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Galveston weather concerns

NouCruzer

By NouCruzer,
in Royal Caribbean International

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bluegiraffe

bluegiraffe

Posted
Posted
As of early today there was no refund and RCI was specifically telling people that. IMHO this is way too little way way way too late. Advising their guests to travel into a Federal disaster zone or lose their money and refusing to cancel a cruise which was OBVIOUSLY (to anyone with half a shred of common sense) not going to happen was unconscionable.

 

I've been watching this unfold over the last few days, just amazed at the lack of common sense, responsibility, and customer service by RCI. We've cruised with them in the past, but after Anthem and this, I think we'll be sticking to Princess and HAL.

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perditax

perditax

Posted
Posted
I've been watching this unfold over the last few days, just amazed at the lack of common sense, responsibility, and customer service by RCI. We've cruised with them in the past, but after Anthem and this, I think we'll be sticking to Princess and HAL.

 

 

My upcoming first RC cruise on Oasis is my first case of buyer's remorse. PIF sadly.

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setsail

setsail

Posted
Posted (edited)
It will hurt them. .

 

No it won't. There are thousands of hurricane threads on cc dating back to when they were aol, they repeat every year during the season. It has not hurt them yet, the ships continue to sale full. Sure they might lose a customer here and there but nothing a full ship won't fix. People should learn from all those post that cruising during hurricane season to expect anything including lame decisions made by the cruise line and be prepared for the worst.

Edited by setsail
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Cruzaholic41

Cruzaholic41

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No it won't. There are thousands of hurricane threads on cc dating back to when they were aol, they repeat every year during the season. It has not hurt them yet, the ships continue to sale full. Sure they might lose a customer here and there but nothing a full ship won't fix. People should learn from all those post that cruising during hurricane season to expect anything including lame decisions made by the cruise line and be prepared for the worst.

 

Exactly. Costa sunk a ship and killed 32 people. They're fine. Princess just got slapped with a 40 million dollar fine for dumping oil. They're fine. Carnival stranded 2 ships at sea after engine room fires. They're fine. All of those are Carnival Corp by the way, yet Carnival Corp is fine. To think something this relatively minor will hurt RCI is ludicrous. In fact, it's stupid to even think so.

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Traciewatson

Traciewatson

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My heart, prayers and hope goes out to those effected in Texas. We are also planned to sail September 3rd and I am only hoping RCI will give us more notice than they did those poor people who fought hard to get to Galveston for the cruise that was to leave today. Only time will tell.

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Cindy

Cindy

Posted
Posted

The freeways should be fine (I hope!) by later in the week. I don't think getting to Galveston by road will be a problem as long as people stay on the main freeway lanes. There are feeder roads and neighborhoods that will take longer to recover.

 

I'm not sure how long it will take the airports to resume a normal schedule. You keep hearing the words catastrophic and unprecedented, and those aren't an exaggeration. Nobody can tell how long it's going to take to get some degree of normalcy, because we've never seen anything this bad before.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Forums

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nealstuber

nealstuber

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Posted
I think that the difference between both strategies is that Carnival immediately said 'no you don't have to come here if you're watching the weather and don't feel like it's safe, we're not going to hold your money hostage''.

 

 

If anyone was so sure that it was not safe to travel 24 hrs in advance, they had the option to not travel. If they were so much better weather intel then RCCL they would be "sure" of the eventual outcome, stayed home and let the chips fall where they "knew" they would.

 

But, just as RCCL was not "sure" what was going to happen, neither were the passengers. I'm not sure why one party should be clairvoyant and assume all financial responsibility.

 

And I have walked in these similar shoes.

 

Some may remember Hurricane Ivan from 14 or so years ago. She closed Port Canaveral when we were scheduled to sail Mariner OTS from there. I don't remember what all of our options were, but the option we took was changing our round trip tickets to Miami as we were told Mariner would round trip from there until the PC was open. Turned out the PC opened sooner than expected and we debarked there. We didn't pay anything to change either flight (the return was changed twice) and RCCL opened the phones for free (before it was relatively cheap) to make it possible and had buses back to MIA who needed to go there.

 

It was a wonderful cruise, except for the people complaining that we only got 3 ports instead of the scheduled 4.

 

My point is this. We had faith that the Cruise Line and Airline (Delta-Song now defunct) would do the best they could under the circumstances and they did.

 

We might have had more options on the front side than those in the current situation, but we did not start out by expecting the "right" to cancel. We gave the cruise line and the airline time to make an INFORMED DECISION as opposed to a GOOD GUESS and it worked out ok for all. And that's what looks like is happening here (at lest with respect to those who were planning to sail today).

 

 

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LMaxwell Great Review Rare

LMaxwell

Posted
Posted

Carnival made an informed decision. RCI gambled. That's as charitable as one could put it. Agents telling people get to the pier or lose your money is not erring on side of caution. Companies say they have customer safety as top priority but in this instance the word ring hollow.

 

I am especially surprised as Mr. Bayley comes with a background of working on a ship and working his way up the ranks from a guest facing position and understands these realities. He did not come up in the corporate bean counter role where maximized profits is the norm. Holding Mr Bayley to a more stringent level of reproach given his career experience is warranted in this situation. Until midday today Royal maintained the cruise would still get in today and reboard tomorrow when it was clear to any of us here that would not happen and people on the ship were posting here to ask the forum what was happening...and they were ON THE SHIP.

 

I can't and won't blame Royal for weather, but they really seemed to lack clear decisive management communication the past couple of days. In Feb 2016 we said hope they learned a lesson. A year and a half later...did they?

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Traciewatson

Traciewatson

Posted
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I feel so guilty for sitting here in my comfy home worrying if I will go on a cruise in a week when so many are in a life threatening situation. From everything I have read it looks like it will still be a mess there next weekend, but cruises should go out of Galveston like normal. I had a friend that cruised out of Galveston the week after Ike so she has assured me that we will be leaving next week. Any thoughts? Again if RCI cancelled and donated all the food and supplies to those in Texas I would be satisfied, but it would just be nice to have some idea.

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