Rudder Damage on Celebrity Century Cancels Cruise

[LauraS]

Check out the latest Celebrity Cruises news from Cruise Critic:

 

Rudder Damage on Celebrity Century Cancels Cruise

[steamboats]

BTW the Century is in Villefranche-sur-Mer and not in Nice. As Villefranche is a tender port this is complicateing the disembarkation process.

 

You can clearly see her on the webcam of Villefranche

 

http://vsm.shinshu-a.com/

 

steamboats

[verla]

As you can imagine this is quite a mess as many people are from North America with pre booked flights from European gateways.Apparently they are being disembarqed in Ville France which is a small town. There is no sattelite phone or internet working onboard according to reports.

 

Passangers are in a position to re book a flight from a major city at their own expense. They also have to get there from Ville France.

 

The train runs from Ville France to Mt Carlo and in the other direction to Nice.

 

It is unfortunate that they do not tow the ship to a major port perhaps there is some potential danger to passangers?

[cl.klink]

The story says that rudder damage was discovered during a dive inspection while they were in a port. Is such an inspection common? Or, do you think it was done in response to a concern of some kind?

- Joel

[merryecho]

Just got an email from a friend on this trip. Sounds like Celebrity has pretty much abandoned their passengers. They just lost this potential customer.

 

"The day we arrived, they announced the ship was "broken" and they were cancelling the cruise. We had barely unpacked. They then more or less have deserted us. The boat will be tugged away tomorrow so we have to be off. Our flight home was not for 12 more days...and the town we are tendered at has no train service (they are on strike). So, tomorrow we will be dropped with no hotel, no flights, no transportation, no maps, no internet, (you get the picture)...and about 50 pounds of luggage each on the beach of an obscure city with about 1000 other people trying to get home. We believe that we may have a flight out from Nice (closest airport) tomorrow...but we do not know for sure how, where, what or when (it is about 7:30 pm here right now).

 

SO...in short, we have spent more time in a plane or some other cruel form of transportation than we have in Europe. We have spent enormous amounts of money and seen nothing. We have purhashed nothing. We have not strung more than 2 consecutive hours of sleep together since last Monday and we hope to be home by Sunday "

[CanWeGoYet?]

That's incredible. I thought Celebrity took better care of their passengers. Scary. :(

[ssCRUISERS]

The story says that rudder damage was discovered during a dive inspection while they were in a port. Is such an inspection common? Or, do you think it was done in response to a concern of some kind?

- Joel

 

Yes I have heard that divers check the ship at each port looking for anything suspicious. Have never seen them doing so.

[The Viking]

Although I feel sorry for the passengers who get a full refund and 25% off in cruisecredit, I would stay in that wonderful area and enjoy it in local B & B. This will also give me some time to schedule my return travel.

[FritzG]

Yes I have heard that divers check the ship at each port looking for anything suspicious. Have never seen them doing so.

 

I've seen divers around the ship in port, and I wondered what they were doing. I figured it was either for security or to check systems of some sort.

[penetangjudy]

Although I feel sorry for the passengers who get a full refund and 25% off in cruisecredit, I would stay in that wonderful area and enjoy it in local B & B. This will also give me some time to schedule my return travel.

 

Wonderful thought but not everyone has the funds available to just change their vacation midflight....some people actually save for cruises and this kind of misfortune is a huge blow for them.

 

I can't believe Celebrity would actually just abandon them like that without assuming any responsibility for ensuring their return voyage home. Really makes you wonder.

[donaldsc]

Just got an email from a friend on this trip. Sounds like Celebrity has pretty much abandoned their passengers. They just lost this potential customer.

 

"The day we arrived, they announced the ship was "broken" and they were cancelling the cruise. We had barely unpacked. They then more or less have deserted us. The boat will be tugged away tomorrow so we have to be off. Our flight home was not for 12 more days...and the town we are tendered at has no train service (they are on strike). So, tomorrow we will be dropped with no hotel, no flights, no transportation, no maps, no internet, (you get the picture)...and about 50 pounds of luggage each on the beach of an obscure city with about 1000 other people trying to get home. We believe that we may have a flight out from Nice (closest airport) tomorrow...but we do not know for sure how, where, what or when (it is about 7:30 pm here right now).

 

SO...in short, we have spent more time in a plane or some other cruel form of transportation than we have in Europe. We have spent enormous amounts of money and seen nothing. We have purhashed nothing. We have not strung more than 2 consecutive hours of sleep together since last Monday and we hope to be home by Sunday "

 

Simple answer - insurance.

