The one negative to cruises

[Shaded Lady]

I guess I'm lucky... My cruise was booked (and publicized at work) back in Feb... A month ago my boss realized we're both scheduled to take the same week, next week. We are never off at the same time, so she can cover for me with my staff if needed.

 

I thought, uh oh... She's going to try to cancel my cruise... But when one of the other managers asked if she was going to do that, her response was 'no way... We've all worked too hard this year. I'm not canceling my plans and I won't ask her to!'

 

I almost hugged her, right there in the hallway!

[mitsguy2001]

Not true. I got my current cove balcony for this coming week-- a very busy cruise week--13 days before sailing. I had booked almost two months ahead but changed my outside to a balcony since prices dropped.

 

It seems that what Carnival is doing is blocking certain popular categories, such as 6M (Deluxe Oceanview) and 7C (Cove Balcony) in order to force people to book less popular categories, such as 6A (Standard Oceanview, mostly in lousy locations) and 8A (Standard Balcony in lousy locations). I had complained about that practice in several threads, but it looks like you may have actually benefitted from it.

 

It is not dead midship but is by the aft stairs.

 

Are you below the aft dining room or below the galley?

 

The worst thing about a cruise for me is if it rains the whole time (and you can still do stuff inside-just more crowded), and having to repack at the end. Oh, an missing my pets which I do anytime I travel!

 

Howe often does that happen? It seems to me that, at least in the Caribbean, that would mostly happen only if there was a tropical storm, in which case, they'd probably sail away from it, even if it means doing a different itinerary.

[Georgiagolfer]

I personally have found no negatives. However, it is a negative for DW to have to place the kids (2 small dogs) in a kennel for a 7-10 days. She worries about them while away, but not enough to keep us from cruising.:eek:

[Gail & Marty sailing away]

Buy insurance ..

[mitsguy2001]

You are right. Both husband and I are exempt and we both work long hours.

Husband has 5 weeks of vacation that he must take by year's end as company is reducing the maximum amount of stored hours. No way will he be able to take it due to what is needed at work. We imagine he will lose about 120 hours (three weeks) of that time before year end. If you can't take off, well, you can't take off. This is the nature of many businesses these days.

Of course I tell him to take an extra day a week off, but if he does, he just works 16 hours on the other days anyway. IT is what it is.

 

That, in my opinion, is one of the most dishonest practices followed by employers nowadays. They give you a large amount of "use it or lose it" vacation time, but give you a workload that makes it impossible to ever use that vacation time.

 

In my personal opinion (and I realize this will never happen), there should be a law requiring employers to pay employees for unused vacation time. It would at least force employers to be honest about how much vacation time you'll be able to actually take.

 

The problem is, with my idea, the employees who act like doormats and put their job above everything else will just waive their unused vacation pay, forcing everyone else to basically do the same. For example, if I was unable to use all my vacation time due to workload, and I worked for a company that had such a policy, and I asked for unused time to be paid, I'd probably get a response like "Bill waived his unused vacation time pay, and you should do the same; you are a professional, and need to make sacrifices".

 

The other problem is that it could cause employers to offer their employees little or no vacation time, perhaps even expecting all time off to be unpaid.

 

As for the policy at the company that I work for: We get 3 weeks of vacation time per year, and 1 week of personal time per year (no sick time; we have to use vacation or personal time when sick). Personal time does not carry over from one year to another, but we do get paid for unused personal time (that is in the company handbook, so they have to follow it). Vacation time does carry over to the next year, but we can accrue a maximum of 5 weeks. The company handbook, however, does not tell you what happens when you go over 5 weeks. Do we get paid? Do we just lose it? I guess it's up to the company's discretion. That, I have a problem with, since it basically becomes a popularity contest. I'm sure that the "popular" employees would get paid for their unused vacation time, while the less popular employees just lose it.

[Andoria]

Reading these posts remind me why I am still working at a small, family run business 12 years later. The raises haven't been great but they come EVERY year, I am a person not a number, I have great health insurance and no one would DREAM of telling someone they couldn't go on a scheduled, paid for vacation. I'm counting my blessings!:)

 

 

Due to this crappy economy, I have a hellish commute but my vacation is marked on the calendar and my boss wouldn't think of taking it away from me. My SO works for a major corporation and he can still get his time off. So I'm not sure what this "real world" OP speaks of.

[deborahjo]

Let me start off saying I love cruises! I've been on 4 cruises so far, and have posted reviews for all 4, and all 4 have been very positive.

 

However, cruises do have one major negative compared to a land vacation. The negative to cruises are that you tend to be locked into whatever date you choose long in advance. First of all, the deadline to get a full refund is far in advance. Yes, I know that cancel for any reason insurance exists, but it only covers a percentage of your fare.

