Seenie

Early July in Canada? Are you talking about the cruise that goes to NY, Boston and Bar Harbor as well?  Mostly warm weather clothing: chances are good that it will be hot, and hotter and more humid in NY and Boston. Check the seasonal average temperatures.

But you can also run into rain, wind a cool temperatures, so you'll need another layer or two in reserve. My backup cold weather gear that I take most of the time is a fleece pullover (jumper), a sleeveless insulated vest, and a hooded windbreaker. Those layers worn together will keep you comfortable in almost anything except a blizzard, and a blizzard is not going to happen in July, not even in Canada.

How many suitcases? One: a carry on. Mix and match everything, including a carefully curated collection of lightweight separates that make three respectable formal night outfits.   OK, flame me ... 🤣

Port Royal, 

Sadly, that address no longer works.

Meanwhile, my TA gave me the guest relations email address,  guestrelations@cunard.com  and we will see what comes of that.

Thanks again.

2 hours ago, Victoria2 said:

So it's not your agent's fault as he/she didn't know about your disability and it's not Cunard's fault as they didn't know either.

You are absolutely bang on, Victoria.  I've already told my TA, and I've emailed Cunard. But maybe I haven't made what I'm trying to say clear enough.

What I'm saying is that the welcome and the treatment that I received from Cunard throughout the week, in many of the ship's areas, was very different from that which I've received when I've booked in the exact same way, and with the exact same MO, on other cruise lines, airlines, in hotels, restaurants and entertainment venues over many years and in many countries. I've been travelling like this a long time, and I'm the same person, booking as I have always booked, giving the same notice and signals, and transacting and behaving as I always do. Despite that, the treatment which I received on Cunard was very different (and not in a good way) from my usual travel experiences. I should also say that I love travelling in the UK because the level of disability awareness and accommodation -- not to mention the spontaneous kindness with which I've been treated countless times by the British -- is so different from the reception and the service that I got on Cunard. I guess I had expected a British travel experience.

I did say at the beginning that when I know that Cunard has received what I wanted to share (I'm aware that they sometimes read these boards, and I had no other way of giving feedback) this thread could be deleted.  In the meantime, I'm grateful for the input people have given me, particularly Port Royal for giving me that email address, and you for suggesting that I speak to my TA about warning people about Cunard's booking process.

1 hour ago, PORT ROYAL said:

Head of Customer Services for Carnival Group (including Cunard).  

Based in the office of Mr J Weinstein 

 

Sam.Constable@carnivalukgroup.com

 

He, or his PA, will reply directly, not a Customer Services Person 

 

 

Thanks again, Port Royal.  I have just emailed Mr. Constable:

Good morning Mr. Constable

19 minutes ago, Victoria2 said:

I suggest you aim it at your agent who should have known the processes Cunard require from their disabled passengers. 

 

 

Victoria, you are absolutely right. Here's what I sent my agent a few minutes ago:

17 minutes ago, Victoria2 said:

Cunard are brilliant with their disabled passengers. As long as they are aware they have some.

 

Did you fill in your medical and mobility questionnaire? Why didn't you pre request the shower stool if it's that vital to your everyday needs?

 

 

Because I wasn't aware that it was a big deal on Cunard, but I am now!  I'm very self-sufficient, and I learned many cruises ago that simply asking for the stool onboard saves a lot of peoples' time and emails.  I was on RCI and told a head housekeeper that I felt so bad because of the time and effort that had been spent on pre-arranging a simple shower stool and her advice was "The easiest for us is if you just ask when you get onboard. It saves hours of messaging and notifications ..."  Thought I had learned that. *Sigh* obviously not.

But now I have learned about Cunard, so it all goes into my learning, coping and ever-expanding toolbox! Soon that toolbox will be too heavy for this old girl to lug about: we get old too fast and smart too late!

Thanks for the comment, Victoria!

37 minutes ago, canoncruiser said:

Sounds like a Collector of Injustices-sorry you feel done by-but I’ve only crossed in Grill once, and that because of a surprise upgrade, and I’ve always been well received by Cunard staff and crew.  

Canoncruiser, I know, I sound like a collector but I assure you I'm not.  If I was, I'd have to stay home!  Travelling as a mobility-impaired person requires determination, ingenuity,  the ability to roll with the challenges and most of all a sense of humour. I've been travelling like this for a good while and usually cope pretty positively with the many challenges. The best tool in my coping toolbox is my sense of humour, but I'm afraid I ran out of that commodity on Cunard.

Maybe I need to change the first line of my post to read:

She's beamy, substantial, stable and elegant: a bit like me, really ...  no, I'm joking about the stable and elegant part! 

7 minutes ago, PORT ROYAL said:

 

Sorry, thought you were a direct booker.

What is your TA doing for you?  Supporting you is what they are paid to do.

If your TA is already banging down Cunard doors on your account,  then you are possibly duplicating effort.

