Serenade Suggestion Box -- by special request from DennisCD

[emeraldcity]

At our Meet & Mingle, the cruise director said that they welcome our suggestions about how they can improve our cruise experience. That being said, I thought I'd offer mine and I encourage anyone who reviews this to either rate the validity of my suggestions or add some of their own. Dennis swears he reads this stuff!

 

Dining with Ship’s Officers

I know there’s always a lot of buzz about being invited to dine at the Captain’s table, but there are other ship’s officers as well. On my very first cruise my sister and I dined with the Hotel Captain, which was incredibly fascinating. We got to hear about the kinds of things that his job entails. Please consider sprinkling the other officers around the dining room from time to time so that more people get a chance to experience some dinner table conversation with one of the people who make their vacation possible.

 

Take Those Gold Medals to the Next Level

Gold, silver and bronze RC Medals are passed out, Olympic style, for different contests throughout the cruise. It would be fun if you had a medium for displaying the week’s tally about who had won what … and where they were from. A video display in the lounges or the pool deck … maybe a channel on TV. You could hype up the whole thing as a regional medals race, Olympic style. There was always a lot of regional support in the on-lookers when it was announced where a contestant was from (even when they didn’t bring the whole fam-damily).

 

Shorten those Lines for Bingo Card Sales

You can kill three birds with one stone here. Offer bingo cards pre-sale in the Logo Shop with a modest discount. You’ll (1) make cruisers happy they are getting a deal, while getting them to commit to the activity since they already bought the cards earlier in the day, (2) drive more traffic into the Logo Shop where potential purchases can offset the loss for the modest discount, and (3) avoid losing sales to the last-minute people who will play if they don’t have to deal with a long line.

 

Go Green with your Photography Operation

Printing massive quantities of photos in the hope that the photographee will buy from the photographer is wasteful and so non-ecofriendly. I have to believe that the technology exists to tag photos when taken (we all carry our sea pass card) so that you can identify the subjects. Cruisers can then either view the photos of just themselves at a kiosk (instead of rummaging through the displays) and order the exact sizes and quantities that they desire. Take it one step further and let them view the photos in their cabin on the TV. If you can order room service on your TV, why not photos?

 

Widen the Selection in the Logo Shop

Royal Caribbean has one of the best corporate logos (if not the best) I’ve ever seen. Yet I found the selection in the Logo shop to be rather limited. I wasn’t the only one in there looking for specific items that aren’t carried anymore. So I tried to get a little more non-specific and I still didn’t find much that worked for me. Give me more choices and I’ll find the room in my suitcase to get it home.

 

Bring Back the Horse Races

Always a crowd-pleaser!! I’ve heard it said that maybe they got old after awhile … but there have been a number of years that they’ve been gone. You could get a lot of press out of announcing that they were coming back. If you want to bet the ponies – the Serenade is the place to be.

[steponboard]

At our Meet & Mingle, the cruise director said that they welcome our suggestions about how they can improve our cruise experience. That being said, I thought I'd offer mine and I encourage anyone who reviews this to either rate the validity of my suggestions or add some of their own. Dennis swears he reads this stuff!

 

Dining with Ship’s Officers

I know there’s always a lot of buzz about being invited to dine at the Captain’s table, but there are other ship’s officers as well. On my very first cruise my sister and I dined with the Hotel Captain, which was incredibly fascinating. We got to hear about the kinds of things that his job entails. Please consider sprinkling the other officers around the dining room from time to time so that more people get a chance to experience some dinner table conversation with one of the people who make their vacation possible.

 

Take Those Gold Medals to the Next Level

Gold, silver and bronze RC Medals are passed out, Olympic style, for different contests throughout the cruise. It would be fun if you had a medium for displaying the week’s tally about who had won what … and where they were from. A video display in the lounges or the pool deck … maybe a channel on TV. You could hype up the whole thing as a regional medals race, Olympic style. There was always a lot of regional support in the on-lookers when it was announced where a contestant was from (even when they didn’t bring the whole fam-damily).

 

Shorten those Lines for Bingo Card Sales

You can kill three birds with one stone here. Offer bingo cards pre-sale in the Logo Shop with a modest discount. You’ll (1) make cruisers happy they are getting a deal, while getting them to commit to the activity since they already bought the cards earlier in the day, (2) drive more traffic into the Logo Shop where potential purchases can offset the loss for the modest discount, and (3) avoid losing sales to the last-minute people who will play if they don’t have to deal with a long line.

 

Go Green with your Photography Operation

Printing massive quantities of photos in the hope that the photographee will buy from the photographer is wasteful and so non-ecofriendly. I have to believe that the technology exists to tag photos when taken (we all carry our sea pass card) so that you can identify the subjects. Cruisers can then either view the photos of just themselves at a kiosk (instead of rummaging through the displays) and order the exact sizes and quantities that they desire. Take it one step further and let them view the photos in their cabin on the TV. If you can order room service on your TV, why not photos?

 

Widen the Selection in the Logo Shop

Royal Caribbean has one of the best corporate logos (if not the best) I’ve ever seen. Yet I found the selection in the Logo shop to be rather limited. I wasn’t the only one in there looking for specific items that aren’t carried anymore. So I tried to get a little more non-specific and I still didn’t find much that worked for me. Give me more choices and I’ll find the room in my suitcase to get it home.

 

Bring Back the Horse Races

Always a crowd-pleaser!! I’ve heard it said that maybe they got old after awhile … but there have been a number of years that they’ve been gone. You could get a lot of press out of announcing that they were coming back. If you want to bet the ponies – the Serenade is the place to be.

