chengkp75

This would imply that for decades both ship designers, maritime safety experts, and classification societies have not studied the safety of stairways and ship's side rails, to determine whether this is a possibility or not. While you may have felt that you could have gone over the rail at the time, I think a scientific study of the physics involved would show that it is about 99.9% not possible (I'll give you that 0.1% possibility, though I don't feel it is justified, after spending 46 years on ships).

As I've said before, unless two ships are sailing in the same place, at the same time, going the same direction at the same speed, comparing environmentally induced motion between them is meaningless. Also, the same ship sailing in a given location, at different times, can exhibit different behavior each time.

The ship is licensed as a bar, not a liquor store, so there are no bottles of liquor sold onboard.

If you google search "restaurants, old port, portland, maine", you'll find a slew of places, though not all are open for lunch (not sure if you'll be in port for dinner), and I've been to nearly all of them, and would recommend every one of them. For seafood, I'd recommend Boone's, J's Oyster Bar, or Gilbert's Chowder House for lunch. Portland has been named a top "foodie" town for several years. A popular tour is the Portland Mail Boat Run, which is the Casco Bay Ferry that runs mail and supplies (including the groceries purchased by island residents at mainland stores) to all the year round inhabited islands of Casco Bay. Takes about 3 hours, goes to 4-5 islands, great views of the Bay. Almost all of downtown Portland is within 1.5 miles of the pier, all of it safe walking (though lots of cobblestone sidewalks, and fairly hilly). Art Museum, Wadsworth-Longfellow House (Henry's house), narrow gauge railroad, Portland Observatory for views of the Bay, Eastern Prom trail for views of Bay and lots of Victorian houses.

Disney has always had lifeguards, and RCI started a few years back. I believe Carnival had them pre-pandemic, not sure now. Just know that they are not "lifeguards", they are "pool attendants", in that they don't necessarily have any special training in lifesaving, nor is their entire focus on the people in the pool, like a lifeguard is supposed to be. They are more for ensuring good behavior at the pool, not in lifeguarding.

Unlike airline "taxes and fees", which are charged "per passenger" to the airlines (and passed to the passenger), most cruise ship "taxes and fees" are based on the ship size (tonnage or length). So, regardless of how many passengers are onboard when the ship calls at a port each week, the total "taxes and fees" remains the same. This flat charge is then divided among the number of passengers onboard to get each passenger's share of the charge. So, trying to compare "taxes and fees" between two cruise lines is not really valid. In the post a few above, the poster was comparing simply the fare between the lines, and expecting that the "taxes and fees" should be the same or similar. However, what is the physical size difference between the two ships, what is the passenger count difference between the two ships? That is what will determine the individual passenger's "taxes and fees". And, due to a ruling in a class action lawsuit against the cruise lines a couple decades ago, what the cruise lines are allowed to include in "taxes and fees" is severely limited, and can only be taxes and fees that are required for the ship to physically be present in the port (wharfage, pilot, tugs). They are not allowed to include things that happen in the port, but that are part of ship's operations, like baggage handlers, longshoremen for storing, garbage removal, etc.

The problem with the "type C" plug adapter is that it is ungrounded. The Tessan adapter shown gives the impression that you are using a grounded outlet, since the US side is 3-prong. While the "type E/F" appears the same, with only two pins, you will notice a metal band on the periphery of the adapter, at the top and bottom, and these connect with the ground strips in the ship's outlet, to provide ground protection.

Marine Gas Oil is more familiarly known within the US and Canada as #2 diesel, or home heating oil. The gas turbines were originally installed to provide "green" operation in Alaska, but they soon found out that operating a 20Mw gas turbine at the 8-9Mw hotel load was cost prohibitive, so the diesel generators were installed for in port operation. The gas turbines will still provide hotel power when at sea. At today's bunker prices, IFO380 (the high sulfur fuel ships can use with scrubbers), costs $550/metric ton, low sulfur (VLSFO) bunker oil that can be used without a scrubber costs $640/metric ton, and MGO (Marine Gas Oil) goes for $950/metric ton. Note also that MGO has a lower "energy content" (how much energy a ton of fuel will produce) than bunker fuel, so that raises the cost even more, as you need to burn more tons of fuel to get the same energy output. The gas turbine engines were never a good idea, except as used on the Cunard Queen Mary, where they are only put on when the ship needs full speed, or the turbine can run at full power. The US Navy makes extensive use of them, and they work for the Navy for a couple of reasons, one, the power plant is smaller than a diesel or steam plant, and two, the Navy does not need to show a profit every quarter, so fuel costs are not really important. As for pollution, a lot of what people see as a "brown haze" is actually the result of efficient combustion, and you only see that haze in certain lighting and/or cloud backdrop settings. It is almost always there, regardless of the fuel used.

