takemewithyou

Yes, all veranda cabins have shower curtains……no doors. There are CC cabins with tub/ shower combinations…..there is partial glass wall. we prefer CC cabins that do not have the tub…..only the shower. There is a glass enclosure with plenty of space.

Adare Manor….site of 2027 Ryder Cup!

It was in the Insider for 5 pm on embarkation day on my cruise mid June on Pursuit. Hopefully cruisers with more recent experience will respond.

This is the last I can find about a loyalty ambassador……is she still with Azamara? https://www.azamara.com/blog/2021/04/interview-new-loyalty-ambassador 2021. Looking at her LinkedIn account, it looks like she is currently with RCCL, not Azamara. ???????

And that is another example of the degradation of Azamara. People used to be able to contact loyalty department and get a response. Nothing seems to work anymore there, either! Is there even a Loyalty Ambassador at Azamara anymore? Has the position been eliminated? Can anyone name who the Loyalty Ambassador is? We used to get regular quarterly newsletter from the Loyalty Ambassador at Azamara. I am trying to remember when the last time was that I received one! I think it has been a couple of years!

All the more reasons that Azamara should be flourishing at this point. They were set free by RCCL due to the huge debt situation that RCCL had taken on……something had to go and it was Azamara. Sycamore took them on and invested in the fleet. Everything was going quite well until the IT disaster. Azamara did have time to try to get things in order before the data transfer occurred. There possibly was only so much they could do, due to corrupt data from RCCL. I don’t know…. But what I do know is that the CEO was attempting to communicate through the IT disaster at a minimal level….not very well. And then she has stopped even trying to communicate. Why? Not much improvement in weeks and months. And now there are very frequent “sales” e-mails and emails going out to customers with bookings about discounted beverage packages that lead to more IT disasters. Right now, I can’t defend any of their actions, I do worry about Azamara’s financial situation because of the bungled IT disaster and the frustration of so many customers and their travel agents. If TA’s don’t want to deal with this mess, they will redirect their customers to companies that have functional web sites and decent customer service.

In all my years of cruising on Azamara, I have never seen one of these Bev packages sales. I have seen it on Celebrity, however! But Azamara is now “divorced” from RCCL. It’s all very interesting, but to offer this sale and then make it unbookable……..it’s ridiculous to the extreme! Does anybody test to make sure the sale can be booked before sending out the offer?!

I think that Guest Relations and other onboard staff must be exhausted trying to reassure passengers and correct many items that should have been taken care of pre-cruise by customer service. It must be hard for them to maintain a positive attitude with passengers and do their job every day! I know people on my roll call this summer were very frustrated and upset and were just waiting to get onboard to try to get all their issues resolved. Much frustration and outright anger to deal with constantly.

Allan is the best butler we have ever had, also! Agree also about Iwan and CD Martin. Happy you had a great cruise.

Me, too. I do have one future booking made before all the website woes, so I am monitoring….. Care to elaborate on what red flags you are seeing?

So…..as to the elephant in the room, I guess…….is all this incompetence due to the CEO and her staff at corporate office in Miami or is it due to lack of financial support from Sycamore Partners? I am concerned that the train is coming off the rails!

Agree, Phil, and it is getting to be very concerning! It seems to be getting worse….or is that my imagination? Even the TA’s are having to spend so much time now trying to get things straightened out. Thankful to my travel agent for getting me through my last cruise this summer on Pursuit. None of my OBC showed and I was stressed about that but I was assured that my OBC would be correct and that my loyalty level was correct. Couldn’t check in but she did that way ahead for me and sent my docs and my luggage tags by email.

This kind of stuff is why you need a travel agent to take care of this for you! And NO, I am not a travel agent. I just wouldn’t book a cruise on Azamara without one right now. The frustrations are constant right now with that web site! Have you called Azamara for help?

Have to say…..that type of service would drive me nuts and we also experienced that on our single Viking cruise!

Thanks. I appreciated your honest review and I appreciate that you elaborated on Journey’s condition. Since that is our next booking on Azamara for late 2024, I am interested in when drydock is and what may be done. Hopefully others can comment if they have heard any specifics. I agree with you about the ultimate beverage package. I had it late 2021 on Quest and found that a lot of the wines mentioned on the web site that were supposed to be on the wine list weren’t there, either! It was disappointing but at that time everything was being blamed on supply chain issues and that cruise started in Miami. Second cruise, late 2022 I smartened up and did not purchase the package and brought some wines onboard and the wine issues were the same. This June on Pursuit, I did the same thing…..brought my own wines onboard with me and did also have some of the included wines being poured, which were just ok. I agree that the servers start to panic a bit when you go off script and want to order a bottle of wine and not have the wines automatically on offer. It does take awhile for the wine you ordered to appear!

I really like Azamara but some things have got to be done regarding customer service or lack there of currently. It’s been months since the website fiasco and things are still a mess. It’s essential to be represented by a travel agent when dealing with them and as this story illustrates, sometimes the best agencies can’t get errors corrected, even by escalating to the head office. The article mentions how capable the CEO is or should be, but I feel like she should have more communication and updates with her loyal customers and she should have made more progress is getting things back online by now.

Thank you for posting this.

Regarding the appearance of Journey……does anyone have any information on when the dry dock is scheduled and what work might be carried out?

@Bimmer09 I don’t know if HAL still features an Indonesian tea in the dining room (used to be offered one time on longer than 7 day voyages) but if they do, they are something very unique and special. The servers are in their Indonesian dress and the offerings are special. They used to offer a regular tea every afternoon that was also nice.

Noticing that the conversations here on this board have diminished significantly! Many people must have moved on to other cruiselines! It’s pretty concerning, although we hear nothing from Azamara , other than frequent sales emails and mailings. We are, however, reading here regularly about customers cancelling their cruises out of their frustrations dealing with Azamara’s management and web site issues. Sad !

Hi Norris, thanks for the reply and I appreciate your honest answer! We have sailed HAL quite a bit as well as X (last on in 2015) We were last on HAL in 2018. We always liked HAL. They have interesting itineraries. We found their food to be fine. Their Neptune Suites are large and very comfortable. We have not been on HAL post Covid. I did read their CC board intermittently post Covid and there were a lot of concerns over food quality. I haven’t keep up with their boards recently. I hope the food has improved. Again, it was always good Pre Covid. I would say the Pinnacle Grill was always better than Prime C on Azamara, The crew was always great and very friendly……similar to the crew on Azamara. Sounds like you have found a good replacement for your Azamara cruise. I will try to remember to read your review! have a great cruise!

How does the price compare? Just curious….. Aft suite on HAL compared to the accommodations that you had on Azamara?

Agree with @uktog. We saw the same show last year the cruise right after @uktog”s……we just missed each other 😀. We really enjoyed it and always liked Harry Belafonte’s music. We had seats pretty close to all the action. It was an easy, relaxing and fun Azamazing Evening. Note: If you didn’t want to leave the ship, you could just sit on the sunset veranda off of Windows Cafe and see and hear all the action from afar.

Let us know how it goes…..do you have dress in formal attire for Seabourn?

We have done those itineraries on Celebrity and Holland America and they were great cruises. I think Oceania has some nice itineraries with both Maine and PEI, but pricey. Azamara is the one I wanted to return on to this area. Boston is a great city. Great history. New York? Well, I could care less to go there. Sorry Host Jazzbeau. 😀