chengkp75

And, this has what to do with the response above yours? Now, if there was a water main break underground, that contamination would be different than a ship, but that is not what the poster you are responding to is talking about. If you repair something in your house, what difference does it make whether the water came from a well, a lake, a river, or the ocean? But, as that poster stated, very often if you shut off the water in your house, you will have some brown water for a short while. Why? It's not from the ground, it's from an iron or steel piping or fitting that has dried out when the water was drained, and the rust has come off the inside, and then gets flushed through the rest of the piping. This is very similar to what I've described as the reason for the discolored water on ships, that the chlorine scale on the inside of the pipes has dried out when the pipes are drained, and is then flushed through the system when water is restored.

For northern Europe cruises, MSC uses Euros.

It's not that California set out to disrupt the industry, they were responding to something people had been asking for for years. It's just that Carnival's lawyers are smarter and faster than the state lawyers, and found a way to benefit from a law intended to restrict them.

No, the paperwork for CBP doesn't change, other than a new manifest reflecting the added or deleted passengers. What changes is whether or not CBP decides to do a more in depth disembarkation interview process than they do for closed loop cruises. This, especially if CBP does not have additional agents assigned, can lead to delays in clearing the passengers, and consequently missed flights.

US passport laws require the sex offender to self-identify themselves in order to get an identifier on the passport, as is noted in another post above. The government can revoke the passport of a sex offender that does not have the identifier, but that requires the government to find out that a sex offender has obtained a passport without the identifier, which could be never. That would require data sharing between State Department, CBP and Angel Watch both in Homeland. This is not quite true. The US has claimed "extra-territorial jurisdiction" over certain serious crimes that happen on a foreign flag cruise ship, in international waters, but only if it involves a US citizen, and isn't in the territorial waters of another country. And, even then, not all US laws apply to incidents on the ship while in a US port.

If you're in the boat, it is windward or leeward side that matters, when you're puking your guts out. Now, on the ship, it's a matter of personal preference as others have said above. 😄

Starting in May, the Chinese have granted a 15 day visa exemption for cruise ship passengers, allowing calls at various Chinese ports of call (15 specified ports), provided the passenger proceed with the vessel to the next port (i.e. no departing the ship in other than the port of origin). For flying into China to start/end the cruise there, you still need the 72 hour transit visa.

Well, considering that even the figure of 138,000 GT is not weight, we don't know how much weight the ship has gained. If we want to pick nits, Voyager does not displace even 42,000 tons, she has a "volume equivalent" of 42,000 GT (Gross Tons being a unitless measure of a factor of the ship's total enclosed volume.) I would estimate that Voyager displaces (her actual weight, loaded with passengers, food, fuel and water) at around 25,000 metric tons, tops.

And, in fact, most of the "instructions" given during the drill were to fill the time, so whether or not anyone paid attention was of little consequence. And, in an actual emergency, those same people would be bitching about "getting this over with". The old muster drill format gave everyone the experience of what an actual muster would be like, with everyone moving to the stations at one time, and tended to make that route a bit more "sticky" in people's minds. I recall a post from an RCI cruise about a year after the restart, where they had an actual muster (I believe it was for a man overboard situation), and the poster mentioned the chaos because most people didn't remember what deck their muster station was on, let alone where it was. And the justification for this from the poster was that "it was nearly a week ago that we boarded and went to our stations". Around the same time, NCL briefly went back to the old muster, and a poster commented on the chaos here as well, since the crew had not been training with actually mustering all the passengers at once. God help us in an actual emergency.

Since the ships are not Chinese flag, they have to go to at least one non-China port, to satisfy the Chinese cabotage equivalent of the US PVSA. Same thing with Japan, all cruises have to call at one foreign port, typically South Korea. Don't know what demographics they are looking to cater to, but the Japanese ports may be more attractive.

So, you're saying that if a registered sex offender goes to a foreign country, then the terms of their parole would apply? I don't think that would be the case. It is outside the jurisdiction of the paroling court. US law does not carry over everywhere on Earth.

Yes, the POA has different reporting requirements since it is US flag, and the Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act does not apply to the POA. And as I said, it only lists raw numbers of incidents, not the details of those incidents, as the numbers are the only data that the FBI supplies to DOT. You will also notice that it only lists a few very serious crimes that need to be reported, and I don't believe that a bar fight falls under any of those categories, unless one or more participants required hospitalization. What distance regulation between sex offenders and kids does the Bahamas have, since that would be the jurisdiction that applies. You are giving them a lot of credit. Cruise line B might appreciate that information, but what benefit would it be to cruise line A to share that info with B? As with the above quote, you are assuming that the cruise lines willingly share information between themselves. I don't believe it.

The list of incidents (and I'm not sure if the names of the parties involved are reported) is reported to the FBI, not DOT or USCG. USDOT maintains the list of the number of reported incidents, and that does not include "unruly passengers", it is limited to "serious crimes". However, even if the names of parties were reported to the FBI, they would not then report these names to DOT, or other cruise lines. Besides, nowhere on the DOT report does it mention "punishment", and specifically says it does not take into account the "investigative status of the incident", so a banning would not be reported, nor would the FBI care a whit whether a passenger was banned from a cruise line or not.

Why would Carnival care if a disruptive person booked a cruise on a competitor's ship? Carnival likely shares this with the other lines in the Carnival group, but I think they would enjoy having an NCL cruise disrupted.