 

Secondly, if you are forced to cancel (and accept the financial loss) and try to reschedule, most of the good rooms will be gone, and you may be stuck with a room directly above the nightclub. Also, the best fares will often be gone. With a land trip, what room you get usually has nothing to do with when you book.

 

Thirdly, when you book a cruise, for obvious reasons, you are locked into the entire period of the cruise. For example, my most recent cruise was June 24 - July 1, 2012. Let's say, hypothetically, your boss tells you that they really need you to work on June 24 (say a big project is due that day, or there is a major meeting scheduled for that day), but that the rest of the week is ok. With a land trip, you can always start your vacation a day late, and either accept it being one day shorter than planned, or possibly extend it to July 2. With a cruise, it's all or nothing: you either go on the entire cruise, or you cancel the entire cruise.

 

The reason why I am thinking about this is because 3 days before my most recent cruise, our biggest client at my job dumped a last minute rush job on us. This, unfortunately, came shortly after my boss chewed me out for not working enough overtime (which isn't even true, by the way). I had booked this cruise many months in advance (far too early to have known whether or not June 24 would be a busy week or not), and booked early saver, and carefully selected a cove balcony room (a very popular category on the Magic) in a quiet location (many cove balcony rooms are in noisy locations).

 

Given the cirumstances, there was absolutely no way I was going to cancel the cruise at that point. I would have lost 10% of the fare plus the cost of the insurance (we had cancel for any reason insurance that covered 90%). Plus, if we were to have booked another cruise on that ship anytime soon, we would not have been able to choose a cabin that we would have wanted, and we likely would have had to pay more. So, we went on the cruise (and had a wonderful time)! Though I do realize that I didn't do my career any good, and that in the future, I will likely be chewed out about being on vacation while everyone else was working overtime (to be fair, I did work overtime on July 3, 5, and 6, when everyone else was taking an extended 4th of July weekend).

 

If this had been a land vacation, we probably could have rescheduled it for sometime in the near future with little or no penalty.

 

Just something I wanted to point out. I realize that there is no way around this, but just something to keep in mind.

 

They make me get off the ship at the end of my cruise. LOL...

[mitsguy2001]

Buy insurance ..

 

Insurance does not cover work reasons, unless you buy "cancel for any reason" insurance, which does not cover 100% of the cost. You still lose a lot of money for a cruise that you don't get to go on, and it becomes difficult to re-book in the near future.

[Name Of The Game]

Negatives for us are that we feel the need to purchase travel insurance (mostly for the med vac) for an additional $100.00.

 

Then we feel the need to fly in a day early just to be on the safe side so that's another $100.00 for a hotel and meal or two.

[mitsguy2001]

Due to this crappy economy, I have a hellish commute but my vacation is marked on the calendar and my boss wouldn't think of taking it away from me. My SO works for a major corporation and he can still get his time off. So I'm not sure what this "real world" OP speaks of.

 

It might depend on what field you are in. In my field (civil engineering), it seems that we are expected to make a lot of sacrifices and expect very little in return. Obviously, there are other fields like mine. You and your SO are lucky that you are in fields that are more employee friendly.

[Andoria]

It might depend on what field you are in. In my field (civil engineering), it seems that we are expected to make a lot of sacrifices and expect very little in return. Obviously, there are other fields like mine. You and your SO are lucky that you are in fields that are more employee friendly.

 

 

I was finding fault with your use of "real world." For sure employers have the upper hand and I'm looking forward to the day when there will be plenty of jobs and unreasonable bosses can be put in their place.

[mitsguy2001]

I was finding fault with your use of "real world." For sure employers have the upper hand and I'm looking forward to the day when there will be plenty of jobs and unreasonable bosses can be put in their place.

 

Why were you finding fault with my use of "real world"?

[sail2sea]

Unless you don't need flights, I don't see how you can avoid losing at least some money if you have to cancel 3 days ahead with any type of vacation.

 

I find cruising limiting, most in offering full local experiences. Sea days can be a bit boring to those of us more action oriented. And the internet is expensive and slow.

[azpilot]

I just went through something similar to this. We have our cruise set for Oct 21. I knew our Company was moving but its been a floating time frame. They are starting to hone in on that week as the move for some reason. We booked ES and its paid in full, luckily for us however we called and I moved the date up to the same cruise and ship but a month earlier. We paid an extra $200 plus the $100 in Admin fees and went from an aft balcony to a suite. All in all it worked out fine for us. I'm not so sure however the closer we got if this would have worked at all or we would have been able to get the better deal we got this time.

