RDC1

14 hours ago, Iamcruzin said:

There is always a chance of a cancellation due to a charter especially if booking 2yrs out.  But from what I have been reading it seems that Royal Caribbean doesn't accommodate the booked passenger very well as compared to other cruise lines. At the very least they should honor the price you paid for the same category room on whatever sailing you pick. Pick another cruise line. You may find that you like it better and you may get a better price. The only thing I'm loyal to is my wallet. My experience with Royal Caribbean's marketing and pricing hasn't been favorable. I think I will be headed back to Celebrity or Princess after this trip.

Celebrity also has a track record for converting cruises to charters.  Princess seems to far less often.

Nope.  It is still the same ship with no break between bookings.  

Sapphire Princess was 7:30 on board.

Now that Princess has been successful in getting people to fill late traditional, I expect that their next move will be to consolidate early traditional in the stern dining room and to make the mid ship dining room which has been early traditional/late anytime to be anytime all of the time.  That matches with the change to a single early traditional time.

1 hour ago, Coral said:

Though the aft dining room is used for early also. The mid-ship is "additional space" because early used to fill up all the time and they needed more space. I am always aft when I go early.

 

Answer to "OP" is "no".

There used to be two different early traditional times, one 15 minutes before the other.  The earliest time was the mid ship early traditional, late anytime, the second time is the main early traditional dining room on deck 6 stern.

Now there is only 1 early time.

1 minute ago, TAMU Dad said:

Next week will be my first Elite status free laundry privileges.  How does it work out, as have not used Princess laundry since 30 years ago long before self service machines?  Then we put our cabin # somewhere on each piece, how do they do it today and tips on making the experience positive?  Can you even select cold or hot water washes, are shirts returned on hangers, wash/dry your laundry separately from anybody else, etc?

You put your laundry in the paper bag provided in your cabin.  Fill out the supplied form.  Leave the bag and form for the room steward.  Shirts and pants are provided on hangers, rest folded in bag.

Assume hot water, no selection for temperature.  

I also have never used the form.  Just put the required information in a letter and then attached the proof of ownership.

On 3/24/2019 at 4:58 PM, Colo Cruiser said:

I have spent and continue to spend thousands on Princess cruises.

I don't lose sleep over a coffee package whether I paid $38 for or I received for free in a mini bar exchange that does not carry over to another cruise.

You can thank your fellow passengers for selling their cards on eBay and abusing the system for these changes.

If you hate what Princess is doing maybe it is time to move on?

There are so many choices out there.

Yep, especially when you consider that the only people that lost very much during this switch were people that got free coffee cards as part of their Elite benefits.  The same group which had people selling the cards they got as part of their benefit. After all if someone purchased their cards it is unlikely that they would have more then one, and statistically would have had relatively fee punches remaining on average.

4 minutes ago, chengkp75 said:

I'm sure they do, but only when making the cruises into the arctic areas.  And by the way, that is the new Polar Code.  Just because it was adopted in 2014, that just means that the proper number of nations approved it, it didn't come into force until last year.

OK thanks. I had thought I read somewhere about other changes in 2017.  

10 minutes ago, chengkp75 said:

As noted by SeaDog46 in his original post, there are only a couple of ships that meet the Polar Code at this time, all the others are working under grandfather waivers.  The ships don't need a "survival suit" or "immersion suit" for each passenger, they can provide a "thermal protective aid"  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_Protective_Aid

 

These are cheaper than survival or immersion suits since they don't provide buoyancy like a survival suit does, it is designed to be worn over a lifejacket.

The info I was going off of was from IMO adopted in Nov 2014 so not even the latest changes. I see that they can use a thermal aid, but do they carry enough for all, compared to the normal 10% of lifeboat capacity.

http://www.imo.org/en/MediaCentre/HotTopics/polar/Documents/Polar Code Ship Safety - Infographic_smaller_.pdf

6 hours ago, chengkp75 said:

 

What is happening is that cruise lines are going to more places, like the Northwest Passage cruises, and the IMO has looked at the risks of these cruises by ships that don't meet the previous Ice Classes, and decided to upgrade their requirements into the new Polar Code.  It is all about passenger safety in areas where the threat to the ship from the environment (bad weather, ice damage) is very real, and where rescue can be far away and take days to get there.  Building a ship to Polar Class costs a lot of money (lots more steel to reinforce the hull, special safety equipment), and for a ship that only does an occasional trip into Arctic waters, it probably isn't justified unless the line charges a whopping supplement for these occasional cruises.  Arctic cruises will be limited to expedition type ships that are built for the environment, and rightly so.  Even though the ships that have done the Northwest Passage are Ice Class (though not the highest class), I cringed when I thought of the risks taken for these cruises (and I know the passengers signed liability waivers to go).

How have the cruise lines gotten around the requirement in the polar code for having a survival suit for each passenger? I suspect that the large cruise ships don't meet the 1 for each passenger requirement.

13 minutes ago, knittinggirl said:

I wish someone would explain the ice class certification to me.  How much extra does a ship cost to ice rate the ship?   Why can't they build the new ice class requirements into the new ship builds?

