What is going on with Scenic Cruises

[flviking]

41 minutes ago, franski said:

If you stay in what they consider a "host hotel" for a pre-stay, they will include airport transfers - even if you are outside the tour dates.  They often have a hotel identified as a meeting point so they can get the boat cleaned before the next group arrives.  If you were staying there - or could get there - transfers would most likely be included. But - at that point - it might be a group transfer.

 

We are going in 3 days ahead of our Scenic cruise (eastern Europe). The tour starts with one night at the Marriott - so we booked there.  Transfers are now included - even though we are outside the tour dates. 

 

On a positive note, unless your hotel is way outside the downtown Buda/Pest area, a taxi will be really reasonable.

 

Fran

We are at the Four Seasons. We asked them to arrange the car for us.

[mvjcruise]

Last February I started this thread because I wanted to book a cruise with Scenic, but could not get their website to work. Little did we know at that point that Scenic had fallen victim to a cyber attack.

 

Today, almost a year later, I find myself in the same situation. I am again trying to book a cruise, but cannot get any cruises to come up in in the cruise finder. I put in river cruise, the month I want to sail and NO cruises show up. None, Zero. I know there are cruises in April, the website will not show them!
 

I love Scenic once onboard(even on the ill-fated Jade cruise with the engine trouble this past April), but this is getting ridiculous. 
 

How are we to look at, and book cruises if they can’t get their website to work?

 

I am so frustrated, today I started looking at other cruise lines!

[prairie girl]

1 hour ago, mvjcruise said:

Last February I started this thread because I wanted to book a cruise with Scenic, but could not get their website to work. Little did we know at that point that Scenic had fallen victim to a cyber attack.

 

Today, almost a year later, I find myself in the same situation. I am again trying to book a cruise, but cannot get any cruises to come up in in the cruise finder. I put in river cruise, the month I want to sail and NO cruises show up. None, Zero. I know there are cruises in April, the website will not show them!
 

I love Scenic once onboard(even on the ill-fated Jade cruise with the engine trouble this past April), but this is getting ridiculous. 
 

How are we to look at, and book cruises if they can’t get their website to work?

 

I am so frustrated, today I started looking at other cruise lines!

I had issues with the website today as well!  
I finally managed to hit the “contact us” icon and started a live chat to get an answer.  I see now that there is a notice on the bottom of the page that they are experiencing difficulties with some of their website.

I am also getting more and more frustrated dealing with them.  The end product better be worth it!!

 

 

[ddaniel337]

Find a good, seasoned river cruise travel agent and let them deal with the website and corporate issues and also recommend some other fantastic river cruise lines and bypass the angst that Scenic continues to cause their clients and industry personnel.

 

[Rebel54]

I really wanted to try a cruise with them but their website frustrated me way too much.  I hope they get that fixed.

[loriva]

I wonder if Scenic's Australian base--they are a long-established Australian company--is so strong that they do not care about attracting new customers from the United States or Canada?  (The UK website does not seem to have the same issues as the one we in North America use.)  We have friends who were with Scenic for an Amsterdam to Budapest cruise in October 2022 and they reported most of the passengers on the cruise were Aussies.

[Canal archive]

Scenic for a few years before Covid really started to push in the American market. We’ve  been travelling with them for many years and yes their base market is Australians which you would expect from an Australian company our travelling companions have also been Canadians, New Zealander’s and only recently Americans. Has anyone tried contacting the boss man Glen Moroney I suspect he’s contactable through Scenic Swiss office where evidently he lives. 
I hope the system gets sorted soon.

[franski]

On 1/21/2023 at 10:51 AM, Rebel54 said:

I really wanted to try a cruise with them but their website frustrated me way too much.  I hope they get that fixed.

Do you have a TA?  If so, get him/her to reach out on your behalf.  My TA has no issues getting in touch with Scenic (or Emerald) when needed.

 

Fran

[SLWW]

I was updating our Trip Personalizer the other day, and noticed it appears Scenic has done away with the luggage/backpack options.  It used to show on the bottom left corner of Guest Details section.  I checked the Scenic Club information on the website, and it is gone from there too. A cost cutting measure I guess.

I have contacted Scenic, but haven't heard anything back from them.  

Edited February 24, 2023 by SLWW
added another sentence

[TheRampantSnail]

20 minutes ago, SLWW said:

I was updating our Trip Personalizer the other day, and noticed it appears Scenic has done away with the luggage/backpack options.  It used to show on the bottom left corner of Guest Details section.  I checked the Scenic Club information on the website, and it is gone from there too. A cost cutting measure I guess.

I have contacted Scenic, but haven't heard anything back from them.  

we will be on Scenic in April for a Basel to Amsterdam cruise. This will be our first Scenic cruise and, indeed our first river cruise, although we have done many ocean cruises.

