Crystal Serenity Review

[ctjon]

I think one of the reasons that the crew on Crystal is so great is that the passengers do engage with them and treat them as special and get the same special treatment back.

[ak1004]

12 minutes ago, ctjon said:

I think one of the reasons that the crew on Crystal is so great is that the passengers do engage with them and treat them as special and get the same special treatment back.

 

So now you are saying that passengers on Crystal are more special than on other lines?

 

We treated the crew exactly the same way on Crystal, SS and other lines, but we did not get any special treatment back. Great service? Yes, but no more "special" on Crystal than SS or Oceania or Azamara.

 

Now I know why. It's because we are not special.

[Texas Tillie]

15 minutes ago, ak1004 said:

 

 

Now I know why. It's because we are not special.

 

No one here has said that!

[tinaincc]

18 minutes ago, ak1004 said:

 

So now you are saying that passengers on Crystal are more special than on other lines?

 

We treated the crew exactly the same way on Crystal, SS and other lines, but we did not get any special treatment back. Great service? Yes, but no more "special" on Crystal than SS or Oceania or Azamara.

 

Now I know why. It's because we are not special.

Maybe it is the hubris of the loyalists that is the biggest turnoff. Reminds me of when the “old” Crystal was going under and people here gave everyone grief who complained about how terrible the executives were for lying to customers about escrow.

 

I actually prefer to have nothing more than a professional relationship with crew and staff - the original review was totally fair and not a big deal until the loyalists came out in droves to discount it mercilessly. Now there is more than just price and old ships as a reason to keep me off C in the future.

 

 

 

[BWIVince]

IIRC, I explained countless times how the customer deposits are held by cruise lines, during the Covid shutdown, after the Covid restart, and after the assignment.  Crystal implemented exactly what they said, but just like at all cruise lines, there are risks to that system of sequestering passenger deposits that I’ve been pointing out on this board for YEARS.  This is exactly why I’ve been warning people since the start of the pandemic  to never book travel (on ANY supplier) that’s outside the chargeback window on your form of payment.

 

Vince

[tinaincc]

1 minute ago, BWIVince said:

IIRC, I explained countless times how the customer deposits are held by cruise lines, during the Covid shutdown, after the Covid restart, and after the assignment.  Crystal implemented exactly what they said, but just like at all cruise lines, there are risks to that system of sequestering passenger deposits that I’ve been pointing out on this board for YEARS.  This is exactly why I’ve been warning people since the start of the pandemic  to never book travel (on ANY supplier) that’s outside the chargeback window on your form of payment.

 

Vince

Here we go again…what about the infamous “escrow”…I have been a Banking Executive for 30 years and I understand how chargebacks work as well as who bears the burden when using that option. I naively chose to trust Crystal when they said my deposit would be held in escrow.

 

I don’t need a lecture on why I should forgo recollection of MY past experience and book another cruise with “family”. 

[Texas Tillie]

3 minutes ago, tinaincc said:

Here we go again…what about the infamous “escrow”…I have been a Banking Executive for 30 years and I understand how chargebacks work as well as who bears the burden when using that option. I naively chose to trust Crystal when they said my deposit would be held in escrow.

 

I don’t need a lecture on why I should forgo recollection of MY past experience and book another cruise with “family”. 

 

Then why are you still here beating the dead horse?

[ChatKat in Ca.]

3 hours ago, speech1102 said:

I think the idea of this thread was don’t expect to be treated by the staff like most of what you have read.  We have sailed many crystal cruises and have never personally met any officers or cruise directors.  We have never dined with anyone associated with Crystal.  We don’t stay in a penthouse or luxury suite.  We have always enjoyed our cruises but don’t expect to be pampered. Great if you have 100 cruises and dine every night with staff.  I just think they were saying this is not the norm. 

When I was cruising another line, my travel agent got a perk for her clients to dine with officers.  It was usually a table for 8 and hard to converse with many of the other passengers. We had little in common with several of them.   Sometimes we were invited twice to dine with officers.  We declined those offers after a few.

 

We've not been invited to dine with an officer on Crystal and doubt that we will.  We may even decline if we are.  It's not why we cruise!

 

 

[BWIVince]

24 minutes ago, tinaincc said:

Here we go again…what about the infamous “escrow”…I have been a Banking Executive for 30 years and I understand how chargebacks work as well as who bears the burden when using that option. I naively chose to trust Crystal when they said my deposit would be held in escrow.

 

I don’t need a lecture on why I should forgo recollection of MY past experience and book another cruise with “family”. 

