betsey

I clicked on the "Contact Us' Icon and got a "bad request" page. The photos are now blank as well. It sure doesn't make me want to book specialty dining!

Hey Holland America (yes, I know no one at HQ ever reads these boards, but Jeez!), I was thinking about making a reservation at Tamarind for my birthday coming up soon on the Nieuw Amsterdam in October. I clicked on the link to see what the menu looked like and it was a broken link. How am I supposed to make a reservation and spend my hard-earned money if I don't know what's on the menu? Back in my day, a very long time ago, when I worked at a fancy cruise line, someone would have been in trouble for not getting this fixed pronto. But things have changed I guess. Oh well, I'll keep my money and leave HAL wondering why I'm not going to the specialty restaurant when I go cruising this fall....

We paid $95 last week. Quite a deal compared to prices on land.

Interesting thread here. I just got off of a British Isles cruise on the Journey this week. This is my third Azamara cruise post Covid, and the only real issue I had was with the shore excursions. They were top -notch in terms of vehicles, guides, etc, but the bookings of them were a disaster. Myself and many others booked one tour and were given tickets for another tour. Most of us realized this the morning of the tour. The poor beleaguered shore excursions rep managed to accommodate us. On another one, the description in the onboard booklet in our room was nothing like the screen shot I took of the tour when I made my booking online. Again, this shore excursions agent told me that this verbiage was for a tour that had long been cancelled (WTH?). Later in the cruise I politely asked for a meeting with the Hotel Director, and she also brought in the Shorex Manager, and I explained my concerns and asked her who can I can contact in the home office, since I thought they did a fine job onboard, but also drove home the point that if this website and shorex booking issue wasn't fixed pronto, their jobs were in jeopardy. During this meeting I found out from them that there were multiple guests with the same issues. I stressed that I sail on Azamara because of their interesting itineraries and that there are few options to take tours with third-party operators. Now, I don't know if it's going to change a thing, but I do hope that if they can say that a passenger took to the time to meet with them and explain to them what their issues were and how it affected their vacation, perhaps they take it seriously at the top and can start to fix the issues, or not, who knows? The Hotel Director thanked me for the feedback when I disembarked.

I was able to download the document for my cruise coming up next month. Unfortunately, the typos, shore excursions with no descriptions at all, and shore excursions with incorrect descriptions were still there. Absolutely embarrassing. I worked for a luxury cruise line decades ago, and if this had happened where I worked, people would have been fired.

I think the date is the departure date of the cruise. The port listed is where the Azamara Celebration being held, which is not on the departure date.

I'm able to view and book most of the cruise shore excursions for my upcoming cruise in July. Some of the excursions have no descriptions whatsoever. They also completely skipped putting in shore excursions for one port. So amateurish.

Same here. Now you see it, now you don't. Makes you wonder what is going on.

It looks like other cruise lines are having problems too. https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/vantage-travel-cancels-trips-blames-data-security-incident/

We just got back from our second cruise to Japan a couple of weeks ago (not on Azamara). Check into the Goodwill Guides in Japan. You do need to request them two weeks in advanc, but they are complimentary other than you do pay for their transportation and meals. We had one (actually two, one was a trainee) in Osaka, and they were wonderful! They spent 7 hours with us and took us to everything we wanted to see and more! Japan is easy to get around on your own, and people will go out of their way to help you there.

Sorry to hear about the weather in Kochi. I've been there twice. My favorite thing to do there is to go the Hiromi Market and get some Bonito Tataki cooked over rice straw. We were on the March 13 sailing, and the dish was just as delicious as I remembered it. I agree, there's no excuse for running out of the sodas and teas in Japan. One of the staff could just go into town and find a vending machine nearby......

I just returned from a Japan/Korea cruise on HAL. There were also few shore tour options. Out of four tours that we booked with the ship, two were very good, and the other two, although their command of English was very good, their tour guiding skills were terrible! There is such a shortage of guides that guides were being flown from Busan Korea to Jeju Korea to guide there the next day. Our best guide experience was the volunteer guides we booked in Osaka through the Goodwill Guides.

Same here!

Yes, like you, I was only able to see half of it last week while on the Westerdam due to another committment. Would have loved to be able to see it rebroadcast.

I hope so. I just picked up a couple of small gifts yesterday for our goodwill guides. When we were in Japan before on a cruise, I gave our cruise line shore excursion guides some Ghirardelli Chocolates ("from our hometown"), they seemed to appreciate them.

