Ticked off at RCCL...

[HBE4]

38 minutes ago, BensonFan711 said:

Secondly, there's no quick fix for the propulsion issues Allure is having, which she was also having back in 2017 (and is the reason I booked Oasis and not Allure back then).  She needs to be in dry dock for that to happen, and since she's not totally dead in the water, it's not really a big enough issue for Royal to cancel cruises to fix.

 

39 minutes ago, BensonFan711 said:

This is the nature of cruising.  I've had two cruises where the entire itinerary changed due to hurricanes.  Nothing you can do about it.  The azopod isn't working properly.  Nothing you can do about it.  And more importantly, nothing Royal can do about it to fix it right now.

 

I agree in that it's not a serious enough of a problem to pull the Allure from service.

 

But Royal should publish realistic itineraries, especially when the know the long-term fix is a year away and not wait until they start collecting money first, then change it.

[mom2tcdx2]

I guess I am more of an odd duck when it comes to cruise bookings.  I booked based more on the ship, and rarely do I even look where the ship is actually going.  Sometimes I do look between say Eastern or Western Caribbean, but honestly I have seen most of those places enough that I cruise for the ship not the destination.  

 

Only place I really try to avoid is booking Nassau, just don't really care for it and if we have a ship go there we stay on the ship.  I also don't care for Jamaica, and we often we also stay on the ship there as well.  As for San Juan, I prefer San Juan over St. Thomas.  However I really like seeing the feral cats along the waterfront, so my husband and I always go and take the kitties food when we do.  Last cruise on the Allure we met a kitty that we ended up adopting and had flown to Virginia.  So I would rather go to San Juan over St. Thomas any day.  But each of us has our own preferences.  

[johnjen]

On 7/26/2019 at 1:47 PM, CruisingDaddy said:

 

Am I being unreasonable in asking for something?  I normally don't ask and I know in our cruise contract it does say that they can change the itinerary for any reason but I feel this issues was in their control and it could have been remedied.  They have a broken ship and they choose to not fix it and affect all their next cruises until they bring her into dry dock.  I mean if we were our to sea and something happens to the ship and we miss a port it's one thing, or unrest in a port like in San Juan I'd have no issues with changing our ports of call, but this I feel should fall on them.  What do you guys think?  Am I crazy in asking for something in return?  I would like to get your thoughts on it.  Thanks

I don't find you being too unreasonable considering you're a victim of circumstances with this. I would write a letter; don't expect much feedback though, but definitely write them constructively. Wish you all the best.

[BensonFan711]

22 minutes ago, HBE4 said:

 

 

I agree in that it's not a serious enough of a problem to pull the Allure from service.

 

But Royal should publish realistic itineraries, especially when the know the long-term fix is a year away and not wait until they start collecting money first, then change it.

 

We don't actually know what's going on behind closed doors at Royal.  What we *do* know is that cruise lines don't change itineraries until they're absolutely forced to.  Heck, I had one changed at the pier.....and then I spent more time than I cared to telling people who insisted on complaining to find somewhere else to do it because I didn't need their complaining ruining my vacation.

 

Royal may have options on the table we don't know about.  I have no idea what they would be, but I'm not a ship builder/engineer, nor am I privvy to the inner workings and confidential communications within RCL.  Bottom line - I don't think you were scammed.  I think that itinerary changed after the booking.  Allure is a great ship and a destination in and of itself.  I'd be thrilled to be on an Oasis class ship for the ship itself; don't care where it's going.

[KansasK]

We were on the Allure on the June 2, 2019 sailing. St. Thomas was changed to San Juan long after we booked. With the small distance between these islands, we could not understand why, but the ship was going to San Juan anyway. We stayed on the ship and enjoyed the mostly empty ship. My daughter and family did a San Juan Old and New excursion and had a great time. She wants to return to San Juan for a vacation.  

 

I cannot address the problem with others having been there so many times before, but my daughter made the best of it and still had a fun day. 

 

I had wanted to go to St. Thomas like many who have posted but just dealt with what we got and still enjoyed our cruise. We are not mad at the cruise line. 

[suesnake2002]

I think what people are loosing sight of is this ship "has" at present mechanical problems. With repairs over a year out. 

Advertised itineraries were made with a ship running at full functioning capacity. In most cases 2 years ago. 

Royal is full aware that advertised itineraries can not be met, due to the reduced speed of a "broken" ship. 

So why not advertise the "real" intineraries. 

Maybe because once they have your money your out of luck. The oh so famous .... it's in the fine print. 

