Pride of America drama

[amyh13]

I am confused at to why NCL keeps pushing back the start date for POA.  I know ships are sailing to Hawaii.  Final Payment is due on Friday.  I we could drive to the port that is one thing, but people have to make a significant investment for airfare to Hawaii and refundable fares are ridiculously priced.  It makes me a little nervous to wait and book airfare 6 weeks out.  Grrrrr.  I booked this trip pre-covid and have been looking forward to it for so long.  I got a steal on a suite so I hate to let it go.  

[LGW59]

2 minutes ago, amyh13 said:

I am confused at to why NCL keeps pushing back the start date for POA.  I know ships are sailing to Hawaii.  Final Payment is due on Friday.  I we could drive to the port that is one thing, but people have to make a significant investment for airfare to Hawaii and refundable fares are ridiculously priced.  It makes me a little nervous to wait and book airfare 6 weeks out.  Grrrrr.  I booked this trip pre-covid and have been looking forward to it for so long.  I got a steal on a suite so I hate to let it go.  

Good luck

[steamboats]

I would have been on a plane today... for the Jan 22nd cruise. Now it´s postponed including the April 2nd departure. We´re rebooked for May. Hope this will happen.

 

steamboats

[shof515]

the pride is the one of the hardest and difficult ships to have crew onboard because they can only use American crew onboard. if they have crew issues with getting them onboard then sadly more cruises need to be canceled 

[vacation44]

1 hour ago, amyh13 said:

I am confused at to why NCL keeps pushing back the start date for POA.  I know ships are sailing to Hawaii.  Final Payment is due on Friday.  I we could drive to the port that is one thing, but people have to make a significant investment for airfare to Hawaii and refundable fares are ridiculously priced.  It makes me a little nervous to wait and book airfare 6 weeks out.  Grrrrr.  I booked this trip pre-covid and have been looking forward to it for so long.  I got a steal on a suite so I hate to let it go.  

I completely understand how you feel.   We have a POA booked for March 2023 and the price of air is indeed a significant investment.    

 

Best wishes to you that it works out.

[chengkp75]

1 hour ago, shof515 said:

the pride is the one of the hardest and difficult ships to have crew onboard because they can only use American crew onboard. if they have crew issues with getting them onboard then sadly more cruises need to be canceled 

Bingo.  And it is not just that the crew needs to be US, every single one of them needs to be credentialed as a merchant mariner by the USCG (including accredited onshore safety training, and an FBI background check).  All of this takes time and money to get the potential crew just to join the ship for the first time.  No foreign flag hotel crew need this level of documentation, and marine crew have lesser standards than USCG that they need to meet.

[ChiefMateJRK]

I was booked on the same sailing, and I cancelled it Monday.  I have a POA cruise booked each year from 2023 - 2025, so we'll go whenever this all blows over.  In the meantime, there are many other places to cruise.

[amyh13]

That makes sense about the crew.  I will likely stick it out and reschedule if necessary if they will honor my price.  Luckily we are cruising in April so I can get my fix after almost 3 years.

[chengkp75]

7 minutes ago, amyh13 said:

That makes sense about the crew.  I will likely stick it out and reschedule if necessary if they will honor my price.  Luckily we are cruising in April so I can get my fix after almost 3 years.

That is why POA habitually sails short handed, as there is no readily available pool of dishwashers and housekeepers with the proper training and documentation, just waiting around for a job.  I suspect that most of the crew from prior to the shutdown have moved on to jobs that pay more (nearly any), and that don't require you to be away from home for 4 months, and share a cabin with strangers.

[The Traveling Man]

35 minutes ago, chengkp75 said:

Bingo.  And it is not just that the crew needs to be US, every single one of them needs to be credentialed as a merchant mariner by the USCG (including accredited onshore safety training, and an FBI background check).  All of this takes time and money to get the potential crew just to join the ship for the first time.  No foreign flag hotel crew need this level of documentation, and marine crew have lesser standards than USCG that they need to meet.

