BWIVince

I’m glad you elevated that to a manager and requested it in writing. I have serious doubts that a call center agent would be an appropriate resource to vouch for the PVSA validity of an itinerary, especially at a line that spends most of the year not sailing from US ports. Vince

I think they anticipated that (given the circumstances)... This looks designed with that very much in mind. Vince

I wouldn't worry too much about that (but that's easy for me to say as I've recently expressed my feelings about Tastes 😄 ). The space on both ships was originally designed to be concept-agnostic, so this type of transition has been baked into the design. It's entirely possible that there would less than 24 or 48 hours worth of work, if that. We'll know more as more details become available, but this sounds like a really light lift. Another thing to keep in mind, most of Crystal's alternative dining venues have been completely constructed/reconstructed from the steel at some point in their career, in 11 days or less. That should give some context around how quickly they can make most minor modifications, if it's that fast to build them in the first place. Vince

I wasn’t initially concerned when I saw those terms because that’s rather standard boilerplate verbiage that prevents customers from churning credits and non-cash instruments into cash, but you make a great point about the literal application of these terms. If someone has a tangible monetary expense from turning one award reservation into another, I would encourage their agent to submit the expense for reimbursement because that’s not really supposed to be the typical exclusion use case for that clause, and I think it’s worth pushing for a reimbursement in that case, even if it takes an elevation (though it shouldn’t). Vince

Somehow a friendly battle between Jim Brochu and Gloria Gaynor DOES seem like an appropriate Pride Month activity though! 😄 ❤️ Vince

Ok, I'll go on the record and say it... 🙂 Not everyone loves Tastes. I definitely don't love it. The dinner menu is completely dull, and the lunch menu is completely inappropriate as the sole remaining quasi-sit down daily lunch venue. (Chicken quesadillas and spaghetti with meat sauce? Is there an elementary school lunch lady to dish it up too?) That said, the Chinois Chicken Salad has been around for decades (since the Wolfgang Puck days), so I don't see it going anywhere anytime soon. If I read this correctly, this only addresses the dinner service, so unless there is more to the announcement than what's on the web page (which there might be), I think lunch may be more like (or exactly like) what we have now than dinner... Which itself is pretty status quo. Just my read on it though. [Edited to add, the above comments are in the spirit of 'different strokes for different folks'. I'm not attacking people that like spaghetti and quesadillas.] Vince

I agree that a lot of Crystal's existing customers won't be familiar with the brand, but 4 beef small plates (half the street food menu) plus 4 different steaks and an additional beef feature is still a _LOT_ of beef. I'm more worried about people complaining that there is too much focus on beef (despite the name), but that may just be PTSD because I listen to clients complain all day and have learned to expect the worst. lol I love the menu though -- looking forward to trying it someday. There are many things I'd happily order. Vince

The law is totally that dumb. 🙂. It looks at the transport of individual passengers vs. just itineraries. Fortunately in Crystal’s case (vs. a lot of US mass market lines), most people that tack together segments either touch another continent during their travels or return to the same US port they left from, but then cases like this do pop up from time to time. OC peppered their North American itineraries with calls at Aruba and Curacao (almost obsessively) to give everyone maximum flexibility and prevent headaches down the line, but sometimes it made the itineraries especially awkward in the process. I’m not surprised they didn’t allow the fine. 😔. The fine is supposed to be reserved for cases where the line didn’t know of or couldn’t control the passenger’s actions (and can be passed on to the passenger), and the waivers are supposed to be used in cases where the situation was unavoidable (national emergency, weather emergency, etc.). If they let too many people just pay the fine it looks like a cash grab by CBP. Vince

Larry, if I were in your shoes, I would check with Crystal on this sooner instead of later (but that's just me). When someone catches this closer to departure, assuming the law hasn't changed, they MAY just pay the fine, but they would have the right to just cancel your ticket and refund your money as the remedy for their error. 😞 It's not like the old days where they had to honor an erroneous contract at any cost. Not saying Crystal wouldn't take your position into account for their error, but I've seen suppliers do way stranger things in the past couple of years. It can't hurt to get them to explain why this is legal, or rectify it now. Vince

My mind went there for a minute too, but that authority was really limited, and expired on March 31, 2022 or when Canada lifted its restrictions, whichever happened first. https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/593 Vince

