Anthem keeps docking us around

[NIATPAC29]

This was all so avoidable. RCCL put the money over the passenger. Many options were available.

[NewSalt]

I've quit reading around page 16, so please excuse me if this comment has already been made, but am I the only one who thinks that the passengers disembarking from this cruise would not find a jaunt on the Staten Island ferry very high on their lu0ist of things to do, no matter how much of a bargain it might be?

[poncho1973]

I'm just excited that almost 99.45817685579% of all human beings on the planet are no longer going to cruise because of this.

 

BARGAIN CITY!

[mark290]

I won't ever downplay what people felt onboard this cruise, I've been there more times than I care to think about, and yes, in weather and ship motion more severe than you and the others describe. Its my job. And for someone who is not used to the sea, this first experience is of course shattering. No denying.

 

My question is: Do you fly? Are you any more in control in an aluminum cylinder at 35,000 feet than you are onboard a cruise ship?

 

Doesn't seem that RCI is trying to keep things "hush hush", when they've admitted to a mistake, and have come up with an action plan.

 

Do you really think that Corporate is so short sighted as to knowingly place a $billion+ dollar vessel, and the lives of passengers and crew at risk for the sake of a single cruise's revenue? Loss of the vessel would involve the litigation over injuries and loss of life, possible pollution remediation, the value of the ship, and even the loss of years of future revenue from this ship.

 

I am not a RCI loyalist. As stated, I try to be the impartial arbitrator, pointing out the realities of the sea, the maritime industry, and international law. I have castigated as well as defended the same cruise lines, when the facts demand it.

 

You are no doubt an expert in your field and I very much enjoy reading your posts.

 

I believe I read any earlier post from you where you felt the mistake they were admitting to was they failed to provide the vacation expected. Are you now saying the mistake was for something other than providing the expected vacation?

 

If corporate put such an expensive asset in harms way, I think we would all agree, it wasn't knowingly. It would have been because they made a mistake.

I think the only way a company puts a large asset and humans lives in harms way is because they miscalculated. It happens all the time. Companies go out of business because of errors like that. RCCL won't go out of business, I am happy for that, but it is a common occurrence.

Edited February 11, 2016 by mark290
Spelling and probaly other ones

[NJHousewife]

Don't you mean, "SOME passengers that I spoke with out of 4000 did not feel that way"...."MOST" is way to quantitative...seriously. But for you and those, its valid. Most of us on here are NOT trying to invalidate your account or feelings, regardless of what the other defenders on here think, but there are always 2 sides, or 3 or 4 or 5, to the story.

 

Well posting here is quite a complicated task I guess. No I don't mean some passengers, in fact all of the passengers that I spoke to were not happy with being put into the situation or how it was handled after the fact. I did hear many praise the crew (and I do too) as they were great throughout (except for guest services). I did hear SOME say that they were thankful that the captain was able to get us through it once it was happening. But I do know what I meant to say and I said what I meant. This what I heard from people. I did not speak to 4000 people.

 

This is tiresome. I see how these subjects get out of hand I guess.

[emdia43]

I'm just puzzled. For those real sailors on here- if the ship was really tilted to 45deg wouldn't you be able to walk on the walls?:confused:

[Irene7]

Too bad the news vans will swarm all these people who are lined up to get off the ship. Go on Twitter and you will see the pictures of lines of people up and down decks 4 and 5. These people have had enough of an ordeal without a camera and microphone in their face asking for a play by play. The news will get their hot takes and make it even more dramatic than necessary.

 

The media does blow things up I agree. But the comments from the passengers are not scripted. I am looking forward to the cruise reviews from the passengers that leave them. I wonder how many will say their experience was not as bad as the media states.

[JimmyVWine]

Don't you mean, "SOME passengers that I spoke with out of 4000 did not feel that way"...."MOST" is way to quantitative...seriously. But for you and those, its valid. Most of us on here are NOT trying to invalidate your account or feelings, regardless of what the other defenders on here think, but there are always 2 sides, or 3 or 4 or 5, to the story.

 

No. NJHousewife has it right. She says that "most of the passengers she spoke with". Don't confuse that with "most of the passengers on the ship". If she spoke with 20 passengers and 11 of them agreed with her, then her statement is true and not at all too quantitative. If she spoke with 50, and 30 agreed with her, then again, she is correct. Whether or not you want to extrapolate that to provide a snapshot of what everyone on the ship thought is up to you. That is what polling companies get paid to do.

[broberts]

...Do you really think that Corporate is so short sighted as to knowingly place a $billion+ dollar vessel, and the lives of passengers and crew at risk for the sake of a single cruise's revenue? Loss of the vessel would involve the litigation over injuries and loss of life, possible pollution remediation, the value of the ship, and even the loss of years of future revenue from this ship.

...

