sfaaa

High fuel price, supply chain issues, Covid, labor shortage, heavy debt load and expensive airfares are killing the cruise industry. It will take a long time before cruise lines recover from the current sad state of affairs.

If you like sea days, cruise to/from Hawaii and North America mainland is great. Lot of relaxing down time and ocean gazing. If you dislike sea days, fly to Hawaii and cruise NCL.

Sad to read Divina looks tired and run down. It was a stunningly beautiful ship with lot of sparks when I sailed on her a few years back. 

OMG, sounds like a cruise from hell. Hope you and your family feel better soon. 

Alaska cruise market is kind of saturated right now with many cruise ships from different lines all going to the same ports. Some lines are even selling next year's spring Alaska cruises at a low NRD rate to entice early booking. Something seldom seen before Covid. Great for cruisers but bad for cruise lines.

Very helpful B2B info. Thank you for posting. One question: Is the ship Covid test free to B2B passengers?

MSC is the only mass market cruise line I know that uses catering coffee urns and not food service coffee machines at buffet drink station. Many times, the urns would quickly run out or the coffee gets cold in them. Not sure why MSC does thing this way.

Pasta and pizza are always good. Other food is so so but plentiful. You certainly won't starve.

I was told it is now up to 90 days.

2 hours ago, broker1217 said:

 

It was eye opening how people behaved, and not in a good way.

 

Tell me about it. Besides not washing their hands or skipping hand sanitizer, what really disgusts me was most coughers didn't even bother to cover their mouths when they coughed out loud and sprayed gems at buffet, MDR or theater.

5 hours ago, memoak said:

People are on land tours packed in buses and likely not masked up

Very few people are masked up on cruise ships even when the rule says they are required. Most act like Covid is over. Hence the inevitable result.

Looks classy. I like it.

2 hours ago, retrocedat said:

 

After Titanic advanced capability to see in front of the ship even in fog and bad weather i thought was mandatory, but it seems i was on the wrong.

Roald Amundsen has armored hull and built like a tank. It can sail through ice field with relatively ease.

Clearly happened. It's all over the news. Waiting for fight video to show up on youtube.

I was on the cruise right before OP. Mask was mandatory in theater and casino from Day 1. Still some people ignored the policy. Handwashing was not enforced at restaurant entrances. Buffet was self served. Some night events at observation lounge were packed with zero social distancing and few masks. By Day 5, fair amount of coughing around. DW tested positive for COVID two days after the cruise. Not trying to be negative but cruisers beware.

Humm...the plot just thickens. 

https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/24/asia/hong-kong-jumbo-restaurant-sink-investigation-question-intl-hnk/index.html

Bummer. Seems like cruises lines just can't get a break these days.

For Alaska cruise, people tend to spend more time inside the ship due to cooler weather and rain. It may be a factor.

Wearing regular mask may not be enough. My wife and I got off an Alaska cruse last Sunday. DW began feeling unwell starting this Tuesday. Sore throat, slight cough, stuffy nose. She used the blue regular mask during the cruise. I wore mostly N95 every time I stepped outside my cabin. So far, I remain negative and have zero COVID symptom. Stick with N95 mask.

It's called Fun Ship for a reason. Join in on the fun or stay in your cabin. Your choice.

4 hours ago, robmtx said:

For those of you seeing the offer today, have you used the Royal Caribbean Amex offer recently? I used it about 6-8 months ago. I'm not seeing the offer now so wondering if I'm ineligible?

 

 

Same here. Got the last one but not this time. Kind of bummed since I have a final payment coming up this Friday.

Before lock down, house wine on US cruises was La Terre from California. Obviously not a premium wine but it is still drinkable if you don't want to pay extra.

Be careful if you book NRD. One time, my cruse price dropped before final payment but a nasty RCCL agent decided to play hardball and refused to price adjust given it was NRD which means I could not cancel and rebook unless I paid a $200 penalty. I waited for a few days and tried again. Luckily this time I got a very resonable agent and she repriced the cruise for me without giving me any hassle. 

2 minutes ago, JT1962 said:

🤔. If the person they ordered for just stood in line and ordered for themselves,  wouldn’t the line be longer and take the same amount of time as one person ordering for two?

Not if you picked the shorter of the two lines thinking it would be faster but it actually turned out to be the opposite.

Part of the problems is that some people would order an extra bowl of Mongolian stir fry for whoever he/she was with instead of just for himself/herself. So the wait time suddenly becomes twice as long.