Is it possible they're still staying on for the segment to Bridgetown? That would make it legal. Vince

Just underscoring what Tracie mentioned... When cruises are removed from the web's content management system, the first step is to turn everything off from active booking. I'm sure there are other cases that cause them to close bookings (one of the cases we see as waitlist on the web user side), but every time we see major changes or cancellations made it always starts with this step. This is how we know when something officially sets in motion. (Keep in mind, there are many more steps to go and can still take some time, but at least we know for sure the change is in motion.) Vince

Crystal wouldn’t have qualified for bankruptcy itself before the GHK shutdown, and Genting wasn’t interested in selling Crystal for what Manfredi and party offered. Hindsight being 20/20, if they had known how the shipyard dispute would play out, MAYBE they would have made a different decision pre-Covid, but there were multiple factors back before the pandemic in play with the GHK shutdown that were different when the offers were declined. I also don’t know that the path would have been so smooth if A&K or some other combo of investors had bought Crystal before the pandemic. If someone had bought a going concern, their investment cost would have been infinitely higher than just buying two old ships and their branding out of liquidation — and pandemic shutdowns are expensive as heck…. More expensive than restoring a damaged brand, usually. Also, people often forget Crystal’s liquidation wasn’t about Crystal or anything going on there. Genting put GHK into liquidation as a circuit breaker to keep the shipyard dispute from hurting the parent company, since the liability with the yards and its property/projects was exponentially higher than GHK was worth. Crystal was just collateral damage. Vince

That absolutely sucks... But there are some hard limits to a company going out of business, and that's one of them. 😞 Liabilities and financial records don't convey in a branding purchase. You have to look at the win of the jump start of being able to earn the next award with the new company. Vince

It’s not ridiculous, it’s unfortunately the way incorporation works in the US. A&K had the option of buying Crystal if they wished, which would have given them the entire company including all of its financial records, and all of its assets and liabilities. For a variety of smart reasons, they did NOT do this. Loyalty program data in the US is financial data. Earned awards are financial liabilities and pending awards and redemptions are maintained in a company’s financial system. There is usually an API that connects some basic info between a company’s financial system and their CRM system, but financial details (for a lot of security reasons) to some degree are always limited to the accounting system as that’s the real single source of finance truth. The CRM system is the source of truth for customer data and history — minus the financial history. Using one of my clients as a real world example, they use Salesforce as their CRM and SAP for their accounting system. Their customers can redeem loyalty points for events through my company’s event management system, which calls their CRM to get their customer info about who they are, and calls SAP to get award balances and debit them as needed. In A&K’s case, they ONLY bought the CRM data. Unlike the customer data, the financial data isn’t an a la carte asset, it comes with the purchase of the company, which would not have been a viable option for A&K (or anyone at that point). This gives them the customer sailing history (and not even great data there as Crystal had only deployed a modern CRM in GHK’s final years), NOT financial data or award data. From this, Crystal can (loosely) glean total cruises, but based on my record during the GHK era, even the total number of nights and regions sailed may be incomplete from the early NYK years…. But they have no definitive data on earned or redeemed awards. Also, I can imagine someone asking why if Crystal doesn’t have access to financial data, how can they do the EI program? A&K is a party to the assignment as a buyer of many assets, and MM&A is helping facilitate the assignment data as such, but the info MM&A is sharing with A&K is publicly available assignment data and not Crystal’s financial records. The loyalty program liability details by customer, so far a I’ve seen so far (and I may have missed something), has not been exposed in the assignment. Does that help explain it any? Vince

As Keith noted, this varies by terminal and agency. I’ve definitely seen a whole stash of wheelchairs onboard both ships, BUT especially in almost all of the US (though not exclusively), Crystal’s crew can’t just go in the terminal and perform whatever services they feel like — it’s not their jurisdiction in most ports here. 😔 Hopefully this can be worked out with the port with some help from Crystal though, as there are plenty of operators and destination management agencies in FL and Port Everglades that offer wheelchair assistance in their portfolio. Vince

That’s great news…. But they do sound a little more like an agency than an intermediary. Vince

