ccrain

They will eventually get it right, but it will cost 10x as much as originally projected and take 2x as long.

Remember when they first rolled out internet cafes? Even hardwired to on-board servers, the PCs were a pain to use, log on to and especially log out on those rough sea days!

Remember when they first rolled out wifi in the atrium - the line at the internet desk with people trying to connect their IPADS and Apples? (Some of those people are still there today!)

Remember when they first rolled out wifi in cabins? They still have cabins with wifi dead spots at the desk, but the bed's ok!. The steel in the ships will basically wreak havoc with any RF signal. (I've had the same problem in hotels as well.)

In the old days you used to have to test new software/hardware systems under realistic conditions. That is apparently what they are doing now - test/fix/test/fix/test/fix...been there, done that...now chuckling under my breath.

My biggest complaint with IT folks nowadays, especially in my own company, is that they don't test new software before they blindly deploy to determine all of the unintended consequences (like locking out every multi-function printer in the division hooked up via USB), and most IT folks are sitting with a Gig-E line to the server in the room next door and wondering why I'm having a problem updating my computer over a 356kB/sec VPN connection from two states away! Or on a ship in the middle of the Tasman sea!

Its gotten to the point nowadays that I have my own test computer for my home network. All of those updates, all of that new cute software is deployed on my junk computer first before I put it on my main computers. I have had to restore that one from scratch a couple of times now due to Windows update issues and software that didn't do what I wanted it to do...

Us old dogs still know a few tricks...

Dave, are you guys still scheduled for the Coral 4th through the 18th of November?

"Imagine a place where time ceased to exist, a place of unsurpassed and unforgiving beauty. A place of endless quiet. Imagine no more. The Frozen Continent."

 

For one interested in Antarctica, especially visiting there, I recommend getting hold of a copy of Bernard Stonehouse's "Antarctica from South America". Stonehouse also wrote a longer one "The Last Continent: Discovering Antarctica" which he wrote earlier but the latter is likely difficult to find. Stonehouse spent most of his professional life in Antarctica, a lot of which was with dog teams.

 

Personally, being born and raised and having spent my entire life in a land of ice and snow and the Alaska wilderness it makes little difference to me whether I step off onto an ice berg or piece of Continent. However, having flown many tourists onto Alaska's glaciers and seen and heard the awe and appreciation expressed by visitors, I have nothing but respect for those who spend the time and money to do so.

 

Actually it was my wife who found the cruise to Antarctica in 2010 and I reluctantly agreed to go along. Was I glad I did that. It was much more than I expected, we sailed around down there on a large vessel for three days, Elephant Island, Admiralty Bay, Esperanza Station, Deception Island, Neumayer Glacier and much more. That doesn't count the three sea days getting there from Buenos Aires and the sailing day back across Drake Passage to the Cape.

 

 

Of course, I would dearly love to do this again, perhaps on a smaller vessels equipped with Zodiacs, with time and luck maybe I well. I do spend my summers in the Wrangell Mountains of Alaska and do have a lot of young friends who guide mountain climbers and glacier hikers here during the summer, many of which spend their winters working in Antarctica at the US stations down there. None get to see the Peninsula though and are somewhat amazed at the pictures and when I tell them about it.

You and I may have been on the same cruise. With Dr. Stonehouse? He was a real hoot. That British humor during his lectures was one for the books. Even the day we were stuck out in ice berg alley with the wind howling and ice bergs floating by was pretty unique.

That was also the trip where the catabatic wind caught the Star just turning into the Neumyer Channel. She heeled over about 10D and the Captain, Perrin, aborted and we retraced our steps back up the Gerlach Straight. Talk about being in the middle of nowhere, we were 1,000's of miles FROM the middle of nowhere!

Definitely a unique cruising experience...

We did Antarctica on the Star in 2010.

Here is the Live From I posted back then. You will not be disappointed in any cruise around Antarctica...

