FYI : May 30 Sunshine - Possibly Oversold

[cruzeluver]

We are currently booked on the May 30th Journeys cruise on the Sunshine out of Charleston. A couple of folks on the roll call have reported they were contacted by Carnival and were made an offer to switch to another sailing in order to try and get ahead of possible over-sold situation. We have not been contacted, but as we booked through our TA they would have to reach out to her I assume.

 

I have heard of this kind of thing happening, but never on a sailing we have booked. Just putting it out there for any others who are also booked.

 

As this is a very unique sailing (not Charleston's usual ship and the fact that its a Journeys cruise) made it very popular. I have not seen staterooms available for close to a month now and we are still nearly five months out.

[ATL_Miami_Cruiser]

It's amazing that this can happen on a cruise ship where each booking is tied to a physical cabin with a unique cabin number. It's not like it's Southwest airlines where its a free for all for seats. The only thing that makes sense to me is that someone at Carnival screwed up and handed out a block of cabins to customers that were reserved for a TA or another "electronic" problem happened with their database that causes duplicate bookings. Unless by oversold they mean they exceeded lifeboat capacity.

 

I could be wrong about my assumptions. It would be good if someone with cruise ship reservation knowledge can explain to us how this could happen. I'm curious :)

Edited January 24, 2016 by ATL_Miami_Cruiser

[vwrestler171]

Wow, I've never heard a a cruise ship being overbooked. Let alone 5 months out. That could be a nightmare for some cruisers, depending on how Carnival handles it.

[DaytonCruiser]

It happened a few times with ships sailing out of Baltimore.

 

The issue is with gty cabins. The cruise lines anticipate a percentage of people who book will cancel, so on popular sailings they will allow more gtys booked that are actually available.

 

If I can find the old threads I will post them here

 

 

 

When pax got bumped

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=63404

Edited January 24, 2016 by DaytonCruiser

[schusterj]

Carnival sometimes sells cabins with a guarantee rate where the cabin is assigned just prior to departure. It is possible that too many unassigned cabins have been sold.

[welldone60]

It's amazing that this can happen on a cruise ship where each booking is tied to a physical cabin with a unique cabin number. It's not like it's Southwest airlines where its a free for all for seats. The only thing that makes sense to me is that someone at Carnival screwed up and handed out a block of cabins to customers that were reserved for a TA or another "electronic" problem happened with their database that causes duplicate bookings. Unless by oversold they mean they exceeded lifeboat capacity.

 

I could be wrong about my assumptions. It would be good if someone with cruise ship reservation knowledge can explain to us how this could happen. I'm curious :)

 

It's probably not that they oversold the number of cabins, but that they have sold to more passengers then life boat capacity. Life boat capacity is the controlling factor on the number of passengers allowed.

[Frank12]

It's probably not that they oversold the number of cabins, but that they have sold to more passengers then life boat capacity. Life boat capacity is the controlling factor on the number of passengers allowed.

This makes sense.

[ATL_Miami_Cruiser]

It happened a few times with ships sailing out of Baltimore.

 

The issue is with gty cabins. The cruise lines anticipate a percentage of people who book will cancel, so on popular sailings they will allow more gtys booked that are actually available.

 

If I can find the old threads I will post them here

 

 

 

When pax got bumped

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=63404

 

Oh that makes sense. I guess cruise lines are a lot more like airlines then I thought.

[LuckyZ]

I am going to assume that people who booked a specific cabin will not be affected.

 

We always book a specific cabin

[zqvol]

It's probably not that they oversold the number of cabins, but that they have sold to more passengers then life boat capacity. Life boat capacity is the controlling factor on the number of passengers allowed.

 

 

There are enough lifeboats for every berth. Common myth that life boat capacity has anything to do with the ship being full. I really wish people would stop spreading this myth.

[YourCruiseGurl]

I am going to assume that people who booked a specific cabin will not be affected.

 

 

 

We always book a specific cabin

 

 

I had chosen my cabin (7250) and was offered to move.

[Mikew0805]

There are enough lifeboats for every berth. Common myth that life boat capacity has anything to do with the ship being full. I really wish people would stop spreading this myth.

 

This is not true. I worked in Carnival Reservations for quite a few years, and we would frequently reach a 2/3 pax max restrictions on sailings.

