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HMR74

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About Me

  • Location
    North East Illinois
  • Interests
    canasta; good music, and drinks with friends (and kids and grandkids)
  • Favorite Cruise Line(s)
    Best Deal and Itinerary at the time
  • Favorite Cruise Destination Or Port of Call
    almost anything we have not been to

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HMR74's Achievements

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Cool Cruiser (2/15)

  1. On board EQ now. dining fairly good. Service mostly pretty good. i still see strange things which I attribute to mgt. eg, We have premium drinks, however in order to get fresh squeezed juices , only at Luminae, Blu or Aqua spa. Be nice to make it easy for the other ~80% in MDR. no bottled water when leaving ship. That used to be a nice touch as well as beach towels, had dinner at Qusine the other night, braised short ribs of beef, excellent, but also in MDR last night, equally excellent and same size. Not sure why I want to pay about 60 pp, for the show. servers and steward could not be nicer and more attentive and they do hustle. wine, the premiums are in some places but not others. At ensemble lounge they promised me they would have it the next night and they did. I understand that its a lot of inventory, skus to have, but X used to tell us all about how good its wine celler is. Did it replace wine celler space with a few more staterooms? they screwed upon my internet. I bought 5 , 3 extras since we do not like switching back and forth , and do like having iphones and ipads always on. now a days with two factor identification, its nice to have internet on 2 devices. Esp with windows machines which lock you out and you need second device.
  2. Juat a few years ago we went to a Wisconsin Supper Club on the Mississippi north of La Crosse. Wisconsin Supper Clubs are the old fashioned establishments with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin playlists.probably on Sat Radio. Anyway, Prime Rib dinner was excellent at good prices but I distinctly remember the drinks served. I had a crown royal filled to the top with a minimlal amount of ise and ice in a separate glass if I needed it. $5 My wife had a full glass of wine of what she liked at the time at 2/3 of the price in the north burbs of Chicago. eg, Wildfire. Not a Mortons etc, When kids went to camp ages ago, up in Northern Wisconsin North and west of Green Bay, a Supper Club named White Stag-wedge salad was 1/2 of the lettuce head. Drinks were the same "bargain" A Stella on board is I think 11 or 12 now. A 12 bottle case sells for 15 or so. Its not a micro brewery beer. Betcha these places in Wisconsin are still high value.
  3. Thats true of my reisilng wine--the only apparent $17 reisling, is found in Murano--not found in MDR or any of the bars that I have seen so far. That obviously makes it difficult for an owner of the premium package to use it on the premium reisling.
  4. Well I am value oriented. And note, that even inside cabins are costly now. I see where an inisde daily rate on a cruise we woud like is 50% more than I paid for Aqua 4 years ago, computed an a daily cost basis and we know ther is also shrinkflation, in that pound for pound we are getting less now regardess of the level of cabin. I used to be frustrated over the shoreside service on many levels. Part of that goes away via using an agent, but its stil there. But I used to shrugg that aside because the cruise itself was so good. ummm.
  5. I agree with what you and the math say except I question whether they understand what they are doing. I think they all belong to the "Let's throw stuff up on the wall and see what sticks" management club. They need some (diversity) Seniors in managment that can tell then, "No, thats not how this works" but look at the composition of managment-young. Not much mentoring going on. They can raise prices and get away with it as long as the service and quality of product levels do not decline. Customers like us will say, so what, the prices are higher and we can afford it, not thrilled to pay more, but we walk away happy campers so where is the problem? Its when we are no longer happy campers with the product provided. And management does not care or is not aware. Both attributes deadly for a business.
  6. I still maintain the management team has no clue what they/it are doing. Either that or they are intentionally trying to screw up the company.This ongoing stuff is just stupid. My observation is there...aw forget it, I might get in trouble. I will experience it myself next week. HOwever, and I use reisling as my barometer, I saw two cheap reislings on the premium ,one was in classic before-cannot see that anymore and I see whats now a second probably upscale reisling but apparently only available in one of the specialty dining rooms. The management goes from one mistake to another. Or in trying to fix one problem just makes the problem worse. A few months ago I was told that on S class, I could not get premium coffee in the MDR-well, how far is Luminae from MDR on S. Or Blu. is there just one premium coffee machine and its at El Bacacio? Thats what I saw on Oasis and not just that, it was in the middle of evening acitivity and a long line for the coffee and then a separate long line for the sweets. In a not so pleasant setting--like being at a fast food joint. That was Oasis. A small coffee shop for a 4700 double occupancy ship. Serving one coffee at a time. The problems are contaigious within the RCL group. It is almost hilarious.
  7. Sy Syms, "an educated consumer is our best customer"--catchy phrase but appropriate. One thing not mentioned , from my standpoint, was the "vibe" on board, at least S Class. When the product pieces wre put together for the customer, it all felt good. Real Good. Right now, X has "lost that loving feeling". Bring Back that Loving Feeling, or we're gone gone gone. Hat tip to the Righteous Bros and Top Gun.