 

Is this an environmental issue or a safety issue?

Someone else can describe everything that goes into it, but it is definitely safety.

Having spent some time in Antarctica (3 seasons as part of a USARP research program), I am surprised that it has taken this long for safety restrictions to be tightened. 

Look at the difficulties involved in this weeks problems with the Viking Sky, Antarctica is a far more remote and less forgiving environment.  Even though the Peninsula is kind of the banana belt of  Antarctica and does not have the conditions of the Ross sea and other area, if a ship were to encounter difficulties there is little to no infrastructure there for rescues.  Even when relatively small ships have encountered problems  rescue was more dependent upon other ships in the area, not national rescue assets.  A good example is the Lindblad Explorer, an ice strengthened ship, specifically designed for Antarctic waters.  It hit ice and sank close to King George Island. The passengers and crew, 154 in total, spent several hours in life boats before getting picked up by the MS Nordnorge (A Hurtigruten ship) and dropped off at a Chilean research base. Fortunately that accident happened in good weather.

Not a good thing if it were to happen to a cruise ship with thousands of passengers.

You are not automatically directed, but you just follow the signage.

https://www.cbp.gov/travel/trusted-traveler-programs/global-entry/enrollment-arrival

1 hour ago, GGrace said:

On my recent Miami-Santiago (NCL Sun, December repo) cruise I studied the deployment instructions for the canister life rafts: quite visible on metal signs, in English, on the promenade deck if you pay attention to that sort of thing. (Of course I can't remember what the procedure was but it was interesting at the time. I think it involved harnesses and block-and-tackle to get crew members one-at-a-time down to the rafts.)

I think when you edited the item you quoted you made a mistake, because the line you attributed to me, came from the person I was responding to, not from me.

3 hours ago, gatour said:

Have you heard of the Costa Concordia?  It basically did a close pass near an island on Captain's orders to either impress someone or some other reason.  The ship ran across rocks which caused a gash which caused flooding.

 

The ship engines shutdown, the ship then drifted for a few hours at the mercy of the currents/winds (there was no storm going on).  The ship eventually drifted into a reef which caused it to list and partially sink.

 

About one third of the passengers had just boarded the ship and had not gone through muster drill (at the time muster drills had to occur within 24 hours of sailing)

 

The captain never ordered passengers to muster stations.  There is a protocol where an immediate inspection needs to take place in these type of instances.  Based on the inspections which would be around 15 minutes, the captain should have ordered people to muster stations.  Between the time that the inspections would have occurred and the time when the order to abandon ship, would have given time to get passenger to the correct muster stations even if they hadn't attended the muster drill.

 

There was a 2-3 hour gap between initial incident and the order to abandon ship with no call to muster stations.  I believe if the captain had called people to muster stations, there would not have been 32 deaths.

Not quite  on the Costa Concordia 696 out of the 3206 actually on board had not yet been to must drill

Collision occurred at 21:45 General alarm was given at 22:48.

4 hours ago, PelicanBill said:

Someone was asking about lifeboat deployment on the Costa Concordia.  There were 3 lifeboats that could not be deployed due to the severe list.  But 23 of 26 were deployed plus the life rafts. There was a very hard time getting off the ship into rafts and boats after they were dropped.  and the seas were calm. The boats and rafts had 125% capacity total.

 

If you look at the area around lifeboats you will see some large cannisters, often in clusters in racks. These are the life rafts. What I don't know is how people are expected to get in these since they drop into the ocean.

 

I think this incident will cause some serious thoughts about emergencies in storm conditions.  It is clear that you cannot drop life boats when the ship is rolling side to side as Sky was doing. The boats would be slammed against the ship and thrown into the waves.  

The problem of deployment applied more to the life rafts (only 6 of 70 launched) than to life boats where 20 out of 23 launched.

 4229 persons were board ; 3206 passengers and 1023 crew

The capacity was 3720 in life boats and 2395 in life rafts  (125% of max lives).

So when one looks at it depending upon which life boats did not launch (all 150 size or 2 150 and 1 60) then at most 3360 was the most that could have evacuated by life boat (no documentation of if they were all at capacity or not). That leaves 869 for rafts.  Since rafts were at most 35 person, the 6 that launched would have had a max capacity of 210.  that left at least 659 that did not make it onto either life rafts or life boats.

The above information came from The Royal Institution of Naval Architects - Costa Concordia Passenger Evacuation.

31 minutes ago, Paulchili said:

There are some important differences in examples you cite.

To see Antarctica you MUST sail there - that’s the only way to see it. There are no land trips to Antarctica. In addition, you do it in their summer. Ditto for Greenland & Iceland.

To see Northern Lights you do NOT have to sail to Norway in February/March - you can see them from land in many places in N. America, Iceland and Scandinavia.

not quite there are a couple of groups that fly people in. You can even book a day trip from Chile by air.

