NCL Housekeeping Mess, Starlink Live across RCI Fleet, plus Disney Cruises Biggest Ship in Asia

Join my private Facebook group for cruise deals, tips and advice - the more members we have, the better we’ll get! www.facebook.com/groups/CTGdeals Follow me on Facebook and Instagram: www.facebook.com/thecruiseandtravelguy www.instragram.com/thecruiseandtravelguy Support the channel with a slogan tee: https://thecruiseandtravelguy.myshopify.com Head to my website for great cruise and travel deals: www.thecruiseandtravelguy.com.au Royal Caribbean has announced that as of March 31st, its entire fleet now operates the high-speed, low-latency satellite internet called Starlink. The upgraded service will be provided to all guests who purchase Voom Surf + Stream, and promises speeds capable of supporting live streaming on social media platforms. Starlink has, pardon the pun, made waves in the cruise industry, with the service being adopted by most major cruise lines around the world. As far as I know, there are still gaps in the service, with particular parts of the world’s oceans not seeing particularly high speeds but this should hopefully be addressed in the coming months as more cruise lines continue to add the technology to their fleets. Disney Cruise Line will be making its highly anticipated Australian debut later this year, but now the cruise line has committed to basing its largest ship in history in our neighbourhood. Well, relatively speaking. Earlier this year, Disney acquired the unfinished new build, Global Dream. When she launches, the circa 200K GRT, 342m long vessel will become the largest in the Disney fleet by a considerable margin. Based on a Memorandum of Understanding between Disney Cruise Line and the Singapore Tourism Board and starting in 2025, the gigantic ship will home port in Singapore year round for at least 5 years. That means that for the majority of Australians and New Zealanders, the newest at-sea Disney experience will be only a single flight away. If you want to tick more than one travel experience from your bucket list at the same time, then this next cruise is for you. Departing Los Angeles on April 5th, 2024, Emerald Princess will embark on a 15 night Ocean to Ocean cruise, taking its passengers from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean via the famous Panama Canal. That ticks one item off my bucket list at least. The second? On April 8th, Emerald Princess will be positioned near Mexico, where she will be in a prime vantage spot to view the full solar eclipse. Passengers will be invited onto the upper decks and provided with special glasses, allowing them to enjoy the 4 minute and 28 seconds cosmic event. Grand Princess and Majestic Princess have both concluded their Australian summer seasons, with the ships each embarking on their transpacific repositioning voyages to North America within the past week. It marks 3 years since the last Australian summer cruise season ended, rather abruptly, and barely one year since the local ban on cruise ships came to an end. Princess Cruises has announced a new partnership with coffee supplier, Lavazza. The partnership will extend to all of the line’s ships during the northern hemisphere Spring and will hopefully result in a much-needed improvement in the quality of coffee served onboard. Cementing the new business relationship, coffee-inspired meals will be developed, plus educational sessions, tastings, food-pairings and samplings will be offered onboard. It seems NCL passengers and crew are pushing back against the cruise line’s revised stateroom cleaning policy. Rolled out at the beginning of the year, the cruise line replaced its twice daily room cleaning schedule for a once per day service for all stateroom categories except for suites. In making the change, Stateroom and Junior Stateroom Stewards lost their titles, replaced instead with the all-encompassing Stateroom Attendant. According to a reports on the Crew-Center website, this change resulted in a pay-increase for those previously recognised as Junior Stewards, but a pay decrease for more senior Stewards. Additionally, one crew member noted that where they previously cleaned staterooms for 30-35 guests per section, that number has now jumped to 52, with a reduction in the quality of cleaning. The pushback is apparently being met with equal management resistance, with supervisors allegedly telling unhappy stewards that other major cruise lines are doing the same thing, so there’s really no point in jumping ship to another line. This is definitely an intriguing topic and I’ll keep an eye out for any updates. Thanks for watching!