mcship

It will happen. I use a TA for NCL, and did for my upcoming Princess, because free grats on the Princess. NCL it is cheaper thru TA, and free grats. Carnival on the other hand, cheaper (by just a touch) to use their system. Since Princess IS Carnival, I would expect that to carry over, but may also be dependent on the PAX. If most Princess book via TA, they would be careful in yanking that out from under the TA. But, cutting fare by 50 bucks vs TA, would drive many to the web site.

Yes, that would be the "billion words" part I referenced.

FAS is done at time of booking. Not really an ad-on. You either book "sail away" or FAS. (FAS premium was not out yet). old FAS had - among other things - 3 specialty dining. new FAS dropped that to 2. People with old FAS got 3. They did not lose a dinner just because the terms changed. The wifi package changed too, and the old FAS got the old package. Old was 250 minutes (yea, minutes are stupid, but that is what they had) per booking. New was 150 per person. If on the old, you had the 250 total.

When NCL changed their FAS program, people who had bought under the old (3 dinners) got their 3 dinners. New bookings got 2. It is not difficult.

The complaint if not about the $$. it is the principle. If it were $0.01 it would be an issue. I am in real estate. If the seller fails to disclose a 20 dollar fee to the HOA, the seller has to pay. Even if the HOA changed the fee the day before, and the seller had no say in the matter. Because that is what was agreed to. 20 bucks on a half million is totally immaterial. But it matters - in principle. If the seller finds out during the process, and discloses, it gives the buyer an opportunity to cancel. Yes, over 20 bucks (no, in reality nobody is going to do this, but could). that is how a contract works. Princess said the fare includes oceanNow and pizza from alfredos. They absolutely can change that going forward. but need to keep it for those who already booked. it was part of the "contract" (and yes, I know, their legal team has a billion words saying otherwise, so "legally" they can do it, I am speaking logically)

I dont disagree there. Worst part of all of this, is that is soooooooo simple to properly manage, but they dont. From a human perspective having 1000 different fare categories, packages, etc is overwhelming, so they think it is "hard". From a system design perspective it is childs play, so easy and trivial. But management rarely understands - and that is well beyond just cruise lines.

It is not "optional items". They were included in the base fare (pizza and oceanNow). If a company can arbitrarily change the terms of your purchase, then why bother? Yes, in the fine print, some of this is covered from a lawyer perspective. But lawyering up is not good customer service.

Chairs will only be included in the PlusPlus84.523 package.

"increase profits" They have to get back to profit first. Right now they are not forecast to do that until 2024. Current quarter is looking estimated positive, but not enough to pull the whole year up.

The OceanNow, being part of the standard offering, but no longer being free is apparently a major sticking point for folks. That and pizza (which I don't understand, but anyway). It would have been easy to do it the same way as gratuity increases. So if you are fully paid by X (even if that means you pay in full early) then you still get oceanNow and pizza free. If you wait past X, you do not. Or they could have simply had folks choose to make their deposit non-refundable by X, and "lock in" the free pizza. There are a bunch of very simple things they could have done, which again, would not appease everyone, but would reduce the number. Same could be said for everything.

That was my point. They could easily do the same for all of the changes. Gratuities are the exact same as anything else. This would be the better approach, in that it would give folks warning. You would still have people griping (because people), but less of it.

Agreed. Easy enough to make the changes going forward. Or announce that if not fully paid by X, etc. Just like the pre-paid gratuities. When those have gone up, across lines, if you have already paid by X date, you get the current/old rate. After that , the new rate kicks in. Simple enough to do that for these changes too. Paid in full by X, you get free pizza. Wait until after X, and you do not. If you have plus paid pre-X the pizza does not count as a casual, after X it does. This is TRIVIAL design.

Yep, you are correct, they restructured that in May/June. Good. There is WAY to much overhead Just showing how they don't pay attention, the bio for Padgett says he still reports to Jan. You would think they would fix that right away. Me, I would be firing the person in charge of the web site (this is not an IT thing, it is simple content). If you have to be told to do the obvious...

Padgett is a brand manager. He reports to Jan Swartz, another brand manager over Holland America Group, who in turn reports to Josh Weinstein the CEO. They can put all the fake titles they want on people, but "brand manager" is the one they should have. It is like a bank, where everyone has "vice-president" titles. Josh Weinstein has been in place for a year (August 2022). So a year. Needless to say, the changes are going to continue and/or ramp up for quite a while. And at the end of the day, they all "report" to Micky Arison who is not going anywhere, since his father Ted started the company. I use quote on "report" because chair of the board is supposed to be out of the day to day operations. But one does not do well by crossing the chairman. But, Micky is 74 yrs old. When he steps down, who knows. His son Nick is the CEO of the Miami Heat (which Micky owns). Would he come over to Carnival? That would be quite a leap NBA to Cruise Industry, but who knows.

It would not be complicated. They could have 1000 different programs. Buy X, your medallion is run, it charges correctly. This is elementary level system design. Now, from a customer service perspective, the person at the desk, trying to explain to Bob why his package is different than John - over and over and over. That could be a real issue.