Cruiser Formerly Known As Cheapo Dad's Trip Report on Odyssey of the Seas Sailing to A Minus B Plus C Plus H Islands

[harryfat1]

In case the fashion police here on CC is out to grab someone for not following the dress code, here’s a picture of us for dinner so they can leave us alone for the night.

 

[harryfat1]

Here are the food pictures from the Christmas Eve dinner.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

The dessert looked “different” from what we had in the previous RCI Christmas cruise.  The description said it was “Buche De Noel”.

 

I thought it would be like what we had back in 2017 and I even showed the family the picture from my phone (yes, I still have 2017 cruise pictures stored on my phone as it has a massive 256 GB storage capacity) of what we ordered back then.

 

I was expecting something like this from the 2017 Independence of the Seas Christmas dinner:

 

 

Instead, we got this:

 

 

As you can't post something here on CC without knowing what you are talking about before soemone corrects you in less than 10 minutes, I Googled what “Buche De Noel” is supposed to look like and I got this:

 

 

 

As the commercial said – not exactly the same when compared to what the Odyssey served us.

 

My son said the Odyssey version looked like something that came out from the rear end of the dog…

 

 

 

[h20skibum]

4 hours ago, harryfat1 said:

I understand if someone had to clean 10 cabins and all 10 of them want morning cleanup, then the cabin steward may not get to all of them and therefore need to put 3 of them for the evening cleaning. We can’t ask the impossible tasks but at least explain it to the guests like Brian’s attendant did for him so the expectation can be met.

 

We talked to our cabin steward on Symphony, and he said he had 25 cabins to service, and those included several suites in our area.  He said about 2/3 request morning cleanings.  That is still a lot of cabins to do, every day.  Plus, they have to try to clean those cabins that people have a ton of crap laying around.

 

I am pretty high up on the anal score, because each time we leave the cabin, there is never anything laying around.  Clothes and shoes are put away, desktop is bare, and everything else is organized on shelves.  

 

1 hour ago, harryfat1 said:

 

By then, the boys' cabin was finally cleaned.  The note reminded people to set their clock FORWARD for 1 hour so we lose an hour of sleep tonight.

 

 

That is strange, because we didn’t have the time change on our sailing.  They just reminded everyone to stay on ship time, so we had that hour difference in the southern ports.  I wonder if that is captain’s discretion?

[LuCruise]

Was curious as the Christmas menu looks very similar to the New Year's Eve menu.  I took a photo too so just compared, and it is the same except for the dessert you mentioned (and ours said Happy New Year at the top and no xmas decorations).  Instead of Buche De Noel, we just had an Italian Hazelnut Chocolate Cake.  Even if not true to it's form, your dessert looked pretty good.

[hucifer]

10 hours ago, harryfat1 said:

After the family got back, it was almost time to shower and get dressed for the formal night.

 

One major problem of not having the boys’ cabin cleaned was they had no clean bath towels.

The cabin attendants haven’t cleaned their cabin since we boarded on day 1.  After realizing the cabin steward was not going to come over anytime soon, I had to make a phone call from the desk phone to Housekeeping and requested 2 sets of fresh towels. 

 

Waited 20 minutes.  Nothing. 

 

OK. This isn’t going so well.  I went outside the hallway and waited awhile to find one worker walking by and asked him for some towels and he opened the utility door down the hall and got us 2 sets. 

 

I thought about going down to Guest Services to request towels but they probably just told me to call guest services.

 

After the boys started taking their showers, housekeeping finally dropped off the 2 sets of towels I requested. 

 

Never thought I had to work so hard on a cruise ship to get fresh towels.  In the old days of 2 cabin cleanings daily, you had fresh towels everywhere you looked. Now you have to flag someone down in the hallway to get some…

Yeah, Royal's service isn't a fraction of what it used to be. I know the room stewards are working their rears off. I blame the bean counters (no offense) at Royal for this.

 

Your son is right; dessert looked like the product that comes out of a rear end. Was it tasty, at least?

[luvtoride]

26 minutes ago, hucifer said:

Yeah, Royal's service isn't a fraction of what it used to be. I know the room stewards are working their rears off. I blame the bean counters (no offense) at Royal for this.