A lot of people saved a lot of money by reading my “lectures”.  I’ll leave it at that.  😏 
 

Vince

[Stickman1990]

2 hours ago, BWIVince said:

A lot of people saved a lot of money by reading my “lectures”.  I’ll leave it at that.  😏 

So what did you say about the escrow situation at the time?

 

That statement fooled many who trusted old Crystals assurances re keeping money in a seperate account only to be accessed as cancellation provision milestones were reached  - which turned out to be totally false 

[tinaincc]

2 minutes ago, Stickman1990 said:

So what did you say about the escrow situation at the time?

 

That statement fooled many who trusted old Crystals assurances re keeping money in a seperate account only to be accessed as cancellation provision milestones were reached  - which turned out to be totally false 

Thanks for this. Up until now this thread has felt like gaslighting 101.

[Roland4]

And in other news, that same poor, dead horse continues to receive a beating!!! Give it a rest! 😵😵

[KenzSailing]

I find this thread fascinating.  It started with an infrequent poster(as best I can tell) excerpting a general CC review(which I make a point never to read) of Crystal.   And here we are with an extended discussion of the perceived social hierarchy within the transitory experience of the construct of a single cruise on a cruise line that has barely restarted. 

 

But to get more Cruise Criticey, hey, the mushroom soup is back(occasionally.) 

[BWIVince]

4 hours ago, Stickman1990 said:

So what did you say about the escrow situation at the time?

 

That statement fooled many who trusted old Crystals assurances re keeping money in a seperate account only to be accessed as cancellation provision milestones were reached  - which turned out to be totally false 

So I guess we needed my “lecture” after all…. Fancy that.  🙂

Cruise line reserve accounts are NOT an escrow, and I repeatedly explained this as two things were happening — Crystal’s statements explained the benefits of the reserve accounts and not the risks, and people were making false assumptions about how the accounts work (obviously).

 

Reserve accounts only segregate CUSTOMER money, not the company’s money.  Yes, they sort of act like a quasi-escrow because the cruise line has to hold deposits in a separate account that they can’t touch until the funds become non-refundable, at which point they become company funds (usually on a graduated scale).  
 

In theory cruise lines can then provide customers their money back even if all the customers cancel at once, because all the money that would be due the customers would be in reserve, with the company only taking money that wouldn’t be returned to the customer — in theory.

 

In practice, there is a giant hole in this theory, and that comes when the company money has to be returned to customers en masse — it’s usually already spent on deposits with other suppliers and fixed costs, the entire reason for the graduated schedule that the money gets booked to the company.  Prior to Covid, this usually just looked like an accident with a ship that would take it out of service  for months, years, or permanently, because that caused a sustained reduction in capacity for the line (longer and broader than a weather cancellation), and cruise lines generally plugged this risk with insurance….
 

But then came Covid.  Suddenly cruise lines had to come up with not just the customer money, but also the company money that was previously non-refundable, and they had limited to no insurance to back up what they had expected the risk to be.  That left them scrambling to get refunds on deposits from their suppliers, but many of those suppliers were in the same boat as the cruise lines, causing lots of delays as everyone had to slowly scrape together refunds all up and down the supply chain.

 

The second set of backstops besides insurance are the normally separate credit card reserves.  Banks realize the risk of their policy of allowing chargebacks for an extended period of time on transactions where the merchant deliveries services at a future date, and mitigate this risk with steep cash reserves or bond requirements for companies like cruise lines. These are company funds that the bank controls completely, and is used to fulfill chargebacks in case the main accounts become depleted.  
 

What Crystal did prior to Covid were conventional reserve accounts, like all lines.  What Crystal changed for the restart was they starting using their largest bank-controlled reserve account to hold all the customer money.  While that IS a safer arrangement for most credit card customers, at the end of the day it really doesn’t protect customers from the scenario of mass-refunds of company (vs. customer) money, nor does it address the issue of customer credits, which are also company money.

 

…And THAT is what I warned everyone about repeatedly.  So it’s entirely dishonest to say I was trying to cover anything up for Crystal’s management — I explained over and over how reserves work and their risks, even before operations restarted in 2021.

 

Vince

[Keith1010]

10 hours ago, ak1004 said:

 

So now you are saying that passengers on Crystal are more special than on other lines?

 

We treated the crew exactly the same way on Crystal, SS and other lines, but we did not get any special treatment back. Great service? Yes, but no more "special" on Crystal than SS or Oceania or Azamara.

 

Now I know why. It's because we are not special.

I know your comments were directed at ctjon and not at me but I thought I would chime in.

 

This is one of those cases where fewer ships does make Crystal more unique.  And yes, I know the down-side of too few ships. The positive of having only two ships is that most of the crew has been on one of the two ships for years. A few have moved but most of stayed so they have a strong bond with one another. And while some guests sail on both ships equally many guests sail one ship most of the time and often it is to see the crew members they know so well.  

