CaptRat

We arrived home late last evening and, following a 35 minute phone hold, was finally able to speak with Cunard customer service this afternoon.

According to the person I spoke with, those stranded should email an accounting of their expenses with receipts to guestrelations@cunard.com. No guarantee was given for any kind of compensation. Our cruise fare was refunded to the credit card this morning and I confirmed with customer service that the FCC used for a portion of the fare was also reinstated. However, the 20% FCC has yet to be calculated and added to our account. (Not that any FCC means much to us now as we'll probably never sail on Cunard again after this fiasco.) Also, one's Cunard World Club account is currently unavailable online without a booking (they're working on that and it will be available .... eventually.)

To add to my comments above, I'm sure that Cunard is aware of the double standard. In fact they know specifically which passengers received lodging and transportation assistance and which of us did not. At this point, the right thing for Cunard to do is offer reimbursement to those not assisted at a commensurate level to those who were. 

And yet, five days after the cancellation email, my only communication from them is an email with no message with a one page .pdf breakdown of my cruise fare attached. And even that breakdown isn't correct.

20 hours ago, JSR said:

…… this is a perfect example of the double standard, while the guests already on the ship are enjoying their holiday, those that were not on the ship are left to their own devices to arrange housing as well as transportation with little notice. Not to mention those that are unable to fly either for health reasons or are traveling with dogs, etc. are truly in a predicament. I am happy for your friends however, compassion for those in more difficult situation is called for. 

 

 

Exactly this. Cunard did not inform anyone that an option to check-in and receive room, board and transportation would be made available. Only those already onboard, those who didn't receive the email cancellation, and those who ignored the email or were already at the pier received those benefits. The rest of us were abandoned with a “ sorry for the inconvenience” email. This is, intentional or not, definitely a double standard.

One can attempt a defense of Cunard with remarks such as “be prepared when traveling,” or “these things happen,” or “Cunard's T&C applies,” etc. But those remarks ignore the fact that not all were treated the same and that many of us incurred thousands of dollars to return home while others did not.

Admit this information about the mattresses does not make me happy. We are sailing on the sea princess in October. Do you know if mattress toppers are available? What category were you in?

We were in a category BB balcony on Baja deck starboard midship. Honestly, one of the twin mattresses that made up our queen bed was broken down enough that a mattress topper probably wouldn't help a lot. It was disappointing as we had the new mattresses on the last nine cruises prior to the Sea Princess and those mattress were great.

J

Given the current exchange rate between the USD and AUD it's very, very good for Americans! Sure, the some of AUD prices are higher, but not all, and the drinks prices include the gratuities but you shouldn't end up paying any more, and will probably pay less, than you do on USD cruises.

Whether Australian based Princess cruises are a "good deal" for Americans has been a topic of discussion for some time. While we were on the Sea Princess for a Hawaii cruise last month, we ran a comparison of prices. Here's what we determined:

Drink prices for cocktails using liquor from the well are essentially $0.50 USD higher depending on the exchange rate. Cocktails using call liquor (Bombay Sapphire, etc.) are about $1.00 USD higher. Martinis and other higher end cocktails are about $1.25 USD higher. Beer is also about $0.50 USD Higher.

Bottled wine is definitely higher for anything of moderate quality. We, including our Aussie friends, opted to purchase decent wine ashore and pay the $15 AUD corkage fee as it was more cost effective.

We also compared booking rates. As it turned out, the AUD and USD rates were about the same for the same class cabin. BUT, and this is a big "but," an American booking on an Australian based cruise is automatically signed up for the cabin gratuity. The Aussie bookings aren't.

We remedied that by having the gratuities discontinued/removed and tipping our steward, waiter, jr. waiter, and some of the bar staff with cash.

Oh, and one more thing... shareholder and military onboard credit is in AUD not USD.

I have 3 cruises booked and none of them are showing Internet packages at this time. As noted above they are all showing nothing but "In-Cabin Calling To Shore". 10 minutes. $49.50

 

Hopefully it's just the Princess "crack IT team" making changes in order to put up the new package prices.

