Thameside

Good news Thameside!

I've heard from our ship Customer Service. Long story short, the Ground Handler in Mumbai has your missing luggage! After you left the terminal a woman returned your bag that she mistakenly had picked up. Our CS personnel are working on getting the bag sent to you asap.

Thank you I did receive a message last night asking me to confirm my address for it's return. It's good news, and we are grateful, but it does show how bad Mumbai Port, and your agents, are, when it has taken over a week to find out that the bag was returned to them on that day. They did have all my contact details.

Thanks for following this through, it is appreciated. I will let you know when I receive it.

To the OP - I think that you owe Azamara an apology for your misleading thread title. As I suggested in a previous post, Azamara did not lose your luggage.

 

DON

All I can say DON is I would be very grateful if people like you (as per you previous post) take more care when collecting their baggage so as not to cause so much distress and upset to fellow passengers.

Yes they have found my lost bag and I await it's return.

Thameside I am so sorry to hear this has happened and as you entrusted your bags to the cruise line using their instructed methods you are quite right to expect them to resolve the issue.

Don ibelieve you are being unrealistically harsh I am not sure if you were on this cruise. We were and are still onboard but at this stage are unlikely ever to do a cruise that embarks or disembarks in Mumbai. Through no fault of Azamara there is a bureaucracy in Mumbai and level of incompetence in the agents and port authorities which makes the process quite disagreeable. We tried to make light of the issues but we have not had to tolerate the level of discomfort that Thameside has

I do not think it is their job to solve the process issues but it is right they challenge it to get resolution of their unhappy situation.

Thank you uktog, still have no information with regard to the bag but are forever hopeful.

Enjoy the rest of your cruise.

I'm so sorry Thameside! When you say you 'rang Royal Caribbean', do you mean Azamara? And was it the UK office you called?

If not, send an email to our UK MD Richard Twynam. He is very responsive!

rtwynam@azamaraclubcruises.com

Thank you for the email address, I will try that. I am making some progress now with corporate guest relations but if you ring any Azamara number in the UK, for this kind of problem, it gets routed to the US and my first contact was with RCCL.

Your post title is not accurate. Most like Azamara did not lose your bag but someone either accidentally or purposely took it. There are no controls or checks at the luggage area to make sure that everyone takes the correct bag.

 

I actually accidentally took someone else's bag once from an airport. I landed at Anchorage and grabbed my sort of unique looking bag. When I got to the motel, I found that it was someone else's bag. I am not sure if it was my fault or not because I can't remember if there was another bag the same as mine on the carousal or not.

 

The next day both of us returned the bags to the airport and things got sorted out. However without more information, I would not blame the airline for the error and then post a message on the airline site blaming them for the problem.

 

DON

With all due respect Don, yes if I leave my bags in the care of a cruise line or an airline and they are not available for me to collect then it is their responsibility. At Mumbai they seemed to feel that as they had offloaded all of the bags that the answer must have been, taken in error. If that was the case you would have thought that by now, a week later, they may have resolved the issue.

Our bag was well labelled and had distinctive ribbon etc. on it.

If you want to take it to the nth degree, all bags should have proper tags on with serial numbers, as airlines do, and nobody should be allowed out of a customs hall with the bags they have collected, after first being checked against their receipts, as airlines did many years ago. As they choose not to do this, as it is obviously not very practical, then yes they have lost my bag, even if it was taken in error.

The landside area in Mumbai was not very secure and a destination where this sort of system might well be used and if not, more azamara staff from the beginning, not just their agents, watching the bags.

We arrived in Mumbai last Friday 12th May and after leaving our three bags outside our room on the evening before only received two of them in arrivals area. We had private arrangements and left the ship fairly early. After searching everywhere and nearly two hours later, there was no sign of it. I eventually got to fill in a Personal property report, with their agents, for the missing bag but had to leave the port to catch our flight. On return home I rang Royal Caribbean to enquire about my bag. I am finding it very difficult to communicate with them and am getting no information with regard to the tracing of it. Has anyone had a similar experience.

You are correct. But when Princess cancelled their Istanbul departure they refunded any change fees for the customers that made their own flights, up to $250. That is why I will NEVER EVER be a Seabourn customer again and am now a very happy Princess customer. This gesture speaks volumes about how a cruiseline treats its passengers.

We were due to depart from Istanbul on July 2nd (This Saturday) and early yesterday morning 29th June we were advised by Seabourn that due to the recent atrocities at Ataturk Airport Istanbul they were moving this departure to Athens. A great pity for us but very understandable and the correct decision. We had made all our own arrangements and had to start finding other flights and hotels. To their credit, we were advised that there would be an on board credit for the inconvenience and that they would pay reasonable expenses and change fees which were a direct result of the change. It was very difficult to get flights to Athens at short notice from London, as many were already full and the ones that weren't were at very expensive. Anyway we managed to get flights out tomorrow evening so hopefully we will make the departure.