I'll take this as serious. All ships "cool themselves" with sea water. All nuclear reactors release minimal amounts of radioactive material, notably tritium (which is an isotope of water) and have for over 60 years. I would hesitate to get into a discussion whether the spent fuel cells are "polluting" or not, but they will never go away. As for having them on cruise ships, there is a reason that only the Soviet Union had nuclear powered commercial ships (they aren't economical). Also, it is quite different in having "employees" (Navy crew on Navy ships) possibly exposed to a reactor incident than exposing passengers. There would also be liability issues for whether anyone who developed cancer at any time in their lives after their nuclear cruise, was exposed, and whether this caused the cancer. It just isn't going to happen.

Both systems used to create drinking water on ships, Reverse Osmosis and Evaporation, will remove all radioactive isotopes except tritium, as noted above. Also as noted above, tritium is a naturally occurring isotope in water, and has been around forever (remember the ***'s working to concentrate "heavy water" (tritium) during WW2?). It is generally present in surface water from cosmic radiation creating tritium atoms from hydrogen in the atmosphere, and then the tritium gas reacts with oxygen to form water, and falls out of the sky into water sources. So, your local drinking water supply has some tritium in it, guaranteed. I don't know how far out this water is going to be discharged, nor where this is in relation to where ships in general, and cruise ships in particular are passing. And, the fact that they intend to take decades to discharge the water means the dilution will be great, and as noted in the article linked, most scientists feel that this will pose little to no risk to humans or environment.

Under the new Canal tariff schedule, a Viking ocean ship will pay about $195,000 just for the transit (various required services are extra), and since the new schedule does not charge passenger ships on the basis of total berths, but on PC tonnage, this is also about what a container ship of the same size would pay. Then, to get a guaranteed slot, in daylight, the cruise ship pays another $70,000, or a 35% surcharge. Backlogs of ships awaiting transit during dry spells have happened many times in the past.

The only place to anchor, wait for excursions, and turn around is Gatun Lake, which is quite a ways from the Pacific side, so this does not become economically viable.

My point, exactly. I don't think of phones, computers, and televisions as "essential supplies". And, you are willing to give 95% of maritime "polluters" a pass because they aren't a leisure activity?

Just remember that cruise ships are less than 5% of all ships, and all ships burn the same fuel, and that over 80% of the world's commerce travels by sea, and you'll get an idea of why ships use the fuel they do, and why people make noise only about cruise ships, and not about the ships that bring their Ipads and Iphones and their Whole Foods groceries to them, since an increase in fuel cost would mean an increase in the price of those "essential" to life items.

And, you'll never know when those ships are burning LNG or liquid fuel, as they are required to carry liquid fuel as well, and they need some liquid fuel to burn the LNG. The engines work perfectly well on 95% LNG or 100% residual fuel.

The ships with scrubbers can use the same fuel they have been using before the change in emissions levels. Bunker fuel is the "end product" of refining, after all the possible gas, jet, or lube oil has been removed. Many older refineries cannot extract anything more from the crude, and the bunker fuel is left over, about 30% of each barrel of crude. Newer refineries can extract about 95% of each barrel of crude as refined product, leaving solid coke as the end product (used in steel production). Now, with ships no longer able to use high sulfur bunker fuel (and again, many refineries cannot extract the sulfur from the bunker fuel to make it compliant with the new rules), the price of high sulfur residual fuel drops, and in third world countries where they were trying to "go green" by using natural gas in their power plants, it now makes economic sense to switch to the high sulfur bunker fuel, since these countries have little to no environmental constraints on the fuel used in power plants. The vast majority of ships (and cruise ships are less than 5% of world tonnage) have switched to low sulfur fuel rather than install scrubbers, due to the capital cost of the scrubber, and the operational and maintenance cost of scrubbers.