 

No one should think this means I don't think the fleet should grow. It should and has to for Crystal to be successful but IMHO those lines who grow to quickly dilute the crew and sometimes this results in an inconsistent experience for guests.

 

This happens on land. I have followed Nordtstrom for many years as they were a great model for customer service including empowering their people who work the floor to make most decisions without going to management.  We even had them come in and speak with our management team about how they did this. They were very successful because when the opened a new store they largely staffed it with people who worked at other Nordstrom stores so they new the culture very well.  However, at one point they grew way too quickly opening a lot of stores each year and they had to change the approach and hire in a lot of new people.  I believe this was an example of how growing too quickly can hurt the business in the long run.

 

I do think for many who sail Crystal regularly the bond with the crew is special as the bond among many guests and the bond among the crew amongst themselves is special.

 

All I know is when we meet crew who we don't know from before either because we never met them before or because they are new we engage them in conversation and in a course of a cruise feel like we have known them for a much longer time than one cruise.

 

As to the word special, for us the crew is very special and the relationships we have with them are very special. And no, I don't consider myself to be "special" but my wife is very special to me.  

 

Keith 

[ak1004]

4 hours ago, Keith1010 said:

I know your comments were directed at ctjon and not at me but I thought I would chime in.

 

This is one of those cases where fewer ships does make Crystal more unique.  And yes, I know the down-side of too few ships. The positive of having only two ships is that most of the crew has been on one of the two ships for years. A few have moved but most of stayed so they have a strong bond with one another. And while some guests sail on both ships equally many guests sail one ship most of the time and often it is to see the crew members they know so well.  

 

No one should think this means I don't think the fleet should grow. It should and has to for Crystal to be successful but IMHO those lines who grow to quickly dilute the crew and sometimes this results in an inconsistent experience for guests.

 

This happens on land. I have followed Nordtstrom for many years as they were a great model for customer service including empowering their people who work the floor to make most decisions without going to management.  We even had them come in and speak with our management team about how they did this. They were very successful because when the opened a new store they largely staffed it with people who worked at other Nordstrom stores so they new the culture very well.  However, at one point they grew way too quickly opening a lot of stores each year and they had to change the approach and hire in a lot of new people.  I believe this was an example of how growing too quickly can hurt the business in the long run.

 

I do think for many who sail Crystal regularly the bond with the crew is special as the bond among many guests and the bond among the crew amongst themselves is special.

 

All I know is when we meet crew who we don't know from before either because we never met them before or because they are new we engage them in conversation and in a course of a cruise feel like we have known them for a much longer time than one cruise.

 

As to the word special, for us the crew is very special and the relationships we have with them are very special. And no, I don't consider myself to be "special" but my wife is very special to me.  

 

Keith 

 

I completely understand your point of view and 100% respect it. It's just that things that are important to you are less important to me.

 

btw, for the record, to comment in the escrow issue, I had 3 deposits for future cruises and it took a lot of time and effort to get them back. However, I don't believe that the new owners should be held responsible for the sins of the previous owners. This is not something that would affect my decision to book or not to book Crystal cruise.

 

And as usual with CC threads, we are now completely off the original topic. I'm not sure why this is even being discussed now - this is ancient history.

[judyhop]

We are boarding tomorrow and we are really excited! Did they bring the classes back?

[KenzSailing]

8 hours ago, BWIVince said:

 

In theory cruise lines can then provide customers their money back even if all the customers cancel at once, because all the money that would be due the customers would be in reserve, with the company only taking money that wouldn’t be returned to the customer — in theory.

 

In practice, there is a giant hole in this theory, and that comes when the company money has to be returned to customers en masse — it’s usually already spent on deposits with other suppliers and fixed costs, the entire reason for the graduated schedule that the money gets booked to the company.  Prior to Covid, this usually just looked like an accident with a ship that would take it out of service  for months, years, or permanently, because that caused a sustained reduction in capacity for the line (longer and broader than a weather cancellation), and cruise lines generally plugged this risk with insurance….
 

 

 

 

Great post.  Let me try to translate the bolded point in terms my slower firing synapses can process:

 

Essentially, cruise lines collect monies from potential pax.  These monies become non-refundable on a sliding scale prior to delivery of service(the cruise.)   At the same time lines are paying out from accounts payable for goods and services attached to each and every cruise.  The disconnect, however, is that these payment schedules and receivable inflows do not perfectly align(and probably far from it.)  Most problems that might arise from this discontinuity can be patched over by the various mechanisms you outlined.  However, the pandemic was what economists call a "black swan" event.  IOW, everything stopped, and there were way too many entities vying for way too few chairs in this game of musical chairs.

