KnowTheScore

1 hour ago, Aplmac said:

I fear that ship will need a mega-dry-dock, to haul out all the carpets

all the air-conditioning ducting,

steam-clean the whole ruddy thing from stem to stern! Fumigate it?

She's 16 years old now (which isn't that old for a ship).........

Yep.   It's going to be a very hard sell imho to get anyone in cabins on that ship after this whole episode.

7 hours ago, happy cruzer said:

So there may be certain cruises that seem to hold less risk ( yes, there is always some risk and it does change over time) than others.  Galveston to the Caribbean probably falls in that category at this time.  Any other ideas on what cruises may hold less risk?

I'm guessing you're just talking here about the risk of there being Coronavirus on-board a given cruise.

The bigger, more likely risk is that there will be people on the cruise with cold/flu symptoms which may then cause ports to refuse you entry until they can be tested and cleared.   In respect of this risk I think all cruises are equal.   With 1000s of passengers and crew on-board all ships it's a nailed on certainty that there will be people with cold/flu symptoms imho.

1 hour ago, Ava79 said:

It's high time. Cause the way these poor people were left on a ship where the conditions for spreading of the virus are just perfect, such as general ventilation, adjacent cabins and so on... it's just inconceivable to the mind! What for?

 

UPD: number of cases has increased to 454 by now, unfortunately

Totally agree.

The number of cases is increasing at a very alarming rate day by day.  

Within about a week we've gone from 66 to 128 to 218 to 355 to 454

The Americans are fortunate to have been evacuated and returned to the USA even though they will now spend another 2 weeks in a military quarantine base.   It just seems utter madness to keep all these people cooped up together.  Empty the entire ship, put everyone in quarantine areas ashore and sterilise the whole ship imho.

I can't agree Shipgeeks

Cruise lines do their best to entice people to book early esp when a new brochure comes out.   It is to their benefit if they can get cabins booked as early as possible.  Surely helps forward planning.

But if they are going to brutally penalise people who book early and who are loyal then what is the point booking early at all?

Yes, if we were in some incredibly exclusive market where you absolutely had to get in first and book that cabin then booking early would be necessary but really that's not the case is it?!  We're not booking trips into space are we?

And let's also be clear on the point about cabin choice.  The cabins are all split into various different grades and the ticket price is attached to that grade.   So it should make the slightest difference when you book, the price is whatever your chosen grade of cabin is.   Yet cruise lines persist in dropping the prices as you get nearer to the cruise date in order to get bums in cabins and it just creates such immense bad feeling between passengers themselves and between passengers and cruise lines.

Personally I firmly believe that those people who book the earliest, the loyal bread and butter customer base, should be the ones offered discounts and those leaving things to the last minute should be the ones paying the premium.  If they did this cruises wold get booked up well in advance.

It's a lovely place for a breakfast, some tasty options on that menu and if I remember rightly they stay open for breakfast slightly later than the main restaurant.  Always a plus in my book.

30 minutes ago, wowzz said:

Most inconsiderate passengers of the cruise award, goes to the 4 passengers (presumably doing a b2b, given the lack of any type of luggage) who quite happily sat in the best 4 seats reading and doing cross stitch, whilst all around them people were searching for some floor space to sit on ! 

Consider however that like everyone else they need to be out of their cabin so the steward can do the cleaning and all the other places they might wish to sit and relax will likely all be designated waiting places for disembarking passengers.  Not much they can do as a result.   If the weather were lovely and warm and sunny they would doubtless go and sit outside on the upper decks but given the awful weather we are currently having they need to find somewhere inside.

5 hours ago, ABQrobin said:

 IF....  you are traveling using a Passport, you get off the ship and walk up to a person with a video screen.  They tell you to look at the screen, it takes a picture of your face and matches your face with your passport, facial recognition software. 

Isn't that a blatant invasion of privacy and data?    Can you refuse to be bagged and tagged in such a way?

“What ones do you remember?”

I expect a few people remember the fate of the "Aurora" P&O ship that failed to do it's World Cruise in 2005 due to propulsion failure and the passengers just went round the Isle Of Wight and back to Southampton.   Mind you they got free drinks on-board for the duration and another free future cruise so they were probably not too disappointed !

On ‎2‎/‎15‎/‎2020 at 12:16 AM, crystalspin said:

They say no publicity is bad publicity (or something like that). Carnival's stock price has already started to rebound.