[NeverSoBer]

Negative part of cruising is that lately in some of the ports they are staying shorter then they use to. Anyway its all about saving of money they pay for docking, on new ships that are making more money and they have more expensive cruises they are staying in ports same as before....

[kathy884]

To the OP - While I appreciate your concerns, I don't fully understand how a land vacation would provide that much more flexibility, unless it's one you're driving to. If you need to change/cancel airfare, there are penalties involved and most vacation packages have cancellation penalties. Unless you're just planning to drive somewhere, rent a hotel room and take in the local sites, most any other vacation plans would carry some time of loss if you were to cancel.

 

:) These were my thoughts too, based on the types of land vacations we usually plan.

 

Many of the land vacations we do are even less flexible than a cruise for cancellation as we often rent condos or houses from owners (not uncommon to pay 1/2 at time of booking and the rest 30 days before) with no refunds for cancellation less than 30 to 45 days in advance. // For us both land and cruise packages tend to mean flights, so both have the same issues if you need to change/cancel those. // There is also a trend in the travel industry for prepayment with no cancellation to get substantial discounts -- e.g rental cars at the Newak airport Aug. 3-6 were starting at about $118 a day (ouch). By prepaying on hotwire my price is $53 a day (but with this I am out the money if I have to cancel).

 

Day tours seem to have quite a bit of flexibiity in canceling if you cancel 48 hours in advance. For concert tickets, if you can't get there you are out of luck entirely it seems.

 

You are correct, though, that traditional hotels let you cancel by 6 p.m. the day of arrival (I'm seeing a trend for that to be 48 hours in resort areas these days though) and retail car rentals let you cancel with no penalty. These days more and more often though you have to pay a big premium for this flexibility. For us personally, unless the trip is four night or less though, it's really unusual for us to stay in a typical hotel.

[SASA13]

IMO the only bad thing about a cruise is that it ends!:D

 

Amen

[okwriter]

I didn't read all of the replies, but it sounds like the problem is your employer rather than the type of vacation you choose. I'm blessed to work for myself at home...the downside is that there is no such thing as a PAID vacation. :(

[txmom11]

I work for a large hospital system, and we too have the use or lose policy for vacation time. My DH works for a union shop where his vacation time is guaranteed but the sign up for dates is based on seniority.

 

Luckily for us, the times I can usually go, are not the peak seasons for vacation. We plan around my schedule, and my manager, director, and CNO (chief nursing officer) all put high priority on work/life balance.

 

I schedule my vacations during times when we don't have nurse interns on orientation or during Emergency Nurses Week (did that last year by mistake :eek:). Before I book, of course I ask both the manager, director, and the other supervisor to be sure there are no conflicts. Of course, this year, there is a chance that I might miss a HUGE inspection, but as my boss says, "we'll make due without you. We just won't do it as well." :p Gotta love someone who puts it into perspective.

 

I love my job and love my company. I've heard horror stories from others at other facilities who are told to cancel vacations at the last minute even after getting approval. I feel sorry for them.

[babyblue78]

Insurance does not cover work reasons, unless you buy "cancel for any reason" insurance, which does not cover 100% of the cost. You still lose a lot of money for a cruise that you don't get to go on, and it becomes difficult to re-book in the near future.

 

Check into Travelguard Gold, "Cancel for Work Reasons" is an included benefit. We book that particular policy for that reason, through Insure My Trip. :cool:

[mitsguy2001]

I didn't read all of the replies, but it sounds like the problem is your employer rather than the type of vacation you choose. I'm blessed to work for myself at home...the downside is that there is no such thing as a PAID vacation. :(

 

Everybody here acts like my employer is evil. What you have to remember is that sometimes clients dump a project with a ridiculous deadline at the last minute. My employer does need to somehow get the work done.

 

What I do have a problem with is the lack of redundancy in companies these days. They try to operate as lean as possible, and just assume that they can get anyone to work as much overtime as the employer wants. They will say that they "need" to operate that lean. In reality, the owners could scale back their own lifestyles in order to hire more employees; but they don't ever want to do that.

 

One of these days, an employer will get seriously damaged by operating too lean. In this case, we had a project dumped on us by our largest client at the last minute, exactly when I was on vacation for a week. But what would they have done if rather than being on vacation for a week, I was in the hospital for several weeks? Or what if I died and they couldn't find a replacement fast enough? Or what if I left in order to go to a new job? I guess they'd just expect everyone else to work even more overtime? But what if some employees refuse to work any more overtime than they already are? Or if there are just no more hours in the week for some employees to work? Eventually, this will catch up to employers, and the bosses will maybe realize that they should have scaled back their own lifestyle in order to hire more people, in order to have more redundancy, in order to avoid such a situation.

