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Celebrity is great but Carnival has better batteries

grampasgrumpy

By grampasgrumpy,
in Celebrity Cruises

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grampasgrumpy

grampasgrumpy

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Posted

Our recent cruise on Celebrity Constellation was amazing but after 12 cruises on Carnival without a single battery failure, I believe Carnival has better batteries than Celebrity. My personal justification is in the story below.

 

Shortly after embarkation when my wife first tried to lock our room safe using our agreed upon numerical code it was balky and took a few tries to lock. The next day it refused to lock after accessing the contents and she noticed the display said 'batt' instead of displaying the numbers entered. A call to guest services was made and very shortly somebody came and replaced the batteries and it worked fine the rest of the cruise.

 

Day three was a sea day and that evening we decided to eat at the buffet and then attended a show and took a short walk before returning to our room around 10:30pm. I tried to unlock our door but my key would not work. We tried Teri's key and it would not work. We were locked out.

 

We went from deck 9 down to guest services on deck 3. The young lady was very apologetic and happily made us new key cards. We went back up to deck 9 only to find neither replacement key worked. We went back down to deck 3 and the young lady was again apologetic and proceeded to happily make us new new keys. It was after 10:30pm and I somewhat grumpily said somebody needed to go up with us so we didn't have to go up down the elevator night . The young lady agreed to go up with us, I am sure because she thinks I am incapable of inserting the key correctly to unlock the door and she wants to demonstrate that fact to me.

 

We get to our room and she inserts one of the new new keys and confidently turns the door knob, only to almost break her wrist as the handle refuses to budge. She lets out a slight "hmmm" and tries the other new new key with the same result. She says she has a master key and will use it to let us in. Master keys she is referring to is a physical keys like a house key. She tries to insert that key only to find it doesn't fit. Now she is flustered and I'm tired and a bit more grumpier. She says she will have to go find somebody to open the door and we can just wait happily right there... standing in the hallway... outside our room... at almost 11pm. I'm fixing to let loose (can you imagine that??) when another staff member happens by and she is some kind of floor supervisor or something and the perky young lady from guest services asks her if she can open our door. This person has a master key that actually works and lets us in. But we still can't ever leave our room or we will be locked out. The perky young lady from guest services assures us that "someone from security" will be right up to fix our door tonight.

 

I am surprised when just a few minutes later someone taps on the door and a gentleman in mechanics overalls is standing there telling me he is there to fix the door. There is nothing to indicate he is from security but I'm happy to let him fix it so I can go to bed. I might add he sounds like he is from Russia or some other eastern European country so we will call him "Igor" (not his real name I am sure). "Igor" has a magical device with him that will let him reprogram the electronic lock. He connects his magical device and commences to reprogram the lock. It takes a while for this magical device to work but finally he confidently tries one room key and it still does not work. He tries the other key and it does not work. He makes some funny faces, tries the keys again and they still don't work. He repeats this a couple of times and finally announces he will have to replace the lock and leaves to go get a new lock and more tools. It is now midnight. At midnight carriages turn into pumpkins and I turn even more grumpier. Ask my lovely wife if you don't believe me.

 

"Igor" returns pretty quickly with a handful of door lock parts and some tools. I ask him if this happens often and he tells me he has replaced one lock before. One. Well, at least that is more than none. During this whole episode he does call twice and ask for assistance but is only given advice over the phone, no one comes to assist him despite his specific request. I might add that "Igor" is very pleasant and apologetic about keeping us up so late. He is not at all grumpy. Like I am. After midnight. He proceeds to remove the four screws holding the lock in place. Three screws come out fine and one takes more time... because the screw head strips out. He once again apologizes and says he has to get a drill to remove the offending screw.

 

He leaves and returns pretty quickly with a drill and quickly drills out the bad screw and removes the lock handles. More screws hold the latching part in the edge of the door and he has trouble removing them but finally gets all of the old lock out. He goes to install the replacement lock and... it doesn't fit. The latching part is different. It is well past midnight. I think every bar on the ship is closed. Too bad because "Igor" and I both could use a good stiff drink. "Igor" apologizes again and goes off in search of more parts.

 

He returns fairly quickly. I am impressed with how quickly he can get what he needs and return each time. But I am still grumpy. He finally gets all the parts installed, reprograms the new lock, tries one key and it works! He tries the other key and it does not work. He tries the key that just worked... and it doesn't work. He reprograms the lock, repeats the same work/doesn't work scenario. He tries this a few more times and asks for the "night steward" to be sent to the room so he can try his master key card and see if it works. It seems that "Igor" is trusted with the device that can reprogram any lock on the ship but is not trusted with a master key card. The room steward shows up and his card will not consistently work.

 

"Igor" is clearly frustrated. I am grumpy. It is now 12:30AM. The night steward calmly asks "Igor" if he has tried replacing the batteries in the lock. "Igor" looks at the steward as if he has two heads. Then he removes the top part of the lock, the part where the battery pack is kept. I might add that I watched him replace the lock and the only part he reused from the original lock was the battery pack. "Igor" puts his trusty test meter on the battery pack. After he tested the battery pack batteries started flying all over the place as "Igor" started snatching batteries out and slinging them on the floor. The battery pack holds 5 or 6 batteries. They were flying out so fast I couldn't count them. He installed new batteries, programmed the door... and all the room keys suddenly worked... consistently. "Igor" packed his tools and took off after profusely apologizing for keeping us up so late... until almost 1am. I went to bed. Finally.

