chengkp75

Actually, the PVSA specifically allows cruises to nowhere. It is CBP's requirements for work visas for the crew.

Actually, the PVSA exemption for Puerto Rico eliminates the need for any foreign port call.

Then how are the systems different?

So, are you saying that the newer Carnival ships don't bring fresh air into the cabins? Or, are there thousands of little ducts that snake all through the ship to bring fresh air to each individual cabin? And, each one of these thousands of little ducts has a separate fan to move the air into the cabin?

Having worked for NCL, I can say that this is not correct. The line will try to wait, but they will look at the problem of a busload of unhappy passengers vs the problem of a shipload of unhappy passengers if their cruise is impacted by waiting for late excursions. Been there, seen that. The difference between ship sponsored excursions and DIY excursions, is that if the ship sponsored excursion comes back late and misses the ship, the line will pay for hotels, meals, and transportation to the next port. And, the line doesn't worry about paying for this, as this is covered by insurance, most of which the excursion operator pays for, and which you eventually pay for, as the ship sponsored excursions tend to be more expensive, to cover the added liability.

They can have self-service ice machines, but they have to have more sanitation features than the typical hotel machine, if they are not supervised full time by a food employee. The ice machines are also located in the cabin steward pantries, where the dirty glasses from the cabins are washed and stored, and the public are not allowed access to these again unless supervised, so the ice machine would need to be moved outside the pantry, with the associated plumbing and drain piping moved to the new location. USPH regulations for cruise ships are vastly stricter than land health regulations, as stated by many USPH inspectors, who tend to be former state and local health inspectors.

Any foreign flag cruise ship that calls at US ports, must adhere to the USPH Vessel Sanitation Program, at all times, even on the "high seas" or in foreign ports, or face a full sanitation and infectious disease inspection every time it returns to a US port.

Absolutely correct, USPH regulations require use of gloves when getting ice from the bin, and requires that the scoop is hung up, not left in the ice.

Um, no. They will wait if the itinerary allows for the delay. The promise in the ticket contract is that they will pay for all accommodations to get you to the next port and back to the ship.

The cabin recirculation system will generally not provide a lot of heat, as there is only a small electric resistance heater. The fresh air system requires them to switch the set point to a higher temperature, and switch from chilled water to steam heat. If if is going to be only a day or two of low temperatures, they may not want to open up the steam heat system (can provide a lot of noise from water hammer as the system warms up), just to shut it off again, but they can likely raise the setpoint on the fresh air handler for your block of cabins, so that it just doesn't cool off the incoming air (stops the chilled water from cooling the air).

As I said, the likelihood that Heald asked the right question, or understood the technical answer is up for question.

It's from "cathead", which are timbers projecting out sideways from the bow of the ship, used to support lateral rigging for the bowsprit. The sailors would climb out on the cathead, until they were over the water, then sit with their feet on one side of the cathead, and their arse on the other, and do their business directly into the sea. Over time, cathead was shortened to "going to the "head".

This is not quite accurate. While the cabins are modular, and are installed as a unit, they go in in order, through a hole cut in the hull at each deck. So, the furthest cabin from the hole goes in first, and unless you take them out the same order, or cut another hole at the cabin, you can't just pull a cabin out.

Okay, opened this thread twice, so I can scroll through posts and answer them as I see them. I will stand by my statements that there are two AC systems in each cabin, one that merely recirculates the cabin air, and which is turned off when the balcony door is open. The other is the fresh air supply system, that brings cooled air from outside, and which supplies AC to whole banks of cabins, and which will affect the cooling of all the cabins in the bank, if a door is left open. I will not say definitively that this applies to ships, like Carnival's, that I have not been on, but I will say that this has been the standard technology for ships built from 1990, at least, onwards. And, there are not that many of those still around. While I won't say that Heald is wrong, I will say that he very well may not have asked the right question to get the right answer. As I say, yes, the AC for your cabin, which is very similar to a window AC unit in your house in that it merely recirculates the air in the cabin while cooling it, does shut off when the balcony door is open. However, if you open the balcony door, and then hold a tissue up to the air vent, you will see that (typically to one side of the vent or the other) there is still air flow. This is the second system, and they run the ducting parallel and use one vent. This system supplies all the cabins on one deck, between fire doors, so maybe 30-40 cabins. See the linked post above which describes the overpressure that this system builds. This has been true for cabins since the '90's, this is not something new. However, even something that is "plug and play" has to "plug" into something, whether it is water, sewage, electricity, or HVAC. Once the cabin is installed, the HVAC ducting is run from the central systems to it (both the fresh air supply system, and the bathroom exhaust system.