 

It seems like some of you long time cruisers are spoiled by the service levels in the old days.  I can’t even imagine what the room stewards would have to do with TWO room cleanup visits per day!?  We thought that the cabin service by our Attendant on this cruise was very good and as we expected.  We got everything we needed promptly and he was very nice always.  

[hucifer]

2 minutes ago, luvtoride said:

It seems like some of you long time cruisers are spoiled by the service levels in the old days.  I can’t even imagine what the room stewards would have to do with TWO room cleanup visits per day!?  We thought that the cabin service by our Attendant on this cruise was very good and as we expected.  We got everything we needed promptly and he was very nice always.  

Yeah, when you are initially served steak and champagne, then later a soy burger and a domestic beer, you can't help but miss the former. Some of the service been outstanding, despite the cutbacks, and others...yeah.

[h20skibum]

5 minutes ago, luvtoride said:

It seems like some of you long time cruisers are spoiled by the service levels in the old days.  I can’t even imagine what the room stewards would have to do with TWO room cleanup visits per day!?  We thought that the cabin service by our Attendant on this cruise was very good and as we expected.  We got everything we needed promptly and he was very nice always.  

That is the thing, each cabin steward had half as many (or less) rooms to service.  Now, they are trying to make this their new normal, while charging significantly more.  Maybe their hope is to get enough new cruisers hooked that haven’t experienced anything better.  

[rncruiser]

59 minutes ago, hucifer said:

Yeah, Royal's service isn't a fraction of what it used to be. I know the room stewards are working their rears off. I blame the bean counters (no offense) at Royal for this.

 

Your son is right; dessert looked like the product that comes out of a rear end. Was it tasty, at least?

I’d never had buche de Noel prior to the cruise so I don’t know if it tasted how it is meant to, but it was delicious. 

[NHProud]

10 hours ago, harryfat1 said:

In case the fashion police here on CC is out to grab someone for not following the dress code, here’s a picture of us for dinner so they can leave us alone for the night.

 

You all look so fantastic. Kudos to your sons for dressing up.  I’m just wondering why you didn’t ask for a better table or maybe you did.  I would , at least , have asked your younger son to trade places .  
 

I hope , you are surviving today’s rain without damage to your home and be safe.

[harryfat1]

18 hours ago, h20skibum said:

We talked to our cabin steward on Symphony, and he said he had 25 cabins to service, and those included several suites in our area.  He said about 2/3 request morning cleanings.  That is still a lot of cabins to do, every day.  Plus, they have to try to clean those cabins that people have a ton of crap laying around.

 

I am pretty high up on the anal score, because each time we leave the cabin, there is never anything laying around.  Clothes and shoes are put away, desktop is bare, and everything else is organized on shelves.  

 

That is strange, because we didn’t have the time change on our sailing.  They just reminded everyone to stay on ship time, so we had that hour difference in the southern ports.  I wonder if that is captain’s discretion?

I’ll get to the cabin cleaning discussion in the next post as that gets much more involved and I have made some calculations for that post so let’s just discuss the easier topics here.

 

Totally agree in trying to keep the cabin as clean as possible.  All the shoes are either under the bed or way on the side when we leave the cabins.  Nothing on the sofas when we leave the cabin.

 

I think I mentioned it in earlier posts that I appreciate the overhead storage area above the bed.  I throw my sleep clothes there daily after getting dressed so as not to be in the way.

 

We have cups of water and tea from the night before but they are always in their own pile and easier to take away by the cabin attendant daily.

 

As for the time change, I guess that is up to the captain if he wants to be in sync with the local time.  Personally, I prefer to change to local time as it’s confusing when I’m ashore on the difference between the two times. 

 

Especially if you have independent tours booked like we did, sometimes it would be a tall task to get off the ship on time if the ship time hadn’t changed.

 

For example, at Aruba, we had a tour with a local operator that started at 8:30 AM local time (Atlantic time zone) or 7:30 AM ship time (Florida/Eastern time) if we didn’t switch to local time. We would need to be off the ship early as they only dock the ship at 7-something ship time. So 8:30 local tour time would be extremely challenging if they didn’t add a jump ahead one hour for the ship's time.

