise Line office. For any additional changes made after the initial request, the normal custom air fee will be applied.

 

The waived fee is only available to Platinum, Emerald, Diamond, Diamond Plus and Pinnacle Club Crown & Anchor members only. A valid Crown & Anchor Membership Number must be presented to the reservations agent when making your arrangements.

Good to know that the non-refundable fee is not refundable.

A DVD player with an HDMI connection should work on any ship that has flat panel TVs in the staterooms (which I believe would mean any ship except Jewel of the Seas, but someone else can correct me if I'm wrong).

I doubt that they'd let you bring a small blender. The prohibited items list includes sharp objects, and I doubt a blender would fall under the "personal grooming items or scissors" exemptions. I also doubt, for food safety reasons, that a bartender would let you put your own ingredients in their blenders.

Looks like Harmony's sea trials have begun:

http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/shipid:372127/zoom:10

We had a great time with Herod back in October, and although he was hard to reach initially, there were no logistical issues that I was aware of (I had been coordinating with him for a cruise that I ended up canceling, and other member of our roll call arranged things for our group in October). The stop for lunch at his mother's restaurant with the gorgeous gardens and view of the pitons is not to be missed.

Be aware that Herod is currently running for the Saint Lucia legislature (see http://uwpstlucia.org/uwp-endorses-3-new-candidates/ ). When we toured with him in October, he said that he'd be handing over most of the day-to-day tour operations to his employees.

Hi, why do I need a clonable MAC Adress? As another person wrote, HooToo device is working without the ability to do this. Anyone know? Thanks.

 

Gesendet von meinem D5803 mit Tapatalk

Probably because HooToo isn't a major router manufacturer, and therefore their MAC addresses aren't on the blacklist.

This article was my favorite: http://abcnews.go.com/US/royal-caribbean-passengers-describe-harrowing-trip-sea/story?id=36859053

Passenger Peter Aloupis said it felt "exactly" like being in a washing machine when the ship started listing, or tilting, because of the intense winds and turbulent weather.

Really? Exactly? So you were submerged in hot soapy water, covered in laundry, and then spun at high speed until you were mostly dry?

"We were on the third floor with an ocean view and we literally saw Dory swimming by," Aloupis said

Literally? As in you literally looked out your window and it was completely underwater and, despite the churning seas, you literally saw a computer animated fish? He must've hit his head pretty hard on the washing machine. There are only two cruise ships I know of (Disney Dream and Disney Fantasy) where you can look out your window and literally see Dory, and neither of them are Anthem of the Seas.

To be fair to the article, it did also say:

all but one of the seven passengers on "Good Morning America" said that they would be open to going on another cruise

While you are correct that the PVSA does not prohibit a cruise to nowhere (your third case), CBP has decided that a foreign flag ship using foreign crew on crew visas, violates the laws regarding work visas. This is why planned cruises to nowhere have been discontinued.

Good point. I somehow had missed this back when it was posted.

Anyway, I would think the PSA won't apply, but how about the cruise to nowhere?? If this has been beat to death, I am sorry.

The PVSA does not prohibit:

• foreign-flagged ships departing from and returning to the same U.S. port, provided the ship visits any foreign port
  
• foreign-flagged ships departing from a U.S. port, visiting a distant foreign port (something like Aruba or Kiribati), and then continuing to a second U.S. port
  
• foreign-flagged ships returning to their departure point without stopping
  

I just measured it, it's no more than 5 degrees.

That's me standing straight up. It gets kinda comical...I know the crew is doing everything they can to keep us safe.

Wow. Looks like a 10-12 degree list!

Well Empress won't have the balconies or half the venues of the Brilliance. Does Brilliance still have the gyro controlled billiard tables?

Yes, but they haven't been working for a while now. They were both down on our cruise in October (they got one of them working for the pool tournament, but it was broken again the next day), and I've seen other reports that they haven't fixed them yet.

Well, if they go live with a page that serves STAKE in Chops, then you can not really expect them to follow the maritime distinction of what makes a ship a part of a class.

 

They really had to combine these ships with the current webpage layout or it would have looked odd though.

If you like dining, you can also get "multi-course dining for breakfast, lunch and dining in the Main Dining."

If you like extra apostrophes, you can "choose to dine in our pre-determined seating's or at your own time."

Seriously?

Any problems with wait times for the pool tables? Like mass amounts of people and they are never free?

On our last Brilliance cruise the pool tables were almost always broken. They got one of the two working for the pool tournament, but it only lasted about a day before it stopped moving again.

When I was on Jewel of the Seas we played pool a couple of times without much of a wait. There tends to be less people playing if you go in the mornings.