Are ships sailing at full capacity?

[MISTER 67]

10 minutes ago, MISTER 67 said:

We sailed on Carbbean Princess on 11/28 and she had 1400 on board, we sailed again on her for the Christmas cruise and we had 1500 on board. No issues at all, everyone was masked, food and entertainment were very good and the crew was just fantastic. With Omicron now with us, we will hold off though there are some great deals for January sailings, you can go on RCI for 273 bucks for a 7 day cruise out of Tampa. Caribbean Princess has sailings for 349.00.

 

Edited January 1, 2022 by MISTER 67

[kywildcatfanone]

5 hours ago, pms4104 said:

Likely good reasons not to do so ... use your imagination why cruiselines are not doing so.

You care to enlighten me then?  

[pms4104]

1 minute ago, kywildcatfanone said:

You care to enlighten me then?  

Sure ... too few booked onboard might cause some to cancel and too many onboard might cause others to cancel.

 

Obviously, the cruiselines need revenues to stay in biz ... and they have no obligation to reveal pax count to the public and possibly jeopardize monies coming in.

 

Why should it matter to anyone contemplating a cruise how many are booked anyway? 

[capriccio]

4 hours ago, pms4104 said:

Obviously, the cruiselines need revenues to stay in biz ... and they have no obligation to reveal pax count to the public and possibly jeopardize monies coming in.

 

Nor do they want to share so easily that information with their competitors.

[iamaqt2]

1 minute ago, capriccio said:

 

Nor do they want to share so easily that information with their competitors.

 

4 hours ago, pms4104 said:

Sure ... too few booked onboard might cause some to cancel and too many onboard might cause others to cancel.

 

Obviously, the cruiselines need revenues to stay in biz ... and they have no obligation to reveal pax count to the public and possibly jeopardize monies coming in.

 

Why should it matter to anyone contemplating a cruise how many are booked anyway? 

People are curious about passenger loads these days.. we all know the ships are at reduced capacity.  And Princess isn't hiding the numbers.  I used the Crew Call feature to inquire about the number of passengers on the sailing after mine because I was asked, and they answered my question no problem. 
Ruby Princess recently sailed with 738 passengers, and the Patters reflect that reduced passenger load in a reduction of onboard services.  There is only one main show in the evening and the International Cafe is closing nightly at midnight.  I for one am glad to have that knowledge going into my cruise.  It sets reasonable expectations for me.

[caribill]

On 12/31/2021 at 1:19 PM, lhsail said:

Don’t know that this or a mock booking works right now. Due to capacity controls it seems blocks of cabins are made unavailable. At least that’s how it was on our recent Celebrity cruises. If you did a mock booking you would have thought many more cabins were booked than actually were. 

 

I would not expect a mock booking to give any indication of capacity controls.

 

Aside from cabins reserved for possible quarantine purposes, every vacant cabin should show up for a mock booking until any imposed capacity limit is reached at which point all new booking would be prohibited.

 

 

[kywildcatfanone]

11 hours ago, iamaqt2 said:

 

People are curious about passenger loads these days.. we all know the ships are at reduced capacity.  And Princess isn't hiding the numbers.  I used the Crew Call feature to inquire about the number of passengers on the sailing after mine because I was asked, and they answered my question no problem. 
Ruby Princess recently sailed with 738 passengers, and the Patters reflect that reduced passenger load in a reduction of onboard services.  There is only one main show in the evening and the International Cafe is closing nightly at midnight.  I for one am glad to have that knowledge going into my cruise.  It sets reasonable expectations for me.

Yep, this is me and why i.mentioned it.  During times I think it would be an advantage to have this available.  If they don't want to openly advertise it, that is fine, but make it available behind your login.

[rabin1]

I just got off Caribbean this morning. Sailed two weeks over Christmas and New Years as a B2B

First week 1200

Second week 2500

This week beginning today 1100

This was all told to me by Director of Guest Services 

Kathy

Edited January 2, 2022 by rabin1

[Coral]

7 hours ago, caribill said:

 

I would not expect a mock booking to give any indication of capacity controls.