 

To add to the confusion, when Florida jumps to Day Light Savings time, then they are at the exact time zone as Aruba/Curacao so there is no need for time changes during the daylight savings months.  Whereas during the non-daylight months, it’s at the discretion of the captain on how he wants to align the ship time with local time.

[harryfat1]

Mark provided the important info on the 25 cabin cleaning per attendant.  I can now do some simple math calculations to have some discussion points.

 

First of all, if one attendant must clean 25 cabins daily, and if we assume they can clean one cabin every 25 minutes, that’s 10-plus hours of work.  Further, assume with the Holiday sailing at 125% and they need to clean more with the 3^rd and 4^th berths being utilized, they would need to work up to 13 hours a day to clean during the extremely busy.

 

 

As we had other discussions on the expectations of the cabin steward, I started to wonder what’s their estimated pay.

 

So I made some high-level assumptions to come up with some interesting discussion points.

 

To start, the “mandatory gratuities” as currently stands is $18/day (suites are more).  RCI no longer publishes a breakdown on who gets what amount from the $18 but in the old days, the cabin steward got around 30% of the daily tips with the rest going to dining staff and backroom workers.

 

Assuming that’s still the case, we are looking at $5/day for a cabin attendant. Here’s the math on how much each attendent could be making assuming they all clean 25 cabins daily.

 

 

That more or less gets us to $250/day at 10+ hours of work daily.

 

Of course, it's doubtful anyone will work that many hours the entire year without a break as they will likely get some break offshore at times.

 

Just note that these wages are not the same as US workers as they are not subject to US tax law and the workers don't have to pay for housing or food either during their work time on the ship. So they have financial incentives that a regular land-based worker does not have.

 

No need to start drafting a post saying how hard they work and they deserve the money.  I get that.  Nobody is disputing that.  Just showing everyone how the tips could add up on any given week/month.

 

Tips are a major hot topic of discussion here on CC.  Anytime there’s a tip adjustment, many people jump in and debate it.

[harryfat1]

As luck has it, RCCL reported their annual earning to Wall Street today.  To no one’s surprise, they made a lot of money.  Per the earnings release, net income for the year was $1.7 Billion on a revenue of $13.9 Billion.

 

https://www.rclinvestor.com/press-releases/release/?id=1687

 

To put that in some sort of context, Wonder of the Seas costs around $1.4 Billion to build so RCI made enough money ($1.7B) in one year to build an Oasis-class ship. But that is a simplicity statement as unlike individuals that use the cash method of accounting corporations use the accrual method such that they have income/expenses that are required by the accounting standards and not what an average person off the street would consider an expense.

 

Anyway, not to talk too much about accounting but the point is that they made a lot of money in 2023. More or less can build a new ship.

 

Not everyone here was part of my Navigator trip report last August as someone wanted me to be a Finance guy instead of Cheapo Dad to calculate the food cost fleet-wide.  To do that, I had to dig deep down into the SEC’s quarterly 10-Q filing to talk about food costs.  I plan to do the same when RCCL releases their annual SEC 10-K later this month as to have the annual to see the effects for the whole year.

 

I haven’t had much time to digest all the numbers of this release yet but as we are talking labor more on this trip report than the previous report, I saw something interesting on the press release.  Their labor cost went down when compared to 2022, which was already low due to hiring fewer people due to the pandemic. 

 

Sorry if the screen shot is too small.  I will have better fonts after they publish the 10K as that's in PDF

 

 

 

 

Interesting. So if you have record revenue and pay people less money and prepare cheaper food, guess what, you will make record profits…

 

I will have more numbers later on this month in this trip report for the 3 people still reading by then who haven’t fallen asleep after the last 2 posts

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

13 hours ago, hucifer said:

Yeah, Royal's service isn't a fraction of what it used to be. I know the room stewards are working their rears off. I blame the bean counters (no offense) at Royal for this.

 

Your son is right; dessert looked like the product that comes out of a rear end. Was it tasty, at least?

 

12 hours ago, rncruiser said:

I’d never had buche de Noel prior to the cruise so I don’t know if it tasted how it is meant to, but it was delicious. 

It makes sense that they had a repeat of the “special menu” as Christmas and NYE are the two unique cruises, unlike others.  Easier to do a repeat in terms of ordering/cooking the food versus having 2 separate back-to-back special menus.