 

Hope they don't have to do any maneuvering out of hurricanes way

[cruisegirl1976]

1 hour ago, mom2tcdx2 said:

I guess I am more of an odd duck when it comes to cruise bookings.  I booked based more on the ship, and rarely do I even look where the ship is actually going.  Sometimes I do look between say Eastern or Western Caribbean, but honestly I have seen most of those places enough that I cruise for the ship not the destination.  

 

Only place I really try to avoid is booking Nassau, just don't really care for it and if we have a ship go there we stay on the ship.  I also don't care for Jamaica, and we often we also stay on the ship there as well.  As for San Juan, I prefer San Juan over St. Thomas.  However I really like seeing the feral cats along the waterfront, so my husband and I always go and take the kitties food when we do.  Last cruise on the Allure we met a kitty that we ended up adopting and had flown to Virginia.  So I would rather go to San Juan over St. Thomas any day.  But each of us has our own preferences.  

I'm with you.. I book for the ship .. not the ports.. 

[HBE4]

49 minutes ago, suesnake2002 said:

Advertised itineraries were made with a ship running at full functioning capacity. In most cases 2 years ago. 

Royal is full aware that advertised itineraries can not be met, due to the reduced speed of a "broken" ship. 

So why not advertise the "real" intineraries.

 

Exactly my point....and probably the OP's point as well.

[holiday-shrek]

1 hour ago, suesnake2002 said:

So why not advertise the "real" intineraries. 

+1!

[DebJ14]

On 7/26/2019 at 1:06 PM, DancerMama25 said:

I think just chill. It’s all good.  I know you’re angry about the change and are blaming Royal for not just “fixing the ship,” but that is a lot easier said than done.  They MUST have the ship in dry dock for this particular fix.  There are only so many dry dock spaces worldwide in which this repair can be made, and therefore there is literally no place for them to do this repair ahead of when it’s already scheduled.  The only other option, which most certainly wouldn’t help you nor thousands and thousands of other passengers, would be to take the ship out of service until it has been repaired.   Just let it go, have a great time.

Which is exactly what Carnival did with the Vista this month. 

 

They completely canceled 3 cruises and took the ship to Freeport.  Because of the propulsion issues the June 29 cruise was delayed until July 1, at which time it became an 8 night cruise with only 2 ports.  Guests were given the option to sail and get a big discount on a future cruise or cancel in full for a refund. Because so many people canceled and the sailing date was within a week, they put the canceled cabins up for sale at fire sale prices.  We picked up a balcony super cheap hours before they closed the sailing.  It turned out to be a wonderful cruise. It was the smoothest ride we have ever had with the ship slowly moving at between 9 and 12.8 knots.   They dropped us off in Galveston and headed  straight to Freeport for the repairs.

 

  Because none of the dry dock facilities in this hemisphere could accommodate the Vista, they sent a floating dry dock over from the Netherlands to meet the Vista.  They also needed the lead time to have the parts shipped over.  They replaced all the bearings on the Azipods, which should not have worn out in 3 years.  I am sure there will be a settlement from the manufacturers as there was with Celebrity and Cunard over the same issue.

 

The Vista was driven onto the floating dry dock and then the larger ship, with the Vista on its back, docked at the shipyard in Freeport where the work was completed in record time.  They anticipated 3 days of sailing to the Bahamas and 10 days to fix it an a day or so back to Galveston.  It was finished early, so they put a last minute 4 day cruise up for sale.

 

Carnival bit the bullet and between the refunds, future cruise credits and repair expense it is estimated to  have cost them $50 million.  The stock price took a major hit, but they did the right thing and bit the bullet and fixed the ship.  RCCL seems willing to to limp along for many, many, many months with a ship in need of repair.  They could learn a lot from how Carnival handled this.

Edited July 29, 2019 by DebJ14

[smplybcause]

15 minutes ago, DebJ14 said:

Which is exactly what Carnival did with the Vista this month. 

 

They completely canceled 3 cruises and took the ship to Freeport.  Because of the propulsion issues the June 29 cruise was delayed until July 1, at which time it became an 8 night cruise with only 2 ports.  Guests were given the option to sail and get a big discount on a future cruise or cancel in full for a refund. Because so many people canceled and the sailing date was within a week, they put the canceled cabins up for sale at fire sale prices.  We picked up a balcony super cheap hours before they closed the sailing.  It turned out to be a wonderful cruise. It was the smoothest ride we have ever had with the ship slowly moving at between 9 and 12.8 knots.   They dropped us off in Galveston and headed  straight to Freeport for the repairs.