Given the Crystal Cruises bankruptcy, I would say you won't hear anything for another 6-9 months.

Correct, except that if two or three high wattage hair dryers are plugged into adjacent cabins, and used at the same time, the outlet breaker may trip. Typically the outlet circuits for cabins supplies 2-3. Except that you can plug the dual voltage unit into either the US or European outlet. Use of an extension cord is irrelevant, but no surge protector should ever be used on a ship. Yes. A ground fault can be poor insulation in a motor, a bad connection to a piece of galley equipment, or an exterior light fixture that has filled with water from a storm. Any of these things, completely outside your control, can cause unbalanced voltage and flow in the wires leading to your appliance, and cause problems with the ACLI feature or the solid state circuits in the digital motors and ceramic heaters. Ground faults are important to the ship's engineers, and they will trace them down and rectify them as soon as possible, but they also happen at any time. Being a balding male, I don't have much use for hair appliances, but I would think that the cheapest hair dryer out there would be best. No bells and whistles. Yes, no ACLI plug and no ceramic heater will give you a better chance, but I can't say it would be foolproof.

So, to summarize, the most problematic devices are those with digital motors (Dyson) and ceramic heating elements, and these will work sometimes and not work sometimes, across all ships of all cruise lines.

I would take this with a few grains of salt, unless this person was in the technical marine department. This statement is why I wouldn't take anything this person said as correct. An ALCI plug is not a surge protector, nor is it anything remotely resembling a surge protector. An ALCI does the same thing for your hair appliance as the GFCI outlet does in your bathroom and kitchen; prevent shocks. Again, not quite correct. There is no difference in the electrical system on the Celebration class ships than any other Carnival ship, or any cruise ship. As I've stated many times in many threads on most of the forums here on CC, newer hair appliances will sometimes work, and sometimes not work, on the same ship on different days, or even at different times on the same day. Without getting too technical, it all depends on whether the ship has a ground fault (failing insulation on a piece of electrical equipment anywhere on the ship) at the time you want to use your hair dryer, This kind of "sometimes" failure is due to ALCI plugs, digital motors (like the Dyson products), and ceramic heating elements in hair straighteners and the like. The digital circuitry in these latter two instances don't recognize the shipboard wiring as being correct if there is a ground fault, and won't turn on.

She is always burning HFO at sea. But that is more than "efficiency haze". Is that yellow or brown? Brown can be caused by too cool an exhaust temperature causing the NOX to condense. This could be excessive cooling by the scrubbers with the engines at low load. I'm thinking that is the case, as there is white smoke near the stack, another sign of cool exhaust temperatures (water vapor condensing). All the cruise ships I've worked on had NOX and SOX analysers in the exhausts to monitor the levels.

1. A fight on a cruise ship at sea falls under the jurisdiction of the flag state, as has been mentioned, and in this case that would be the Bahamas. 2. Why would any cruise line care one fig whether a troublemaker got on a competitor's ship or not? I think they would rather enjoy it if the person/persons caused trouble on their competitors' ships. A person causing trouble on a ship from a different company has nothing to do with Carnival's business. 3. The "banning" is not a legal document, it is the business owner's right to deny service to anyone they choose to, unless they are a member of a "protected class" under the discrimination laws of the flag state. 4. Any universal banning of a person from flying is done by a government agency, an airline can only ban someone on their flights, just like Carnival. 5. The ship cannot detain you unless they have arrested you for a crime under Bahamian law, but then they will have to turn you over to local law enforcement at the next port, and that jurisdiction would then have to decide to prosecute or not. 6. I don't think there is any legal reason that a person has to sign a document acknowledging that they are banned from a cruise line. Again, it is the business owner's right to reserve service from anyone.

There aren't any "updates" to be made. They will overhaul the azipods. The diesel generators are overhauled, generally in service, every 12,000 hours (about 2.5 years), and this is a total teardown and overhaul.

Oil filter clogging, or particulate alarm. Alarm and/or failure of any system that is inside the ship, which is the majority of the azipod system: azimuthing hydraulic pumps, motors, brakes and coolers; problems with the power supply system (frequency converters that change the 60 Hz main power to a variable frequency AC power to allow the motor to run at various speeds). False alarms that would either shut the azipod down, or would need to stop it to investigate whether it was actual. Even something that requires going into the pod, if they slow down enough that the propeller doesn't freewheel in the wake, can be done with the shaft locked. The only things that require a diver or a dry dock are a failure of the propeller seal (unlikely in the open ocean, more likely close to shore where trash can get picked up), or a bearing failure of the motor/propeller shaft.

Huh? Still does not point to a repetitive problem. Never said it was your imagination, just that you were concluding that it was a repetitive problem that Cunard can't fix.

While there was probably a problem, I would take this statement with a few grains of salt. If a generator had failed, and the available power was less, they would have slowed all of the azipods down the same amount (and there are 4 of them, not two), as slowing just one side down would require more steering effect from the azipods, taking more power away from straight ahead speed, therefore more drag and even less speed. I would suspect more of a propulsion problem, than a power generation one. They most likely had slowed or stopped on of the pods for maintenance.

If these incidents were in fact "mid-ocean", then they were not whale related. The speed restriction zones are coastal areas, out to at most 200 miles from land.