 

I'm sorry to say I disagree with everything you posted except maybe dining with the ships officers. If you put the people in the logo shop then it's not a store it's a gambling venue and will drive my business away. The horse races were fixed to have the horse with the most betters win to keep as many people as possible happy and fixing races is wrong even for a that reason. No matter what you do to help me find my photo's I won't go to look anyway. They do use your seapass card on some ships to identify you for the reasons you want. After they took away the free photo from the d+ book I stopped looking. The photo price is so ridiculously priced for a digital photo I wouldn't consider buying it.

A video for who won trivia, you gotta be kidding. The only one interested might be the winner. I'm past school yard "atta boy" and I see those metals in the garbage or on Ebay.

[Cruzin-K]

I'm sorry to say I disagree with everything you posted except maybe dining with the ships officers. If you put the people in the logo shop then it's not a store it's a gambling venue and will drive my business away. The horse races were fixed to have the horse with the most betters win to keep as many people as possible happy and fixing races is wrong even for a that reason. No matter what you do to help me find my photo's I won't go to look anyway. They do use your seapass card on some ships to identify you for the reasons you want. After they took away the free photo from the d+ book I stopped looking. The photo price is so ridiculously priced for a digital photo I wouldn't consider buying it.

A video for who won trivia, you gotta be kidding. The only one interested might be the winner. I'm past school yard "atta boy" and I see those metals in the garbage or on Ebay.

 

I pretty much agree with what you said (disagreeing with the OP). I don't play bingo, wouldn't do the horse racing, and while the photo suggestion is a good one - it would take quite a bit of technical upgrading and is still probably a long way off. Dining with ships officers is a good idea. I don't buy the logo merchandise and don't get involved in the onboard contests except to attend and laugh hysterically at The Quest.

 

I'm sure some people from Royal Caribbean (and all the other major cruise lines) read postings on Cruise Critic but the RCI boards move pretty quick and I seriously doubt everything gets read, especially by a Cruise Director who seems to work about 25 hours a day. People at the corporate offices are more likely targets for our suggestions than a specific ship CD. Dennis was a very active CD which means if he gets any time at all on the computer he is probably answering work related e-mails and dealing with other important ship's business, not reading CC. He said at our M&M a couple weeks ago that people at RCI read the boards, but I got the impression that he himself doesn't spend much time here.

[kjhighball]

Dining with Ship’s Officers

Great idea...The Captain's invite seems to be very exclusive, and he only has so much time, but the other officers could be available from time-to-time. Or make this a contest "reward" or charity auction item?

 

Go Green with your Photography Operation

I completely agree. Disney has this technology down to perfection. The photographers scan your Passport (i.e. Seapass) immediately prior to the picture, and the shots are electronically linked to you. You can view them at many places around DisneyWorld, and when I got home, I could share them with friends/family so they could buy additional pictures. There is definitely some technology needs here, but it is not anything knew.

 

Widen the Selection in the Logo Shop

My wife would agree with this. We attempted to buy shirts from the Logo Shop, but we could not find much selection. On the final day of the cruise, they finally pulled out lots of shirts for the "sale" near the pool. On that day, we saw much more selection and found some nice options. Where were they during the week? I don't know!

 

kjhighball

Serenade of the Seas - 4/10

[printingchick]

I sailed on the Serenade with Dennis just last month.

 

I don't seem to have a lot in common with the OP either, although I agree with the photo shop suggestion.

 

I would recommend not scheduling major crowd-pleaser events on port days. Our M&M was scheduled for our St. Thomas day, PRIOR to departure time. Very few people were able to attend. (Fortunately, we'd scheduled our own, informal M&M on embarkation day.)

 

Also, I LOVE the contests. I was a judge for the sexy legs contest for the first time on this cruise. This contest would have been better attended and would have drawn more contestents, had it not been at 5PM on a port day. Again, difficult to make when all-aboard is 4:30. It may have been scheduled this way for the purposes of the "Cruise in Review" video (more on that later), but I think the timing somewhat diminished the event by severely limiting participation.

 

More time for karaoke!! We were fortunate to have had a karaoke contest added to the final night of the cruise because there was so much interest in this event on our sailing. It meant missing the farewell show, but my daughter took 2nd place! I realize that karaoke won't be as popular on ALL sailings, but it's easier to shorten a scheduled event than it is to add to it.

 

Have done the MTD on two cruises now and will NEVER go back to traditional dining. I know a lot of people don't really care for the musical waitstaff, but I enjoy it (to a point) and we were actually treated to some of those numbers in MTD on this sailing. We may be cheesy, but we enjoy getting up and doing the Macarena after dinner! :D

 

I love all the crew/passenger mingling activities, such as the crew versus passenger volleyball or dodgeball contests, the 70's night disco party, dancing under the stars, etc. In my opinion, the friendliness of RCL's crew is one of the advantages it has over Carnival. (Take it from someone who used to be a LOYAL Carnival cruiser!)

 

My only real complaint about my cruise experience was the "Cruise in Review" video. I purchased one for the first time on this cruise, as my daughter and I were very involved in a lot of the activities. We were VERY disappointed. The video included NO footage from the Love and Marriage game. Even though we know it was recorded, it included NO video of the karaoke contest. (Why bother taping it if not to include it?) Our sea day was at the very end of the cruise and they'd already finalized the video by then. None of the sea day events were included. (Maybe that was the reason they scheduled the sexy legs contest for a port day??) Very little footage from our actual sailing was on the tape. It seemed to be mostly stock promotional footage. It wasn't much of a souvenir of our specific cruise. That would be my most emphatic piece of constructive criticism.

[TEXASMUNK]

Photos online; great idea

Logo Shop; great idea

Bingo cards: Great idea (don't play but it would shorten lines and increase store traffic).

Dining; Have had the opportunity of dining with various officers, their focus is always interesting