  8. I mentioned the young 40 something's the other day. My kids with their grandkids. And their friends. Crusing is not ther thing. And they all have been on plenty of cruises and going to Disney. Next year 4 families are going to all inclusive. The kids (grandkids) love the nice beaches and the parents love the luxury and service level. Plenty of activities. We headed off in our own direction cancelling a b2b2b retreat on Beyond and doing a land trip to Greece, the islands and Italy for 6 weeks. Admittedly it is a totally different approch and my wife was apprehensive but it turned out us folks in the mid 70's dealt with everytihng and enjoyed the hell out of it. Yes, a slower pace than 40 years ago but we built in low profile days. It was also 1/3 the cost of the cruise, which made us enjoy what we did even more. Whats the punch line? X (for us) and RCL (Oasis in the past, Icon in the future,for the kids) loses a small percentage of their revenues. X will lose some retreat passengers upgrading in ammenities and downgrading in price, Perhas more than some. Since the business is a very high fixed cost business, they will need to be above the full 100% occupancy (made possible by 4 in a cabin, or 6700 on Oasis meant for 4600 full double occupancy). And the bottom line here is cash flow is going to be hard to improve from this point. And it has a lot of ship to pay for. 21 billion soon to be closer to 30 billion. Wtih higher interest rates. The cruise lines are caught between the rock and hard place. The only alternative they see is cutting this and that and finding new or additional sources of revenue and they all are out of good ideas. They have to think out of the box and they cannot. Not entirely their fault-the lockdowns did not help. the CDC (I think) seemed to go out if its way to prolong the shutdown for cruise lines. $$$$$. Food costs went up and have not moderated. The killer wil be when oil prices go back up to triple digit. Just my analysis of why thiis drink problem is a problem-they all need more positive cash flow. And th eway I see it, it's not going to improve.
  9. Trying to decipher the wine situation. I am on a cruise next week, and the app has interesting situations. To keep permutations low I like Reislngs. The MDR has 2--the $12 per glass Chateau St Michelle, and its $50 per bottle an dteh J&H Sellbach Kabinitt, same $12 and 50, except the bottles if buying 1 at a time near me ate 8.95 and 15.95 We wil also be dining in Petite Chef, Murano and Tuscany-- Morano has 2 additinal Reislngs, Tuscany has 1 and Petite Cheff has one reisling. Thats per the app -which even teh executiv eoffice tells me is inaccurate even on the day of sailing. (Then I ased myself, why have it) Anyway for me,the resioings offerred are 17 or under, mostly at 12, but none are listed on the classic package, whereas in the past the Chateau Ste Michelle was on the classic. This is all too colex to keep track of. All I want to know, keeping it simple, whats the best aka most expensive reisling I can get in premium package and why is it not avaiable in most venues. On S class, the dining options are on 4 or 5, I think,Luminae, Blu, MDR ,Petite Chef, Tuscany and Murano all there. On an different level, I saw something reporting that X is seriously considering a total rennovation of S class. That means redoing the MDR like Edge has for the 4 MDRs. Plus making Retreat more exclusive. perhaps putting Luminae up there somewhere, as well as Michaels club. Perhaps X will put a rollar coaster or 7 story slide up there. Certainy a larger Sunset bar like on Edge series and all of it extending a few feet further over the side. Perhaps add another level or two to accomodate Retreat. It muchs be sgnificanty less expensive to do thatthan build a new Edge--baffles me but I am certain the financial MBAs there have it nailed down. 🙂 We were on NCL Westwerd decades ago and shortly after we were on it they decided to make it longer for more cabins.. BTW a Stella is $11 plus 20%.
  10. If from Chicago, the name is "Da Eclipse". I attribute many spelling issues to use of phones and tablets and everybody is in a rush. Lot's of truncated words. You becomes "U". most commonly misspelled word in my book, is "seperate" which drives me nuts. Back when I started working, big accounting firm, we had a pool of typists -the era of IBMs Selectric. Nothing automated. Their joke about the "College Boys" was that with all the education we had, they had to correct our spelling, grammar, punctuation et al. They were correct. Somehow that was not taught well in HS or College. One good class required for the men in Business; Accounting and Management, was Home Economics for Men. By the way, is there going to be a battle over who uses "X". Celebrity or Elon Musks "X". My 2 cents worth for the day. Not worth much at all.
  11. the point is few of us like being insulted by the wierd arrangement X puts out. In my case,they moved a wine thats 5 a bottle from classic to premium, and thats plain old nuts.
  12. Just received an e mail on this--at Liquor Barn in Illinois. This is an example of when there should be an upcharge. But this caught my attention
  13. Back a few years ago we were on a TA that I wanted to buy a package to buy several bottles at a discount. While I thought about it X pulled the special, and told me the reason was that there was so much demand , but there was not space on the ship for it. I though that was a fishy excuse then, more so now. Because statistically they know how much booze they will go thru on probably any cruise, given demographics etc. They even know what we have had for our drinks making it more predictable.That stat changes if we cannot get the drinks we want. How well they use the info is another subject. Subjective because they can use the info to reduce their financial exposure to lowest margin drinks, by running out of stock early in a cruise. Sorry! eg, I do not understand how Heineken can be on Classic and Stella on Premium. Both basically a mass produced beer. Retail they are priced the same. A buck a bottle perhaps a little over that. $13-$15 a 12 bottle case. but I like Stella better. Do they sell more Stella and that fact gets it into Premium?
  14. X did not just say it had the best, it promoted it as a differentiator from other cruise lines.
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