Enough of my woes, Seabourn are doing the right things at the moment and according to their website will be making a decision on other Istanbul departure within the next 24 hours

I find it hard to believe that 5 consecutive cruises for next Summer are completely sold out already. Maybe they have been with drawn due to a private charter as often seems to happen with Azamara or they are changing the itineraries yet again. I was interested in one of the August cruises but the recent problems in the Greek Islands deterred me from booking at this time.

I agree with you, hard to believe that five consecutive cruises that far ahead are all sold out. That was shown on a fairly big German discounter site, who are usually fairly reliable at showing cabin numbers available etc. However a very large US discounter is still showing all the cruises for sale even the 2nd August, so who knows.

On the European website that I am looking at it shows 5 consecutive cruises from the 10th July 16 onwards as sold out, including your cruise leaving Istanbul on 2nd August ending in Athens. Hope that helps.

The Azamazing evenings we have been to have been held in unique venues, with an insight into music and culture we would never normally have seen.

They put a lot of work and effort into these.

I cannot imagine considering missing these because you may miss dinner! You will not go hungry - there is food served before and after the event. In Sevastopol they served food at the event too.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

It is certainly not missing dinner, that is the problem. It is whether it is worth the hassle, experienced by some, firstly having to tender and presumably then being coached to the venue and then perhaps not enjoying the venue and or performance. That was the point of my question, obviously for you it was worth it.

Thanks everyone for your input, it is helping me to decide. A pity this one, to be held in FETHIYE, TURKEY probably hasn't been done before. We will decide nearer the time.

We are booked on Azamara Journey due to depart from Athens on 20th Sept 2015. This is our first Azamara trip since the introduction of Azamazing Evenings. I have read a lot discussion on the subject and it seems fairly split as to Good or Bad and seems very much dependant on the actual event and location. It seems that the one for this cruise is to be held in FETHIYE, TURKEY and doing a little research into the venue, which is Kale Park Restaurant, it does not make very good reading. It also says that a welcome drink and canapes will be served.

I thought that these evenings always included dinner, but this does not always seem to be the case, reading some of your reports. Has anyone been on this evening or read anything about as I am currently of the mind that I would be better off not subscribing even though it's Free. A shame because it was something I was looking forward to. ANY THOUGHTS Please.

This may have been discussed before, sorry but it's new to me.

There is a couple of minute video advertising this product which can be accessed via the new Le Club Voyage news for July or below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLIG...ature=youtu.be

A bit cheeky we thought, especially at the end, and not sure we would want to be on view to prying eyes. What do you think, you romantics, are you up for it?

Is this available now and has anybody tried it.

Just off Eurodam Baltic cruise yesterday.

We had as you wish dining and were allowed to book up to three days in advance. We normally booked a table for 2 only and were accommodated. Generally though if you are booking for next day or closer you will only be offered fairly early 0615 ish or late after 0815, could not get anything 0700/0730. So we booked what they had and turned up at about 0715 our favoured time and they accommodated us fairly well.

If you want your time you have to remember to ring each day three days in advance to get what you want, not easy.

I believe this is the menu you are looking for. Hubby scanned all the menus May 2015 on Noordam: http://www.rogerjett-photography.com/here/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Canaletto-Dinner.pdf

 

Joanie

Just got off the Eurodam on Thursday 25th June and that is the menu we had in Canaletto and we found it very good for the extra $10 per person and used it twice.

I am looking to book a short Black sea cruise on the Star Pride and have read many contributions on this board regarding this ship, thanks. Can anyone please tell me if the cabins/suites have been refurbished and look like the photos on their website as some reports suggest they are not. Thanks for your help.

How did the staff fall short on service? Waiters? Steward? Both? Everyone you encountered?

 

I'm puzzled over the "poor cabin candition" since the ship just finished a refit. What specifically was broken, worn, or theadbare?

Overall they were not a happy crew it was a struggle for staff in general to say good morning etc. if not directly serving you. Our waiters were good and our steward was fine.

The refit seems to have been public areas, carpets and some painting along with the new single cabins and sun canopies on deck 12. Our room was very tired looking, both sofa and chair were in need of deep cleaning or recovering and the carpet although fairly clean was shoeing it's age. Curtains needed a clean and some repair work. The worst aspect for me was the bathroom tiling which had a lot of black mildew on the grouting and around the bath and was poorly lit.