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1134239

Deja vu,

 

With the flooding reported this morning on the Carnival Dream (I believe), it brings back memories. The incident I mentioned was flooding. In our case if was a 6 inch water line for the pool in an equipment room across the hall from us. The room was designed with tall thresholds to contained the water , but with the heavy roll of the ship, over a thousand gallons got into 5 rooms. Water was over 2 inches deep in our room on deck 11. Our first thought (for a very brief moment) was we missed the emergency horn and we were almost ready to sink. LOL:eek:

 

 

Even though I had removed the laptop from the case on the floor and put it up on the desk because the case was wet, clean up crew put the wet case back on top of the laptop, and water ran into it. Took about $500 to get it repaired. We never leave anything valuable on the floor anymore.

Heck of a video on the national news. The only thing left valuable on the floor, besides the suitcases under the bed, are the shoes in the closet...

I also had problems with the air-con in our inside cabin (C511) on the Sydney to Japan cruise, Charles, but I'm not sure what the actual temps were. They did improve it slightly in the first couple of days but there seemed to be an inherent design problem. The cool air was coming out of the air-con at the foot of the bed, but wasn't flowing up to the head of the bed. It was OK for DH but I "run hot" and like a really cold cabin at night. We bought a really great fan in Darwin and that solved the problem for the remainder of the trip - we placed it on the desk and it blew the cool air from the air-con up to where I needed it. I mentioned the issue in the post-cruise survey but didn't bother sending in a specific complaint.

 

I had a similar problem on Golden (inside cabin) and on Royal (balcony cabin), so I think that fan will be travelling with us on more Princess cruises. I've never had a problem on the Sun class ships though.

 

I just don't understand why the Princess cabin air-conditioning settings don't allow for people who like really cool cabins at night. The air-con in the public areas is great so why not in the cabins. Other cruise lines can do it, Celebrity cabin air-con is brilliant.

 

Great to hear you got a good response from Princess.

 

BTW I thought it was port you added to your lemonade, not vodka! ;p

Having dabbled in HVAC engineering, its all a matter of balance. There are only so many tons of A/C and CFMs (Cubic Feet per Minute) available on an HVAC 'string' - the ducting from a chiller unit along various cabins in series. The end of the string always gets the short end of the CFMs. The air flowing out of our vent in the cabin was within specs temperature wise, they re-calibrated the thermostat to a lower setting, but the CFMs just wasn't there IMHO. The bathroom air noise in the upper vent was not there on this cabin and you could just barely hear the air coming in.

This could have been caused by any number of things from original design issues to needing a replacement fan blower unit to problems with the chillers.

The heat load in the afternoon is typically the most stressful in any cabin we've been in (on the sunny side of the ship), but most cabins can keep the heat controlled even when the curtains are open. We had to keep ours shut all the time...

Customer service actually gave us one of their fans they use - indicating that their offices weren't exactly cool either. I asked for it specifically - which is probably why I got it from them.

Funny that you mention Port as I did get into the Port Lemonade that was offered in the Elite Lounge. Not my favorite drink, but it was on the 'cheap' list and it wasn't bad. Since we had plenty of coffee cards from prior cruises, we kept the Elite bar, trading out all the booze for beer and whiskey, and all the sodas for Sprite Zero, so I ended up doing 7&7's (short for Seagram 7 and 7-Up, the drink of choice after the last final in college) for most of the cruise.

For future cruises I suggest you get a thermometer alarm clock. This is the first time I've had to use it for ship purposes. Most of the time its used for 'no dear, its XXF in the cabin, so its you, not the room temperature' discussions...

talk to me about programing in cobol and fortran using punch cards...;p

 

yeah, i'm old(er)

Fortran IV punch cards, 1st year of college...oh if I knew then what I know now...

Wow, I bet that was quite the chore! I actually had email at that first internship, and in the CS department at school. So it wasn’t quite that bad!

Yep, when the 3.5" 1.2MB floppy was introduced we thought we could rule the world!

Thank you for that information. I made a note of it. I wonder if the fact that you had so many cruises booked had something to do with the way you were treated by customer service?

Actually I think it was the fact that we repeatedly went to customer service on the ship and they documented the issue from the first cruise. That coupled with a specific complaint, including a specific issue, with hard data, led them to do what they did.

Or maybe the fact that we've never done a complaint in almost 18 years and over 500 sea days with princess.

Who knows.

I'm just reporting some positive news on the customer service front... they do listen...

I wonder if C702 on some or all of the other Grand Class ships has this problem. :confused:

This is a Japanese Grand, so there are significant differences in layout and deck plans. I would not be surprised if there were differences in the HVAC system as well.