 

  Because none of the dry dock facilities in this hemisphere could accommodate the Vista, they sent a floating dry dock over from the Netherlands to meet the Vista.  They also needed the lead time to have the parts shipped over.  They replaced all the bearings on the Azipods, which should not have worn out in 3 years.  I am sure there will be a settlement from the manufacturers as there was with Celebrity and Cunard over the same issue.

 

The Vista was driven onto the floating dry dock and then the larger ship, with the Vista on its back, docked at the shipyard in Freeport where the work was completed in record time.  They anticipated 3 days of sailing to the Bahamas and 10 days to fix it an a day or so back to Galveston.  It was finished early, so they put a last minute 4 day cruise up for sale.

 

Carnival bit the bullet and between the refunds, future cruise credits and repair expense it is estimated to  have cost them $50 million.  The stock price took a major hit, but they did the right thing and bit the bullet and fixed the ship.  RCCL seems willing to to limp along for many, many, many months with a ship in need of repair.  They could learn a lot from how Carnival handled this.

 

Except they would take Allure out of commission for double that time since there's no dry dock near Florida that can handle her after the Oasis accident. I believe the announcements of the itinerary changes through Oct were just before the accident. I'd say until that accident they were likely hoping to bring Allure to that dry dock too. With that option out, they can only dry dock Allure in Europe. Considering Allure has a scheduled dry dock in March (I think) for two months that would mean the ship would have been out of commission for 4+ months out of 8 IF they could find the dry dock space. It just makes no sense to cancel cruises, sail to Europe for repairs, and then sail back to Florida only to sail back to Europe 2 months later. 

[PTC DAWG]

50 minutes ago, DebJ14 said:

Which is exactly what Carnival did with the Vista this month. 

 

They completely canceled 3 cruises and took the ship to Freeport.  Because of the propulsion issues the June 29 cruise was delayed until July 1, at which time it became an 8 night cruise with only 2 ports.  Guests were given the option to sail and get a big discount on a future cruise or cancel in full for a refund. Because so many people canceled and the sailing date was within a week, they put the canceled cabins up for sale at fire sale prices.  We picked up a balcony super cheap hours before they closed the sailing.  It turned out to be a wonderful cruise. It was the smoothest ride we have ever had with the ship slowly moving at between 9 and 12.8 knots.   They dropped us off in Galveston and headed  straight to Freeport for the repairs.

 

  Because none of the dry dock facilities in this hemisphere could accommodate the Vista, they sent a floating dry dock over from the Netherlands to meet the Vista.  They also needed the lead time to have the parts shipped over.  They replaced all the bearings on the Azipods, which should not have worn out in 3 years.  I am sure there will be a settlement from the manufacturers as there was with Celebrity and Cunard over the same issue.

 

The Vista was driven onto the floating dry dock and then the larger ship, with the Vista on its back, docked at the shipyard in Freeport where the work was completed in record time.  They anticipated 3 days of sailing to the Bahamas and 10 days to fix it an a day or so back to Galveston.  It was finished early, so they put a last minute 4 day cruise up for sale.

 

Carnival bit the bullet and between the refunds, future cruise credits and repair expense it is estimated to  have cost them $50 million.  The stock price took a major hit, but they did the right thing and bit the bullet and fixed the ship.  RCCL seems willing to to limp along for many, many, many months with a ship in need of repair.  They could learn a lot from how Carnival handled this.

Do you realize how much bigger the Allure is compared to the Vista?  That floating dry dock has no chance....

[time4u2go]

2 minutes ago, PTC DAWG said:

Do you realize how much bigger the Allure is compared to the Vista?  That floating dry dock has no chance....

How big of a ship can the floating dry dock handle?

Edited July 29, 2019 by time4u2go

[DebJ14]

1 hour ago, smplybcause said:

 

Except they would take Allure out of commission for double that time since there's no dry dock near Florida that can handle her after the Oasis accident. I believe the announcements of the itinerary changes through Oct were just before the accident. I'd say until that accident they were likely hoping to bring Allure to that dry dock too. With that option out, they can only dry dock Allure in Europe. Considering Allure has a scheduled dry dock in March (I think) for two months that would mean the ship would have been out of commission for 4+ months out of 8 IF they could find the dry dock space. It just makes no sense to cancel cruises, sail to Europe for repairs, and then sail back to Florida only to sail back to Europe 2 months later. 

You missed my point.  Because of the accident in Freeport with the Oasis there was not a dry dock big enough to handle the Vista, except in Europe.  So, Carnival bit the bullet, canceled the cruises and  spent the money to hire the Boka Vanguard, and sail it over from Holland.  It is the world's largest floating dry dock.  