Any idea when they implemented those regulations?  When we sailed on the PoA in December 2016 we were told by the General Manager that only 75% of the crew had to be US residents.  We met several officers and crew members whose citizenship was other than US, but they were documented US residents.  We also met a few who lived outside the US.  Also, this is first time I've heard anything about a requirement that everyone, all the way down the roster to the waiters and stewards, had to be Coast Guard certified as merchant mariners.  Could you please quote your source for this info?

[julig22]

13 minutes ago, amyh13 said:

That makes sense about the crew.  I will likely stick it out and reschedule if necessary if they will honor my price.  Luckily we are cruising in April so I can get my fix after almost 3 years.

Good luck with that.  My 2023 cruise, re-booked from 2022, re-booked from 2021 is about 35% more.

[chengkp75]

42 minutes ago, The Traveling Man said:

Any idea when they implemented those regulations?  When we sailed on the PoA in December 2016 we were told by the General Manager that only 75% of the crew had to be US residents.  We met several officers and crew members whose citizenship was other than US, but they were documented US residents.  We also met a few who lived outside the US.  Also, this is first time I've heard anything about a requirement that everyone, all the way down the roster to the waiters and stewards, had to be Coast Guard certified as merchant mariners.  Could you please quote your source for this info?

My source is 46 years sailing in the US merchant marine, and having actually worked on one of NCL's US flag cruise ships.  It is true, that up to 25% of unlicensed crew (not deck or engine officers) may be non-US citizens, but they must be resident aliens (Green Card).  I won't go into searching the CFR's for the USCG regulation numbers that require that all crew who hold an emergency duty (everyone) must have a merchant mariner's credential, take a 40 hour shoreside Basic Safety Training course (basic firefighting and lifesaving equipment) (foreign hotel crew need only a 4 hour "Personal Safety and Social Consciousness" course onboard.  Those regulations have been in effect for decades.

 

NCL was able to get an act of Congress passed where a certain amount of crew on their US flag ships are not either US citizens or US residents (still holding to the 25% non-citizen level).  This was done over strenuous objection by the USCG, as USCG training requirements and documentation are more strict than other countries, and trying to do a background check on a resident of another country is almost impossible.  These crew are supervisory, brought on to teach/train US hotel crew.  The requirements for these NRAC (Non-Resident Alien Crew) are that they have worked for NCL for at least 10 years prior to applying for NRAC status, NCL applies for a H2B work visa for them, and assumes all financial and legal responsibility for the crew while working in the US.  They are paid US wages, and have US Social Security and Taxes, and Hawaiian state tax withheld from their pay.  The USCG's major problem with this was issuing merchant mariner documents to non-residents.

 

Just for grins, I did search for the CFR:  46CFR15.403b(1) and 46CFR15.404h. 

Edited January 19, 2022 by chengkp75

[Oceansaway17]

1 hour ago, julig22 said:

Good luck with that.  My 2023 cruise, re-booked from 2022, re-booked from 2021 is about 35% more.

yes the prices for POA have jumped a lot over the last 16 months.

[NikiPinkston]

I really sympathize!  We decided to cancel our January, 2022 POA cruise & reschedule to this November a couple of months ago (previously rescheduled four times from March, 2020) as it seemed like Hawaii re-opening to cruising again was just moving very slowly, and last month our January cruise was ultimately canceled.   I feel your pain as it's no fun playing the guessing, waiting & hoping game.  We had paid for our airfare & had to reschedule it now to avoid penalties but, of course, we had to pay the difference in fare and it had gone up a good amount.  I'm sorry to say that the fare for the POA had also gone up each time we re-booked, quite a bit from our first booking.  It's costing NCL a bundle to have these ships remain idle so, hopefully, they're working very hard to staff the POA.  (BTW, this will be our second POA cruise & it's a great experience.)  With ships now sailing to Hawaii, I think that there's hope & I'm sending you all good wishes that you will sail!

[Cindy]

Now that I've had myself a good cry I'm trying to figure out my options. Luckily we can push our air out again as long as we book by the end of May, and there's a cruise in October that would work for us.