Recently the shore excursions listed for my cruise this summer got updated, and not for the better. Some of the tour prices went up by a lot. Some tours got added, but there is only a title and a price, no photo, no description. In once case the even the name of the destination is misspelled. The prices for some of these mystery tours are outrageous! For example, in Edinburgh, there is a shore tour to the Royal Brittania Yacht, where it says it is walking distance from the ship, but no other description, the cost is $199! For what, I have no idea? I've planned and operated shore tours for a cruise line in the past, I'm thinking about applying for a job there!! Does anyone from Azamara read these posts anymore?

Your timing is right. Enjoy Florence. We had a great guide named Andrea, hope you get him.

When we went on this tour in October, the first stop was at Pierotucci Leather Factory. Note: it is not in Florence, but on the outskirts. It was more of a restroom stop than a hard-sell shopping stop. One couple did have a tour guide that they were meeting, and they were going to get an uber from there. We then bused into Florence, where we got off the bus, and the guide walked us into Piaza Santa Croce, and took us to a jewelry and leather shop called Misuri, where that became our designated meeting point at the end of the day, where he guided us back to the bus that was parked in a different location. I hope this helps.

Nice photos. I was on the Pursuit at the time. It's a real disappointment that the ships didn't do anything to commemorate this moment.

Agreed what UKTog said. To move or cancel everyone's shore excursions for the day and to not commemorate the occasion was a complete fail by Azamara Corporate. My husband already noted it on the electronic survey. This could have been a big deal, but instead it was a ho-hum and an inconvenience.

Now that we are back, a follow-up to this post. When we boarded the ship, there was a long line of irate guests looking to rebook their Florence tours that were inexplicably cancelled. The onboard staff had no explanation for the cancellation. I overheard one shorex staff person respond to one guest who just wouldn't give it a rest, "That was in the past, this is the present." Okay. We ended up booking the Florence on Your Own and decided to make the best of it. A side note: my profession is a tour guide. In the past I have been a tour planner for shore excursions for a vendor in California. I have planned and conduct tours for a living, and this was my vacation, and I truly wanted someone else to guide me around. I didn't want to deal with the logistics of finding my way around - to me, it is "work." Oh well. On the positive side, the escort we had was truly an outstanding guide to and from Florence. Knowledgeable, entertaining, and his English was excellent. He really made the day. On the negative side, beside the overwhelming number of people there waiting in line for every museum because it was free, there was a foot race in town, where all of the participants were wearing lime green t-shirts. The entire city was complete gridlock of people, making even trying to walk across Ponte Vecchio impossible. I will forever remember visiting Florence as a sea of green t-shirted people! Two other shore excursions on the trip were also cancelled on short notice with little explanation, leaving us scrambling to plan our port activities. As a cruise line that touts their "destination immersion" this made some of our port calls very disappointing.

Ithikan, thank you, I agree. Florence is one of those bucket list cities. I think I figured it out. Our tour was to include a visit to the Accademia and since it's on the first Sunday of the month, the museum is free to everyone, and timed reserved tickets are not available. So that would not be possible. To me that would not have been a deal breaker on the tour. I would have liked it if Azamara would have explained that instead of sending a completely blank email. Not handled well.

Thanks. I'm a little paranoid. Last cruise on AZ in February, they cancelled just about all the excursions we booked. Had to do a lot of scrambling. Heading to SFO shortly for our flight, where all of the food service workers are on strike.

Leaving today for a cruise on the Pursuit. I got an email late last night from Azamara with the header "Cancellation Confirmation - Shore Excursion Azamara Cruises" and absolutely nothing in the body of the email. Looking online at my Voyage Planner, it looks like they cancelled a tour in Florence. What the...??? Now it's too late to rebook any other tour, and too late to rebook with an outside operator as well. Not a good way for Azamara to start off the cruise IMHO.

I used to work for a cruise line many moons ago and we got a lot of request for partial cruises. The first consideration was always was it legal. Like the US, many countries have laws that forbid getting on in one port in that country, and getting off at a different port in that country without going to a different country in between . For example, it isn't allowed to sail from San Francisco to Juneau, or from Rome to Livorno. So, if your beginning and ending ports are in the same country, that might be a no from the cruise line - they get fined heavily. You will have to assume that you will get charged full fare, because they wouldn't be able to fill the stateroom with another customer in your absence. Good luck!