 

The dessert tasted fine.  I ate the whole thing. 

 

I was just saying it looked different than what I thought it should be.  The foodie purists, need to adjust their expectations for future Holiday cruises if they see this again on the menu

 

[harryfat1]

13 hours ago, hucifer said:

Yeah, Royal's service isn't a fraction of what it used to be. I know the room stewards are working their rears off. I blame the bean counters (no offense) at Royal for this.

 

Your son is right; dessert looked like the product that comes out of a rear end. Was it tasty, at least?

Haha, yeah, sure. Go ahead and blame the bean counters.  That’s like blaming the knife after someone got cut instead of the person wielding the knife.

 

Contrary to what people think, Finance of its own does not spearhead the changes in corporate policy.  We are the tail of the dog.  We wag when the dog tells us when to wag and not the other way around.

 

The typical scenario is for Finance to produce a whole bunch of reports and then senior management/board of directors reviews it and says “Why is labor cost so high?” 

 

Then Finance will provide a more detailed breakdown of the ship’s operating cost by department type and then the CEO will say, we want to reduce costs related to cabin cleaning as it’s wasteful to clean it twice a day.  That's when they have to figure out what is the bare minimum number of cabin stewards needed for each ship.

 

Finance on its own has no clue about how long a cabin steward takes to clean any given cabin.  Operations must provide that info.  I’m sure they have it to the minute on what is the expected time for a worker to clean the cabin.  When they go through training to become one, all cabin attendants have to meet these criteria.

 

So Operations has to tell Finance that it takes 25 minutes (my hypothetical number from above. No idea how accurate it may be) to clean one cabin and on average, they think a person can clean a maximum of 25 cabins per a typical working day.  This number has to come from operations.  Your average bean counter sitting in the Miami corporate HQ has never cleaned a ship's cabin.  They know zip about that. 

 

Only when there’s enough data input from Operations will the Finance group calculate the wage savings in reducing the staff.  For example, assume in the old days of twice-a-day cleaning, each cabin steward could only clean 15 cabins (again my theoretical number).  In a ship like Odyssey with 4,200 people that’s 2,100 cabins or they need 140 cabin stewards on any given sailing to have full coverage to clean all the cabins 2 times a day.

 

If they reduce it to 25 cabins per attendant at one cleaning a day, they only need 84 cabin stewards (2,100 cabins divided by 25).  The difference is savings of 56 jobs at whatever average salary each person makes and annualize that for all the ships in the fleet is your cost savings. 

 

The bean counters calculate all these numbers in Miami for the CEO to approve but they don’t initiate it.  They are the tail that will wag when the dog wants the info and then Finance wags/calculates.  Finance is never the group that just sits around and says “Hey, let’s see how much money we can save if we fire 56 cabin attendants on the Odyssey?” 

 

That’s not how Corporate America's Finance operation works.  The directive and thought came from the senior management after looking at the various reports and wanted to cut every single line of expenses and then operations are the one that comes up with the idea on what headcounts are needed to safely operate the ship as Accounting has no idea how many people are needed to clean a ship.

 

But nobody ever blames management or Operations.  It’s always the bean counter’s fault for calculating the numbers…🤪

 

[harryfat1]

12 hours ago, luvtoride said:

It seems like some of you long time cruisers are spoiled by the service levels in the old days.  I can’t even imagine what the room stewards would have to do with TWO room cleanup visits per day!?  We thought that the cabin service by our Attendant on this cruise was very good and as we expected.  We got everything we needed promptly and he was very nice always.  

 

12 hours ago, hucifer said:

Yeah, when you are initially served steak and champagne, then later a soy burger and a domestic beer, you can't help but miss the former. Some of the service been outstanding, despite the cutbacks, and others...yeah.

Yes, in the “good old days”, they used to clean the cabins twice a day but per my post above, they have more staff to do the cleaning so it’s not the same as the current workload.

 

In comparison, cruise line cabin cleaning is still better than land-based hotels as your average hotel on land no longer has daily housecleaning unless you stay at very high-end places.  Your typical 2 or 3-star hotels by Hilton/Marriott/Holiday Inn are cleaned every other day or every 3 days.  You just go downstairs at the front desk to ask for fresh towels if you need them.