[tinaincc]

Just now, KenzSailing said:

 

 

Great post.  Let me try to translate the bolded point in terms my slower firing synapses can process:

 

Essentially, cruise lines collect monies from potential pax.  These monies become non-refundable on a sliding scale prior to delivery of service(the cruise.)   At the same time lines are paying out from accounts payable for goods and services attached to each and every cruise.  The disconnect, however, is that these payment schedules and receivable inflows do not perfectly align(and probably far from it.)  Most problems that might arise from this discontinuity can be patched over by the various mechanisms you outlined.  However, the pandemic was what economists call a "black swan" event.  IOW, everything stopped, and there were way too many entities vying for way too few chairs in this game of musical chairs.

This is how the process works, typically. This was superseded by the old Crystal rolling out the “escrow promise” when trying to entice bookings. It is old news and certainly not relevant to the new Crystal where the described reserve process is used. 
Another interesting note is that the credit card companies will hedge their reserves by cruise line based on risk of default or insolvency as a way to help with potential chargebacks. It was a very challenging time after COVID for this and many other reasons.

[BWIVince]

15 minutes ago, KenzSailing said:

 

 

Great post.  Let me try to translate the bolded point in terms my slower firing synapses can process:

 

Essentially, cruise lines collect monies from potential pax.  These monies become non-refundable on a sliding scale prior to delivery of service(the cruise.)   At the same time lines are paying out from accounts payable for goods and services attached to each and every cruise.  The disconnect, however, is that these payment schedules and receivable inflows do not perfectly align(and probably far from it.)  Most problems that might arise from this discontinuity can be patched over by the various mechanisms you outlined.  However, the pandemic was what economists call a "black swan" event.  IOW, everything stopped, and there were way too many entities vying for way too few chairs in this game of musical chairs.

 

Nailed it!  For the most part the lines have set up the cancellation penalties to align well with their outlays, and the patchwork of mitigators covers normal interruptions well, we just didn't have any (and still don't) backstop against the music stopping completely.  Cruise lines may be fighting for different terms on their supplier contracts that may make it easier to recover their advance payments faster in an industry shutdown, but short of that tiny step, we're still meaningfully in the same boat.

 

Vince

[travelberlin]

On 9/16/2023 at 10:18 AM, Texas Tillie said:

 

Better not put me on that list! I can think of a number of places where Crystal can improve. My point was almost everything I experienced (I experienced) on Silversea wasn't equal. I expect my upcoming cruise on the Nova to reveal a new, fancy ship. Will the food, service, etc. equal, much less exceed Crystal, we'll see. I will be honest in my review, but my review will be a personal review, as are everyone's.

Have you written a review? Can you tell us on which number of places the New Crystal can improve?

Ivi

[May B]

6 hours ago, judyhop said:

We are boarding tomorrow and we are really excited! Did they bring the classes back?

Bon voyage! Have a blast!

 

Which classes do you mean? Pretty soon, you’ll be able to tell us!

[Texas Tillie]

6 hours ago, travelberlin said:

Have you written a review? Can you tell us on which number of places the New Crystal can improve?

Ivi

 

No review. There were issues with the remodeling  that have been reported - the phones and the tv having glitches and the lighting in "OO" and "UU" needing work, but I wouldn't be surprised if those things have been corrected by now. I did have a discussion with the excursion team about there not being excursions listed as "minimal" activity for those that need to take it easy. They were aware and said they had already passed the info on to the new group securing excursions. They didn't say but I assume it's A&K. I've looked at excursions listed for January cruises and there seem to be more with minimal activity. My only other "complaint" was that all the evening entertainment in the Galaxy was at 9:45 which is generally too late for me. I'm hoping that at least some will be earlier going forward. Food was better than ever. Service was as good as ever.

 

Patty

[KenzSailing]

1 hour ago, Texas Tillie said:

 

 I did have a discussion with the excursion team about there not being excursions listed as "minimal" activity for those that need to take it easy. They were aware and said they had already passed the info on to the new group securing excursions. They didn't say but I assume it's A&K. I've looked at excursions listed for January cruises and there seem to be more with minimal activity.

 

My hips(which are of the opinion that they are 10 years older than the rest of me) thank you.

[BWIVince]

9 hours ago, KenzSailing said:

 

My hips(which are of the opinion that they are 10 years older than the rest of me) thank you.

Don’t you hate it when you’re born with reconditioned parts, when you’re pretty sure new parts were ordered?  😁. In my case I seemed to have inherited some from my mother, so at least I knew the previous owner.  
 

Vince