 

I tend to agree. But this agreement is tempered by my observation that people and organizations can suffer tunnel vision. I suspect a bit of that may have contributed to the situation with Anthem.

[NIATPAC29]

There is some good news. Royal has apologized. Royal has admitted they made a mistake. Royal is going to up there weather recon. But royal should also do more for the victims

[BecciBoo]

i'm just puzzled. For those real sailors on here- if the ship was really tilted to 45deg wouldn't you be able to walk on the walls?:confused:

 

bingo!

[dandee2]

EVERYONE on board had internet, dandee. The ship gave them free wifi for the duration of their cruise.

 

I guess I was speaking from experience. Just took a cruise last month.

 

Me: Flip-phone :-(

DW: No phone

Mother: No phone

 

No tablet

 

No internet even if it was free.

[nednrom]

This was all so avoidable. RCCL put the money over the passenger. Many options were available.

 

RCCL can't win for losing -- there would have been people complaining about different ports/changed itineraries/canceled cruise if they had done anything else. I've seen posts about missing ports due to captain's decision not to tender to a port as an option!

 

It's easy to be a Monday morning quarterback - there are positive and negative, and absurd comments about this sailing and I suspect the truth is somewhere in the middle -- you are taking a chance if you sail from North in the winter time - that's just common sense. But to comment to say many options were available and RCCL put money over the passengers is perhaps a bit of a dramatic statement.

[BecciBoo]

 

This is tiresome. I see how these subjects get out of hand I guess.

 

Yes, I agree with this one.....so long and God bless you, hope you get over this.:)

[nednrom]

I guess I was speaking from experience. Just took a cruise last month.

 

Me: Flip-phone :-(

DW: No phone

Mother: No phone

 

No tablet

 

No internet even if it was free.

 

Don't they have internet cafes? I seem to remember Allure and Oasis having them. Maybe I'm remembering a different cruise line.

[jamiebytes]

I was also on the ship. There were 4500 passengers on the ship so many conversations and viewpoints to overhear. I do think that people keep focusing on the weather woulda/shoulda/couldas, which is definitely valid but also interesting to me since In the 24-36 hours after the incident most of the reactions I saw on the ship were primarily anger regarding the ship not continuing the cruise (either by not going to ports or by not reopening things like the pools).

 

I overhead quite a few loud, angry phone calls about how "we're not going to the Bahamas at all, this is such a wasted trip". One memorable moment right after the captain's announcement that we were turning around when a lady screamed "this is BULL****" at the top of her lungs while looking straight at me (not sure why) and then walking away expressing her upset at not getting to the bahamas. Lots of general disappointment around turning around - many people wanted to continue in spite of what happened. Many people I talked to with this view were first time cruisers, and for some this was their "once in a lifetime" trip. So I can definitely understand where their disappointment came from. But I point this out to say... Not everybody was worried about the danger on the ship.

 

There were of course 4500 of us on the ship, so indeed there were a lot of different observations made. Even my husband and I had different reactions. During the storm, I was shaking and in tears initially, while he watched the Super Bowl and insisted everything would be fine and he'd had worse. (He did puke due to the motion eventually, for which I will forever tease him!) I was scared! But I also knew that we had not been told to go to muster stations, and my personal observation of the captain's mid storm announcements was that he was clearly focused on nothing else but the ship which was exactly where he needed to be. If he called us to muster stations though, I would have flipped undoubtedly.

 

Personally? My only complaint was in the way the return time announcement was handled. Changing the plan after 24 hours meant we spent 5 hours on the phone with travel insurance and our travel company sorting out how to fix our rescheduled flights in a way that would actually be covered. We worked it out in the end.

 

Other than that, I am fine with the way Royal handled the situation and am confident that they will be implementing policies and procedures to prevent this from happening again.

 

I also feel they are incurring an extreme financial loss due to this cruise (full refunds, no gratuities collected, damage repairs, replacing items, tossing unused or damaged food, 50% off future cruises, lost revenue from days out of service, cost of assisting people with hotels and airline change fees, cost of refunding all internet packages and providing free service, other compensated items they provided to assist passengers, logistics costs for bringing the ship back early and conducting inspections and repairs). Royal has been hit straight in the pocketbook on this. For those people who insist Royal only continued the cruise in the interest of making money, wouldn't you also agree that the financial hit of this incident will motivate then to do everything in their power to avoid ever being in this scenario again? I feel they will, so I would sail on Royal again without hesitation. Probably not out of Jersey again though. :-) I only went to Jersey to try the Anthem. Beautiful ship. Wish they'd bring her south during the winter.

[dandee2]

I was on another line and yes they have workstations. But in a situation like this one, I wonder how many people would be able to access one.

[Reader0108598]

Don't they have internet cafes? I seem to remember Allure and Oasis having them. Maybe I'm remembering a different cruise line.

