8/17/08 Captain Jack's Repossession Repo Cruise to PC thru TPC #8

[bellelinus]

Hi Julie,
I'm going to have a chat w/PJ when I go on the Mexican Riviera cruise at the end of June - he worked "magic" for the Tea for us last summer. However, as far as the private room - I know that there are a number of requests in for brunch - I think there are more requests than sea days!!!



ZIP LINE QUESTION How is everyone planning on getting from the ship to the Canopy Tours office??? I know Monica said that when she spent a week in PV she traveled by public buses.

Fingers crossed, Chris . . .

We are going to take a taxi to the Canopy Tours office . . . however, I do think there was some talk about how to take a bus and it wasn't that big a deal.

 

[yargrnhoj]

I can't get logged in to the thread on the Pirate Zone to list our excursions. It tells me I'm not registered.

The Pirate Zone was outsourced to DCL. They seem to be really good at this Internet thingie.

 

[tom31b]

Now on to Palo. This is where I started hitting glitches.

Palo seems to be what crashes it all.

Everytime I got booted it was doing Palo

 

[Nutty4Disney]

We can go together Coral!

I'll be there with you too.

Yes thank you for that Stace! I double & triple checked the bottom of each page to make sure there weren't anymore submit buttons to click. Swimming Mickey after every page. Wow what a process that was!

Yep, that bit of information was invaluable for us. You rock Stace! The moral support last night was awesome too.

Whoever is taking charge of the scrapbooking let me know. I would like to participate/help.

 

[GoofyontheHiSeas]

Hi Julie,
I'm going to have a chat w/PJ when I go on the Mexican Riviera cruise at the end of June - he worked "magic" for the Tea for us last summer. However, as far as the private room - I know that there are a number of requests in for brunch - I think there are more requests than sea days!!!



ZIP LINE QUESTION How is everyone planning on getting from the ship to the Canopy Tours office??? I know Monica said that when she spent a week in PV she traveled by public buses.

Chris, I think we were waiting until after last nights adventures in networking to get final counts on each time and maybe (not sure) try to arrange something. It may be awhile, but we will keep you informed.

 

[captaincrash]

Exactly right. It's a tough problem, but one that definitely has solutions available. They just cost.

In truth (as I brought up but probably did not emphasize enough), this is not a technology problem so much as a business/economics problem.

I'm actually really curious how much of an impact DISboards has on the problem. Consider even the day one reservations (as awful and chaotic as it was). How much of the day one demand happened because communication about the reservation window opening that was propogated here?

Most cruise lines have to rely on advertising to get the word out. And I've never seen an ad or Email from another line saying "wake up at 5:00am and book this amazing upcoming cruise".

I certainly wouldn't be on this cruise were it not for Disboards. I certainly would not have been up at 5:00am or whatever it was without it. I probably would not have stayed up to book excursions at midnight (aka 9pm) without it.

It's seems possible that Disboards significantly distorts reservation and excursion booking models as compared to the cruise industry overall. One could argue that DCL should realize this and plan accordingly, but if, in fact, Disboards is unique among cruise lines, and if it is distorting customer patterns, then the only way DCL would learn is through mistakes/experience - and that takes time.

Wouldn't that be the ultimate irony though? That we ourselves are one of the primary sources of the problems we are facing?

See...

... Dan did NOT single ME out as the problem. SO I must be INNOCENT!

I gotta go get my "chores" and business obligations handled now. Plus in 3 hours we're getting the kids out to the post office for their passports.... oops ... just got a call from Alicia and the schedule is too tight for both of us so we're pushing that to thursday - or friday.

Anyone wanna confirm how long it's taking to process these passport renewals? I heard it was under 45 days with normal processing now.

Adios folks! Have a good day now... or else!!!!

 

[Andrew DEREK UK]

OK.,.. I'll have the 25 Ice Cream Bars on hand for you - all collectible after the Mickey Ice Cream Bar Races. You'll have to collect the clean wooden sticks from the bars and "reassemble" them about 8-18 hours after the race when you've visited the cabins of the various particpants for the "processed remains". That is ... if ya want more then the Mickey Bar sticks.

As for the brunch, you got it pal! Of course, I'l provide the brunch on a sailing of my choosing... so I hope you can meet up with THAT particular voyage! You of all among the surviving Time Lords should know that you should be careful to choose ones' words carfully when framing your wishes. Just ask Aladdin, right?

OK... I've goofed off more than enough today - I really gotta go without and further delay.

Have a better day today than you were expecting. Did I mention that DCL was sending a special Castaway Club sail away gift to everyone who got messed up last nite? Oh shoot... now where were my notes on thatspecial gift? I guess you'll all have ta wait until August now to figure out what it is you're getting!

< wink >​

If you need help my stateroom will have 25 mickey bar sticks by about 6pm first day.

 

[sk8ingmom]

That just means you are overdue for a great upgrade!

Things like that don't happen in my life.

I can't get logged in to the thread on the Pirate Zone to list our excursions. It tells me I'm not registered.

...OK for the record, Stace. I'm going to be nice.

Hi Julie,
I'm going to have a chat w/PJ when I go on the Mexican Riviera cruise at the end of June - he worked "magic" for the Tea for us last summer. However, as far as the private room - I know that there are a number of requests in for brunch - I think there are more requests than sea days!!!

I so want to do Wenches Tea (& Speedo Parade). I hope it works out.

ZIP LINE QUESTION How is everyone planning on getting from the ship to the Canopy Tours office??? I know Monica said that when she spent a week in PV she traveled by public buses.

I plan to have Roger and Tom carry me on a litter.

Let's run the numbers. Let's figure a 50 ship fleet. Average 7 night cruises and the same criteria.

