BWIVince

Don’t you hate it when you’re born with reconditioned parts, when you’re pretty sure new parts were ordered? 😁. In my case I seemed to have inherited some from my mother, so at least I knew the previous owner. Vince

So that’s what Crystal’s execs meant when they said she’d been rehabilitated? 😁 Vince

Thank you for taking the time to share your review, Debra! Sorry to hear about your husband's passing, but I'm really glad you took the plunge and booked the trip. One of the topics that has come up on the board is the concern that the number of solo cabins sold would be regularly limited to the number of solo cabins allocated in the deck plans. It's great to hear they're at least continuing to book guarantees at the solo rate when they have the surplus inventory of doubles to work with. I think we were all hopeful it would work that way, but it's reassuring to hear that's working in practice as well. Thanks again! Vince

Nailed it! For the most part the lines have set up the cancellation penalties to align well with their outlays, and the patchwork of mitigators covers normal interruptions well, we just didn't have any (and still don't) backstop against the music stopping completely. Cruise lines may be fighting for different terms on their supplier contracts that may make it easier to recover their advance payments faster in an industry shutdown, but short of that tiny step, we're still meaningfully in the same boat. Vince

So I guess we needed my “lecture” after all…. Fancy that. 🙂 Cruise line reserve accounts are NOT an escrow, and I repeatedly explained this as two things were happening — Crystal’s statements explained the benefits of the reserve accounts and not the risks, and people were making false assumptions about how the accounts work (obviously). Reserve accounts only segregate CUSTOMER money, not the company’s money. Yes, they sort of act like a quasi-escrow because the cruise line has to hold deposits in a separate account that they can’t touch until the funds become non-refundable, at which point they become company funds (usually on a graduated scale). In theory cruise lines can then provide customers their money back even if all the customers cancel at once, because all the money that would be due the customers would be in reserve, with the company only taking money that wouldn’t be returned to the customer — in theory. In practice, there is a giant hole in this theory, and that comes when the company money has to be returned to customers en masse — it’s usually already spent on deposits with other suppliers and fixed costs, the entire reason for the graduated schedule that the money gets booked to the company. Prior to Covid, this usually just looked like an accident with a ship that would take it out of service for months, years, or permanently, because that caused a sustained reduction in capacity for the line (longer and broader than a weather cancellation), and cruise lines generally plugged this risk with insurance…. But then came Covid. Suddenly cruise lines had to come up with not just the customer money, but also the company money that was previously non-refundable, and they had limited to no insurance to back up what they had expected the risk to be. That left them scrambling to get refunds on deposits from their suppliers, but many of those suppliers were in the same boat as the cruise lines, causing lots of delays as everyone had to slowly scrape together refunds all up and down the supply chain. The second set of backstops besides insurance are the normally separate credit card reserves. Banks realize the risk of their policy of allowing chargebacks for an extended period of time on transactions where the merchant deliveries services at a future date, and mitigate this risk with steep cash reserves or bond requirements for companies like cruise lines. These are company funds that the bank controls completely, and is used to fulfill chargebacks in case the main accounts become depleted. What Crystal did prior to Covid were conventional reserve accounts, like all lines. What Crystal changed for the restart was they starting using their largest bank-controlled reserve account to hold all the customer money. While that IS a safer arrangement for most credit card customers, at the end of the day it really doesn’t protect customers from the scenario of mass-refunds of company (vs. customer) money, nor does it address the issue of customer credits, which are also company money. …And THAT is what I warned everyone about repeatedly. So it’s entirely dishonest to say I was trying to cover anything up for Crystal’s management — I explained over and over how reserves work and their risks, even before operations restarted in 2021. Vince

My pleasure! I’d happily take one of those suites for the convenient and stable location because the small obstructions don’t bother me, but I know other people are the opposite so I try not to minimize the significance of the obstruction. 🙂 Vince

A lot of people saved a lot of money by reading my “lectures”. I’ll leave it at that. 😏 Vince

The obstruction for the midship Aquamarines on Deck 9 are the lifeboats and tenders that hang under those suites. The regular lifeboat (it’s hard not to make that plural anymore) sits under the deck, but the cab of the tenders rise slightly above the deck, about to the top of the bulwark on the railings. The davits for the tenders have components that rise above the railings, but it’s not a solid obstruction (IMHO). If you google pictures of Symphony you can see exactly the degree of obstruction of each suite on deck 9. Hope this helps a little. Vince

IIRC, I explained countless times how the customer deposits are held by cruise lines, during the Covid shutdown, after the Covid restart, and after the assignment. Crystal implemented exactly what they said, but just like at all cruise lines, there are risks to that system of sequestering passenger deposits that I’ve been pointing out on this board for YEARS. This is exactly why I’ve been warning people since the start of the pandemic to never book travel (on ANY supplier) that’s outside the chargeback window on your form of payment. Vince

YMMV, Ivi…. I’m also a solo and I was just about as satisfied with NC’s solo offerings as OC’s, relative to fares in the rest of the luxury segment right now. From my observation of trip reports so far, solos continue to book a variety of categories on Crystal as they always have, and the single supplement has always been graduated. For my cruise next year, I had the option of booking the solos (which didn’t suit me in this case), or verandas for a higher supplement just like in the past. Fares are higher than in 2020, but where in the travel industry aren’t they? I wish Crystal hadn’t gone with dedicated solo cabins, but I expressed the risk of that years ago when this was floated out and I was in the minority, and my closing comment on that was “watch what you wish for”…. That said, I don’t think it’s the end of the world, and certainly didn’t keep me from booking Crystal as a solo. The evidence so far is very anecdotal, but I’m still seeing lots of solos I know booking Crystal so far. Vince

