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DCGuy64

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About Me

  • Location
    Burke, VA
  • Interests
    Music, foreign languages, travel, cooking
  • Favorite Cruise Line(s)
    MSC
  • Favorite Cruise Destination Or Port of Call
    Caribbean

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  1. Thank you for posting this. We just booked our very first Virgin Voyages cruise over the weekend, and are excited about trying VV for the first time. (Resilient Lady January 4, 2025)
  2. Thanks very much, @Gretchendz for posting this! We are planning our very first VV cruise and I've been a Delta Skymiles member for decades. It's nice to have this perk! 😄
  3. You're right in both of these paragraphs. I agree with you that when someone is just panning around with his video camera, he's unlikely to be targeting me specifically (or my wife). And I also agree with you that there is some conflation going on here. But here's where I take a different view. Once someone has taken video that includes me in it (whether on purpose or not), it's out of my control. So while Ben and David, for example, might upload a video to You Tube that has footage featuring me, is there any way to prevent some 3rd party, who might have malevolent intent, from using that footage? Not as far as I know. Several of my friends who are active on Facebook have never once posted any photos of their children, including garden-variety beach or amusement park photos. Know why? Because there are creepy people out there who target children, that's why. What if I call in sick at work but I'm really on a cruise ship somewhere and someone films me and then it's seen by my boss? If you Google around, you'll find plenty of examples of people who went for job interviews, but then their potential employers searched online and found video of them drunk and acting stupid, so they weren't hired. Some people will argue "well, that's what you get for misbehaving" but I think that's an asinine point of view and very Big Brother-ish. If people don't want to be filmed, don't do it. I don't want the entire universe to become a real life version of The Truman Show. Do you?
  4. Yeah, but it does two things that, as far as I understand, aren't the status quo: 1. It will (hopefully, since it hasn't been written yet) give the vloggers some written assurances that they are welcome to continue filming (versus a total ban, which would be very difficult to enforce) and 2. It will give passengers who don't want to be filmed some kind of support in case they object. Right now, it's a bit of a Wild West (although some lines like Carnival seem to have language like this already in force). Currently, if I told some vlogger not to film me, he/she could say "you can't stop me, there's no rule against this." Well there will be soon, from the looks of it.
  5. Don't worry, @Citrons. One of these days, sooner or later, someone who thinks this is no big deal will have something unpleasant happen to him/her as a result of some nosy videographer, and then the story will change. As the saying goes, "what goes around, comes around."
  6. Glad to hear it. Sounds like the right approach. In a way, this could be a silver lining to the whole incident: cruise lines work in sync with YouTubers and others to develop a policy that allows reasonable access to film in public spaces, while being respectful of passengers' privacy. Win/win!
  7. Oof. Under the circumstances, it might have been better for you just to board anyway. But as @S1971 pointed out, their policy appears to incentivize sick passengers to sail anyway, since a last minute cancellation gets them nothing from MSC.
  8. Not taking MSC's side, but I'm curious why they have the "5 days" rule on notifying them. Do they hope that by freeing up cabins last minute, they can let people upgrade/get last-minute travelers in those cabins? I don't really know.
  9. You're exactly right. The FAQ's could be worded like "in order to receive compensation, you must inform MSC via telephone at xxx-xxx-xxxx with 5 days of embarkation, but no later than 1 day prior. Note that the day of embarkation is too late. And your request must be accompanied by written documentation." Something to that effect, in legalese.
  10. OK, got it. I guess I was thinking that the day of embarkation counted as "within 5 days." I hadn't considered the possibility that "day of" meant "day 0." That stinks. If @KimPossible1's sister had tested positive just one day earlier, she would have been OK from the T&C perspective. EDIT: I wanted to add that I share @JamieLogical's surprise that Covid rules are even a thing anymore.
  11. Right, I agree. There are times, also, when demanding your rights can be just not worth it in the end. I can imagine a scenario in which a couple, excited about getting on a flight to a great destination, decides to film the TSA checkpoint process and is told "you can't do that here" and then says "yes we can, the law says so," and a confrontation ensues. Maybe they're on the right side of the law, but who wants to hold up the line and start an argument? I've seen people confront TSA personnel about the backscatter X-ray machine and demand a private patdown instead and the TSA gets annoyed. On a recent cruise, a gentleman about to get off at a port repeatedly refused to take off his baseball cap so the security agent could compare him to the photo he'd uploaded prior to the cruise. People started yelling "come on, man, just take off the damn hat, let's go!" Was he within his rights to refuse? Maybe not, maybe so. But there are battles just not worth fighting sometimes.
  12. OK, thanks. Based on that, it seems @KimPossible1 did that. She called before noon the day of sailing aka embarkation. That would seem to satisfy the requirements.
  13. Thank you for posting this, @MsTabbyKats. So can I assume that the "within 5 days" clause means "no fewer than" 5 days? Meaning if my sailing is on March 15, I must inform them no later than March 10? If I'm right in that assumption, then I could see where MSC was within its rights to deny the refund/FCC request. I think @KimPossible1 was under the impression that "within 5 days" meant "no more than 5 days" before embarkation. BTW I was under the same impression she was. (As an aside, it would almost encourage people who got sick within 5 days of embarkation to board anyway, sickness or no sickness, or else not sail and get nothing.)
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