While the crew may not look forward to the weekly drill, they realize this is what keeps their skills sharp. As you say, they are smart people and know that repetition has been shown to be the best training possible, regardless of how smart the participants are. Also, it is known that regardless of how much training a person has, until a real emergency happens, you don't know whether that person will respond to the emergency or not (run into the fire or away). The crew know that muscle memory is what is needed to improve the odds that the proper response will be produced, without conscious thought. As noted before, firefighters are not stupid, and they train almost daily. What is insulting to the crew is when passengers, who the crew are training to save, have no respect for them or what they are trying to do, and don't accept any responsibility for helping the crew to accomplish this.

So, what you are saying is that "being able to find your muster station" meets the objective of the passenger muster drill, but not for the crew muster drill. Crew must be dumber than passengers, then, and their time less valuable than passengers. So, the poor passengers who remain onboard on port days are subjected to reduced passenger services for longer than the required crew drill, so that the vast majority of the crew can leave their duties and train as "passengers" or those herding passengers. They also get to be subjected to interference in their cabins and public spaces as the crew search those areas (don't recycle your fantasy that the crew can do this during their incredibly busy turn around day), and the crew have to give up any chance of shore leave in order to participate in another drill. Lots of regard for "the hired help" here.

No, you answered whether you thought the passenger muster drill met the objective of the drill. I asked, based on your model, whether the crew drill should be done similarly to the e-muster, since that meets the objective of the drill, and whether doing a weekly in person crew drill was a "waste of the troops time".

Never answered the question.

Yes, Disney started back with the in person drill before NCL, and you don't hear all the outrage about it on their forum. It's the ones who don't want to "waste my precious vacation time" who are all arguing against it.

Let me ask you this question. On their first day on the ship, the crew are shown where their muster station is, both for "fire and emergency" and "abandon ship" (most have two different stations). Since in an abandon ship situation, the vast majority of the crew don't have any more responsibility than passengers during their muster, that is, to be mustered and to board the life rafts, according to your model, the first day orientation meets the objective of the muster ("finding your muster station"), and therefore the practice of having the entire crew participate in the abandon ship drill is outdated and a waste of the crew's time? The "finding of your muster station" is not the objective of the muster drill. May you never find yourself in a real shipboard emergency, when you learn that there rarely is any method of "escape", that doesn't also threaten your life.

Can you enlighten us as to how you know this fact?

Water is tested monthly. However, not every single shower head is tested, and Legionella will not live in the chlorinated water circulating around ships. It will develop in a place where water and air are both present, the water has been stationary for a few hours so that the chlorine has dissipated (inside the shower head itself). So, unless you test the positive shower head as part of the random testing, you won't know the bacteria is there. Additionally, ship's shower heads are required to be fitted with backflow preventers, which would keep the contaminated water from migrating in any way back from the shower head into the circulating system (homes don't have this).

Yes, this is correct. Federal law ends at the gangway, essentially, and flag state law takes jurisdiction. Further, even countries where pot is legal, or decriminalized, do not allow pot on ships, as the IMO has regulated ships as zero tolerance, and the ships won't want the possibility of "cross contamination" between passengers and crew. This is why the ticket contracts prohibit drug use, including cannabis. As far as Carnival is concerned, both Panama and Bahamas have pot as illegal, and Bahamas has a "craft industry" of busting tourists for pot possession, so, in fact, as long as those laws remain intact, the ships would not be allowed to legalize pot.

And, again, the same old complaint against the in person muster, that I have told you does not need to be a part of the muster drill.

Convenient that you don't mention the other aspects of the drill, that I've repeated for you several times. Also interesting that someone who has experience in military training has what appears to be a low regard for a chain of command, and proper response to emergency conditions.