1 hour ago, Hlitner said:

Not sure why you continue to think that 4 engines "failed."  History of cruise ship power failures tells us that most of the time (not all) the failure is due to electrical bus issues such as a major failure in a power panel.  The Viking Sky, like most modern cruise ships, uses electric motors to drive their props.  The "engines" are simply large power generators that provide the necessary electric power to drive the engines and other systems.  The engines must be housed in at least two separate and independent engine rooms.  Yes, in theory all 4 can fail due to a major fuel contamination issue, but these fuel systems have some redundancy built-in which makes that unlikely.  And even if a fuel bunker were to somehow get contaminated there are multiple fuel bunkers.    It is too bad that ChengKP75 is not around (he is apparently at sea on a tanker) since he is the true expert here on CC....when it comes to these engineering issues.

 

I seem to recall when Carnival had a ship completely disabled in the Gulf of Mexico it was due to a major electrical failure.  There was some talk about changing SOLAS standards to require new ship designs to have some real redundancy in their electrical systems/panels....but not sure if any changes have actually been finalized.  Where is Chengkp75 when we need him :).

 

Hank

carnival ship had fire that took out main distribution panel. A Cunard ship lost power and had to get towed back to port in the med a few years ago. Again it was a problem with power distribution.

1 hour ago, The_Big_M said:

 

Actually, that was the point I responded to - that it was stated it should be accepted as part and parcel ref: "If you choose to cruise you sometimes have to put up with … ships having blackouts occasionally. "

 

So yes, someone is asking you to "accept that." Which means you're arguing with your own position...

have sailed on 34 cruises on various lines. Out of those 34 have experienced brief power losses (less that 15 minutes) twice. fortunately neither time was in a critical situation.

so yes it does happen.

1 hour ago, RuthC said:

I'm not seeing a problem here. You, along with 29,999 others, left money with HAL beyond the four year period in which to use it. They want to clear it off the books. 
HAL farmed out the task of finding the owners of the money and getting it returned to them to a company in that business. The money has been out of your hands for several years, and now four months longer is not sitting well with you? You are going to get back money you left languishing.

However, if the person had an account with HAL, as most of us on this board does.  Then the Future Cruise Deposit is linked to that account and as a result the cruise line would have had the information ( e-mail, physical address and probably phone number) to easily cut a check or at least notify the individuals involved.

The normal process for Princess (which is part of the Holland America Group within Carnival, and which shares some of the corporate structures) automatically sends a check when the credit card refund fails.

57 minutes ago, Pushka said:

In the case of the Concordia and now Sky, they were unable to use the lifeboats. So it does beg the question of what they can actually be used for in emergency situations like these two. 

If the ship was actually sinking they could probably use the lifeboats.  The point is that the ship is not sinking.  Using the life boats would be hazardous to load, hazardous to launch, and a very very very rough ride.  Pretty much a last resort.  Passengers are safer on the ship and evacuating is a slow, but manageable process where they can focus on one passenger at a time.  

Just now, GeezerCouple said:

 

I think the Captain "ran out of engine", not time, in this case.

 

GC

My point was that even before the engine problem there is not a lot of room to avoid the storm when you consider the Norwegian sea and the direction of the storm, and the route of the ship.  So very little option for avoiding the weather, even before the engines failed.

2 hours ago, Hlitner said:

And the "obvious" answer is that the worst place for a large cruise ship to be in a major storm is docked (or anchored) in a port!  The norm is to get the ship out to sea (where it is actually safer) and try to avoid the storm or the worst part of the storm.   In fact, most harbor masters will close ports in severe weather and request that ships depart....generally before the storm reaches the port.

 

What happened here is not necessarily related to the weather but to a major power failure (usually electrical).   None of us who routinely cruise (we have spent over 1000 days on cruise ships) or spend time at sea are "making light" of it!  In fact, I have texted a family member who is on that ship (she is doing fine) to express our concern and inquire about her well-being.  And as I posted earlier, she replied that they are doing OK and waiting to be rescued (they are still thinking by helicopter). 

 

What I find distressing are the comments (such as yours) that immediately want to point the finger of blame to something, or start asking about compensation.  Neither of those issues are appropriate at this point in time when over 1100 folks still remain on that vessel.  Trust me that my wife's cousin (who is on the ship and at her muster station) is only concerned about getting to land..   There will be plenty of time later to deal with the blame game.  For now, it is about saving lives.

 

Hank

Unlike the Caribbean a captain does not have very many options in the Norwegian Sea with a major storm coming from the west or southwest.  They cannot go east, they cannot go north.  About the only choice is to go south and it sounds like they simply ran out of time.  

2 hours ago, mikjr said:

Please tell me... what was I supposed to do??   I've had cruise credits with Princess for years, they don't get used, they send me back a CHECK!    

There have been some other stories on CC where refunds to the old Costco cards (Amex, prior to the major switch to Visa) have been very problem filled.  In one of them Princess had said that they had refunded it to the card, but the individual never received anything.  It is like anything going to the Amex costco card numbers just vanish. 

Are you certain that it is HAL that turned it over to the third party.  It might be that HAL refunded it to the card and think that the refund was successful, only to have Amex turn it over to a third party because the card was closed.

It seems like almost like Amex is doing everything legally possible to be obstructionist when it comes to the coverted Costco accounts.