 

What would happen is that the sailing would start with a lot of 4 and 5 per cabin, and get to the point that if we went over 2 (even 3 pax max depending on situation) pax per cabin that is left, we would exceed the lifeboat capacity. TA's would get very frustrated, as many times there were 80+ cabins left, and they could not/would not accept what we were explaining. Back then, there were a LOT of 5 passengers in regular quad cabins, with a rollaway on the Fantasy class.

[chengkp75]

There are enough lifeboats for every berth. Common myth that life boat capacity has anything to do with the ship being full. I really wish people would stop spreading this myth.

 

This is not true. I worked in Carnival Reservations for quite a few years, and we would frequently reach a 2/3 pax max restrictions on sailings.

 

What would happen is that the sailing would start with a lot of 4 and 5 per cabin, and get to the point that if we went over 2 (even 3 pax max depending on situation) pax per cabin that is left, we would exceed the lifeboat capacity. TA's would get very frustrated, as many times there were 80+ cabins left, and they could not/would not accept what we were explaining. Back then, there were a LOT of 5 passengers in regular quad cabins, with a rollaway on the Fantasy class.

 

Yes, there are more berths than lifeboat capacity, so that the line can offer 3rd/4th accommodation in a variety of cabin categories. Since 3rd/4th guests typically pay lower fare than 1st/2nd guests, the line prefers to have all cabins at double occupancy, rather than a few empty cabins and more upper berths sold. The "hold" on 3rd/4th passengers, as Mikew says, happens when the line plans on having all cabins at double occupancy, and then the 3rd/4th pax count approaches lifeboat capacity. This has led to many complaints because the line will tell a party of 4 that they have to book two cabins, even though 4 capacity cabins are still available.

[ATL_Miami_Cruiser]

If I were the cruise lines I would make an investment now into next gen lifeboat tech and ships with next gen deployment systems designed to support them. If they worked together with lifeboat manufacturers and put money into R&D, I'm sure they could find a better design such as offset staggering lifeboats across 2 decks (4 decks total when you factor in the height of the lifeboats) on the side of the ship with deployment arms that reach out further to allow two staggered rows of lifeboats.

 

I'm not a ship engineer but I can imagine the possibilities if they chose to move from more traditional lifeboats to something of this century.

Edited January 25, 2016 by ATL_Miami_Cruiser

[Capo Capitan]

If I were the cruise lines I would make an investment now into next gen lifeboat tech and ships with next gen deployment systems designed to support them. If they worked together with lifeboat manufacturers and put money into R&D, I'm sure they could find a better design such as offset staggering lifeboats across 2 decks (4 decks total when you factor in the height of the lifeboats) on the side of the ship with deployment arms that reach out further to allow two staggered rows of lifeboats.

 

I'm not a ship engineer but I can imagine the possibilities if they chose to move from more traditional lifeboats to something of this century.

 

No need. Within the next 5 years we will have life drones.

[ATL_Miami_Cruiser]

No need. Within the next 5 years we will have life drones.

 

That would be cool :D

[SadieN]

This seems to happen more often on Princess. Some pax really get outrageously good move over and offers.

[wantocruisemore]

I had chosen my cabin (7250) and was offered to move.

 

Just curious but what did they offer you?

[YourCruiseGurl]

Just curious but what did they offer you?

 

 

Free plus an upgrade from regular balcony to spa balcony.

[Budget Queen]

This is not true. I worked in Carnival Reservations for quite a few years, and we would frequently reach a 2/3 pax max restrictions on sailings.

 

What would happen is that the sailing would start with a lot of 4 and 5 per cabin, and get to the point that if we went over 2 (even 3 pax max depending on situation) pax per cabin that is left, we would exceed the lifeboat capacity. TA's would get very frustrated, as many times there were 80+ cabins left, and they could not/would not accept what we were explaining. Back then, there were a LOT of 5 passengers in regular quad cabins, with a rollaway on the Fantasy class.

 

WHEN did you work for Carnival?? Your, "back then" is telling. If it isn't current, you are claiming, nothing has changed with bookings since? New booking programs are initiated updated frequently. Even information from a few years ago, probably isn't valid.

 

This is all speculation.

[gtalum]

It's amazing that this can happen on a cruise ship where each booking is tied to a physical cabin with a unique cabin number. It's not like it's Southwest airlines where its a free for all for seats. The only thing that makes sense to me is that someone at Carnival screwed up and handed out a block of cabins to customers that were reserved for a TA or another "electronic" problem happened with their database that causes duplicate bookings. Unless by oversold they mean they exceeded lifeboat capacity.