 

DON

[Sabbycat]

My husband and I were scheduled to be on this cruise, but had to cancel due to family matters.:confused:

We discussed what we would have done if we had made the trip. We would have just flown to somewhere in the med. for a week then back to Barcelona to catch our flight home. It would have been an added expense, but still, if you get given lemons, why not make lemonade.

While Celebrity may not be handling it as some would like, I feel the compensation they are offering is fair.

To those who are there, why not make the best of this. Yes, it sucks, but life is unpredictable. Take this opportunity to explore Europe; Fly to Rome, Venice or Naples. Try to enjoy what is left of your trip and don't get too down. Only you can control whether your trip is truly ruined or not.:D

[Sabbycat]

xxx

[TeaBag]

My husband and I were scheduled to be on this cruise, but had to cancel due to family matters.:confused:

 

We discussed what we would have done if we had made the trip. We would have just flown to somewhere in the med. for a week then back to Barcelona to catch our flight home. It would have been an added expense, but still, if you get given lemons, why not make lemonade.

 

While Celebrity may not be handling it as some would like, I feel the compensation they are offering is fair.

 

To those who are there, why not make the best of this. Yes, it sucks, but life is unpredictable. Take this opportunity to explore Europe; Fly to Rome, Venice or Naples. Try to enjoy what is left of your trip and don't get too down. Only you can control whether your trip is truly ruined or not.:D

 

Well said. The south of France is lovely and that is what we would have done, but I think there are people who just are not capable of turning things around quickly. They need assistance and it would seem that Celebrity has just not been there for them.

[Lou33]

Simple answer - insurance.

 

DON

 

But things are not that simple....

 

Insurance is irrelevent in this case. It will not refund the airfare since the passengers used the tickets. And most insurance plans will not be much help for paying for a flight back home. Most plans will pay for a return ticket up to the cost of the insured trip. However this applies only to certain conditions for trip interuption, like a death in the family, a natural disaster, etc. But when the cruiseline cancels the cruise for reasons that are there own fault, then this doesn't apply.

 

My insurance would pay up to $100/person for change fees on a return ticket, but it would not pay the difference in the cost of the ticket. And if you are getting a last minute ticket on a flight that is almost sold out from a place like Nice or Barcelona, that could be several thousand dollars.

 

So lets see...The passengers spend thousands on a roundtrip ticket for 3 days in hell. Then spend thousands more to get back home. And none of this is covered by insurance.

[meembop]

We were also on the Century and our experience has been pretty well described. Two thousand disappointed angry frustrated passengers. The crew was doing their best but the situation was poorly managed and chaotic. I finally got Internet access after a number of hours and booked a hotel in Nice since we were told we had to be off the ship by 5:30. We had hotels and tours booked in Rome at the end of the cruise so just going home wasn't an option. C gave us the choice of a ten HR bus trip to Barcelona or a trip to the

Nice airport. Once we got to our Nice hotel we learned more about the strikes going on in France. We quickly booked another dAy just to buy time to figure out what to do. This is not one of your "usual" strikes. Literally millions of people are demonstrating in the streets and thousands have been arrested. Fuel Depots have bee taken over affecting all transport. Trains out of Nice are not running. Our wonderful hotel staff finally found a transfer company willing to take us to the nearest train station in Italy where we were able to train to Florence.(Taxis didn't want to use their fuel to go that far.) Hooray! We will fill in our cruise time in Italy. We did have trip insurance but it probably won't begin to cover our added expenses.

[meembop]

One more comment. Flights out of BCN were running in the $thousands. One woman was quoted $7000 to continue were family's vacation by flying to another location. I looked at flights to Rome and several other options and found the same thing. Very expensive lemonade I'm afraid.

[jtatsud]

I agree with meembop. While the crew looked to be doing their best, any real help from Corporate Celebrity was almost non-existant. We were essentially "on our own" from the time that Celebrity announced the rudder problem.

[jtatsud]

Here is what Celebrity sent my travel agent which looks OK unless you were actually on the ship and experienced what really happened:

 

Celebrity advised us of the following services provided to all guests onboard the “Century”:

 

• They assisted with rearranging travel plans for all guests onboard

• Provided shore excursions in Villefranche on Oct. 15th

• Marine Operations is proceeding with repair plans on the steering rudder

• Guests received travel questionnaires

• Guests were given a full refund and 25% future cruise credit

 

 

Let me comment:

 

1) They assisted with rearranging travel plans for all guests onboard: Unless you had also booked your flights through Celebrity, this "help" was essentially free use of the ship's phones and Internet service. Of course, since pretty much all the guests were trying to use the phones and Internet at the same time, they were essentially unusable. I finally had to use my AT&T cellphone to dial out at the onboard rate of $2.49 per minute. Per previous comments, some passengers had to pay thousands of dollars to get back home.