W'ere now at 125000 passengers/week, 6.5 million/year (obviously less - those 50 ships aren't running full, but let's go with it). 3.25 million passenger vists. 48.75 million visitors/year.
Only 3.46 billion page views though - Alexa ranks Carnival at 7.1 pages/visit.
That's 658 page views/minute. That would be the baseline they are designed for (11/second).

With 50 ships and weekly cruises, we get 7 ships booking every day. But let's call it 8 to be conservative.

We were estimating DCL had 250 people for 2 ships, so if the Carnival folk are as dedicated (which I doubt) we're at 1000 people hitting that server at peak. That's 1000 page views/second....

On a system that is normally scaled for 11 views/second.

With DCL we figured a peak of 500x and a conservative minimum of 100x load. With this model we come up with a peak of 90x. What's the conservative minimum? 20x? 40x?

The point is - though it's counter-intuitive, you really are better off with a larger fleet in this regard - because you've already built up more server capacity to handle your average load. Your costs are amortized across more passengers. You've probably also built a more scalable system. Going from 2 servers to 20 can be more complex than going from 40 to 400 (in the latter case you've already solved the database synchronization, load balancing and system management issues).

Also, I do believe that Disboards increases the magnitude of the problem -let's face it, we really do encourage each other (scare each other?) into trying to book at the same time. Does Carnival have anything like this? I've sailed with them a few times and never ran into it. If we had even distributed our reservation load over 24 hours instead of all trying within one hour, I expect DCL would have handled thing quite nicely.

OK, but none of that has given me back 3-4 hours of sleep or kept me from screaming at my laptop last night. Now ya go and throw in all this math. It's like adding insult to injury.

 

[Grandma x3]

Chris, I think we were waiting until after last nights adventures in networking to get final counts on each time and maybe (not sure) try to arrange something. It may be awhile, but we will keep you informed.

Thanks!!

 

[captaincrash]

In reply to both of the following quoted passages....

The Pirate Zone was outsourced to DCL. They seem to be really good at this Internet thingie.

Yeah - I heard that. I think though that you have to sign up for it. They have a limited selection to choose from. The window for gift registration opens next Sunday at 12:01am Eastern.....

Ohhh Noooo.....

I gotta go now...​

 

[justmestace]

...OK for the record, Stace. I'm going to be nice.

You banned me for threatening to throw you overboard, didn't you?



What kind of LITTER are they carrying you???

 

[tom31b]

Faster machines definitely help - and I expect things are getting better though it's hard for us to see from our limited perspective.

Of these ideas, splitting the CC Palo, Excursions and Spa would help somewhat - in that you'd reduce the total number of reservations that people are attempting to book on a given evening. Still, most people want at least one of each, so what you'd get is almost the same number of peak visits at 12:01 on each of the nights. It's just the duration of the slow down would be less, as people would get their reservations or give up sooner. In other words - we'd all be going nuts (same thing) at 12:01, but the system would speed up much sooner than it did last night.
From a marketing perspective, my guess is that having three very frustrating nights is worse than one very frustrating night.

Having additional backup servers might help - if that's the main bottleneck. But I think the real bottleneck is talking to their database system (I think that's what is happening while Micky is swimming). And that's much harder to split across multiple machines. To see why, let's say they have 20 spots for Palo Brunch. If you have one database on one machine, it's pretty easy to keep track of those reservations. If you have two machines, and each one has a copy of the database (which is what you need to improve performance), how do you coordinate the two machines to prevent them from issuing 40 spots? Well, they have to communicate with each other to stay synchronized, and in doing so you lose much of the benefit of running the databse on two machines! Ouch!

It's a tough problem.

Here is a really dumb idea. Open up booking when you actually have someone working, like 8 a.m.?

 

[goofyforlife]

See...

... Dan did NOT single ME out as the problem. SO I must be INNOCENT!

Crash i'll blame ya for my problems last night since we both have the same TA

Things like that don't happen in my life.

Mine neither...

" If it weren't for bad luck...we'd have no luck at all........"

Heck i don't even play bingo on ship cause i'd never win... Better off drinking the money i would have played with...

 

[sk8ingmom]

Here is a really dumb idea. Open up booking when you actually have someone working, like 8 a.m.?

So swimming Mickey can have a hold soundtrack?

What kind of LITTER are they carrying you???

 

[tom31b]

MATH ALERT!!!!!

No, GEEK alert!

 

[sk8ingmom]

Heck i don't even play bingo on ship cause i'd never win... Better off drinking the money i would have played with...

Me either. Let's meet for cocktails while everyone else is playing bingo!

 

[tom31b]

I can't get logged in to the thread on the Pirate Zone to list our excursions. It tells me I'm not registered.

We have sub contracted our IT support to DCL, give it some time

 

[danfromca]

Here is a really dumb idea. Open up booking when you actually have someone working, like 8 a.m.?

Sounds good - but then not only are you fighting for database access with 200+ cc members trying to book excursions - you have all the Disney employees and reservation agents hitting the system at the same time.

Opening it up at midnight does make it impossible to talk to someone for help. But it actually improves overall performance of the site! How weird is that?

 

[tom31b]

The Pirate Zone was outsourced to DCL. They seem to be really good at this Internet thingie.

We have sub contracted our IT support to DCL, give it some time

Sad JR....just sad

 

[tom31b]

Sounds good - but then not only are you fighting for database access with 200+ cc members trying to book excursions - you have all the Disney employees and reservation agents hitting the system at the same time.

Opening it up at midnight does make it impossible to talk to someone for help. But it actually improves overall performance of the site! How weird is that?

Then eliminate the on-line carp and do it via phone.

The bottom line is DCL has cheaped this. They are aware of the problem and have been since 2005 at least and refuse to improve the system either from an IT or customer service perspective. We are money in the bank to them and they don't care!

Rant over!