 

Aside from cabins reserved for possible quarantine purposes, every vacant cabin should show up for a mock booking until any imposed capacity limit is reached at which point all new booking would be prohibited.

 

 

I did use a mock booking to tell my Grand sailing. It was helpful IMO for my sailing.

 

There were huge sections that were not bookable which I interpreted as "not available/blocked" and the sections that were open, only had a few cabins booked here and there It this case - it proved to be true as the ship probably had 450 passengers.

 

They definitely kept passengers in certain areas and blocked off areas so they didn't have to put room stewards there.

Edited January 2, 2022 by Coral

[Dar & Bob]

7 hours ago, caribill said:

 

I would not expect a mock booking to give any indication of capacity controls.

 

Aside from cabins reserved for possible quarantine purposes, every vacant cabin should show up for a mock booking until any imposed capacity limit is reached at which point all new booking would be prohibited.

 

 

Does anyone have an idea what the possible capacity limit is?

[caribill]

1 hour ago, Coral said:

They definitely kept passengers in certain areas and blocked off areas so they didn't have to put room stewards there.

 

Understandable if they do not have the staff to support a higher passenger load.

 

However as indicated in the post by Rabin1 above, holiday cruises had significantly more passengers than non-holiday cruises. In Rabin1's example, the ship was at about 80% capacity and I doubt staff was reduced after the holidays.

[Coral]

4 minutes ago, caribill said:

 

Understandable if they do not have the staff to support a higher passenger load.

 

However as indicated in the post by Rabin1 above, holiday cruises had significantly more passengers than non-holiday cruises. In Rabin1's example, the ship was at about 80% capacity and I doubt staff was reduced after the holidays.

Mine was a holiday sailing Dec 20-Dec 30th. Approx 450 passengers. We had 800 crew onboard on the Grand. We had adequate staff.

 

The sailings before and after were much higher (almost 1500 passengers embarked when we got off).

 

They still consolidated passenger cabins to certain areas.

Edited January 2, 2022 by Coral

[caribill]

1 hour ago, Dar & Bob said:

Does anyone have an idea what the possible capacity limit is?

In Rabin1's example above, the ship was at about 80% capacity, but I do not know if that was a limit.

[caribill]

1 minute ago, Coral said:

Mine was a holiday sailing Dec 20-Dec 30th. Approx 450 passengers. We had 800 crew onboard on the Grand.

 

 

Wow. That certainly reversed the usual proportion of crew to passengers.

[Coral]

Just now, caribill said:

 

Wow. That certainly reversed the usual proportion of crew to passengers.

It was amazing. I doubt I will ever have that again!

[MsSoCalCruiser]

I wish there was a way to find out what the occupancy will be prior to boarding. I am interested in the Majestic Princess 2/19/2022 and 2/26/2022 sailings.  One is a theme cruise and the other isn’t but both are during spring break.  If anyone has any connections please see if you can find out for me.  

[PrincessLuver]

On 1/2/2022 at 10:58 AM, caribill said:

 

Understandable if they do not have the staff to support a higher passenger load.

 

However as indicated in the post by Rabin1 above, holiday cruises had significantly more passengers than non-holiday cruises. In Rabin1's example, the ship was at about 80% capacity and I doubt staff was reduced after the holidays.

According to crew on the Majestic the Crown Princess is in LA and being used to house crew for a variety of reasons......they are trying to adjust crews to ship passenger loads as they are finalized.....it does not seem like there is excess staff on board at this time....also....not sure if there are going to be any production shows on this 10 day cruise....very little live music anywhere....

[Coral]

1 hour ago, PrincessLuver said:

According to crew on the Majestic the Crown Princess is in LA and being used to house crew for a variety of reasons......they are trying to adjust crews to ship passenger loads as they are finalized.....it does not seem like there is excess staff on board at this time....also....not sure if there are going to be any production shows on this 10 day cruise....very little live music anywhere....

We had 2 large production shows and 1 Christmas show at the end of our 10 night cruise. British Invasion and a Soul Music one. It started out very quiet in the cruise as far as production shows went. We did have a really good violinist from Lord of the Dance on our cruise in the Theatre. She didn't have many people attend her show.

