Has your Roll Call ever been a let down?

Your cruise is booked...excitement sets in..you look up your roll call for your cruise...looking to "meet" your fellow sail mates and chat away discussing plans on what do to?

The Roll Call had been set up months, even a year or more out, people post...I've just booked, days even weeks go by no posts....So you try to initiate conversation of interest, nothing. Then more people post, only to find they know each other, either from sailings past or friends. Meanwhile, you hang, looking to gain information on your cruise. What I am also finding on some of these threads are unkind comments to someone who has an actual concern.

Anyone else ever encounter this and what did you do.

YES...this has happened on our last 2 cruises, MSC Transaltantic Brazil to Italy and Fred Olsen Amazon River cruise. It seems the only reallly active roll calls are ones with a large American or Canadian contingent. Our MSC one had very few American or Canadians, quite a few Australian and New Zealanders, plus south Americans. I started the roll call an no one else joined. The Fred Olsen cruise was virtually made up of all Brits most of whom had cruised FO before and seemed to know each other. Again I started the FO roll call and then there was another couple who were cruising as a group of 4 and weren't interested in joining us for any excursions...their loss esp when we were doing specialist private tours with a local guide and others were herded on the ships tours. We've had some really good experiences cruising with large roll calls, where we have had great private excursions and made many friends over the years. I think people not just Brits may be a bit shy, but also people just don't know about this site.

Sandy in Spain

I've only had one roll call actually result in a meet and greet being set up and that was our last cruise. None of the others really amounted to much, either with number of posters or doing anything onboard.

My past cruises have had very inactive roll calls.....its just the nature of the beast that they will not always give you what you want

Hi there - to answer your question, yes. But please try not to let your "Roll Call" have that kind of power over you or your cruise. Yes, it's nice to connect beforehand but I tell you, once we get chatting with others it has been our experience that people talk easily, first about cruising and then about other things. In other words, you will make friends. We have friends with whom we are still in contact; one couple even came to see my husband at work after our cruise was over. I mean - - the Roll Call is a mere tool but it's not really about that at all. It's about the people. :)

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I've had great roll calls and mediocre or even non-existent roll calls. My last cruise, I organized the Meet & Greet so we quite involved. More than 100 people came to the M&G and we had probably about a dozen different private tours planned that people could join. It's the most active roll call I've ever been involved with.

The cruise before, we set up a few tours but didn't have an official Meet and Greet. A few of us made a point of meeting each other and I'm still in touch with a few people from that cruise.

I've found that the roll calls are really active for NCL and Carnival, and that so far the Meet & Greets have been better on NCL. Since NCL provides refreshments and a venue and several officers attend, that impacts attendance in a positive way.

I've never had a roll call where people were unkind to each other. On one some people came from Carnival's FB page and attacked us for some joking we'd done that got reported by someone who visited our roll call but didn't join. It was pretty ridiculous.

Hi there - to answer your question, yes. But please try not to let your "Roll Call" have that kind of power over you or your cruise. Yes, it's nice to connect beforehand but I tell you, once we get chatting with others it has been our experience that people talk easily, first about cruising and then about other things. In other words, you will make friends. We have friends with whom we are still in contact; one couple even came to see my husband at work after our cruise was over. I mean - - the Roll Call is a mere tool but it's not really about that at all. It's about the people. :)

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Good advice! As much as I enjoy chatting on the roll call pre-cruise and the meet and greets, but on cruises where there's been an inactive roll call and no meet and greet I still had a great time. I agree that it's simple one of many ways to meet people. :D

No two roll calls are precisely the same. Various factors come into play from the number of participants to the mix of participants.

Keith

Depends to a degree on the cruise line, length of cruise and itinerary. Longer European cruises have always been more active for us as people discuss touring venues and tee to arrange groups. Mexico, Alaska, the carabbean seem to be less active as there are fewer people looking for tours

Some roll calls are better than others.

The most annoying are when a few people only want to chat endlessly among themselves about things that have absolutely nothing to do about cruising.

No, I don't care to know about their grandchildren's dance recitals and I certainly won't want to see pictures. :rolleyes:

I currently have 3 cruises booked and none have roll calls which are active. On my last cruise, it was very active and at the meet n greet no one seemed to chat with each other, all just kind of sat around and waited for the captain to show....I've kind of given up on them....

Every group of people, be it a high school class, a U S Navy deck division, or a bunch of passengers looking forward to the same cruise, will have its own nature and dynamic. I've had a T/A from Rome to Florida with great interaction - we booked pre-cruise trips in Italy, transfer from Rome to the port, group tours at ports of call and get togethers on board; two years later, on a very similar itinerary, it was close to impossible to get any responses: things just are the way they are.

Every group of people, be it a high school class, a U S Navy deck division, or a bunch of passengers looking forward to the same cruise, will have its own nature and dynamic.

Very well said -- Bravo/Zulu! :cool:

I've had some great ones and some not so great ones. The best by far are Carnivals - a real meet & greet - and fantastic cocktail party for pretty cheap! I am not a big fan of the meet the officers type of meet & greet as I've not met my fellow cruisers that way - both of that type I have attended everyone left when the officers left.

Ive' had some where we ended up cruising together again and are all friends on the place that is not to be mentioned here!

I basically use roll calls to arrange or join people on private tours. Sometimes they work and sometimes they do not work.