I'd like to hear a few more clear examples of were Q. Vic fell short .

 

Tour groups have always had some sort of priority when it comes to disembarkation ...surely that's common sense ? don't they need to get them off first to complete their booked tour in time for the evening departure.

 

Are you sure that the person you spoke to in the immigration hall at FL was a Cunard employee ... as a Brit you should know by now that FL isn't the best place to transit or disembark. As rosco says was it Cunard or the port authorities causing the hold up.

:)

We were advised initially that US immigration had computer problems and processing was very slow so we were being held on board to save us standing in queues too long. This went on until we were finally let off at about 0900 only to find very long queues which took some two hours to process. The officer processing me was not aware of computer problems earlier.

Tour groups had been let off first, and there were a lot of them, followed by the self help walk offs and then us, so there were still many behind us and the hall was full of baggage. the procedure at the port is collect your baggage first and then queue for immigration, which means you are having to move all of your baggage every few feet in the queue, not the case for tour group customers obviously. I don't agree that tour group customers should get priority at disembarkation ports such as this. Cunard know how long it takes to process people through US immigration, wherever it may be and should either start them later or make different arrangements.

Yes the lady I spoke to in the hall was part of the ships crew in a white uniform. The local representative staff were much more polite and helpful.

We disembarked from the Queen Victoria at Fort Lauderdale on Monday after completing the first leg of her world voyage and I experienced so many problems during just 13 days. Most of the problems could have been handled so much better with good customer service training. I have found staff generally much better on most other cruise lines. We travelled Princess Grill and that part of the product other than the poor cabin condition was very good.

They don't seem to be able to get customers on or off the ship whether it's embarkation, disembarkation or tendering at ports. They always have plenty of excuses and don't tell you the whole truth. The biggest problem seems to be making sure that the tour groups booked with them take absolute priority when things are running late, to the cost of everyone else.

I will save my observations for other posts, but am happy to answer any questions you might have if you are joining the ship soon. I know you Cunard lovers will be fast to defend them but as the last Cunard person I spoke to in the arrivals hall at Fort Lauderdale said to me, after standing in an immigration queue, with my baggage, behind the tours for the day, for more than two hours if you don't like our rules don't use Cunard again.

YOU CAN BE SURE OF THAT

I am hoping someone from the US and/or UK could do me a favour and check whether Q602 (Jan 6-10 2016) is showing on the Cunard website for that country.

 

I've come across websites showing the cruise exists, but the Australian Cunard site isn't showing it.

 

I'm thinking of booking this to bridge the gap between two Cunard voyages - it's better than travelling back up to London for four nights.

 

If it does show on the US or UK sites, I'd love an indication of what prices are for QG (solo).

 

I get the feeling Cunard is keeping the slot potentially free should it need to briefly dry dock or something. I understand that this short trip did take place earlier this month before the WC.

 

Anyone with pricing information from that would also be appreciated.

 

No obligation btw! :)

It's not showing on UK Cunard website, but found it on US website *************, London Hamburg London and Grills started at $1899.

Excellent news thanks, should hopefully be all ready at Southampton for our departure on Tuesday. Can't wait.

Good to hear Emily, thanks for your report.

Just a read a recent review posted a couple of days ago and they mentioned that the ship was very cold on their recent back to back trip. Did anybody else encounter this problem as we are due to depart on her on January 20th and it would be a little bit of a concern at this time of the year.

The following is the review;

http://www.cruisecritic.co.uk/memberreviews/memberreview.cfm?EntryID=268656

Yep, just booked a short cruise this week on CP and we got $200 obc per person, total $400 which applied to all cabin grades including interior, nearly the price of the cruise. Great deal

There are a lot of you all having a go at someone who has written a lot a good stuff about there interesting cruise experiences just because of there complaint about the Hoppa bus driver.

I live near Heathrow and don't very often have to use these services, but recently stayed at an airport hotel on the way out and on my return. On both occasions I find the service dreadful with not so courteous drivers and dirty buses with are overpriced for the service provided.

Heathrow airport Limited decided a number of years ago to stop all the Hotel courtesy buses going into the airport terminals and introduced this awful service, which is put out to tender by them and from which they take a rate off.

I feel it gives an awful impression to overseas travellers arriving in the UK and needs to be looked at urgently. They manage to accommodate the hotel courtesy buses at most international airports around the world including LA, but we can't manage it here, typical.

Have you used the service? if not please try it and see if it's worth £5 each way. Yes of course I accept that one is supposed to have the correct money in sterling etc. but haven't any of you been caught out on occasions. It would help if the limited amount of machines there are available for ticket purchase worked.