If the deck plans are anywhere near accurate, the bathroom window is the only part of the suite that’s actually near a lifeboat in the Deck 8 CPs, and since that part is built out from the superstructure, the lifeboat shouldn’t instruct the view. If you climbed in the tub and got up to the window, and looked completely to the side, I don’t know if you would see that lifeboat or not, but that should be the only way to see a lifeboat from any of the windows. Similarly, with the bathroom and dining area built out you can’t see the lifeboats from inside the balcony, but if you stick your head over the railing and look fore or aft you’ll be able to see part of the lifeboats. The deck 10 CP’s work the same way if you look down and aft, they’re just slightly further away and the boats are just in a different relative position. I wouldn’t personally think that anything about the deck 8 CP’s would be claustrophobic, but I know some people are sensitive to being able to see any part of the ship or lifeboats anywhere in their view no matter how far they stick their head out, so that’s why I was trying to be specific. Vince

I don’t understand why this has been such a big deal. Anyone that doesn’t think the fares are worth it doesn’t have to pay them. A Crystal cruise isn’t a life sustaining need, nor a regulated utility. There are plenty of other excellent vacation options in travel. Similarly, if the fares don’t sell, Crystal will lower the fares, just like old Crystal did. 🤷🏻‍♂️ Yield Management is a thing. Along those lines, no one forecasts a cruise operator is going to have the same loads in its third year of operation as its second month of business. If their current loads were that off from their forecast, they would have changed the fares or run promotions, Again, yield management is a thing. Vince

Crystal runs a little differently in that regard…. Not that it’s not Crystal’s goal to sell as many berths as possible, but there are a lot of complications: 1). Crystal has an exceptionally high rate of singles. The new single cabins sort of address this to a small degree, but based on my first hand experience so far, not every solo wants or is booking the designated solid cabins. Solos take out half the berths of each cabin they book. 2). Although not currently advertised, the third berths in the former penthouses still exist, which Crystal almost never sells (for many reasons). They may have taken these out of the current capacity number already, but since it’s sort of a constructed number and not an actual count of berths onboard, it’ll be interesting to see if any of these are taken into account at all. 3). Some cabin inventory is almost always out of service for maintenance or other issues, and some is always held back for complaints or other issues that arise in normal operation. 4). OC used to regularly need revenue cabins on Symphony to house supplemental staff plus invited guests like lecturers and hosts. Some extra formerly revenue cabins seem to have been taken out of inventory permanently to address this, but the number of cabins removed from Symphony doesn’t jive with the OC scenarios, even adjusted for the lowered capacity…. So this one remains to be seen. …Those are the reasons Symphony can’t physically reach capacity — outside of that there is also just a wedge of the pie for how much inventory will likely go unsold on the less popular cruises. I’m hopeful the reduction in inventory will close this gap finally, but I’ve seen a half dozen management teams try to address this factor in a variety of ways over the past 30+ years (including inventory reduction already), so I’d still mark this past TBD. That part is outside of your question though, I was just tacking that on because I factored that in my estimate. Vince

No worries! Laurel gets kind of disrespected locally, but a large part of my family is from that area, so that just kind of stood out as I was reading it. 😊 Zebra is a great company…. The pre-printed luggage tags Old Crystal was printing in 2021 and early 2022 looked like Zebra-style labels, funny enough! I’m hoping Zebra will have a role in Crystal’s future as well. 🙂 Vince

I wouldn’t expect anything less. Concept tweaking is a Crystal tradition. Symphony’s Asian venue has only had a few names, but it’s had more concepts than I’ve had job titles in my entire life. Vince

EVERYTHING? Really? I can’t name anyone I know that doesn’t have at least a small wish list for Crystal, no matter how much they enjoy Crystal or rave about their experiences. YMMV obviously, though. Vince

Thank you for confirming that no one who actually responded to you in this thread actually exhibited the behavior you generalized all of us with. Vince

Really classy. 😒

Nothing like being painted incorrectly with a very broad brush… I sail more with Crystal than other lines because they do certain things that I value better than their competitors. I don’t think I know a single Crystal regular that thinks that everything Crystal does is “far superior”. 🙄 Regent does many things “far superior” to Crystal, they just happen to all be things I couldn't give two hoots about. Vince

Why the eye roll at Laurel, Maryland? 😞 Some of us are proud to live near there! Vince

That’s a perfect example (like the ones upthread) of the operational upgrades that Crystal used to give — ones that served an operational purpose on their side. Vince

That's very true... But it's not completely new. In the old days we just had a more limited view of what media sources were in the travel industry. The type of perks that were once extended to travel writers and the like, are now extended to different types of media channels. Circulation doesn't equal followers and views the same way obviously, new formulas exist to calculate how much publicity an influencer really generates given the fluff in everyone's history, but it's worth noting that a lot of these cruise influencers reach more people now than many travel publications back in the day... So it's definitely a thing. Vince

Just curious since I haven't been able to picture this since the 2018 refit... Is that walled off area where they stage the meals for the supper club? I was trying to figure out how that worked logistically, considering how small that pantry is there. Vince

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out in the new world. That's kind of where I predict Symphony's average to be, since she can never practically reach capacity in the real world. It'll be higher on some sailings, but 500 seems like a "norm" now. That's just a gut instinct though, without much history yet. Vince

I can relate completely... I had the same kind of experience with one of the restaurant managers, who my family knew not only Crystal's whole history, but also from Princess, before NYK was event dreaming of Crystal. 😊 Vince