We have just received our cruise documents and something puzzled me. There is a line which says "continuing our sustainability journey, guests will now receive a 50 per person onboard currency credit in lieu of luggage". 

I wonder if this might explain the issue you raised.

 

[Canal archive]

We’ve got the information so will try to get it correct for you - no more luggage or other bits & pieces, no more hard copies, print yourself. Now on board credit for all of 50 whatever unit of currency is used locally to be used on either Spa treatment, Laundry, or towards really up market alcohol. I asked and it cannot be used in the ships shop, or carry it forward to another cruise. They are also intending to do something with the loyalty scheme. There trying to minimise the use of plastic on board so everyone gets there own personal drinking vessel.

This is all supposedly towards their sustainability it will be interesting to see if it works.

Evidently it’s on the FAQ but I haven’t found it and when I asked I discovered the office staff haven’t been very well trained about the new system.

Ive traveled with Scenic enough to have gone through 1 change of the loyalty system. 

[SLWW]

Thank you TheRampantSnail and Canal archive for the information, our trip isn't until September, so maybe that's why we haven't heard anything.  The 50 Euro/dollar whatever will be handy for laundry.  Will passengers still receive the one free bag of laundry?  It's a pity we won't be able to use the credit in the store.  We are Platinum members, and I have been trying to find out if we qualify for the transfers to and from the airport, I haven't heard back from Scenic.

[Canal archive]

According to the U.K. Scenic office yes the laundry allowance is as it was so no change and we have the transfer and as we’re Diamond members we get a little extra mileage.

Thats all sorted hopefully the same applies in Canada I expect so because we all chat on board and swap experiences on CC.

 

[SLWW]

Thank you Canal archive, I'm glad the laundry allowance hasn't changed.  This will be our first cruise as Platinum members with the private transfers.  I hope we are within the mileage allocation range. 

[Canal archive]

Ours is 75 miles to begin with and we get 100 miles as Diamond members our country is so much smaller than yours so your mileage allowance could be more.

[Host Jazzbeau]

Frankly the backpack was a waste – much too heavy to carry!  And frequent cruisers surely have collected all the branded luggage they want.  OBC is much more appealing to me.  [I suppose they could cover all bases by having some leftover Scenic luggage in the shop and allowing the OBC to be used for that – to carry home all the shopping from your trip!]

[Canal archive]

Luckily I have a daughter and son in law who help train youngsters for the expedition part of the D of E awards so quite a few backpacks can be seen in the remoter parts of our islands. I’m also someone who really doesn’t want advertising logo’s everywhere. So will I have more laundry, debatable we are only a hop skip and jump from home, I could have my nails done as no hairdressers on board evidently, but don’t worry I’ve never been in a quandary as how to spend what’s on offer.

[Ritabob]

Is the laundry one bag per cabin or one bag per person?  If on a 15 day cruise is it per cruise or per week? 

[Canal archive]

It’s one bag per cabin of what is supposed to be 1kg but I’m pretty sure they’re not weighed, well ours certainly wasn’t it must have been well over during our last cruise. It’s one bag per cabin per cruise.

Edited February 25, 2023 by Canal archive

[Ritabob]

Uniworld offers one bag per week and whatever you can fit in the bag.  We can fit a lot in their bag .

[Canal archive]

Yup very useful if you’ve traveled across the pond or the world but not quite so much for us from the U.K. unless we are doing a back to back or pre/post cruise tour. Although
50€ won’t go far. Maybe there’s something in the melting pot as they have hinted at other changes especially with the loyalty programme. 

[cloverose]

On 3/14/2022 at 2:52 AM, Tropiclady said:

Thank you. We are also cruising with Emerald.

We are cruising Emerald the latter part of May. As this is our first river cruise, we are not sure what to expect! 

[flviking]

Q.When will we receive our final documents?

A.You can expect your travel documents to arrive between 2 – 4 weeks prior to your departure date. When booking within two weeks of travel, your travel documents will be emailed to you to print at home.

We are 10 days from departure. No travel documents and reservation is "locked" and not viewable.  Travel agent is tracking it down.  Is Scenic always this poor at doing what they say they're going to do?

[Canal archive]

Always to my mind short in time but we’ve never used a TA why haven’t they chased before now?

[pontac]

As I wrote on another thread about my Scenic cruise

 

I find it funny how the things adopted for 'greenness' reasons by companies are the ones that save them money.

 

One of the things I liked about Scenic was how they included and arranged for a chauffeur car to take you to/from the airport. No more though. They stopped that for all but those who've advanced up their multiple loyalty tiers of frequent passengers. That was a major attraction for me. 

 

I did get a backpack from my August cruise with them and my long time hand baggage fell apart so I used the backpack as my hand baggage on a long haul trip I took last month. It seems well constructed - there's even an RFID pocket. And I'll be taking it on our Viking cruise in a couple of weeks.

 

But the large Scenic branding was a bit much, so here's what my bag looks like:-