 

I could be wrong about my assumptions. It would be good if someone with cruise ship reservation knowledge can explain to us how this could happen. I'm curious :)

 

Chances are it's not actually oversold, but someone in revenue management has determined that they can make a lot more money by "paying" booked passengers to give up their cabins and then offering those cabins for sale again at a significant mark-up.

[Siesta Fiesta]

It would be really stupid for a ship designer to create a ship where they have "just enough" seats on the lifeboats because in a real emergency things are not always going to play out perfectly. If I were a ship designer, I'd put in enough lifeboat seats for the maximum amount of passengers the ship could hold, plus maybe a 20% buffer (or whatever "panic" science dictates).

 

When a ship lists badly, everyone is not going to calmly walk the length of the ship to their muster station when they see lifeboats right where they're at. What if most people are watching a show or dining at one end of the ship?

 

Plus, lifeboat seats are relatively cheap. Most of the seats are in those inflatable canisters, not the vessels that you see hanging on the side of the ship.

 

Plus, not having enough lifeboat seats would mean that you are underselling your cruise ship (not maximizing sales) and it would give you really bad publicity like the Costa Concordia if there is a disaster.

 

Obviously you'd have to design the ship to carry all the extra passengers and lifeboats and be able to withstand the "100 year" huge waves.

Edited January 25, 2016 by Siesta Fiesta

[chengkp75]

It would be really stupid for a ship designer to create a ship where they have "just enough" seats on the lifeboats because in a real emergency things are not always going to play out perfectly. If I were a ship designer, I'd put in enough lifeboat seats for the maximum amount of passengers the ship could hold, plus maybe a 20% buffer (or whatever "panic" science dictates).

 

When a ship lists badly, everyone is not going to calmly walk the length of the ship to their muster station when they see lifeboats right where they're at. What if most people are watching a show or dining at one end of the ship?

 

Plus, lifeboat seats are relatively cheap. Most of the seats are in those inflatable canisters, not the vessels that you see hanging on the side of the ship.

 

Plus, not having enough lifeboat seats would mean that you are underselling your cruise ship (not maximizing sales) and it would give you really bad publicity like the Costa Concordia if there is a disaster.

 

Obviously you'd have to design the ship to carry all the extra passengers and lifeboats and be able to withstand the "100 year" huge waves.

 

Hoo boy. Okay, here we go.

 

I'll start with the last statement first, and work backwards. All ships are designed to weather 100-year storms.

 

Second, ships are designed for double occupancy. That is the norm, and anything above that is gravy to the bottom line. Therefore, the lifeboat capacity is designed to be a percentage above double occupancy, based on the cruise line's historical booking data. Once you have a figure, for round numbers lets say the ship is 3000 double occupancy, and the line wants to have 20% above that, or 3600 maximum capacity. You then look at the available lifeboats on the market, and see what combination of boat capacity and number of boats that can fit on the ship best approximates this maximum capacity. If you choose the 370 person mega-boats that the Oasis uses, you could get by with only 10 boats (allowing for 10 crew per boat). If you want to go with the common 150 person lifeboat, you'll need 24, which is not normally practical, so you'll need to look for something around 240 person boats, where you need 15, so you could either increase your maximum passenger capacity by 240 to match 16 boats, or drop it a little to match 14 boats.

 

Once the number of lifeboat seats are determined by design, and approved by flag state and class, that is the maximum number of berths that can be sold on any cruise. Whether or not the cruise line puts more berths in than that number is irrelevant from a safety standpoint, they can only sell as many berths as lifeboat seats. They add berths to allow families to travel together, etc, and offer additional berth cabins in various cabin categories to appeal to all levels of passengers.

 

"Most of the seats are in those inflatable canisters" is not true. To my knowledge, IMO has not given approval to allow passengers to use anything other than lifeboats. The liferafts are for the crew, there are no lifeboat seats for the crew, other than the 2-3 assigned to handle the boat. There are large "marine evacuation systems" using large liferafts, but again, these are not approved for passengers, and I don't think you'd like to try the chutes used to enter the rafts. There must be enough lifeboats for 100% of passengers, and the combination of lifeboats and liferafts must be 125% of passengers and crew.