 

Unfortunately the story does not end here. The next morning we were in Cozumel. We ate breakfast in the dining room and left the ship for our day at Mr. Sancho's beach club. We had a great day there, returned to the ship, cleaned up and headed to the martini bar (shocking I know). We had a drink package and it was programmed into our card. Rather, it was supposed to be. The bar tender advised us our cards did not work on his scanner when he tried to record the drinks.

 

Fortunately the martini bar is on deck 4 and guest services is on deck 3. I head to guest services with our cards and advise the same perky young lady (she must work 24/7) that our keys would now unlock the door but they didn't work at the bar. She offers to make new keys and I tell her to make sure she doesn't lock us out of our room. I think she is a bit apprehensive about it but makes us new keys anyway.

 

I go back to the martini bar and... the new keys do not work at the bar. I go back to see Ms. Perky and she is very apologetic and asks somebody in an officer's uniform at guest services about our cards and they start pointing at the screen and conversing a bit, and then make me new new new keys. We buy another drink just so we can test them at the martini bar, and for no other reason than to test them of course. They worked. I very apprehensively went up to the room to test them and they both worked... finally!

 

At this point I can only assume that when we were later briefly stuck in the elevator, between floors, with the speaker shouting "power failure", that the elevators are not battery powered but I am not 100% sure. Maybe "Igor" was quicker to test and replace the elevator batteries after our lock episode.

 

The moral of the story is... try replacing the batteries first. Always. Batteries first.

 

In the end, "Igor" was very apologetic and he did eventually resolve our lock problem. Guest services was polite but failed to pay attention to detail in reissuing the multiple versions of key cards. Celebrity never followed up with us about the inconvenience and didn't even give us a free apple for the late night fiasco and subsequent inconvenience.

 

I have never had a battery failure on Carnival. Although I guess one could argue a complete shipwide power failure is slightly worse, but since I wasn't there it doesn't count.

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grampasgrumpy

grampasgrumpy

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If your story was not so long I would have thought it was an April fools attempt.

It never occurred to me that anyone would think that. Here are some pics I took for any doubters.

First pic shows "Igors" tools and the partially disassembled lock as he is gone to get a drill.

Second pic shows the lock with three screws removed.

Third pic shows a close up of the stripped out screw.

1.jpg.a4d47b69da14b0ea477740517a3fe4e4.jpg

2.jpg.053100db195901dc77f651feccb49a2d.jpg

3.jpg.32be293ed80aeb35b8b7f1e5d893e1bd.jpg

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chessbriar

chessbriar

Posted
Posted

Sometimes you just get dumb luck.

 

Rest assured, In all my X cruises I have never had any problems with the batteries(am I jinxing myself by saying this). I have however had key problems and not just on X. The one I enjoyed most was while on RCCL, I was in a suite and the concierge handled everything. It was a weird one though. My key would either work at my cabin or at the concierge lounge. It took a day or so to get things fixed. I told the Concierge just give me a key that works in the lounge, I can sleep there. After all, that's where the free drinks were.

 

I hope you give X another try. They do have a great product.

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cyntil8ing

cyntil8ing

Posted
Posted

I was waiting for the TV remote batteries to go. I've had that happen a few times. I've also had the safe batteries go twice. It must be my magnetic personality. Remind me never to cruise with you! It would be a double-whammy.

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Conshydot

Conshydot

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Posted

Same thing happened on my first NCL cruise. It was at night, the person at Guest Services blamed me for storing the card near my phone...THREE times in less than one HOUR.

I assured her I didn't and wouldn't. During our fourth encounter, a maintenance guy was behind the counter fixing something, HE spoke up and said, "Want me to Check Batteries?" The guest service guy said, "I don't think it's the batteries."

The maintenance person replied, " I go with guest, I try."

The Guest Service guy gave a whatever look.

End? It was the batteries, the maintenance person got a tip, and I reported the incident to the Guest Service manager and the head of maintenance. I think that our pictures were hung up in the Service Area. We were warmly greeted by every service person on board and got a comp dinner in the specialty restaurant.

Lesson learned: Card won't open door? ask them to check the batteries!

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rkacruiser

rkacruiser

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Posted

This is the funniest thing I have ever read on CC! I am quite sure if I had been in your shoes, I would have been just as grumpy as you, if not even more!

 

Celebrity ought to have provided some kind of consideration for what you went through.

 

Thanks for sharing!

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Lastdance

Lastdance

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Posted (edited)

Grandpasgrumpy...

 

Make sure you try one of the "S" class ships. They are much newer and have more to offer...I think you will enjoy it, even better than Carnival!

Edited by Lastdance
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Oville

Oville

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We've had door and safe batteries replaced a few times and cards deprogrammed on various cruise lines. Batteries die and key cards become demagnetized. It's not something unique to Celebrity. OP, you just had the bad luck of all three on one cruise.

 

Do try one of the S Class ships, they're great but not because batteries won't conk out and cards will always work, they won't.

Edited by Oville
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grampasgrumpy

grampasgrumpy

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We've had door and safe batteries replaced a few times and cards deprogrammed on various cruise lines. Batteries die and key cards become demagnetized. It's not something unique to Celebrity. OP, you just had the bad luck of all three on one cruise.

 

Do try one of the S Class ships, they're great but not because batteries won't conk out and cards will always work, they won't.

Oh I agree it can happen to anyone at any time on any cruise line. My title was just a fun way to play it. In this case though, what should have been a 15 minute battery swap took about 2 & 1/2 hrs, late at night.

 

We'll be back on Celebrity, no doubt. It was much nicer in almost every way. (except the batteries :p )

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