I'd say you were badly mistaken.   The CCL share price has fallen from 37p down to 30p levels which is where it languishes now.   It remains to be seen where it goes from here and that will depend how the Coronavirus situation develops in the next few months.  

7 minutes ago, Mkrug17 said:

Booked two cabins for four people and in less than one week the price has dropped almost $100 per person. I paid in full, added insurance and prepaid gratuities. What options do I have?

Happened to us recently on P&O Cruises UK.  

We had also heard that people often complain and get equiv OBC for the amount lost.   When we contacted P&O we were refused.   So just another nail in the coffin for us with P&O.  Will be cancelling cruises we have forward booked with them.

Since every cruise line is different Mkrug your only option is to phone or email your cruise line and complain as bitterly and aggressively as you can and ask for a refund of the balance or equiv OBC if that's acceptable to you.

If they refuse then just vote with your feet and go to another cruise line and let your cruise line know that this is what you are doing and that they are losing a customer.  With lots of people doing likewise they will have to take note.

It is for me a most ridiculous strategy/business model for cruise lines to take.   Especially at this time, they need to take care to look after their long standing core customer base, most of whom book early when catalogues come out.  If cruise lines are going to start undercutting those people later on and not redress the balance for them then they are imho being extremely foolish and have little regard for their customers.

If you still get nowhere with the cruise line and still go on the cruise then remove that money from their coffers by curbing your on-board expenditure.

On ‎2‎/‎12‎/‎2020 at 7:34 PM, Ava79 said:

Finally see here a person who understands that a fuss with the coronavirus is too exaggerated and only God knows why and who benefits from it

With the best will in the world you surely can't suggest that Coronavirus has been exaggerated on the Diamond Princess.

Confirmed cases there have spiralled upward day upon day.   41 to 66 to 137 to 218 and now to 355 !

The news today is suggesting that the spread in China might be slowing which is great news if true.

Back on topic

Number of cases on the quarantined Diamond Princess has now spiralled to 355

The USA are getting their people out of the ship.   Flying them home to the US to be placed into a military quarantine camp

Better late than never I guess.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/16/world/asia/china-coronavirus.html

All the ships I have been on require you to close the lid before flushing as the flush button is purposely situated behind the lid

In all fairness our bill at the end of a cruise these days is tiny.  Sometimes less than £100.   We make good use of our OBC which comes from 3 sources, booking on-board, OBC for the actual cruise itself and Carnival share holding.

We're not penny pinchers by any means and in years gone by we used to regularly have a bill of a few hundred.  It's just that these days with everything now changed and dumbed down and no longer particularly special, we don't engage in the activities we used to.   We've not big drinkers from the outset but we used to have a regular routine of a decadent pre-dinner drink in certain ship's bars, doing a little people watching and having canapés that were freely given.  We'd have a bottle of wine at the dining table and then maybe after dinner one or more drinks elsewhere.  By day we used to sit out on prom decks in lovely full length steamer chairs and order cocktails or other drinks.   Now the steamer chairs are gone, we no longer use the prom deck as a result and so don't buy cocktails. 

There are different ways to attract drinking revenue on ships.  You can steer things more like a local pub back home and attract lots of regular drinkers or you can steer things like a sophisticated wine bar with ambience and an aura of decadence about it that will attract less regular drinkers who will enjoy a more "special" experience. 

In terms of the drinks packages you are trying to weigh up it all depends on the specific package and your own lifestyle.

P&O have recently introduced some drinks packages and for it to be worth the money for someone I notionally calculate that they would need to be buying maybe 8 drinks a day to make it worth while.   I think that's a lot TBH but then I'm not a drinker.

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2 hours ago, Toofarfromthesea said:

What is your sense about whether the coronavirus is causing price decreases, and if it is, how far out?  Would it reach early 2021 cruises?  And would it reach destinations that are fare from the current major outbreak areas, like the Caribbean?

 

Thanks

There is no question that Coronavirus is going to hit the cruise industry extremely hard and for that matter the entire travel industry.  Some will try to play it all down and pretend all is well, nothing to worry about etc etc but the predictions are that this will be an unstoppable pandemic.    The virus has already spread far and wide, see here:

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/locations-confirmed-cases.html

That situation will only get worse, unquestionably.   Ships are being turned away from Thailand and Singapore and other Asian countries.  St Lucia and Dominica in the Caribbean closed themselves to cruise ships.   The Italian port of Civitavecchia refused entry to a cruise ship that had people on-board with cold/flu symptoms whilst those people were tested.

and so on

It's imho inevitable that cruise ticket prices will plummet as the virus situation spreads further and further.  In fact quite honesty if I had cruises booked as far as 2021 (which I do but I intend to cancel) then I would cancel now anyway and then re-book them later on because I reckon you'd save a packet.  Imagine how pee'd off you would be to get on board having paid £000s and find that lots of others got ridiculously low ticket prices.  All comes down to personal circumstances.