 

And again, I'll point out that what most passengers consider the "abandon ship" drill is not that in any way. This is the passenger muster, which is done for accountability. There are many instances where the passengers are sent to their muster stations, and expected to reach their stations, not stop at the first lifeboat that they come to, when there is never any notion of abandoning ship. This muster gets the passengers from everywhere on the ship into known locations, where they can be counted and identified, and crew can go looking for the missing. Remember, if the Captain decides that the passengers should get into the boats, this is not abandon ship, as the crew are to stay at their emergency stations until all passengers have left the ship, and then if the Captain decides, then the crew will be called from their stations to their liferafts stations to abandon ship.

 

Setting aside the inexcusable behavior of the so-called Captain of the Concordia, muster should be initiated long, long before there is any thought of putting people in boats, not only for accounability, but to allow for orderly preparation of the boats and orderly embarkation, if needed.

 

Most ships that need to abandon don't list badly, and even the Concordia never listed over 10-12* (well within the launching limits of the lifeboats and rafts) until she grounded at her final resting point, and the excessive list was caused by the one side of the ship being aground.

[chvygrl10]

My travel agent has told me the cruise is sold out & she is having a hard time getting her cabin numbers so that kind of leads me to believe they over booked this cruise. I've seen several people in the roll call say they switched to the April 29th sailing out of Port Canaveral. Kind of stressful because I'd like to know where our cabin is. It's a balcony is all I know.

[Rosefloater]

Hoo boy. Okay, here we go.

 

I'll start with the last statement first, and work backwards. All ships are designed to weather 100-year storms.

 

Second, ships are designed for double occupancy. That is the norm, and anything above that is gravy to the bottom line. Therefore, the lifeboat capacity is designed to be a percentage above double occupancy, based on the cruise line's historical booking data. Once you have a figure, for round numbers lets say the ship is 3000 double occupancy, and the line wants to have 20% above that, or 3600 maximum capacity. You then look at the available lifeboats on the market, and see what combination of boat capacity and number of boats that can fit on the ship best approximates this maximum capacity. If you choose the 370 person mega-boats that the Oasis uses, you could get by with only 10 boats (allowing for 10 crew per boat). If you want to go with the common 150 person lifeboat, you'll need 24, which is not normally practical, so you'll need to look for something around 240 person boats, where you need 15, so you could either increase your maximum passenger capacity by 240 to match 16 boats, or drop it a little to match 14 boats.

 

Once the number of lifeboat seats are determined by design, and approved by flag state and class, that is the maximum number of berths that can be sold on any cruise. Whether or not the cruise line puts more berths in than that number is irrelevant from a safety standpoint, they can only sell as many berths as lifeboat seats. They add berths to allow families to travel together, etc, and offer additional berth cabins in various cabin categories to appeal to all levels of passengers.

 

"Most of the seats are in those inflatable canisters" is not true. To my knowledge, IMO has not given approval to allow passengers to use anything other than lifeboats. The liferafts are for the crew, there are no lifeboat seats for the crew, other than the 2-3 assigned to handle the boat. There are large "marine evacuation systems" using large liferafts, but again, these are not approved for passengers, and I don't think you'd like to try the chutes used to enter the rafts. There must be enough lifeboats for 100% of passengers, and the combination of lifeboats and liferafts must be 125% of passengers and crew.

 

And again, I'll point out that what most passengers consider the "abandon ship" drill is not that in any way. This is the passenger muster, which is done for accountability. There are many instances where the passengers are sent to their muster stations, and expected to reach their stations, not stop at the first lifeboat that they come to, when there is never any notion of abandoning ship. This muster gets the passengers from everywhere on the ship into known locations, where they can be counted and identified, and crew can go looking for the missing. Remember, if the Captain decides that the passengers should get into the boats, this is not abandon ship, as the crew are to stay at their emergency stations until all passengers have left the ship, and then if the Captain decides, then the crew will be called from their stations to their liferafts stations to abandon ship.

 

Setting aside the inexcusable behavior of the so-called Captain of the Concordia, muster should be initiated long, long before there is any thought of putting people in boats, not only for accounability, but to allow for orderly preparation of the boats and orderly embarkation, if needed.

 

Most ships that need to abandon don't list badly, and even the Concordia never listed over 10-12* (well within the launching limits of the lifeboats and rafts) until she grounded at her final resting point, and the excessive list was caused by the one side of the ship being aground.

 

Thank you for explaining this.