We spoke to the Captain and he said that until they came up with this solution, they were planning to sail to Europe to make the repair.  The drydock at Newport News is tied up with Navy contracts and it is really the only one, aside from Freeport that could have handled the ship.

 Since the repair actually only took 6 days I seriously doubt that the RCCL ship would be out of commission as long as you think if they did bit the bullet and sail it to Europe next week. 

 

This is no ordinary ship though: Boka Vanguard is a submersible ship tasked with the challenge of raising the 133,500-ton cruise ship out of the water so that the necessary repairs can be done.

This dry dock is a first-ever operation for the cruise industry and was a creative workaround necessitated by the limited dry dock space at the Grand Bahama Shipyard.

The large dry dock that Vista would’ve used in Freeport was damaged by a crane falling upon Oasis of the Seas earlier this spring.

 

Carnival went out of their way to find a creative, but expensive, solution to a huge problem caused by the crane falling on the Oasis.  Otherwise, they still be limping along missing ports and changing itineraries like the RCCL ship. 

 

Edited July 29, 2019 by DebJ14

[smplybcause]

4 minutes ago, DebJ14 said:

You missed my point.  Because of the accident in Freeport with the Oasis there was not a dry dock big enough to handle the Vista, except in Europe.  So, Carnival bit the bullet, canceled the cruises and  spent the money to hire the Boka Vanguard, and sail it over from Holland.  It is the world's largest floating dry dock.  

 

This is no ordinary ship though: Boka Vanguard is a submersible ship tasked with the challenge of raising the 133,500-ton cruise ship out of the water so that the necessary repairs can be done.

This dry dock is a first-ever operation for the cruise industry and was a creative workaround necessitated by the limited dry dock space at the Grand Bahama Shipyard.

The large dry dock that Vista would’ve used in Freeport was damaged by a crane falling upon Oasis of the Seas earlier this spring.

 

Carnival went out of their way to find a creative, but expensive, solution to a huge problem.  Otherwise, they still be limping along missing ports and changing itineraries like the RCCL ship.

 

I got your point - I was just refuting it because Royal doesn't have that option like Carnival did. 

 

Yes, it's cool what Carnival was able to do with the Boka, but Royal has no chance of being able to do that with an Oasis class ship. It's almost 100k tons more than Vista. Royal can't go "out of their way to find a creative" solution because it does not exist. Also, Carnival didn't do this for the greater good of the passengers. The solution was undoubtedly a cheaper solution over all, when you consider all aspects, than trying to get Vista back over to Europe way ahead of schedule. Vista is only 3 years old, so the next scheduled dry dock is still 2 years away. Meanwhile Allure's scheduled one is only months away. That time difference greatly changes the equation as well. (Not to mention I heard that Vista was limping way more than Allure currently is.)

[mayleeman]

@DebJ14 Compare the specs of the 2 ships and you can see how the situations, and the lines' options, are vastly different:

 

Allure:

 

 

Vista:

 

 

 

Allure is approx 90,000 to 110,000 tons heavier, 130 ft longer, and 30 ft wider.  But most importantly, Vista lost half of its 2 pods when just one went bad. Allure has 2 left. Carnival could not run the ship except to get it fixed. Allure's only available drydock requires a trip to Spain, and doing it now would result in cancellation of at least 20,000 to 24,000 cruisers' plans.  A few adjusted or missed port calls pale in comparison.

[A boat named Jenny 1]

On 7/26/2019 at 1:47 PM, CruisingDaddy said:

This will mostly be a rant because our itinerary changed on our upcoming AOTS Jan 19, 2020 cruise.  Here's why I feel ticked off this time around and I have to take on some of the blame... long story but stay with me on this one.  So my saga started back in January 2019. We were about to sail on the OOTS when one of our friends got ill and they had to cancel the cruise.  So we decided at the time to push our cruise out by a year, after paying $200 to move the booking due to non-refundable deposits... I knew about the fee if we needed to change and am ok with it.  We changed the cruise to Feb 2, 2020 and still on the OOTS then a few months back I get a lovely email from RCCL advising the have charted the OOTS and I would need to either change ships, change sail date or cancel and get a refund. 

 

After looking at their website, I found the itinerary for the AOTS worked for us.  So I call up RCCL to make the change and they were accommodating on doing the changes without any hassle.  They even gave us like $100 OBC or something like that for our inconvenience.  In locking up the new sail date and ship, I then needed to make changes with work to move my vacation days as well as start looking for a new hotel since the date and port was different.  It was a bit of inconvenience, but hey, I was lucky enough to find something suitable for the 4 of us and no big deal.