 

2) Provided shore excursions in Villefranche on Oct. 15th: Not sure why this was included in the comments except to try to show that Celebrity was doing something? In any case these were pretty disorganized, and we missed our tour even though we had signed up and then called twice to try to make sure we had the correct information - which was never given to us.

 

3) Guests received travel questionnaires: Big deal here! Essentially told us that we were on our own - and when could we get off the boat!

 

4) Guests were given a full refund and 25% future cruise credit: This is pretty much a bare minimum and not acceptable to my way of thinking. What about the extra expenses we incurred trying to get back home - including air fare, hotel, phone calls (at $2.49 per minute), taxi, and meals? Hopefully, Celebrity will amend this to include the reimbursement of these expenses.

 

meembop, maybe we should start another thread which would detail the results of our future dealings with Celebrity per this cruise? It would be nice to know what experiences others are having in respect to refunds, insurance, etc. I don't have much experience with this forum so maybe you'll have some comments?

[gatour]

What prompted them to check the rudders. I have never seen divers around a ship except maybe around a embarkation/disembarkation port. Find it strange that both rudders would need to be replaced, unless both hit something, or either it was a precautionary move.

[california couple]

We were on the Century cruise with the broken rudder. We have received the 25% of price paid coupons and the refund to our Visa for the price of the cruise.

With all that we had to endure lack of the use of 'free international phones and internet" as they were jammed or off line! And with the lack of support from Celebrity Corp. (the staff were very nice, but could not help very much. They could not get out on the phones either!).

We did not get our confirmation flight home until early Sat. afternoon right before we were tendered to Neice @ 3:30. Luckily we were in the group to be some of the last on the ship...but this meant we arrived at the hotel in Barcelona aprox 2:00AM. And oh yeah, we stopped for a fast food dinner at our own expense!!!

We were not able to fly out of Barcelona until Wed Oct 20th so we had to stay and pay for three extra days of expenses...hotel,food, and transportation. We decided to go on the fast train for one day to Madrid...very expensive, we did try to make lemonade even if it was bitter!

I feel very strongly that Celebrity should compensate us with a free cruise of equal value. Celebrity definetly needs a better plan for this kind of mishap because we had to make all of our own arrangements with jammed phones and dropped off internet.

We have not received the reimbursement for the airfare or the $100. each for incidentials that we were told we would receive.

We are still getting all of the things sorted out with our travel supplier and will be submitting receipts for travel ins....lets' hope we get some kind of decent compensation!!!

California Couple:cool:

[helen66]

After months of disputes with Celebrity's Executive Customer Service

We were told the total of $350.00 US, is all the compensation we will receive. ( for party of 4 @350.00 us PP)

After being dumped in Barcelona, we incurred thousands of dollars in food, hotels, car rental, gas & tolls.

Recently found out that under the US Maritime Laws, ships leaving from other than US ports, you are at the Cruise Lines mercy.

The recent fire incident on Carnival Cruises, where passengers were fully compensated...plus free cruise, hotels & airfare plus other goodies, was due to our Laws covering American Cruise Passengers leaving from a U.S Ports.( San Diego)

Celebrity 's legal team is fully aware of above laws & threw us a bone to hopefully get frequent cruisers back.

The Cruise Lines all follow the same laws once you board in a foreign country.

Sent out some more complaints to different agencies & hoping for some better results

[Jade13]

After months of disputes with Celebrity's Executive Customer Service

We were told the total of $350.00 US, is all the compensation we will receive. ( for party of 4 @350.00 us PP)

After being dumped in Barcelona, we incurred thousands of dollars in food, hotels, car rental, gas & tolls.

Recently found out that under the US Maritime Laws, ships leaving from other than US ports, you are at the Cruise Lines mercy.

The recent fire incident on Carnival Cruises, where passengers were fully compensated...plus free cruise, hotels & airfare plus other goodies, was due to our Laws covering American Cruise Passengers leaving from a U.S Ports.( San Diego)

Celebrity 's legal team is fully aware of above laws & threw us a bone to hopefully get frequent cruisers back.

The Cruise Lines all follow the same laws once you board in a foreign country.

Sent out some more complaints to different agencies & hoping for some better results

 

I thought they were paying for three additional days of hotels/food, in addition to full refund including cruise and all airfare?

 

What was the additional thousands?