Having worked for an intermediary for decades, I think the dynamic is a little different here. Genting and A&K's sales networks couldn't be more different, not just because they are in different markets, but because A&K is also a supplier of different services (like destination management). I think this will naturally yield different sales relationships for Crystal than they had in the past. I certainly understand from the customer perspective where it's challenging to reset a brand relationship, but intermediaries work differently. They make money off of sales and they consolidate the business into as few channels as they can to maximize their buying power. They may not work with A&K because it doesn't make sense for their customer base and they don't do that kind of business to move the needle enough to be worth it, but they're not going to shun A&K because they have a grudge against Genting. Unlike customers who may not know the backstory of the assignment, intermediary relationships are based on the conglomerates they partner with, and know Genting from A&K intimately. That's just my read on it, for what it's worth. Vince

It might take more patience than that... 🙂 It took old Crystal 30+ years to get a handful of intermediaries. The synergy with A&K's sales network might expedite this, but it's is such a conditional process that I wouldn't hold my breath on what partnerships they sign next/soon/later/ever. Crossing my fingers for you though. 🙂 Vince

It's pretty typical for suppliers to have intermediaries in regions where they don't have their own sales orgs, so this is pretty standard but good news. It's also typical for new suppliers to go through different agencies in a given segment or region before they find one that's a good fit long-term, so it would be very normal of some of these agencies get swapped out at some points for other ones (almost always by mutual agreement). Vince

In fairness to Selvaggio, his features were slightly less Americanized, but Prego pre-dated Selvaggio by at least a decade, and he never had more than a handful of features on the Prego menu at any given time. His consultancy was more like their deal with Wolfgang Puck, and not a licensing deal like the one with Nobu (sadly). Vince

I’ve only had that technique done with shrimp once, but I’ve seen it done on Top Chef and other food shows before, and this reaction seems almost universal since it’s supposed to be pretty rare. (…which isn’t my thing either, I’m with you.) I think in North American culture especially, we’re not just used to fully cooked shrimp almost exclusively, we’re almost used to overcooked shrimp as the norm. One bite of a “rare” shrimp, and alarm bells go off and more people than not with our background find it off putting. I can remember on Top Chef once, Gail’s comment on a similar technique (though not with risotto) was something along the lines of the shrimp coming out “straight up squeaky.” 🫤. Hopefully that dish goes next, if it hasn’t already. 🤞 Vince

As an observer I don’t feel like anyone is trying to attack anyone’s experience with travel, as much as they’re trying to identify that Prego (definitely) served Italian American-style cuisine. As an Italian American, I’m used to the Americanized cuisine, which is fine, but I’ve joked about Prego’s inauthenticity as an “Italian” restaurant for decades, even if it’s tasty enough. My cousins in Italy don’t eat anything like what was served in Prego, and almost certainly would have been offended by it. That said, Italian food is not a monolith. It has lots of regional variations, and has modernist variations just like American cuisine has. I live in a town with a celebrity chef known for his modernist techniques that are somewhat controversial and wildly popular at the same time. If you told someone his flagship restaurant was a “New American” restaurant, and you went there expecting what you’ve had before in the same genre, there’s a great chance you’d walk away saying, “I’ve had New American cruise, and that’s not it” (even though it definitely is). This feels like one of those cases, and from the menus I’ve seen it definitely feels like a modernist take on Italian cuisine. The cooking of raw shrimp with the residual heat of another plated element is definitely a modernist technique, for example. To the point about the menus, Crystal DOES appear to be listening — I’ve seen them ball up the menus at least a few times now and start over with the concept. That says, the history of Jade Garden says that a concept could go through a half dozen relaunches and never be popular, but that takes more than a year to determine. In Symphony’s case it took 13 years. Lol Vince

FWIW, as Prego it was also a tenderloin filet and not filet mignon for as long as I could go back through the menus. Vince

…And you’ll get them. Proper growth in today’s cruise industry, for a small operator without shared maritime resources of other cruise lines in a conglomerate, is a process, and you can’t just skip the middle steps and jump to the end, as Crystal learned the hard way the last time they launched an ocean ship. You can’t take industry-high fixed costs, raise overhead, and divide it among your existing customer base with incremental growth. You have got to either (a) merge to increase the base, (b) wait years until you slowly grow that base organically in your own market before ordering the next ship, or (c) harness adjacent markets for growth. Those are your proven options for a good outcome, and A&K picked option C. Vince