Saga of Eclipse Barnacles continues

[Peteymil]

Email from Celebrity regarding May 15th cruise:

Dear Guest, We look forward to welcoming you aboard Celebrity Eclipse® for your 7-night Alaska Hubbard Glacier sailing departing May 15, 2022, from Vancouver, British Columbia. Before we set sail, we wanted to share some information with you about our itinerary. Due to recent marine growth that has developed on the ship’s hull (a natural process that you might know as barnacle growth), and our commitment to following local environmental procedures, the ship is experiencing lower speeds than typical, and we have to adjust for this in our ports of call timings. This will result in shorter time spent in all ports of call. For your convenience, we’ve included our revised itinerary below. Now that we have reduced time in port, many of our shore Excursions have been affected and either changed time frames or been cancelled. If your excursion was cancelled, you will receive a full refund to your original form of payment. If you would like to book a new excursion, excursions are available on our Celebrity Cruises app or available to purchase when you get onboard at our Shore Excursions desk. We apologize for any inconvenience these changes may cause. To compensate for the above change, we will automatically apply an onboard credit in the amount of $100. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Celebrity Cruises at 1-844-418-6824 in North America or (316) 554-5961 worldwide. Thank you for your patience and understanding. We look forward to providing you an amazing Celebrity Cruises vacation experience. So, sit back, and relax as we prepare to set sail to beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia. Sincerely, Celebrity Cruises

If this was my first cruise to Alaska, I would cancel.  Basically the only port you can do an excursion in is Juneau.  These ports are so close together, I really didn't think they would have to change the trip this severely.

[Turtles06]

Those are some pretty significant decreases to times in port. I’m sorry for everyone affected. 

[WonderMan3]

That's ridiculous. I would be highly irritated.

 

What are they doing to address the barnacle issue exactly? Do they just keep scraping the hull as they dock in every port? Or does this require a quick dry dock to actually resolve the issue?

[Northern Aurora]

I am posting from Honolulu as we just left the Eclipse this morning.  We had an extra sea day and lost one day in Hilo due to the reduced speed.  I asked if the barnacle issue would impact the Alaska sailings and was told onboard that they didn’t anticipate any issues since the distances between ports isn’t that great.  The itinerary changes certainly are significant.

[nw gardener]

Starting to think about canceling my June cruise with this news.  DH is nervous enough with Covid numbers rising and the loss of port time to that degree isn't making either of us happy. This will create quite a few unhappy cruisers if the Eclipse limps through the AK season this way. Will wait it out for now, and so sorry for everyone on the May 15 cruise!

[mfs2k]

Don’t, for one second, think the barnacles are happy about this either. They, also have been trying to wear masks and social distance from one another. Sadly a group of barnacles from a state, which shall remain nameless, have decided there should be no more social distancing, and they have affixed themselves to the hull in close proximity to the others and now you can see what a disaster this is for all. 
 

[mahdnc]

30 minutes ago, Peteymil said:

Email from Celebrity regarding May 15th cruise:

Dear Guest, We look forward to welcoming you aboard Celebrity Eclipse® for your 7-night Alaska Hubbard Glacier sailing departing May 15, 2022, from Vancouver, British Columbia. Before we set sail, we wanted to share some information with you about our itinerary. Due to recent marine growth that has developed on the ship’s hull (a natural process that you might know as barnacle growth), and our commitment to following local environmental procedures, the ship is experiencing lower speeds than typical, and we have to adjust for this in our ports of call timings. This will result in shorter time spent in all ports of call. For your convenience, we’ve included our revised itinerary below. Now that we have reduced time in port, many of our shore Excursions have been affected and either changed time frames or been cancelled. If your excursion was cancelled, you will receive a full refund to your original form of payment. If you would like to book a new excursion, excursions are available on our Celebrity Cruises app or available to purchase when you get onboard at our Shore Excursions desk. We apologize for any inconvenience these changes may cause. To compensate for the above change, we will automatically apply an onboard credit in the amount of $100. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Celebrity Cruises at 1-844-418-6824 in North America or (316) 554-5961 worldwide. Thank you for your patience and understanding. We look forward to providing you an amazing Celebrity Cruises vacation experience. So, sit back, and relax as we prepare to set sail to beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia. Sincerely, Celebrity Cruises

If this was my first cruise to Alaska, I would cancel.  Basically the only port you can do an excursion in is Juneau.  These ports are so close together, I really didn't think they would have to change the trip this severely.

 

That is awful and I am disappointed for you.  

[mom says]

That just suuuuuuuucks. With such short port calls, I'd cancel,  but that's JMO

[travlr21]

Disappointing news. We are on the May 22 sailing, so awaiting word of changes. What is the point of even stopping in Ketchikan?  All aboard would be 4:30 so only 2.5 hours at most to explore?

[39august]

Whoa. Good thing X extended the CWC so these folks can cancel and get FCC plus refunds for taxes and port fees. This is a drastic change to the cruise experience.

