Photo nightmare

[Lavani]

We just got off Navigator on Sunday. Overall, had a pretty good experience, I will try to post my review but it will take some time to collect all of my thoughts.

 

However, I wanted to warn about the experience we had with the photo shop on this cruise. I don't recall seeing a lot of posts about this, but if I have missed them please forgive me. I haven't been on a cruise since 2013, but I guess RC has a new process where instead of the photos on the walls everything is digital and you swipe your sea pass card to view all the photos taken of you and purchase if you choose. If this worked it might be good, as it cuts down on searching for photos - but it doesn't really work. Also it really irritated me because on the top of all of the photos is a Royal Caribbean Photo watermark thing and I couldn't even really see smiles or facial expressions because it is huge and repeated every inch or so. But that is not really what I am complaining about here.

 

Our experience with the photo shop was AWFUL. We took some photos on day 3 that we could not find the next day when we swiped our seapass card. We also could not locate them on the large TV screens where you can look for missing photos. Each and every day we asked photo staff about the photos and we were told some new upgrades were done and that the photos would be loaded the next day. On the last night of the cruise they still were not there. By this time, the photo shop was chaos. Lots of people were missing photos. At one point the entire system went down and no one could access any photos for about an hour. Finally (on our 3rd visit of that day) one crew member located the photos and said they would be loaded onto our account within an hour and then we could order them. They were not. Finally 3 hours later (it is now 10pm) I have to go down and start almost crying for someone to help me. I needed to finish packing and get my young children to bed since we had to wake before 6am to prepare to disembark. Another employee finally went and hand uploaded the photos to our account and I was able to FINALLY order our photos, although I was told we had to come pick them up in the morning at 7am (we would have ordered much earlier and picked them up early if the stupid photos were not lost in the first place). My husband went to pick them up at 6:45am in the morning (we were supposed to self-disembark at 7:30am to catch an early flight) and he had to wait in line until 7:30 only to be told there was a problem and the disc had not been burned and he had to fill out a missing order form. As of now we STILL have not received our photos for which we paid $125. This delay also caused us to be at the back of the line for our disembarking group and we did not get off the ship until almost 9am. It was a terrible, stressful experience and no one seemed to care. In fact, on that last night I asked to speak with the manager of the photo shop and I was told there was no supervisor present and that the manager/supervisor was in his cabin. I find it appalling that they were having so many tech problems and the supervisor still did not find it important enough to be present. I would really like to have my photos and the whole experience just put a bad taste in my mouth at the end of my cruise. So a word of advice - take your own photos. And if you do choose to take photos with an RC photographer be prepared to deal with the chaos.

[Chitoryubt]

Ahhhh the missing supervisor bit. We have only had a few problems over the years, but ... the one common thing was, no supervisor. I'm not sure they really exist :)

 

Love me some cruisin', though. Always have had a fabulous time.

[Philob]

Also it really irritated me because on the top of all of the photos is a Royal Caribbean Photo watermark thing and I couldn't even really see smiles or facial expressions because it is huge and repeated every inch or so.

 

Was the watermark on the computer screen photo? That's to prevent people from taking a picture with their cell phone directly from the screen and bypass the purchase. Don't ask me how I know :rolleyes:

Edited May 12, 2015 by Philob

[Lavani]

Was the watermark on the computer screen photo? That's to prevent people from taking a picture with their cell phone directly from the screen and bypass the purchase. Don't ask me how I know :rolleyes:

 

Yes it was on the computer screen, and I get why they use it, and a lot of other photographers use something similar. But I've never seen it where it was so big and repeated to where it actually made it difficult to see the faces and decide if it was a good photo or not (the mark is so big it can cover up entire smiles or eyes so you can't even tell if everyone's eyes are open).

[setsail]

The photography people are contractors and not rci employees. Its run by the Image group, you can contact them or give feedback here http://www.image.com/contact

Edited May 12, 2015 by setsail

[Cel_cruise]

OP - I am empathetic - we cruised NAV in February and the photo shop experience was probably one of biggest downsides/problems to our trip!

 

This was our first cruise post paper photos on the wall, but with several disney trips under our belt with photo pass, I figured that digital photos could be a real upgrade...but that was soooo not the case!

 

The watermark is ridiculous - there are PLENTY of other water mark approaches that should allow us to see if our kids are smiling before buying the picture.

 

And don't get me started about the frequency of the machines just refusing to respond!

 

When my DH picked up our CD at 10:55 on Saturday night, there was only 1 CD and it was 85$...but we had purchased 2 - 5 packs...so, the next morning we stood in line again and I had them Check the CD - and it had all 10 credits...apparently my gold C&A benefit for buy 1, get 1 worked on the 5 pack! So, atleast it was a good deal after all of the pain!!

[bouhunter]

Yet another reminder why we never purchase their overpriced photo's:D