magnifibeast

We're on the ship, also. I feel they made the right decision and we're being compensated well. A bit disappointing that our vacation is ending early, though. I was wondering if they'd let us stay on til Friday...wonder what we'll do about our flights back.

That's easy: take the 2/12th refund and use it to stay in NY/NJ for two nights and enjoy yourselves! It may cost a bit more but you can still have a nice time.

(We have kids and grandchildren in NJ to visit so we'll have a couple more days with them before we head back.)

We're on the ship. They've opened up free Internet for everyone (though many people already had unlimited access). Also free phone calls from the stateroom. We get 2/12th of the fare back plus 50% of the fare as Future Cruise credit.

But they're NOT letting people stay on till Friday. Not mentioned in the article is that there's quite a lot of Norovirus on board, and enhanced cleaning and sanitizing is going on constantly, all over the ship. I suspect they're going to use the time from Wednesday to Friday to sanitize everything to ensure the virus is taken care of.

To those who must be snarky about contacting via the CEO email address - I beg to differ that it is about being 'entitled' or feeling overly important. The reason people want to escalate things right off the bat (and I am talking in general here, not specific to Celebrity) is that the level of customer service over the years has diminished drastically. If people got good service calling/writing a regular customer service number then they would do that. In most cases (there are a few exceptions of course) customer service has become a horrendously frustrating experience. I can tell you if I could I would definitely email a CEO of Comcast rather than spend an hour waiting on hold only to connect with someone whose English I can barely understand who has no idea how to fix my problem! Just one example of many.

I agree. My wife and I have done 59 cruises, including 40 over the past 5 years -- with Celebrity and six other cruise lines. So we're not neophytes and we know our way around.

We have an issue right now -- Celebrity unilterally cancelling a cruise that they had on hold for us, then being unwilling to fix the problem the next day when it was still fixable -- that we would like to raise with Celebrity and have dealt with by someone reasonably senior, as initial responses from Celebrity through the travel agency have been unhelpful.

Can anyone suggest an email address that will work? Does the contactmichael address above still work? Or the concerns@ address?

"If you would like to bring on your own Menorah, you may. However, since candles are prohibited onboard all Princess ships, it must be electric (no live flame)."

Most ships say this. But three years ago we were on the Queen Mary 2 during Chanukah (Brooklyn to Caribbean and back). In the dining room on formal nights, they had real lit candlebras on every table. Since live flames were obviously being permitted, I brought our menorah to dinner and we lit our Chanukah candles during dinner every night.

(Some ships have real candles in their Friday night service supplies, and have a staff member keep an eye on them and blow them out after the service. Most don't, however.)

I also am absolutely certain that RC and X have had the same policy for longer than Princess to only post the information about Shabbat services when requested. Presumably you have been lucky on all your previous cruises that someone else spoke up on embarkation day.

No, that's definitely not the case. I've done 59 cruises including 41 on RCCL, Celebrity and Princess in the past 10 years, and the Friday night services has ALWAYS been scheduled automatically, with no special request made by anyone. Sometimes almost no-one else shows up, sometimes there are lots of people, but it's never scheduled merely because of a request. Shabbat morning services do get scheduled by request; I've been on several cruises where there were enough of us there Friday night that we agreed to have a Shabbat morning service, and approached Guest Relations to have a room allocated (though usually since that's not done until Friday night, it doesn't go into the newsletter unless there's a second Shabbat on board).

I have also seen this service listed on several recent cruises with a note that they were looking for a volunteer to lead it.

Yes, that's standard on all the big cruise lines. It's clear from the newsletter that it will be run by whoever from the passengers steps forward to run it. My objection was that Princess was saying they wouldn't even do this unless someone approaches the cruise director ahead of time. People don't think of doing this, especially since most of the cruise lines list it automatically. My request is that Princess should revert to doing that in all cases, as the other lines do.

Thanks, Debjo. It was a few weeks ago so perhaps they have indeed reverted to putting it on the schedule.

My wife and I have done many cruises (8-10 per year in recent years, 59 total), on RCCL, Celebrity, Princess, NCL, Cunard and HAL.

All of these lines normally schedule a Jewish Sabbath service on Friday around 5:30pm and put it in the daily newsletter. They provide basic facilities (a place for prayer, prayer books, kosher wine and a few other things) and invite a passenger to lead the service.

Since I know how to lead a traditional Jewish service, I usually do so. (Only on certain holidays does the cruise line arrange for a rabbi or cantor to be on board.) This works fine, and it's a nice way for those of us on board who are Jewish to meet each other and have some spiritual time as a community.

Recently, however, Princess has stopped scheduling the service. I haven't been on Princess since this happened, but heard about it from others. I contacted Princess Customer Service, and was told that the facilities are available if anyone wants to hold a service: "Supplies are present and available for anyone who wants to lead the service at 5:30 pm on Friday evenings."

As I explained to Princess, this doesn't work if Princess doesn't put the service into the daily newsletter as a scheduled event, because those on board won't have any way of finding out about there being a service.

The answer I got (by phone call) was that if I'm on a cruise and I want to have a Friday service, I should speak to Guest Relations and offer to lead it, and then they'll put it on the schedule.

That's fine for the next time we cruise on Princess (provided the cruise doesn't being on a Thursday or Friday so there's time to put it on the schedule). But Jewish travellers on other cruises are not doubt being disappointed when no service is scheduled.

So for anyone out there for whom this is an issue: you may wish to email customerrelations@princesscruises.com and ask them to restore having the Sabbath service on the schedule, so that those who want to attend can have one.

As far as I know, all the other lines still schedule the Sabbath service. Celebrity stopped (as a corporate decree) for a few months about 5 years ago, but then reinstated it, presumably due to requests from passengers.