isnowman

Hi Fran, Thanks for the info regarding immunization recommendations. We’re up in Orillia, traveling with 2 other couples. We leave on Eva Air March 13th to Hanoi, begin our adventure with Scenic on the 14th. Are you on that same itinerary, if so I’m sure we’ll meet up with you before Hanoi. Kurt

Hi terry&mike. Welcome home. I’ve been following your adventure as we leave on the 18 day scenic cruise tour from Hanoi to Siem Reap in March, can’t wait. I was wondering if you found you required any CDC vaccines or treatments for the Scenic portion of your Vietnam/Cambodia trip. Thanks again for such a wonderful review! Kurt

Not the Beyond but we did have a rather irritating thump on our recent TA on the Constellation. We discovered it was coming from under our closet floor, sounded like a bottle rolling around as the shipped was rolling side to side, surprised how it disrupted our sleep. There is no way to get under the closet floor, but I was able to squeeze a face cloth between the closet floor and the front kick plate. It took a while, gently pushing the cloth with the file from a pair of nail clippers. Silence at last, now I'm hoping I don't get charged for the cloth 😅

Hi Vicky, When you open the app on your phone you should see a number of icons at the bottom of the page, safety health check-in etc. Just swipe those icons from right to left and the page that opens should have your profile and what sailing you have selected. The " select a different sailing " prompt should be there. Hope that helps.

Here is the letter: I wanted to personally write to you regarding the recent challenges we've had with our pre-travel documentation and customer service in general. But firstly, I want to acknowledge the inconvenience our service levels have caused you, our most important guests and assure you we take your comments seriously and we will be back to "normal" soon. So what happened? On the 20th of February this year our computer screens globally went blank, except for a simple message advising all our core operating systems and data had been encrypted. We'd been "cyber-attacked" and after a few messages from the hackers a ransom demand was made. I took the decision not to pay as I believe it just incentivises these criminals to keep hacking other businesses. What should have been a relatively short but painful nonetheless re-boot over 2 to 3 weeks, became a total system rebuild which took over nine weeks and we still have the odd "bug" to sort. However, very importantly all guest data was secure with no leaks. During this time it was almost impossible to communicate as normal with our guests and industry partners. Timely cruise cancellations, document and flight issuance, as well as Call Centre response times were all impacted very significantly. Since that time we've been dealing with a huge backlog, whilst trying to employ additional staff to cope with the return to full operations... with the added challenge of COVID related absenteeism. Over and above this, some regions have experienced an unprecedented level of flight rescheduling and late flight cancellations - even on the day of departure - which once again adds a significant volume of urgent calls to the customer contact centre. The two years of COVID pandemic caused cessation of operations and numerous other challenges, and in my 36 years since founding this business I can honestly say the last five months have been by far the most stressful. I understand none of the above is your problem but I did want to share the reasons behind the challenges you face when dealing with us at present. So what have we done about it? Clearly we've restructured our IT department with a much stronger focus on security and recovery protocols. We've employed a large number of additional reservations staff globally, which of course takes time with proper training etc. We've also set up a dedicated support team to handle the administrative tasks for each reservation, so our contact centre staff are more efficient. Our document issuance pre-departure is now nearing pre-cyber event timing. Our average wait times for the customer contact centre have improved dramatically, however we still have occasional blow outs when we get numerous flight schedule changes or large numbers of staff on sick leave. For example, one office recently had 183 flight reschedules in one day, at a time when 13 staff members were on sick leave due to either the flu or COVID. Despite all these challenges we've been heartened with the very positive guest response to Emerald Azzurra and indeed Scenic Eclipse’s inaugural Mediterranean season, as well as return to operations for our European river cruise fleet. We as always are totally committed to overcoming these latest challenges, as we have done so over the many years. Once again I apologise for the inconvenience we've caused and assure you we will soon be back to normal. Best Regards, Glen Moroney, Company Founder and Executive Chairman Scenic Group (Scenic Luxury Cruises & Tours and Emerald Cruises)

Thank you for your response marazul, I'm quite comfortable in a KN95 mask so will bring them. Cheers...

Can anyone who has entered Italy lately tell me how strict the italians are in regards to using a FFP2 mask. We have both the N95 and KN95 masks, which are the equivalent of the FFP2. I am more than happy to wear a mask, but would rather not have to buy ones I don't have if not needed. Thanks for any replies.

We usually book our own air and, like you, add days before or after the cruise. However this time we chose to just do the cruise so am happy to have their air package, I'm just used to knowing or picking our flights up to 8 months before the cruise.

We're also on a Mekong cruise with Scenic in March 2023 so would appreciate any updates. Our fare included the free air promotion, but Scenic has told our TA that they will not will not book flights until 4 months before sailing, seems rather short. Any information appreciated.