[1960Travel]

We are on the Sept 04 sailing, will sit and watch for now as things progress...disappointing for sure

 

 

[TeachAloha]

3 hours ago, travlr21 said:

Disappointing news. We are on the May 22 sailing, so awaiting word of changes. What is the point of even stopping in Ketchikan?  All aboard would be 4:30 so only 2.5 hours at most to explore?

We're on the 05/22 sailing too 😞 I wish I hadn't booked my own excursions in Ketchikan and Juno. I have a feeling ours will change too....

[Suzi66]

3 hours ago, 1960Travel said:

We are on the Sept 04 sailing, will sit and watch for now as things progress...disappointing for sure

 

 

We are on the Sept 11 sailing and staying on until it arrives in Sydney.  I am going to be watching everything closely as this is a trip in a lifetime.  Our first to Alaska, in fact our first that hasn't left Australia or NZ and it has been L&S 3 times now.

[Peteymil]

Unless they tend to this barnacle issue, I don't understand how these itineraries will ever get back to normal. 

[BigAl94]

Very strange as she received a full hull repaint and anti foul in March 2021 which should keep her free of marine growth for 4/5 years. 

[MiniMark]

23 minutes ago, BigAl94 said:

Very strange as she received a full hull repaint and anti foul in March 2021 which should keep her free of marine growth for 4/5 years. 

Most anti-foul processes anticipate a moving ship -- if the Eclipse has been sitting stationary for months, then the marine growth will overwhelm any anti-fouling paint / provisions applied.

[Redking]

7 hours ago, mfs2k said:

Don’t, for one second, think the barnacles are happy about this either. They, also have been trying to wear masks and social distance from one another. Sadly a group of barnacles from a state, which shall remain nameless, have decided there should be no more social distancing, and they have affixed themselves to the hull in close proximity to the others and now you can see what a disaster this is for all. 
 

I think every country in the world has been populated with a similar group of barnacles 🤣

[neeko]

Celebrity is offering refunds on cancelled excursions and for suite guests a 200 dollar OBC. What they should do is compensate a partial refund for the cruise. Imagine only 3 hours in Ketchikan.. why bother. Sitka also a terrible reduction of time at port. Even if it was a future credit that would satisfy me.

[floralscent]

8 hours ago, mom says said:

That just suuuuuuuucks. With such short port calls, I'd cancel,  but that's JMO

I was on the first Eclipse sailing and we were affected and lost a port day to a sea day and we didn’t find out until we were sailing away. With a substantial change like your itinerary has with notice like this is a definite bail for me. The time in your ports isn’t even worth the trip unless you were hoping to just stay on the ship. I’m so sorry 

[WNCtourist]

Wow, those are significant changes. Not worth the expense of flying and cruising for me.

[tpeacockiii]

4 hours ago, neeko said:

Celebrity is offering refunds on cancelled excursions and for suite guests a 200 dollar OBC. What they should do is compensate a partial refund for the cruise. Imagine only 3 hours in Ketchikan.. why bother. Sitka also a terrible reduction of time at port. Even if it was a future credit that would satisfy me.

This is where I land. I think they need to offer a more significant amount in FCC.

 

What’s crappy to me is that the whole issue for the entire season, could be avoided if they were to simply cancel, or otherwise delay/modify the first sailing in a way that would allow them to mitigate the issue. Especially considering the limitations in the ports it had planned that don’t allow for removal of barnacles.

 

instead of upsetting 1 sailing, now they’re faced with an entire season of unhappy cruisers (me included).

 

I’ve contemplated cancelling, but we have travel plans prior to embarkation in the area as well as flights that won’t be refunded in the same way the cruise would be and can’t be changed without additional expense to account for the abbreviated trip. 

 

I’m hopeful there’s a plan out there to fix the issue or maybe the issue is resolved naturally overtime during the season and the port times improve. We’re on 5/29 sailing - so we have some time…fingers crossed…

[NutsAboutGolf]

Wow, time in port is cut by OVER 50%...The worst part is the maintenance team must of predicted and reported the growth, sounds like decision makers felt it was more important to maintain the sailing.  Guessing they felt it was too expensive to fix in Hawaii and west coast

[frrivadulla]

We will be on the July 24 sailing, so can't image they will stay all the season with the same issue, very poor image for Celebrity knowing the problem (barnacle do not grown from one day to the next) and  spoiling our hollidays 😬

[kstetser]

This is our first Cruise on Celebrity after 25 on DCL.   My TA said the service/food/quality would all be what we expect or higher than DCL.  So far, this is a GIANT FAIL.  We are going to Alaska at no small cost to experience Alaska, not sit on a boat.   This barnacle issue is not news to them, yet they waited until the summer season had PIF before making the announcement when the first cruise was setting sail (those folks royally got screwed).    This is bait and switch and very poor business practices.  They are completely aware what it takes to maintain a cruise ship - it was a business decision not to keep the ship's hull clean.   Does anyone know if this situation can be remedied without a dry dock?

Edited May 5, 2022 by kstetser
typo

[Random00]

I hope someone at Celebrity is monitoring this forum. With such a significant decrease in port time Celebrity needs to do more than a $100 per cabin credit. 

 

Step up Celebrity!