That is awesome. Not everyone realizes how powerful MS Word can be. I had an internship way back in college, programming Word and Excel to automatically produce scientific documents. There is some awesome power in there.

 

And you put it to good use on that travelog! I have only read through about a third of it so far, but I love your writing style and the way you portray the places you went and the people you met.

I cut my teeth on page layout on a timeshare system in 1981 with an electrostatic printer. Don't remember the actual program, but it did TWO COLUMNS!

then it was some kind of word processing software on a stand alone machine the admin used and had 8" floppy disks. Then we graduated to personal/desktop word processing on Atari 128XLs, IBM 8086 to 80286 processors using early Wordperfect, then to Apple Macs/Lisas and Apple Write, back to the dark side of IBM and MS Word (in less than 5MB chunks) to Framemaker and then when Word grew up about 10 years ago we did heavy duty document layout on Word from then on...

You cannot begin to appreciate today's software and hardware without experiencing swapping 82kB 5 1/4" floppies when you print out your technical report from the word processor in order to manually insert IBM selectric equations printed on white stickyback correction tape...only to find out one entire paragraph is missing from the 3rd page...and having to start all over again!

Since they admit the problem is with this particular cabin can you tell us which cabin it is so we can avoid it in the future? (If it's a suite then it's not something that will ever affect us. :p)

Good point. Diamond Princess C702.

As most of you who follow my post know, I am one who takes it as it comes, makes lemonade, adds a little vodka and has a party.

On this last series of cruises (42 days in total) we had a serious issue with the AC in the cabin. It simply would not cool down below 74F and in the afternoons when the sun was on our side of the ship it went as high as 80F in the cabin. (Yes, my alarm clock has a thermometer on it - a necessity when arguing hot/cold cabins with the DW after a certain age...) We had to leave on several occasions to cooler climes on deck 5. Even after Hong Kong, going north we actually had to open the door to cool off the cabin.

We discussed the issue several times with the front desk and with engineering. They simply could not fix it. At all. And they tried everything. It came down to this particular cabin and its location in the A/C ducting chain.

The front desk did loan us one of their fans - without it we wouldn't have been able to sleep until late at night.

So when we got back, I decided to file a formal complaint on the Princess website. I laid everything out, the cruise booking numbers, the temperature in the cabin, the steps customer service took, the steps engineering took, in a logical and direct manner. I also included that as a resolution I expected some compensation in the form of OBC on the next upcoming cruises - 60 days on the Coral and a World Cruise on the Pacific.

I was called that evening to tell me they were looking at my complaint and would get back to me in 4-6 weeks. 2 weeks later I got a call from corporate customer service. They had looked into my complaint, retrieved the documentation from the ship, recognized that they had a problem, apologized and gave us compensation in the form of cruise credits on upcoming cruises.

I was extremely happy about the process and the outcome.

I know that others have not had as good an experience as this, but since Princess does monitor this board, I thought a little positive reinforcement would go a long way.

Nicely done and very much appreciated...

Very nice travelog! I am inspired to do something similar on my 7-day cruise! What did you use to make it, before turning it into a PDF and uploading it to OneDrive?

Just microsoft word. It's page layout is pretty simple to use now.

As is my habit, I like to turn my Live Froms into an illustrated travel log. In this case we did a 4 day pre-cruise in Sydney, an 8 day Tasmanian Cruise, a 12 day New Zealand Cruise and then a 22 day re positioning cruise from Sydney to Tokyo - capped off by 5 days in Tokyo. We started for Sydney on the 24 of February 2018 and got home on the 18th of April.

So we spent 42 on the Diamond. Not our longest cruise, but we got to see so many new ports. Only one was a complete repeat (Hong Kong) and even then we did something new and exciting.

So here's the link to the PDF - please enjoy:

https://1drv.ms/b/s!AnklLO6ZVH8FsHB5mApHpnGYIVwj

Which you have to cut and paste for some reason into the URL address...

On the upcoming cruises we did not purchase insurance at time of booking. So in looking at lookback periods, I noticed something interesting.

The lookback period effective date, in all policies I reviewed, is DIFFERENT from the cancellation period effective date.

