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Broadcasting from the Ensuremytrip.com studios in Jacksonville, Florida. This is Cruise Radio.

Hey, what's up? My name is Doug Parker. Thank you so much for checking out this episode of

Cruise Radio. So happy to have you here, my friend. So over the past week, there's been a lot of

cruise news happening. Norwegian Cruise Line up in New York City aboard Norwegian Breakaway

recently revealed more details about the upcoming Norwegian Escape due out fall of 2015. We'll also get cruise news from

the cruise beat editor of travelpulse.com, Teresa Massick. So Carnival Cruise Lines recently announced

a new shipboard app that makes your onboard cruise scheduling and finance tracking a lot

easier. Also, they are piloting a program that gives you access to all the social media sites for a flat rate. Really cool stuff. So joining us now to talk all about it is the director of guest technology for Carnival Cruise Line. Adrian Graystoke, Adrian, welcome to the show. Good morning. How are you doing? Good, thanks. So we'll get to both programs in a minute, but let's first talk about Carnival's a new shipboard app, kind of walk us through it, and what kind of services it provides. Sure. Well, the app is a three app, and if any of your listeners would like to sort of get a sneak preview of it, you can go to carnival hub app.com to see for yourself some of the screenshots, some of the reviews, and what it includes. but I think some of the coolest features, it's got a lot of great stuff. You know, we've been working on this actually for some time, taking guest feedback. And I think some of the coolest features are the chat function, which allows you to chat to, you know, anybody who's on board of the ship at the same time as you, including as well being able to do group chats. You've also got ship maps. And I have to say, you know, I was on Breeze testing this out with my family and my little nephews. And we found it really useful to have a list of everything that's going on everywhere because there's just so much going on sometimes that it's kind of easier to carry around your phone in some ways than perhaps a piece of paper. So that was great as well. And you can also track your onboard spending? Yeah. So as well as that, that was definitely one of our most requested features. So you can go on at any time, no need to queue up or line up or go to a machine. You can see exactly what you've spent. And, you know, I have to tell you, my brother was on board with me on Breeze, and he was kind of depressed by that, because it does actually show you exactly what you're spending. But this is all about giving our guests the most information that they can have to really enjoy their experience. And, you know, I just want to let everybody know that the app itself is completely three. So this is available to everybody who's on Breeds right now.

It is very sobering when you get that final bill.

Or when you see the bill halfway through your cruise.

That's right.

That's right.

Now, back to the group chat function.

Is this a free feature on the app or do you have to pay for this?

So whilst the app is free to download, the actual chat functionality is $5 and that's a flat

rate for the whole voyage.

So you just go into the chat and very simply, pardon me, go into the app and very simply

activate the chat for $5 and you'll be able to talk to as many people as you want to.

And what we've seen is people have been using it, you know, instead of walkie-talkies, they've been meeting new

people and really using it to get the best experience out of their cruise. At the moment, and I just

checked this yesterday, at the moment, the app has actually got five stars on the Apple eye store. So it's

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