 

Unfortunately that would be POA try #8 (we were cancelled once before Covid for drydock and we moved the cruise twice on our own after this mess started), and I'm just not sure how much longer I'm willing to let NCL hold on to thousands of my dollars. 😪

 

I'm about 50/50 right now to go ahead and go to Hawaii in March, stay 4/5 nights in Maui and 5 nights in Oahu, and be done with it. We've never been to Hawaii -- we're more New England/mountains/Europe travelers, but the cruise seemed like a good idea when we booked it 2.5 years ago! This was supposed to be our 60th birthdays trip. By the time we get there who knows how old we'll be!

 

Does anybody have any insight into how long the staffing problems might persist? I understand the constraints the POA operates under. I guess my fear is that in the current job market trying to staff the ship is going to be almost impossible. I don't want to put all my eggs in the October basket if it's just not going to happen.

[chengkp75]

36 minutes ago, Cindy said:

Does anybody have any insight into how long the staffing problems might persist?

The real problem is, if you have crew who are documented and trained, yet you can't fully staff the vessel, what do you do with that available crew?  Do you pay them to stay at home on standby, exacerbating the money drain on the company?  Or, do you let them sit at home and hope they don't find a better job in the meantime, and then you have to go through the whole training and documentation routine again.

[Cindy]

35 minutes ago, chengkp75 said:

The real problem is, if you have crew who are documented and trained, yet you can't fully staff the vessel, what do you do with that available crew?  Do you pay them to stay at home on standby, exacerbating the money drain on the company?  Or, do you let them sit at home and hope they don't find a better job in the meantime, and then you have to go through the whole training and documentation routine again.

Thanks! We're really leaning towards giving up on the cruise and going to Hawaii in March. I know it's a no-win situation for them. Maybe this just wasn't meant to be.😩

[chengkp75]

9 minutes ago, Cindy said:

Thanks! We're really leaning towards giving up on the cruise and going to Hawaii in March. I know it's a no-win situation for them. Maybe this just wasn't meant to be.😩

I sympathize, and if I were doing another trip to Hawaii (went on our honeymoon back in '76), I'd try to squeeze a day or two in for Kauai, probably at the expense of Oahu.

[Crazy planning mom]

6 hours ago, amyh13 said:

 

Agree.  Kauai is gorgeous.  

Edited January 19, 2022 by Crazy planning mom

[Crazy planning mom]

15 minutes ago, Cindy said:

Thanks! We're really leaning towards giving up on the cruise and going to Hawaii in March. I know it's a no-win situation for them. Maybe this just wasn't meant to be.😩

Thats what we did.  After our Alaska cruise was cancelled in June, we decided to just fly there and experience it.

[Cindy]

We decided to kick the can down the road one last time. One way or another we are flying to Honolulu on September 27th!

 

We need to go to Hawaii! I looked yesterday, and my first deposit for this cruise was July 1, 2019.😱

 

I tried to plan land for the same dates in March/April as the cancelled cruise, and I was really having a hard time with availability. This time I will be ready with back-up (refundable) hotel reservations for both Kauai and Maui, and use my hotel reservations for Honolulu whether we cruise or not.
 

I think the last day we can make changes to our air is May 27, so we will have a decision to make towards the end of May. If the POA isn’t back in service by then I will probably request a refund and go with plan B.

[mscdivina2016]

On 1/19/2022 at 2:12 PM, amyh13 said:

 I will likely stick it out and reschedule if necessary if they will honor my price. 

🤣

I have lost 9 cruises with NCL and they will gladly refund you. The prices are double what I already have booked over a year ago. I have 7 booked.

[cruiser123!]

not to add insult to injury here, but you will probably need your booster shots now too.  Maui is requiring it of visitors.  I suspect the other islands will follow shortly.

 

[ajs922]

We had booked this cruise in 2020 then 2021 but cancelled both times. Now the cruise's price has gotten so high we have given up doing it on NCL. Looking at other cruise lines or just flying there and saying on two islands. Sailing out of San Fran., CA might be the way to go. The flight is much lower and shorter as well. Just thinking. Doing Alaska, on the Encore, for the second time, I hope, in late June. 

[ChiefMateJRK]

33 minutes ago, cruiser123! said:

not to add insult to injury here, but you will probably need your booster shots now too.  Maui is requiring it of visitors.  I suspect the other islands will follow shortly.

 

Many of us get our boosters regardless of who is "requiring" them.  😎