I looked at half a dozen major policies and the look back period for pre-existing effective date was the first day of travel NOT the date of purchase, which is the effective date for cancellation insurance.

So basically on a cruise in which final payment is due 90 days prior to embarkation, the look-back period includes that future 90 days when you purchase on or around final payment. This means, basically, that if you have any condition discovered in that 90 days that might need treatment while on the cruise, you should cancel to avoid the potential argument over pre-existing.

Yes, there are a couple of policies that offer the pre-existing waiver if you purchase on final payment, but they have other warts as well such as secondary medical and lower coverages.

Just wondered if anyone else's interpretation of this is similar to mine?

Has anyone hooked up a surface to T Mobile?

I use my surface 3 with my T-Mobile hotspot. In the US, its fine. Overseas, the hotspot is active, but the 256kB/s throttling makes it pretty much useless for PC access.

An illustrated summary and travelog of this series of cruises is here:

https://1drv.ms/b/s!AnklLO6ZVH8FsHB5mApHpnGYIVwj

Wonder if/how that will change with their merger with Sprint

That is the $26.5B question talking heads are trying to answer, but if history is any guide, all the speculation will be wrong when the merger is complete in 2-3 years...

Testing Results for Tmobile - Oceania to Japan

This series of cruises did Australia (Sydney, Hobart, Port Arthur, Melbourne, Darwin), New Zealand (Auckland, Tauranga, Christchurch, Wellington, Dunedin, Napier), Kota Kinabalu, Phu My and Nha Trang, Hong Kong, and then Osaka, Shimizu and Tokyo/Yokohama.

The T-Mobile 55+ account with the $10 ONE plus add-on (for each of us) has kept us in data, albeit at 256kB/sec, free texts and $0.20 per minute calls, for the entire trip- except in Vietnam, which was expected.

The data rate is not fast but sufficient for Google maps, without which we would be lost – basic email, Facebook and even still photo connections to the security cameras at home.

Not bad considering the more expensive alternatives.

I know this'll sound difficult or ignorant but what is a shrug?

I thought it was just a shawl over a dress, but my wife informed me of my ignorance and told me it was a "shrug".

In fact, the dresses and shrug she took were from Magellan:

https://www.magellans.com/itemdy00.aspx?ID=&T1=MD7434+BK+S&cid=364

She really liked them and they packed amazingly easily...

I don't wish to detract from a wonderful cruise blog but I know you were on this cruise along with Charles. Please tell me about the dress on formal night.

No Problem.

From my perspective, formal night wear was a little more formal than a Caribbean or Hawaii cruise and it ranged from 'dressed to the nines' to t-shirts and shorts. A lot more tuxes and dresses from my perspective - with a few more kilts thrown in that are more common on British Isle cruises.

It also changed from the 8 day Taz cruise - less formal than the 12 day New Zealand cruise. The 22 day was much more formal than the prior two.

Just an FYI - our formalest formal wear was slacks, long sleeve shirt and tie for me, dress and a shrug for Judy. Just not enough room to pack a dinner jacket or a variety of formal wear and I hate tuxes!

Thanks Charles for another great "Live"

 

You're always a good read !!

Srpilo

Thanks!

Although the CC automatic editor taking the you know what out of ****take mushrooms just made my morning!

Charles

PS - Just wait until the 60 day Coral in September. That is going to be one extensive Live From...

April 17, 2018 – Last Day In Tokyo

Today marked the end of our journey from Australia through New Zealand, Southeast Asia and Japan. It was everything we wanted in a destination cruise. New sights, sounds, smells, food, people, cultures, new friends. Tomorrow we catch a plane and get ourselves home to deal with real life again.

Today we finished what we started out to do yesterday. We made it to the palace, and this time I allowed Google time to settle and carefully read the signage in the stations as we transitioned through two different changes in trains ending up at the Omote Gate into the Eastern Palace Gardens. Beautiful, serene, spectacular in amongst the hubbub of Tokyo. Like a quiet Central Park in New York on an early spring morning. They limit the number of people into the gardens at any one time via a simple ticket system, so the experience is one of enjoying the garden, not fighting the crowds. We could easily of spent the entire day there, photographing the massive walls and gates, the plants, the koi. A contrast not dissimilar to the one we experienced in Hong Kong at the Chinese garden in amongst the skyscrapers of Hong Kong.