 

Here's where my ticked off part starts coming into play.  A few months ago, I saw messages that the AOTS were having propulsion issues and the ship was going at a slower pace and they needed to modify like 25 cruises because of it... and I only found out after I had made the changes.  The good news was that ours was not going to be affected... Hurray right!!  But last night I get the dreaded email saying that due to ongoing propulsion issues we need to modify your itinerary.  It says, instead of going to St. Thomas for a day, we'll be stopping in San Juan instead for 6 hours (7am to 1pm).  Our option was again to keep this cruise, cancel and get a refund but not for our flights (so no good to us) or change cruises again.  I thought, ok, let's take a look to see if anything comes up that would still work with our flight schedule because I really don't want to go to San Juan especially with all that's happening there right now.  So I call RCCL and asked them to move my cruise. they said sure, we can do that for you but I will need to pay for the difference in price.  I'm like really?? It's like double the price of what I have now and no way I'm going to pay double.  I asked for some OBC or discount at least if I keep this cruise and again they said no....

 

Am I being unreasonable in asking for something?  I normally don't ask and I know in our cruise contract it does say that they can change the itinerary for any reason but I feel this issues was in their control and it could have been remedied.  They have a broken ship and they choose to not fix it and affect all their next cruises until they bring her into dry dock.  I mean if we were our to sea and something happens to the ship and we miss a port it's one thing, or unrest in a port like in San Juan I'd have no issues with changing our ports of call, but this I feel should fall on them.  What do you guys think?  Am I crazy in asking for something in return?  I would like to get your thoughts on it.  Thanks

I agree, got the email too.We are on Allure in Dec 29 new years eve cruise.  Suppose to go to Roatan, now we will be in Nassau (my lease favorite port)  I would be more understanding if it were something that just came up, but RCI has known about this for months.  Feel a little taken advantage of, yes we are still happy to be cruising.  But this is their fault and they are  passing the problem on to us.  

[Ourusualbeach]

Royal is certainly handling this differently than they did at Christmas 2014 when the Freedom was limping along with damaged azipods. We received $350 OBC per cabin on our Christmas sailing and we still hit all of our scheduled ports but were there a couple of hours less at a couple of the ports. 

[Clarea]

6 minutes ago, Ourusualbeach said:

Royal is certainly handling this differently than they did at Christmas 2014 when the Freedom was limping along with damaged azipods. We received $350 OBC per cabin on our Christmas sailing and we still hit all of our scheduled ports but were there a couple of hours less at a couple of the ports. 

 

It's a different company now than in 2014.

 

[Rbullenut]

On 7/26/2019 at 10:01 PM, papaflamingo said:

I'm curious, what profession are you in? 

Probably not in a field that requires proper grammar.

[CruisingDaddy]

Thanks to the cruising community.  I appreciate all your responses and advice provided.  As some asked to keep you posted, I will be going on my cruise even with the change in itinerary.  I'm sure I will have a great time because being on any cruise is way better than not being on a cruise at all. 😀

[BensonFan711]

On 7/29/2019 at 1:30 PM, mom2tcdx2 said:

I guess I am more of an odd duck when it comes to cruise bookings.  I booked based more on the ship, and rarely do I even look where the ship is actually going.  Sometimes I do look between say Eastern or Western Caribbean, but honestly I have seen most of those places enough that I cruise for the ship not the destination.  

 

Only place I really try to avoid is booking Nassau, just don't really care for it and if we have a ship go there we stay on the ship.  I also don't care for Jamaica, and we often we also stay on the ship there as well.  As for San Juan, I prefer San Juan over St. Thomas.  However I really like seeing the feral cats along the waterfront, so my husband and I always go and take the kitties food when we do.  Last cruise on the Allure we met a kitty that we ended up adopting and had flown to Virginia.  So I would rather go to San Juan over St. Thomas any day.  But each of us has our own preferences.  

 

I do the same thing! Two years ago, I booked Oasis because I really just wanted to spend a week on Oasis.  Then Irma hit....and then Maria hit.  So I called my TA and asked how much the Eastern Caribbean leg the week after my Western cruise was.  Considering the hurricanes and itinerary changes, we got that week at a stupid cheap price.  So cheap, we downgraded our balcony to an oceanview and took a guarateed interior for the second week, and paid LESS than the original 7 nights in the balcony.  Deal of a lifetime.  And we called that second leg the "lottery cruise" - no idea what cabin we were in or what ports we were going to.  It was fun!!!!