1 hour ago, chengkp75 said:

One, I have heard there is speculation that corona can be present in fecal matter, but I haven't seen that confirmed. 

You may thus be interested in this:

Latest Study Suggests The New Coronavirus Is Also Spreading Via Feces

https://www.sciencealert.com/latest-coronavirus-study-suggests-it-can-also-be-spread-through-poop

"Diarrhea may be a secondary path of transmission for the novel coronavirus, scientists said Friday following the publication of the latest study reporting patients with abdominal symptoms and loose stool"

"A total of 14 out of 138 patients (10 percent) in a Wuhan hospital who were studied in the new paper by Chinese authors in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) initially presented with diarrhea and nausea one or two days prior to development of fever and labored breathing."

"The first US patient diagnosed with 2019-nCoV also experienced loose bowel movements for two days and the virus was subsequently detected in his stool"

""Importantly, 2019-nCoV has been reported elsewhere in the feces of patients with atypical abdominal symptoms, similar to SARS which was also shed in urine, suggesting a fecal transmission route which is highly transmissible,"

"Fecal spread could present new challenges to the virus's containment, but is more likely to be a problem inside hospitals, which can become "amplifiers" of epidemics"

11 hours ago, bigrednole said:

1. Diabetics: Do the rooms have a fridge to keep insulin cold? Any recommendations on what to have the doctor provide since we will be out of country for a week?

 

As per other posts it's important to understand that the "fridge" in cruise cabins is invariably nowhere near the cold temperature of a domestic fridge and thus may be unsuitable for your needs.   With something that important health-wise you must contact your cruise line directly via email or phone to make them aware of your needs and let them explain how and where your meds need to be stored.

best

DIAMOND PRICESS CASES

The number of Coronavirus cases on the quarantined Diamond Princess has now risen again.

It started with just a few, then 41, then 66, then 137 and now 175 cases

At what point to we start to seriously reassess the notion that air-conditioning doesn't spread viruses between cabins?!!

Not a great time to be cruising imho.

24 minutes ago, Harry Peterson said:

 my guess is that it will be across Europe within a month or so, vaccines won’t be available until next year, and I have no desire to be on a cruise ship with a possible pool of infection.

It's already in Europe.  Bear in mind that the KNOWN cases are just a fraction of the total number of cases as many people who will have Coronavirus won't distinguish it from any other cold/flu or ILI.   Take a look at the picture link below to see the cases across the world:

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/02/12/04/24594710-7994165-There_are_more_than_43_000_cases_worldwide_so_far_and_more_than_-a-65_1581482704363.jpg

Germany : 14 cases

Italy : 3 cases

France: 11 cases

UK : 8 cases

Spain : 2 cases

etc

Remember these numbers are somewhat meaningless because they are only the KNOWN cases which are the ones serious enough that people went to GPs or hospitals.   There will imho be countless more cases than these.

8 cases of Coronavirus in the UK now.

From the Telegraph newspaper:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/02/10/british-government-would-do-coronavirus-spreads/

"Scientific modelling estimates that the UK “could experience up to 750,000 additional deaths over the course of a pandemic”, say the government’s planning documents.

“These figures might be expected to be reduced by the impact of countermeasures, but the effectiveness of such mitigation is not certain”, it adds.

Taking account of this, local planners have been set the target of preparing to extend capacity on a “precautionary but reasonably practicable basis”, and aim to cope with a population mortality rate of up to 210,000 to 315,000 additional deaths, possibly over as little as a 15-week period and perhaps half of these over 3 weeks at the height of the outbreak."

Main news on the radio in the UK this evening said that we should NOT think that Coronavirus is something that can be contained and that we are in the early stages of a pandemic.

I'm therefore not going to be complacent about all of this nor think that's it's something that can be ignored.   People need to be prepared imho and start thinking in terms of avoiding large public places.   8 confirmed cases in the UK and some of them are apparently not caused by any contact with Chinese people or any travel to Asia.   Remember the authorities in truth have absolutely no clue how many cases there are because they can only report the cases that have been specifically reported.  There will be a great many more not being reported imho.