Anybody onboard currently?

[les37b]

I was aware from our roll call there were COVID cases on board Pursuit currently. Seems likely we have another in the room next to ours. I saw a guy this morning in medical gowns and mask looking at a list on some paper near our room. He asked what room I was in which I told him. I said that list of room numbers I could now see looks ominous. I asked how many cases which he refused to tell me. "It's confidential" he said. If I asked what room numbers the positives were in, that would be confidential, not how many on board.

 

He said it was azamara protocol. I'm aware that they are not separating positive and negative guests in the same room. He said she might be negative now, but will be positive soon. How irresponsible. My own experience in January proves that's not a given and effectively continuing to expose someone, they will eventually catch it and the quarantine starts again on the date of that new positive test. The guest concerned is hoping they will disembark in Stockholm when he finishes quarantine. This "azamara protocol" seems to be condemning a further hotel quarantine once the continued exposure claims a new victim which may have been avoided. Quite shocking. I suspect once off the ship it's "not our problem".

 

Meanwhile, it's very noticeable how many people are walking around coughing and hardly anyone wearing a mask.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[uktog]

39 minutes ago, les37b said:

I was aware from our roll call there were COVID cases on board Pursuit currently. Seems likely we have another in the room next to ours. I saw a guy this morning in medical gowns and mask looking at a list on some paper near our room. He asked what room I was in which I told him. I said that list of room numbers I could now see looks ominous. I asked how many cases which he refused to tell me. "It's confidential" he said. If I asked what room numbers the positives were in, that would be confidential, not how many on board.

 

He said it was azamara protocol. I'm aware that they are not separating positive and negative guests in the same room. He said she might be negative now, but will be positive soon. How irresponsible. My own experience in January proves that's not a given and effectively continuing to expose someone, they will eventually catch it and the quarantine starts again on the date of that new positive test. The guest concerned is hoping they will disembark in Stockholm when he finishes quarantine. This "azamara protocol" seems to be condemning a further hotel quarantine once the continued exposure claims a new victim which may have been avoided. Quite shocking. I suspect once off the ship it's "not our problem".

 

Meanwhile, it's very noticeable how many people are walking around coughing and hardly anyone wearing a mask.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes I heard from a friend on Pursuit, they are coughing and have been tested but are negative. There's certainly some bugs floating around just now

[les37b]

31 minutes ago, uktog said:

Yes I heard from a friend on Pursuit, they are coughing and have been tested but are negative. There's certainly some bugs floating around just now

 

From a previous thread from someone on the previous sailing, they had said we would be getting 630 guests on our voyage. I took it at face value. I just went to GS to find out my balance and also asked the sailing numbers. She said we started off with 595 but now had 584.... Not sure if they were COVID disembarks. I did ask if we had any cases of COVID on board and was told no, which is a blatant lie.

 

I will post at some point my thoughts on this cruise - my first on Azamara, which has mostly been positive, but with a few negatives which could and should be taken as feedback for things that I would think are easy fixes. This quarantine thing should however be addressed properly.

 

[uktog]

3 hours ago, les37b said:

I was aware from our roll call there were COVID cases on board Pursuit currently. Seems likely we have another in the room next to ours. I saw a guy this morning in medical gowns and mask looking at a list on some paper near our room. He asked what room I was in which I told him. I said that list of room numbers I could now see looks ominous. I asked how many cases which he refused to tell me. "It's confidential" he said. If I asked what room numbers the positives were in, that would be confidential, not how many on board.

 

He said it was azamara protocol. I'm aware that they are not separating positive and negative guests in the same room. He said she might be negative now, but will be positive soon. How irresponsible. My own experience in January proves that's not a given and effectively continuing to expose someone, they will eventually catch it and the quarantine starts again on the date of that new positive test. The guest concerned is hoping they will disembark in Stockholm when he finishes quarantine. This "azamara protocol" seems to be condemning a further hotel quarantine once the continued exposure claims a new victim which may have been avoided. Quite shocking. I suspect once off the ship it's "not our problem".

 

Meanwhile, it's very noticeable how many people are walking around coughing and hardly anyone wearing a mask.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I wouldn't necessary blame the staff on Guest Relations on a personal basis, they are only allowed to say what they have been told to say or they lose their job. Thats cruise line culture thats not unique to Azamara, all the cruise lines "manage the guest messages"

 

At least Pursuit has some lay up time after your cruise as the charters were cancelled so they can get a really deep clean done

[Mackdogmolly]

I’ll say one thing for Captain Tysse. On our Quest Christmas cruise, he was very straightforward about announcing daily COVID case counts, and it was much appreciated.