No, I'm not. But I realize now that my TA needs to know about this problem. Thanks for pointing that out.  I can't be their only mobility impaired pax.  Will get in touch with them.

Thanks for the helpful comment.

3 minutes ago, bluemarble said:

 

I know it's too late now, but each cabin is supposed to receive a questionnaire near the end of the voyage to be filled out and deposited in a box near the pursers desk. Here is a scan of the questionnaire I received in my Britannia cabin from one of my recent April/May QM2 crossings. If you did not receive one these questionnaires, I can only assume that was a mistake.

 

 

 

For what it's worth, I have never received a post-voyage survey via e-mail.

Ha, I was looking for that! Nope, never got one.  Mistake? Yes, let's be optimistic.

Good to know. Thanks, Blue Marble!

Yes, saw this, but not until after we had booked and made all of our other arrangements.  Naive of me, but had no idea that any cruise line would do this, although I do now.

Good point that you made, though Hattie: we didn't book through a Cunard website, but through an agent that we have used for many years.

Yet another reason not to hurry back to Cunard: clearly they don't want passengers with special needs.  (And indeed, there weren't very many of us onboard.)  And that's OK, we've got the message, it's obviously working well for them.

I have, but I'll double check, Hattie, in case they sent it today.  It's three days today.

There was no questionnaire, although the dining room staff asked us to be sure to fill it out. They obviously thought there would be one.

1 minute ago, PORT ROYAL said:

Head of Customer Services for Carnival Group (including Cunard).  

Based in the office of Mr J Weinstein 

 

Sam.Constable@carnivalukgroup.com

 

He, or his PA, will reply directly, not a Customer Services Person 

 

 

Thank you, Port Royal

19 minutes ago, Pear Carr said:

just wondered if you tried to book an accessible cabin or opted not to?

They had already been snapped up before we booked. TBH, I normally don't book an accessible because I prefer to leave those to the people who are wheelchair bound, or really can't do without the extra space and facilities. I am aware that there are people who will use their blue badge parking permit to book these cabins mostly for the extra elbow room.😟

Good to hear that there may still be hope for receiving an invitation from Cunard for feedback. Thanks, Pear.

Thank goodess! Those nobs were downright painful. They look beautiful, though.

Based on what you said about not bothering to complain to guest services because of the note in the daily, I’m assuming the answer to this is no, but did you by chance ask for your money back for the remaining days of your cruise? That’s what I would have done. I would have asked for money back for the whole thing, but would really only expect it back for the remaining days I hadn’t used it yet.

 

No, I didn't. I kept thinking it would get better tomorrow. For someone so old, I sure am naive. Once the notice went up in the daily, I knew there was no point.

Kinda hard to try it without buying. And buying a 24 hr pass (the shortest available) may not be a total indicator what one may experience the rest of the trip.

You're right. I should have said "buy it by the day for a few days" before buying the whole package.

My advice to anyone thinking of buying VOOM is: don't don't buy the package until you have tried it out onboard for a couple of days. The pre-sailing discount isn't worth the risk. See my post about VOOM on my recent TA.

My advice to anyone thinking of buying VOOM is: don't don't buy the package until you have tried it out onboard for a couple of days. The pre-sailing discount isn't worth the risk. See my post about VOOM on my recent TA.

When we boarded Serenade of the Seas in Ft Lauderdale, the VOOM internet service was very aggressively marketed, with huge posters and staffers in lime green shirts that shouted "ASK ME ABOUT WIFI". So I did. To be sure, I wasn't expecting to be able to stream or to even to do much that was very interactive. Before handing my seapass over, I spoke to one of the green shirt people and I explained my position: I monitor about 30 static web pages daily.* There is nothing fancy about them, nothing moves, sings or dances. I wanted to know whether the system would be up to that task, given the blackouts I'd experienced on TransAtlantics previously.

His answer was that the service was much better than any previous system, although it would slow down significantly in the satellite "black spots". Other than that, he assured me, the surf plan would always be good enough for me to monitor my thirty-some sites without too much inconvenience. On the basis of that advice, I purchased a surf package.

Well, it was agony that reminded me of early nineties dial-up. Nine years ago on a Celebrity, TA we had better serviced. VOOM served up repeated timeouts. Pages "hung". In mid-Atlantic, I gave VOOM the benefit of the doubt, and assumed when we emerged from "the black hole", probably after the Azores, things would improve. They didn't. Approaching the UK things were no better. In and on the coast of the English Channel (the most travelled shipping lane in the world) using the internet was still like watching ice melt. When, in the middle (literally) of Amsterdam, VOOM still wasn't good enough to let me work* I realized it was hopeless, and I planned to take my highly unsatisfactory experience up with Guest Relations.