I find that if the cruise goes to an unusual place or has a lot of port days they are more likely to work. A Caribbean cruise rarely has a useful roll call as the people who are doing a Caribbean cruise are either newbies or who are doing their 100th Caribbean cruise because they can't think of another place to go. In both cases, they are boring.

On the other hand, a cruise to an unusual place or a port intensive cruise where people are trying to figure out what to do on port days is usually more active. For example, we did a 12 day Spain and Portugal cruise where there were only 2 sea days and 3 overnights where the roll was intense.

I will agree w one of the respondents that the people on the roll call should stick to the cruise. I don't want or care about any personal issues that they may have.

DON

I basically use roll calls to arrange or join people on private tours. Sometimes they work and sometimes they do not work.

 

I find that if the cruise goes to an unusual place or has a lot of port days they are more likely to work. A Caribbean cruise rarely has a useful roll call as the people who are doing a Caribbean cruise are either newbies or who are doing their 100th Caribbean cruise because they can't think of another place to go. In both cases, they are boring.

 

On the other hand, a cruise to an unusual place or a port intensive cruise where people are trying to figure out what to do on port days is usually more active. For example, we did a 12 day Spain and Portugal cruise where there were only 2 sea days and 3 overnights where the roll was intense.

 

I will agree w one of the respondents that the people on the roll call should stick to the cruise. I don't want or care about any personal issues that they may have.

 

 

DON

My experience has been the opposite - Caribbean RC very active and the TA was a dud. I have a TA currently booked and that RC seems a little more active - time will tell.

Had 2 bad ones years ago.

Stopped joining the Roll Calls quite a few years ago when they started planning games, cabin crawls, brining gifts, etc.

I basically use roll calls to arrange or join people on private tours. Sometimes they work and sometimes they do not work.

 

I find that if the cruise goes to an unusual place or has a lot of port days they are more likely to work. A Caribbean cruise rarely has a useful roll call as the people who are doing a Caribbean cruise are either newbies or who are doing their 100th Caribbean cruise because they can't think of another place to go. In both cases, they are boring.

 

On the other hand, a cruise to an unusual place or a port intensive cruise where people are trying to figure out what to do on port days is usually more active. For example, we did a 12 day Spain and Portugal cruise where there were only 2 sea days and 3 overnights where the roll was intense.

 

I will agree w one of the respondents that the people on the roll call should stick to the cruise. I don't want or care about any personal issues that they may have.

 

 

DON

You made me giggle about the Caribbean! I have had great luck with European cruises too. Arranged many private tours through here. Not so much with others.

I was on a cruise 3 years ago. There was a huge on line response to the proposed M&G .However ,only 6 people showed up to the meeting .

Had 2 bad ones years ago.

Stopped joining the Roll Calls quite a few years ago when they started planning games, cabin crawls, brining gifts, etc.

I agree.

I usually join the roll calls and have enjoyed the meet and greets.

I've booked a cruise recently and went to look at the roll call. I won't be joining this one.

It's very active and has well over 100 couples signed up. One person seems to be running it and has started a web page, is asking for photos and making name labels. They have arranged shore excursions together, plan a gift exchange and are meeting for a pre-cruise dinner.

That's fine if they want to do that, but it's not my scene. All I look for is to meet a few people and make some casual acquaintances, so that I recognise a few faces during the cruise. I'm not looking for deep involvement or to make a friend for life.

I guess different people have different expectations of a roll call, and that's OK with me.

Yes, some have been less than exciting. Others have resulted in friendships that have resulted in repeated cruising groups that continue today. But we don't plan our cruising around roll calls so we have no expectations from which to be disappointed.

So much variance in my experience! I was on the sailing Navybankerteacher referred to and it was wonderful! Many of us ended up at the same precruise hotel and did many tours and activities together.

Roll calls are important to me if we are on a long cruise (14 days+). I appreciate the advice and some folks even give a heads up when there is a price reduction. That landed me a nice free upgrade one time.

Our last TA's roll call (RCL)sort of fizzled because of lack of leadership and when a rude, self absorbed assistant cruise director showed up to lead the meet and greet. He was the only staff member to show. He controlled the event rather than the group being allowed to. RCL takes the Meet and Greet (mingle) out of the hands of the roll call. We didn't know the day or time or location until just a few days before boarding.

I have been to other events where even the captain showed up (NCL). I think a cabin crawl is great if you have an interesting ship. I loved seeing the three bedroom Haven hosted by some very nice folks who invited us all back for a party as we went under the Golden Gate Bridge (Panama Canal cruise). Gift exchanges can be tricky as some folks don't get the idea of what is expected.

I have been on a number of roll calls. It seems to me that cruises that are longer have better and more interesting roll calls. The roll call I am on now has over 1000 posts and we still have four months to go. This cruise is 42 days so we will have a lot of time onboard to interact.

Shorter cruises < 14 days I don't even bother to join.

The reason I asked is that I live in a non cruising area, the idea of a cruise around here is a 5 ft rowboat in a creek. I get so excited when I book a cruise, I have no one to share my excitement with. So, participating in a roll call is very beneficial to me to gain insight and information on my specific cruise. I don't let non participants burst my balloon, as I have indeed met others on board to make a nice cruise, but it sure is nice getting information you can use or not!

Our cruise coming up in August did not have a roll call when I booked last week. I started one. So far, no one other than DH has posted. I noticed the roll calls for the cruise the week before and the week after have also been very quiet. I don't remember this from our last HAL cruise.

We've had some great meet and greets, gone on excursions with others arranged through a roll call, and even met folks staying at our hotel for drinks before a cruise.