We easily retraced our steps to the hotel via the three lines – racking up another 7 mile shoe leather day. We arrived in time to try lunch at Sakura, a Japanese restaurant in the Hilton. Although expensive, this was a spectacular meal. Absolutely befitting our final full day in Japan. Sakura has a Teppanaki section, a Sushi section, a Tempura section and a general dining area. Each looks out at a different view. We did the Tempura bar. WOW! Not only did we have a spectacular view of the bay and the rainbow bridge thru an almost perfectly clean huge glass picture window, we had, basically, our own personal tempura chef. Each course he prepared in front of us and upon presentation, told us the best way to eat it. Dipped in salt, lemon or tempura sauce with radish, or some combination of lemon and salt. Each served right from the tempura oil in front of us. Fresh as can be, perfectly cooked, perfectly presented as a work of art in front of us. We had prawn legs, the prawn bodies, shrimp, ****ake mushrooms, sweet potato, onion, squid, Shishido peppers, this was WOW food of the highest order. Subtle Japanese flavors featuring the ingredient, not the cooking method or spices added.

The service was exemplary, top notch, with everything in its place and everything having a place to be. Love the precision, the delicacy, the attention to detail. This was not just dining, this was an experience not to be missed.

Yes, it was expensive, but well worth every penny for the experience. This is a must do for anyone staying close to the Hilton Odaiba.

As I told the staff as we left – Oyshikata.

So that’s it for this trip. Until next time. Thanks for riding along. I will be doing a complete illustrated review in the next few weeks which I will post on-line somewhere. If you have any questions, just yell. I will try and answer them.

Bye, Bye….

April 17, 2018 – Touring Tokyo From the Hilton Odaiba

Sunday was an off day with Judy and her cruise cold. Probably caught it from me, but with sleeping all day Sunday, it was windy and rainy anyway, she was ready to go on Monday. We had planned to do Shubuyia, then the palace. The nice thing about the Metro system is the ability to go almost anywhere and do almost anything at the drop of a hat.

The bad news is two fold. First, the Tokyo ‘official’ metro map only lists those trains in the Tokyo Metro system, not the JR system, so the Yamanote line is not shown. Secondly, it matters a lot where you exit a station and Google, with a slow 2G connection, can get confused very easily after existing underground.

We caught the light rail to the Ginza line, then experienced the sardine can effect of the ‘pushers’ in Japan. They stacked more people than I thought possible in these trains. We aborted the first train and then got first in line for the next train. The crush was only on for the first 3 stops, then it eased out as we went from Shimbashi to Shibuya. Then I missed an exit and headed the wrong way coming out of Shibuya. Getting to the famous intersection, then the Mega Don Quixote turned into a 45 minute stroll up hills, down hills, through malls, etc. as Google finally figured out where I was and I took the time to let it settle in a parking lot with a clear sky view. We ended up going through an area famous for its 2 hour hotel rooms. A lot of business people stay in those to freshen up rather than go home for the evening after working very late.

Once I got turned in the right direction, we found what we were looking for – multi-flavored kit-kats, and after checking out the famous Shibuya intersection, we retraced our steps back to the Ginza line, to Shimbashi then up to the Yurikamome Light Rail and back to the hotel. We had intended to go back to central Tokyo to see the East gardens, but found that they are closed on Mondays, so we switched gears and headed for the Anime center in Akihabara. Once again the exit screwed up google a bit, but this time I waited for the map to settle AND looked for a good reference point – in this case a 7-Eleven. This told me the direction of the streets and which way I needed to go. On the way back, we had to cross the street and enter the Ginza station from a different entrance to catch the train back to Shimbashi. All of these trips were on uncrowded trains with none of the crush like the morning commute.

The Akihabara area is interesting. Anime central and home to several of the French maid cafes. Several girls dressed in maid outfits were on the street hawking their café. We did not try one, but there are several on You-Tube. Every kind of anime figurine, manga, video game, dvd or collectible is available in this area. Dragonball to Dragonball Super is the current rage, as is Hello Kitty. The area was not very crowded and we were able to saunter a bit, window shopping and going into several stores.

All in all, an excellent day in Tokyo. Today we do gardens, starting with the East Gardens of the Palace.

Later..