[arizonaperson]

On 12/25/2021 at 2:18 PM, kywildcatfanone said:

Considering finally booking our first cruise since the pandemic. I have read enough to know that masks are required indoors, but are ships sailing at capacity or are they capacity controlled?  Is there  anywhere to find out what the capacity is for a future sailing?  Looking at possibly a 10 day Caribbean in March, thinking it would be less crowded than a 7 day.

 

TIA

No, I don’t believe ships are sailing at capacity. Probably pretty difficult to find out load capacity for future sailing. Too many variables.

Right now for example Majestic December 29th, 2021 -10 day cruise sailing at about 2,035 passengers. Ship holds 3560.

[HaveDogWillTravel]

If there is a live from thread for the cruise just before yours you can ask someone to find out. A crew chat inquiry while onboard will answer a question about the number booked on the next sailing. 
You can also look at the roll call for the sailing before yours. If it’s still active ask there. Basically you need someone on board to ask a crew member. 

[capriccio]

On the Caribbean Princess right now.  Full capacity (all berths)is 3500..  Last week there were 2500 passengers.  This week there are 1001!  No waits for elevators, excellent service, happy staff and passengers.  Passengers following the masking protocols too. 

An interesting tidbit from the CD:  over 500 passengers are first time Princess cruisers.

[cruisingrob21]

Majestic sailed a 4 day voyage 12/18 to 12/22 with 1500 pax (~41%)

 

Cabin steward believed it was related to travel rules effectively limiting non-US tourists

Edited January 4, 2022 by cruisingrob21

[Hlitner]

I think most of the cruise lines (including Princess) have not be limiting capacity other than keeping enough empty cabins to meet their needs for an isolation/quarantine area.  Not only do they need this for COVID, but most newly arriving crew are put into quarantine for specific time (dictated by the medical staff) that is sometimes in excess of two weeks.   The problem faced on most cruises is the lack of bookings.  I would assume that all the Omicron publicity has accelerated the number of cancellations which is also not helpful to the cruise lines.

 

I agree with the posters who said that Princess is not hiding the actual numbers aboard.  In fact, when we were recently on the Enchanted we heard the usual speech that broke down the passenger numbers by country.  On our 2 cruises (starting Nov 10) we had about 1800 passengers.  We were never told the actual number of working crew but there were certainly some reductions among the wait staff in the MDRs (one of the 3 MDRs was kept closed during our 20 days).

 

Hank

[jwattle]

1 hour ago, Hlitner said:

I think most of the cruise lines (including Princess) have not be limiting capacity other than keeping enough empty cabins to meet their needs for an isolation/quarantine area.  Not only do they need this for COVID, but most newly arriving crew are put into quarantine for specific time (dictated by the medical staff) that is sometimes in excess of two weeks.   The problem faced on most cruises is the lack of bookings.  I would assume that all the Omicron publicity has accelerated the number of cancellations which is also not helpful to the cruise lines.

 

I agree with the posters who said that Princess is not hiding the actual numbers aboard.  In fact, when we were recently on the Enchanted we heard the usual speech that broke down the passenger numbers by country.  On our 2 cruises (starting Nov 10) we had about 1800 passengers.  We were never told the actual number of working crew but there were certainly some reductions among the wait staff in the MDRs (one of the 3 MDRs was kept closed during our 20 days).

 

Hank

It has been said that the other dining room is also being used for crew so that they can socially distance more during meals. 🥂

[Coral]

10 hours ago, capriccio said:

On the Caribbean Princess right now.  Full capacity (all berths)is 3500..  Last week there were 2500 passengers.  This week there are 1001!  No waits for elevators, excellent service, happy staff and passengers.  Passengers following the masking protocols too. 

An interesting tidbit from the CD:  over 500 passengers are first time Princess cruisers.

I made sure to tip several people extra as I was thinking their salaries were down with less people. Staff seemed happy - I just hoped their salaries were ok. Plus - I really did have exceptional service due to less people and the tip was definitely earned. I probably should have tipped even more.