[mdpa]

Great time in Seville today! Will be here tomorrow as well. Enjoyed the trip up river this morning. Cruise is perfect so far…

[wjfan417]

1 hour ago, Mackdogmolly said:

I’ll say one thing for Captain Tysse. On our Quest Christmas cruise, he was very straightforward about announcing daily COVID case counts, and it was much appreciated.

He did that on our April cruise also.

[mdpa]

We haven’t had any COVID announcements on our cruise, so assume everything is normal as practically no one is wearing a mask on our Spain Intensive cruise. Same for any of our trips into town, restaurants, security line, etc.

 

Our cruise seems like a much better experience than what is being shared elsewhere.

Edited June 16, 2022 by mdpa

[Roel94]

15 hours ago, Mackdogmolly said:

I’ll say one thing for Captain Tysse. On our Quest Christmas cruise, he was very straightforward about announcing daily COVID case counts, and it was much appreciated.

I was on that cruise. I loved the fact that I always knew.

 

The one thing I need to say is after having Covid in April I kept that cough  as I love keeling coughs,

 

But I do be,ieve Covid been  on all ships out there as no one wearsmasks.

[aussie travel bird]

On 6/14/2022 at 11:21 PM, Riocca said:

Azamara Quest 

 

Only problem here is that Nikolay Georgiev is a Restuarant Manager not an Engineer , not his phote but the name is there.

[AJCM]

20 hours ago, mdpa said:

Great time in Seville today! Will be here tomorrow as well. Enjoyed the trip up river this morning. Cruise is perfect so far…

 

 

Hi mdpa

 

Would you be so kind as to remark on the Seville docking location and whether a shuttle was provided (or required). We hope to be there on Pursuit in Sep (subject of course to covid).

 

Thanks

[mdpa]

8 minutes ago, AJCM said:

Hi mdpa

 

Would you be so kind as to remark on the Seville docking location and whether a shuttle was provided (or required). We hope to be there on Pursuit in Sep (subject of course to covid).

 

Thanks

 

Hi AJCM,

 

We are parked right in the middle of Seville, no need for any shuttle service. Near the road out front there are horse and buggy’s, scooters, and electric bikes for rent. They city is walkable, but depending on health, the horse and buggy’s look like reasonable options.

[mdpa]

You can see the Azamara ship in the background.

[mdpa]

This is the view of Seville from Windows Cafe. Very walkable. 

[yogagal47]

At present we are in the Cruise port terminal in Athens waiting to board the journey and it is a total disorganized disastrous mess. If I face my satisfaction with Azamara on this experience this will be my last cruise on Azamara.

[uktog]

1 hour ago, yogagal47 said:

At present we are in the Cruise port terminal in Athens waiting to board the journey and it is a total disorganized disastrous mess. If I face my satisfaction with Azamara on this experience this will be my last cruise on Azamara.

So sorry to hear this, I believe it was the same on another Azamara cruise recently.  I hope you get on board soon.  If you get a chance, please let us know what caused the chaos.  If nothing else on your mid cruise review you can let azamara know formally what you think!

[Zoey]

2 hours ago, yogagal47 said:

At present we are in the Cruise port terminal in Athens waiting to board the journey and it is a total disorganized disastrous mess. If I face my satisfaction with Azamara on this experience this will be my last cruise on Azamara.

Sounds like a first world problem to me. Hope it gets better for you.  

[Ayden]

3 hours ago, yogagal47 said:

At present we are in the Cruise port terminal in Athens waiting to board the journey and it is a total disorganized disastrous mess. If I face my satisfaction with Azamara on this experience this will be my last cruise on Azamara.

Unfortunately this may be more about pier side testing and processing than Azamara.  We were delayed  boarding in Athens in October, but after one hour on the ship we forgot all about it and we were ready to enjoy our long awaited vacation. 

A necessary part of travel is Airports and cruise terminals....

[audobon_tx]

4 hours ago, yogagal47 said:

At present we are in the Cruise port terminal in Athens waiting to board the journey and it is a total disorganized disastrous mess. If I face my satisfaction with Azamara on this experience this will be my last cruise on Azamara.

We boarded Pursuit in Piraeus in April.  No issues with the Covid testing.  But the computers kept coming and going and crashing.  The contracted check-in staff and systems couldn't handle it and it took a long time to board.  Then shortly after we boarded the computers gasped their last breath.  Azamara took over and did all the processing on the ship.

 

There were a lot of disgruntled pax on that one too. 

 

There seem to be a lot of embarkation fiascoes across all cruise lines, from 3 star to 6 star, and all ports these days.  Luck of the draw.  Just have to go with it.