 

Not everyone uses the internet. My husband would not know nor does he want to know how to turn a computer on:(

 

(I know hard to believe)

 

Reader

Edited February 11, 2016 by Reader0108598

[Irene7]

There is some good news. Royal has apologized. Royal has admitted they made a mistake. Royal is going to up there weather recon. But royal should also do more for the victims

 

Bingo!

[dogo88]

I was also on the ship. There were 4500 passengers on the ship so many conversations and viewpoints to overhear. I do think that people keep focusing on the weather woulda/shoulda/couldas, which is definitely valid but also interesting to me since In the 24-36 hours after the incident most of the reactions I saw on the ship were primarily anger regarding the ship not continuing the cruise (either by not going to ports or by not reopening things like the pools).

 

I overhead quite a few loud, angry phone calls about how "we're not going to the Bahamas at all, this is such a wasted trip". One memorable moment right after the captain's announcement that we were turning around when a lady screamed "this is BULL****" at the top of her lungs while looking straight at me (not sure why) and then walking away expressing her upset at not getting to the bahamas. Lots of general disappointment around turning around - many people wanted to continue in spite of what happened. Many people I talked to with this view were first time cruisers, and for some this was their "once in a lifetime" trip. So I can definitely understand where their disappointment came from. But I point this out to say... Not everybody was worried about the danger on the ship.

 

There were of course 4500 of us on the ship, so indeed there were a lot of different observations made. Even my husband and I had different reactions. During the storm, I was shaking and in tears initially, while he watched the Super Bowl and insisted everything would be fine and he'd had worse. (He did puke due to the motion eventually, for which I will forever tease him!) I was scared! But I also knew that we had not been told to go to muster stations, and my personal observation of the captain's mid storm announcements was that he was clearly focused on nothing else but the ship which was exactly where he needed to be. If he called us to muster stations though, I would have flipped undoubtedly.

 

Personally? My only complaint was in the way the return time announcement was handled. Changing the plan after 24 hours meant we spent 5 hours on the phone with travel insurance and our travel company sorting out how to fix our rescheduled flights in a way that would actually be covered. We worked it out in the end.

 

Other than that, I am fine with the way Royal handled the situation and am confident that they will be implementing policies and procedures to prevent this from happening again.

 

I also feel they are incurring an extreme financial loss due to this cruise (full refunds, no gratuities collected, damage repairs, replacing items, tossing unused or damaged food, 50% off future cruises, lost revenue from days out of service, cost of assisting people with hotels and airline change fees, cost of refunding all internet packages and providing free service, other compensated items they provided to assist passengers, logistics costs for bringing the ship back early and conducting inspections and repairs). Royal has been hit straight in the pocketbook on this. For those people who insist Royal only continued the cruise in the interest of making money, wouldn't you also agree that the financial hit of this incident will motivate then to do everything in their power to avoid ever being in this scenario again? I feel they will, so I would sail on Royal again without hesitation. Probably not out of Jersey again though. :-) I only went to Jersey to try the Anthem. Beautiful ship. Wish they'd bring her south during the winter.

 

Wow a nice mature comment and evaluation from someone who was there.

 

Thanks

Dan

[emdia43]

There is some good news. Royal has apologized. Royal has admitted they made a mistake. Royal is going to up there weather recon. But royal should also do more for the victims

 

 

http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/10/us/new-jersey-anthem-of-seas-cruise-ship-extreme-storm/

 

Seems like all the passengers coming off were very upset...

[emdia43]

Several people have mentioned in interviews that they felt they should have been sent to their muster stations. Would that even be possible? How would they be able to launch lifeboats in those conditions? :confused:

[chengkp75]

You are no doubt an expert in your field and I very much enjoy reading your posts.

 

I believe I read any earlier post from you where you felt the mistake they were admitting to was they failed to provide the vacation expected. Are you now saying the mistake was for something other than providing the expected vacation?

 

If corporate put such an expensive asset in harms way, I think we would all agree, it wasn't knowingly. It would have been because they made a mistake.

I think the only way a company puts a large asset and humans lives in harms way is because they miscalculated. It happens all the time. Companies go out of business because of errors like that. RCCL won't go out of business, I am happy for that, but it is a common occurrence.

 

No, not saying that at all. Again, when you quote someone, you need to look at the context of the original post that I was referring to. That person suggested that RCI put corporate greed ahead of safety, I was asking her back whether she really believed that. :confused:

[chengkp75]

I'm just puzzled. For those real sailors on here- if the ship was really tilted to 45deg wouldn't you be able to walk on the walls?:confused:

 

Well, actually just at the corner of the floor and wall. To really walk on the walls, you would have to be over 90*.

[haywardwis]

Were the passengers required to get off the ship today or could they use it as a hotel for a few more days? In the Galveston Oil spill we were allowed to stay on board as a floating hotel.