At that point, this started being posted prominently in the dailies:

Had that been the message that the man in the green shirt had given me when I was trying to decide whether to spend my money on VOOM, I wouldn't have bothered. I never did expect anything the speed of home (although that's not what the posters, or the man in the green shirt would have had me believe). The message was clear: don't bother complaining, we aren't going to do anything about it. (Yes, cupcake class. Sweet!)

I contacted Royal Caribbean, and I got the predictable your-comments-are-important-to-us lineand they asked if I had taken it up with Guest Relations while I was still onboard. Why would I have done that? The notice in the daily made clear that they weren't going to do anything anyway. The nice folks from PR promised to look into it and get back to me. After a couple of weeks, I contacted them again, to have the nice lady from PR tell me this:

And I suppose that's that. My advice to anyone thinking of buying VOOM is: don't don't buy the package until you have tried it out onboard for a couple of days. The pre-sailing discount isn't worth the risk.

Seenie

* For those of you wondering why I'd feel the need to work on a vacation: I'm not chasing bucks. I am a volunteer administrator on a non-profit network of over thirty communities for people whose lives have been touched by rare diseases. Come visit us at www.bensfriends.org or www.bensfriends.org/community-list/ ! These communities are important to thousands of people who suffer the shock, loneliness, isolation and misery of having a disease that most people haven't even heard of. Some of those diseases are life-threatening, and all of them are life-altering. Someone's got to keep those community homefires burning: I'm one of a small team of volunteers, and I've made this my mission in retirement. The substantial amount of money that I spent on VOOM was out of pocket, although (full disclosure here) I did receive a very modest discount when I explained my work to the onboard staff.

We were on a two week TransAtlantic on Navigator of the Seas. The crowd on this cruise was older than the average RC crowd, many seniors. The solarium pool water temperature was really too cold to do therapeutic water exercise, which is what this arthritic senior, with three joint replacements, needs to do. Several guests complained, and some -- like me -- complained more than once. Finally, for the last couple of days, the water was a more comfortable temperature, but by no means could it have been called warm. I got off the ship stiff and sore from lack of my usual water exercise.

What has your experience been with pool water temperatures? Any ideas for convincing RC to warm up the pool for our next TransAtlantic next year?

Good to know that about China. I was seriously considering a tour just recently, and it never occurred to me to ask, because I've never had any problems.

There's no problem with the battery on either the SmartScoot or the TravelScoot. Both are FAA approved for air travel. You must, however disconnect and remove the battery and take it into the cabin with you. Being small, however, that's not much of an inconvenience.

If airline staff ask, I show them the documentation papers on the battery, although the details are also stamped on the battery itself.

No problems at all.

I have a Pride GoGo Traveler Elite Plus (the one with the big battery). I love it and it has gone many places with us -- planes, cruise ships, trains, coaches in North America and abroad. It comes apart in four pieces, each of which I can lift with some effort. I decided that I wanted something lighter, smaller and easier to "wrangle". I can walk, but arthritis damage all over means my time and range is very limited.

The Luggie and ones like it (Solax) are lovely, and being four-wheeled, very stable. The trouble was that they are one piece units, so still a heavy "lift". Also, they are fairly bulky when collapsed.

I looked at the Travelscoot and liked it, except for the price, of course. I found a new-ish alternative on the market, a SmartScoot. (Smartscoot.com) The advantage is that it is front wheel drive, so much more direct steering and a better turning circle. It's also slightly less expensive, and spare batteries are about half the price of the Travelscoot's. I ended up buying one, and I love it.

I can lift the SmartScoot over obstacles myself, just as you would a bike or a trike. With the help of one person, it can be carried up a flight of stairs. It breaks down into three pieces, each light enough for me to lift easily. And when broken down and stowed in the trunk of a car, because the pieces aren't bulky it can be stashed very easily. It came into the cabin with us, although sometimes I'd just remove the battery and leave it in the corridor. For the cruise ship, the wheel position can be changed to make it easier to get through narrow doorways. Of course, it's less stable when you do that.

I would caution you that to ride one of the three wheel lightweights (SmartScoot or Travelscoot) you need to have reasonable balance or you are at risk of falling. I love my SmartScoot, and have no regrets about buying it. For comfort and stability, though, I still love my Pride GoGo and that's what I call my "street scooter" that I use to zip around the neighbourhood when I walk the dog. But for travel, the lightweight is fabulous and it has made me as mobile as I could be given my disability.

can you take a picture of 3111 when you sail as we are in that one in October...we are aware it is NOT one of the newer ones...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Marsha

We are in 3111 right now, and it is a standard ocean view, like you see in the brochure pics. Lovely location, beginning of corridor, just a small lobby away from guest relations close to quiet sitting area and the glass elevators. Loud music dance party in the lobby last night had us worried about noise. No problem: they closed the glass doors so no issue. I believe the music ended at about 11, but don't know as we couldn't hear it anyway. Would book this room

again!