john1970

If you are waiting for a reply to a Facebook message best of luck. They still haven't replied to my 2018 and 2022 questions!

I guess they keep having 'special offers' of 500 and 1000 USD OBC. They just up the prices to absorb that. Or am I being cynical.

Never got the email. Don't get any emails even though on the new site it is marked to receive them. This is very tiresome

I would be disputing this with my credit card company. You have been patient already. This is your money and Azamara having an IT meltdown is not your problem. 

It's a strange business model that forces you to go to another website to find what cabins are available. You would think they would want to keep the prospective customers on their site. If they push you to look on another site you might find another cruise line that has a better offer. It's almost like they want to give the customer reasons not to book with them. 

Since I set up my new account and confirmed I wanted to receive emails I haven't got one!

I think the cruise lines in general don't really care if you can assign a seat. Their biggest priority is what they can sell the ticket for and what profit they can make.  Of course for myself and many passengers seating is important. I am still amazed that no one at Azamara seems to have really thought about what happens to all the legacy air bookings made by the old company.  How did they plan for these bookings to be serviced? This transition has obviously been a lot more complicated than they expected. I think it will be months before the site and back office are functioning as hoped. I feel sorry for the passengers and the call centre staff. I don't feel sorry for the top management.

Cruise lines have special contracts with a lot of airlines that allow them to hold seats for a long time without any of the normal ticketing deadlines that apply to public fares. 

I am so glad that your tickets were finally issued. I am sorry that you have had all this stress and hassle and it really isn't good enough. Please try and enjoy your holiday and I am sure the on board experience will be a totally different picture. I would write a letter to give them feedback and let them know what the pre cruise service has been like. I will leave it to the experts on here to suggest whether this is something that you should let them know about once on the ship. 

I think they might leave UK and European passengers out of the cull as we usually have stronger consumer protection laws and it is more hassle for them to toy with us.

Why didn't they ask for volunteers? I was on a RC cruise from Copenhagen to NYC in 2012. We got a call from our agent saying they had oversold and would we consider an offer. They offered us a full refund of cruise and air and a voucher for the amount again. We jumped at the offer as my mum was very ill and I didn't want to be at sea out of contact for a long time. We got all our money back and booked another transatlantic for the year after in a suite as we had such a big voucher. Surely that would have been a way to keep all passengers happy.

I would not even attempt to book online with the website in it's current state. Use a good travel agent as they can then have the pain of the Azamara back office. 

I think that most people want Azamara to grow and succeed. However, they can't keep making excuses for terrible service and communication. They have to get a hold of this situation especially for the passengers who have booked air with them. Blaming RCCL etc is going to get very old very quickly. All cruise lines have issues at the moment but if you are booked with Azamara that doesn't really give much comfort. I won't book anything with them until they can offer a consistent booking service. I know the ship service is great but that is only part of the customer experience.

I agree with you. Azamara at sea is totally different from Azamara on land. Also if you can, find a good travel agent and allow them to deal with all the admin. Then you can just worry about enjoying yourself.

I really like the onboard product on Azamara and I will no doubt be back to them eventually. However, they are not a charity and they are not doing us a favour by letting us be beta testers for their website.  The data migration is difficult and complicated but that's why the managers get the big money. and it should not be as poor as this. They need to be more pro active in communicating with their customers. The website is their shop front and at the moment it isn't enhancing the brand or earning them any extra revenue. When the site is functioning as planned it should offer a better experience compared to before and only time will tell if that is the case. Just because other lines have issues as well it shouldn't excuse the failings here.

I think my advice would be to book a balcony or higher as it will likely be busier as people try and cram in as much as they can on shorter cruises. Then you can escape if it gets a bit too hectic.  I have done one on RCL and didn't remember it as being rough and ready. I'm not sure it was relaxing as a long cruise as it wasn't long enough to enjoy being at sea but I would do it again if the dates fitted my work schedule and annual leave.

Always make sure the meter is on and take their badge or number. If they do rip you off report them even if you are home. They moan about Uber but this is why people use them over the metered taxi.

Wow 6 hours. My swear jar would be full. 

It's strange. I used to get all the emails. Once I set up my new password and made sure I had the settings to accept emails I have had nothing at all. That's why I am guessing they are using FB as their email database is knackered.

I just find it strange that they make it easier to check cabins and prices on other websites. You would think they would be trying to drive traffic to their own site.

Is there a date for the website to be fully functional or will it just be an ongoing process. I am glad I use a good travel agent. I can let the have the pleasure!

My status is showing correctly. The points have gone down but I think they took off the last Celebrity cruise I had in February which had been added on, possibly in error. I don't think I was meant to get the points from this one as the split should have already taken place. Glad to see things are progressing. Let's hope they keep on updating the content and correcting the bugs/errors. They have a chance to really make their website a cut above the rest which in turn should drive revenue and loyalty. Fingers crossed.

I think you need to really think about how you will feel after a very long flight and a big time difference. We had a week in Sydney before our cruise and it took that long to get over the 11 hour time difference and change from winter to summer.

We were on Eclipse last month and we could order from the main menu in Blu without any issue. They were happy to help. We didn't have to pre order. They had the main menu at hand and a few people looked at it every night.

I saw a cruise priced at £-1 yesterday. Good value!