 

Again, I want to emphasize that my employer is not evil. They may be operating too lean, perhaps with good intentions. Maybe the client that dumped this project on us is evil. But it doesn't matter, since my employer needs them to survive.

[mitsguy2001]

Check into Travelguard Gold, "Cancel for Work Reasons" is an included benefit. We book that particular policy for that reason, through Insure My Trip. :cool:

 

I had asked about that on another board around the time that I booked my most recent cruise. The consensus from people on that board was that it wouldn't cover the scenarios that I was most worried about at the time.

 

One negative to such coverage is that if an employer does expect you to cancel a vacation (either by asking or by implied pressure), you lose the argument that you'd be suffering a financial loss by cancelling. Of course, given that such coverage does exist, they could make the argument that you should have paid for such coverage. That, basically, increases the cost of a vacation for anyone who has a job.

[mitsguy2001]

One thing from my original post that nobody commented on: does anyone else have a fear that in the near future, employers will ban their "professional" employees from going on cruises at all? They can make the argument that on a land vacation, if they need you to return early, you can (if there are still flights available, or if you are driving), but with a cruise, there is absolutely no way that you can return while you are at sea, or if you are in an American port (due to the Passenger Service Act). Currently, some employers place restrictions on the CEO and other very high level employees (who, in their judgment, the company can't function without). But, as I said before, employers are starting to have expectations on rank and file employees that they used to have only on very high level employees, but without the pay. That would be something that, in my opinion, employees should absolutely refuse to accept, but, unfortunately, most employees will just cheerfully accept, forcing people like us to do the same if we want to keep our jobs.

 

Employees need to realize that they are their own worst enemy. An employer cannot force employees to do something they don't want to do. If no employee is willing to cancel a vacation or work extreme overtime, then employers will have to find some other way to get the work done. But, unfortunately, when one employee is willing to be a doormat and just accept whatever the employer wants, it forces all other employees to do the same.

[mitsguy2001]

By the way, this is the thread where I had posted about cancel for work reason insurance, and was basically told it was useless for my situation, and was told I shouldn't even go on a cruise:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1523289

[mimgan3]

let me start off saying i love cruises! I've been on 4 cruises so far, and have posted reviews for all 4, and all 4 have been very positive.

 

However, cruises do have one major negative compared to a land vacation. The negative to cruises are that you tend to be locked into whatever date you choose long in advance. First of all, the deadline to get a full refund is far in advance. Yes, i know that cancel for any reason insurance exists, but it only covers a percentage of your fare.

 

Secondly, if you are forced to cancel (and accept the financial loss) and try to reschedule, most of the good rooms will be gone, and you may be stuck with a room directly above the nightclub. Also, the best fares will often be gone. With a land trip, what room you get usually has nothing to do with when you book.

 

Thirdly, when you book a cruise, for obvious reasons, you are locked into the entire period of the cruise. For example, my most recent cruise was june 24 - july 1, 2012. Let's say, hypothetically, your boss tells you that they really need you to work on june 24 (say a big project is due that day, or there is a major meeting scheduled for that day), but that the rest of the week is ok. With a land trip, you can always start your vacation a day late, and either accept it being one day shorter than planned, or possibly extend it to july 2. With a cruise, it's all or nothing: You either go on the entire cruise, or you cancel the entire cruise.

 

The reason why i am thinking about this is because 3 days before my most recent cruise, our biggest client at my job dumped a last minute rush job on us. This, unfortunately, came shortly after my boss chewed me out for not working enough overtime (which isn't even true, by the way). I had booked this cruise many months in advance (far too early to have known whether or not june 24 would be a busy week or not), and booked early saver, and carefully selected a cove balcony room (a very popular category on the magic) in a quiet location (many cove balcony rooms are in noisy locations).

 

Given the cirumstances, there was absolutely no way i was going to cancel the cruise at that point. I would have lost 10% of the fare plus the cost of the insurance (we had cancel for any reason insurance that covered 90%). Plus, if we were to have booked another cruise on that ship anytime soon, we would not have been able to choose a cabin that we would have wanted, and we likely would have had to pay more. So, we went on the cruise (and had a wonderful time)! Though i do realize that i didn't do my career any good, and that in the future, i will likely be chewed out about being on vacation while everyone else was working overtime (to be fair, i did work overtime on july 3, 5, and 6, when everyone else was taking an extended 4th of july weekend).

 

If this had been a land vacation, we probably could have rescheduled it for sometime in the near future with little or no penalty.

 

Just something i wanted to point out. I realize that there is no way around this, but just something to keep in mind.

 

 

 

the one negative, "they end"