[mdpa]

4 hours ago, yogagal47 said:

At present we are in the Cruise port terminal in Athens waiting to board the journey and it is a total disorganized disastrous mess. If I face my satisfaction with Azamara on this experience this will be my last cruise on Azamara.

Hope it gets better for you…our onboarding in Barcelona was so seamless I don’t even remember it! So agree that this may be a port/COVID related issue.

[les37b]

4 hours ago, yogagal47 said:

At present we are in the Cruise port terminal in Athens waiting to board the journey and it is a total disorganized disastrous mess. If I face my satisfaction with Azamara on this experience this will be my last cruise on Azamara.

 

It was poor in Lisbon also, taking 2 1/2 hours to get on from arrival. I initially thought it was the third party staff, but the bottleneck was the final part and getting on the ship.

 

It was a repeated topic I heard guests complain about. 

 

Luckily after the first day (massive queues at the MDR), service generally improved. There were some minor niggles, but generally it was fine.

 

[Mrmatt]

1 hour ago, les37b said:

 

It was poor in Lisbon also, taking 2 1/2 hours to get on from arrival. I initially thought it was the third party staff, but the bottleneck was the final part and getting on the ship.

 

It was a repeated topic I heard guests complain about. 

 

Luckily after the first day (massive queues at the MDR), service generally improved. There were some minor niggles, but generally it was fine.

 

Embarked on Onward a couple of weeks ago at Athens.  The problem seems to be that no one was given specific check in times and everyone turned up at 2pm! Disappointing to hear that the situation is not sorted. 

[yogagal47]

14 hours ago, Zoey said:

Sounds like a first world problem to me. Hope it gets better for you.  

Whether it is first world, Second world, Or  third world problem The expectation with Azamara is that they can and should do better. There was no staff from the ship on shore to assess what was going on. There were people With health conditions that made waiting for an extended period of time in the “ holding sauna” very challenging. People were putting their luggage on seats to keep themselves distanced so most of us had to stand. I met a couple That had their initial verification of their Covid test completed and waited till at least one and a half hours past their boarding time before their group number was finally called. This occurred while people who needed Covid tests were taken away and their boarding process prioritized ahead of those of us who came prepared(perhaps because they were paying the $59??).

when we finally got to the second tent where we were to begin the check in process We were all put into one snaking line only to find out when we got to the head of the line at last, that if we had done pre-check in and had printouts or screenshots of our checkin code we could do our check in with personnel who had iPads. If there had been two lines-One for those who had already completed online check-in and one for those who had not, it would have been more efficient. I witnessed a woman in a mobile scooter Who received no assistance to detour around the required steps down to this second building, Wait her turn to check in, only to be pulled out of line and told they were unable to board her. She was in tears, nearly hysterical. I never did find out if she ultimately was able to board. I met a couple at my hotel who had 430 check in time. They were going to take a taxi to the terminal at noon and I cautioned them that they might be turned away so they went to the beach instead. I saw them later and they were so happy because they had a nice afternoon at the beach and when they showed up for check-in it took them only a couple of minutes. 
so far things seem fine on the ship although much of the crew is on their first contract. We had dinner last night by the sunset bar- we wanted to sit outside and watch the sunset which was gorgeous. It was an à la carte menu with limited options but I found the experience to be very relaxing and pleasant and noticed that the tables outside and inside were pretty full.

Edited June 18, 2022 by yogagal47
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[royallondon]

Sounds a nightmare and so untypical of Azamara pre C.  They clearly need to review their procedures and fast.  Starting off a much anticipated cruise on the back foot isn’t what you want or should expect.
Now onboard, I’m sure your rocky embarkation will soon be behind you and  hope the rest of your cruise meets your expectations.  Have a great time.

 

Regards

 

[uktog]

11 minutes ago, royallondon said:

Sounds a nightmare and so untypical of Azamara pre C.  They clearly need to review their procedures and fast.  Starting off a much anticipated cruise on the back foot isn’t what you want or should expect.
Now onboard, I’m sure your rocky embarkation will soon be behind you and  hope the rest of your cruise meets your expectations.  Have a great time.

 

Regards

 

Agree 💯 

Those who went through the process yesterday need to give feedback to Azamara stating exactly what happened. Sometimes onboard staff aren’t allowed into the terminal by authorities so they may not know where the stupidity was. 
 

But communication is still an issue. I’ve an email about my July cruise. If I follow it as written, sounds like I’d be refused boarding with a chronomics negative test. 
 

It’s an ongoing shambles giving unnecessary stress - just tell people what to do without mixed messages and make sure your contractors know it all - it’s not rocket science 😀