 

Brian had a better-communicating attendant so that made a huge difference as we never knew when we would have cabin cleaned.  If we had known ahead of time one of the cabins wouldn’t be cleaned, we would just have asked for fresh towels up front and that would have resolved everything.  We don’t care about making up the bed or sink/desk area as we are pretty tidy for the most part.

 

Or she could have been proactive and told the family when they were in the other cabin that she probably wouldn't get to cleaning the other cabin until later that evening but here are some fresh towels if needed.

[rncruiser]

There are more savings involved than just 56 cabin attendants. That’s also 56 less people that need to be fed and if you are building a new ship that’s 56 less people who need cabins built for them.  56 less uniforms to wash. 56 less people who need to be transported from their home country to the ship. 56 less cabin attendants may also mean 1 or 2 less people needed to supervise them. I’m sure there are other items I have left out. 

[harryfat1]

12 hours ago, h20skibum said:

That is the thing, each cabin steward had half as many (or less) rooms to service.  Now, they are trying to make this their new normal, while charging significantly more.  Maybe their hope is to get enough new cruisers hooked that haven’t experienced anything better.  

Haha, I guess we must be the bunch of grumpy old people telling people to get off our lawn and complaining about the cutbacks of the cruising industry in general.

 

The issue is that people are paying more but getting less.  That’s not a happy formula.

 

Typically, a company does one of two things to eke out more profit:

 

Option 1 - The company cuts back on services and just tells the customers that due to the high cost of labor, they can’t hire more people, and therefore the service level decreases.  The customers won’t be happy but at least they don’t have to pay more.

 

Option 2 - The company charges more for their product/services to cover the higher costs.  But a smarter company will soften the blow by offering more so that even though the customer is paying $100 more for goods/services if they get $30 back in return, the customer can comfort themselves in thinking they got something of value in return in paying more.

 

In the case of the cruise industry, people are paying more (a lot more on many sailings) than a few years ago but getting fewer services as a result (fewer service workers/lower food quality). The combination of both options is what is causing the unhappiness.

 

Maybe the cruise industry set the bar so high in the past that they can’t possibly sustain and therefore must charge more to make a profit.

 

The trend of the cruise industry is more emphasis on “hardware” like the new Icon and Carnival’s Excel class ships or NCL/Princess with their new ships but the “software” like cruising experience/services/food quality has suffered. 

 

It’s like the magicians that want to deceive you by showing you things on the one hand but hiding things on the other hand. 

 

If you look at the RCI ads, all the emphasis has been on the new glitzy ships and families playing in them. Whatever food pictures they do show are extra charge specialty dining so the “software”(services) part of the cruise is a by-product.

 

[harryfat1]

10 hours ago, NHProud said:

You all look so fantastic. Kudos to your sons for dressing up.  I’m just wondering why you didn’t ask for a better table or maybe you did.  I would , at least , have asked your younger son to trade places .  
 

I hope , you are surviving today’s rain without damage to your home and be safe.

Thanks for the kind words.  The boys have been brainwashed to accept dressing up as part of cruise life.  For the Navigator, as it was a blah 4-day cruise, for the first time, I didn’t bring a suit.  I just had a dress shirt and a tie and the boys were surprised/not used to dressing down for a cruise

 

We didn’t request a new table.  We had a similar booth seating on a couple of nights on Princess when they were playing musical tables with us on their flexible dining even though I showed up nightly at the same time and requested the same waiter and same table and requested after night 1 that I want that table and that waiter nightly at 7 PM, they refused to guarantee me the same table as that's their "flex dining policy".  No guarantees.

 

I’m OK with the seating as I can just turn around and see something and the wife can take pictures of the view and I can get up and take pictures of any performance.  There were some tables way in the back side that had no views of the center part of the MDR.

 

What I would have liked is extra elbow space.  As I discussed with Biker previously, if they had “filled in” the middle area on deck 4, in theory, we wouldn’t be as cramped as they could eke out more space to spread people out.. 

 

The pictures didn’t show it but a young couple is sitting next to our table the entire cruise.  They just were not there on that night as they went to Wonderland for specialty dining.  We could hear their conversation just as easily as they could hear ours but you try not to listen in but the noise comes through easily.