I also have multiple cruises booked and the only bookings that don't show internet packages are the Pacific Princess bookings. They'll still have the packages available onboard.

We were on the Royal in January with the initial rollout of Ocean Medallion. The MedallionNet is a huge improvement over the current systems. Much more reliable and (for a ship) relatively fast. I was impressed.

The initial rollout for Ocean Medallion is

• Royal Princess (January 2018)
  
• Caribbean Princess (March 2018)
  
• Island Princess (May 2018)
  
• Golden Princess (November 2018)
  
• Crown Princess (November 2018)
  
• Ruby Princess (January 2019)
  

Notice the Pacific Princess isn't on this list. It is in line for the upgrade, however it's the last in line with no date, so don't hold your breath.

However, one of my main concerns is that the aft lifts don't appear to go down to the dining rooms, and neither do the mid ship scenic ones, only the ones at the front appear to go to all levels. With this in mind, I am wondering whether a cabin near to these lifts would be best for direct access to the dining rooms? And, if so, is it a long walk to the dining rooms (have a bit of a mobility problem) or, with it being a smaller ship, not so much of a problem?

Others have pretty much given the basic information about the lifts on the Sea Princess. Having disembarked from her last week after a 35 day RT from Sydney, I can add some more information.

The mid ship lifts are in two banks of three lifts. Oddly, each bank responds only to the call buttons pushed for that bank. Passengers quickly figure this out and press call buttons on both banks. The result is a lot of double calls on every deck and very slow lifts. A five to seven minute wait is not unusual during meal times as people are going to and from the Horizon Court on deck 14 and even longer in the mornings during port calls. It didn't help that it seemed there was a lift out of service for repair every day.

Even though there are only three aft lifts, the waits are much shorter there so we tended to use those most.

Evening entertainment was satisfactory but the at-sea daytime schedule was very repetitive. We had over 20 sea days and during the last week there were many passengers mentioning being bored. After all, how many carpet bowls, Effy "enrichment" lectures, back pain lectures, etc are required?

Also, although the ship has been recently refurbished, the mattresses were not replaced with the new mattresses (at least not ship wide.) We were starboard Baja deck and our friends were port Baja deck and both cabins had worn, uncomfortable mattresses. Our friend's cabin had new carpet and curtains. Ours did not.

We sail frequently on Princess and have sailed on ten of their ships. We had a good cruise but we put Sea Princess at the bottom of the list. We won't book her again unless it's an outstanding itinerary that meets our schedule perfectly and there are no other options available with other cruise lines.

JMHO

It’s still offered on the Emerald. We boarded today and there are 2 BOGOs a day.

Interesting. Seems like the BOGO offer is a ship by ship practice. Some are saying it's no longer offered on the CB, yet you had it on the Ruby. I am hoping that management will see this is a failed exercise and that more profit is generated with this. What they are seeing now is less margin, so it's a case of tripping over the dollar bills to pick up the pennies.

The other mistake is the Platinum/Elite Lounge practice of moving the passenger favorite drinks off the menu and replacing them with Foo-Foo drinks and then only a special price for the drink of the day and not all the ones on the menu offered. Big mistake....another "ghost town" in the making at Skywalkers.

BOGO is definitely not being offered on the Caribbean Princess. We just disembarked from her yesterday and there were no afternoon or evening BOGOs. Very disappointing.... and a mistake, I think. Both the Wheelhouse in the afternoon and Skywalkers at night were ghost towns.

As of mid July, BOGOs were still being offered on the Pacific Princess both afternoon and evening in the Pacific Lounge.

One can also buy wine by the bottle at BOGOs. As explained to me by staff on the Pacific, they assume 5 glasses per bottle and charge that much for the first bottle. The second bottle (BOGO bottle) is then $5 (5 glasses at $1 each.) I assume this only applies to the wines that they offer by the glass and not the entire wine list from the restaurant.