The dirty little secret that environmentalists don't want you to know about LNG, is that there is a thing called "methane slip", which is the amount of methane "lost" due to various causes from the wellhead to the engine on the ship (leakage, spillage, incomplete combustion, over pressure venting), and that methane is 80 times (that's 8000%) as damaging as a Green House Gas compared to liquid marine fuels in the short term (under 20 years), and 20 times (2000%) as damaging in the long term. So, LNG is not the panacea that everyone thinks it is, and the real reason the cruise lines have started building LNG powered ships (which still require 5% diesel mixed in to get the LNG to ignite) is cost savings in the US market, and a PR benefit. They could care less about the environmental impact.

Well, first the ports have to support shore power. This isn't just like plugging your boat into the marina. Cruise ships use Megawatts of power in port, and the power needs to be delivered at 10,000 volts, so the port needs to build sub-stations to receive this power from the grid, and then shore power stations for the ships to connect to. While it costs about $1 million per ship to outfit a cruise ship for shore power, it costs the port many millions to build the infrastructure, with a long pay back period. So, either the port can simply ban cruise ships, at little cost to the port, or they have to commit to a long term, high capitalization project to keep them.

Looking at the deck plans, I'm starting to suspect that the toilet lines on deck 4 don't go down into the ceiling space of the public areas on deck 3, so the main lines run in the ceiling of deck 4, and the toilets on deck 4 actually flush up. Yes, this is possible with the vacuum system, and fairly common on various ships. Since the OP's cabin (and they mentioned that others along the deck were having similar problems) is therefore at the lowest point of the system (except where the main line along the deck connects to the piping going down to the engine room), low vacuum could result in "product" filling their vertical pipe, and slowly leaking back into the toilet. But, a properly operating discharge valve on the toilet should prevent the back flow, even with low vacuum.

Additionally, the OP needs to check that the student has a multiple entry visa for the US, or he/she will be denied re-entry into the US at the end of the cruise.

This is our definition of "all fast" for most cargo ships in the US. "Arrival" is when the ship reaches the pilot buoy, or the pilot arrives onboard. As you say, for a passenger, it would be the "all fast" time, when the ship is moored and the gangway is out.

20 minutes.

The "ghost flush" is caused when there is no vacuum in the system at your cabin, either due to the system being opened for repair, or a blockage somewhere downstream of your cabin. When you push the flush button, you send a pulse of air to a pneumatic control valve, but if there is no vacuum in the system, the control valve won't let the toilet flush. When vacuum is restored, the control valve is primed to flush, and it will at that time. It is not a problem with your toilet, it is caused by a lack of vacuum somewhere in the system. Every toilet in the system will do the same thing if the flush button has been pushed when there is insufficient vacuum for any reason.

You are correct. I suspect that the OP's toilet had a "discharge valve" (the valve that opens to empty the toilet) that was leaking slightly, so the vacuum in the system was slowly sucking the water out of the bowl, but if the toilet is flushed often enough, one of these "leakers" doesn't get the bowl dry and create a "sucking toilet" that can be heard. Now, when the vacuum goes down in the system, sometimes there is enough vacuum at a location to trigger the flushing sequence valve, so someone's toilet could flush, but there is not enough vacuum to get the "product" all the way through the system, and then what "product" is laying in horizontal pipe runs will flow by gravity down the system. If the "discharge valves" are all working properly, then nothing should come back through while the vacuum is down. But, a "leaker" will allow the "product" to back flow into a toilet by gravity. So, long story short, the OP's toilet was most likely an unnoticed problem, that became a problem when the vacuum system got plugged repeatedly. It is a pretty rare occurrence, I would set it at about once in every couple of thousand toilet failures.

If you're worried about malware from a public USB port, use a "charging only" USB cable, which only has the two power wires installed, not the two data wires, or use a "data blocker" which only connects the two power wires from your USB cable to the USB port, disconnecting the two data wires.