 

We said hi to them nightly as they are a newlywed couple but it would have been nicer to have a little more separation than a better view.

 

My wife and younger son wanted those seats looking outward and that’s fine.  I feel claustrophobic being inside stuck next to a pole and someone else.  I want my freedom of space. 

 

We made it through the storm ok.  A few things in the backyard were displaced from the wind and fell but nothing major. Some areas had flooding or power outages but we were fine.  Thanks for your concern.

 

[harryfat1]

12 minutes ago, rncruiser said:

There are more savings involved than just 56 cabin attendants. That’s also 56 less people that need to be fed and if you are building a new ship that’s 56 less people who need cabins built for them.  56 less uniforms to wash. 56 less people who need to be transported from their home country to the ship. 56 less cabin attendants may also mean 1 or 2 less people needed to supervise them. I’m sure there are other items I have left out. 

Oh, yeah, if you are getting into the "soft cost" of these employees, you can add overhead charges like medical care for 56 people for the whole year or administrative stuff like less payroll work or back office paperwork as I learned from the captain that they have to file paperwork with every port to provide info on every crew member. Fewer workers means fewer people needing to do the paperwork.

 

Or if we carry the benefits of only once a day cleaning - less fresh towels needed daily and less fuel to burn to wash and clean the towels.

[harryfat1]

OK, ready for more Financial discussions on RCI profitability?

 

What do you mean, heck no?  Tired of 10Q and 10K talk already?  We are only on day 2, people...

 

Fine, let's go to the trip reporting then...

 

++++++++++++++

 

After dinner, we saw the piano man inside the elevator with a whole bunch of his fans.  Ahhh, yes, the piano man.

 

For those unaware, RCI has these roaming piano players on the various ships and they appear in front of Windjammer or inside of the elevator.  The popular thing is to hitch a ride in an elevator with him and go up and down the ship while he’s playing the piano.

 

My wife and my son caught the ride with him back on the Navigator in August.

 

This being a Holiday cruise and a younger (and much more boisterous) crowd, the atmosphere inside the elevator with the piano man is very fun to watch from the outside.  You can hear the music and the singing/laughter from the audience way down the hallway.

 

Many times they can’t even close the door with more people trying to squeeze in and the elevator is over the limit on weight capacity.

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

Many criticisms have been levied on the MDR menu changes in 2023 but the one advantage of the new menu is that you are out of the MDR in 90 minutes or less.  Even for formal nights where dinner typically takes a long time. 

 

Ordering dessert upfront saves the time for a secondary menu and ordering and lag time for the waiter to drop off the order and get all the food.

 

Anyway, we were out of the MDR by 9:35, and as such, we had time to visit the uncle in prison (aka formal picture photos) before the 10 PM show.

 

 

Long lines to take pictures everywhere as everyone is visiting their uncles in prison as it must be parole hearing time and they want to show their support to see if the uncle can be released.

 

 

 

This being Christmas, the area in front of the tree was extremely popular with a long line.

 

 

RCI staircases are always a popular photo spot on all ships

 

[harryfat1]

The drawback of so many uncle visits is that by the time we got to the theater, the lower level is already full.  The workers at the front of the theater are directing people to go upstairs to be seated as the lower level is already full

 

 

 

Not the best seats but it’s better than standing considering we found these seats just 1 minute before the show was to start

 

[harryfat1]

OK.  Time to explain the Effectors without giving out too much spoiler information.  It’s the RCI version of Marvel/DC comics meets Broadway. Somewhat of a simple plot of 4 comic book heroes versus one villain,

 

Lots of high-tech gadgets in this show.  If you are bored with the typical Broadway-style song and dance routines of many cruise ships, this one has high-tech features like drones (video later) and lasers or motorcycle props to have you keep saying, “Hey, that’s new and cool.  Never seen that before.”

 

Shows are similar to food in being subjective and everyone has different preferences but I liked this show.  I know part 2 of the series is on the Wonder of the Seas so if I ever sail on the Wonder later on, I would be looking forward to seeing the next installment.

 

If you only have time for 1 main show on the Odyssey, catch this one and skip Showgirls but I'm sure someone else could feel differently.

 

As stated previously, skip the next few pages of uploads if you don’t want spoilers