HAL vs other cruise lines

[OlsSalt]

42 minutes ago, iancal said:

We want a ship where the cabin HVAC is in good working order, the plumbing works with no mouldy smells from previous plumbing leaks that were not properly remediated or on a ship where the cruise line thinks that it is fine to minimize dry dock time and do repairs/upgrades whilst revenue passengers are on board.

 

We find everything else......food, service, entertainment, crew so variable with and between the mass market cruise lines.  Now, we spend more time comparing ships than we do cruise lines.  They all seem to be migrating to the lowest common denominator. We can just as easily have a wonderful cruise on any of them as we can a mediocre.  We do not believe that any one of the mass market lines is that much better than the others.  Different perhaps, but not appreciably better.

 

There seems to be a cadre of very loyal customers on most cruise lines.  The most loyal seem to be the hear no evil speak no evil types when it comes to their favorite.  Seems odd to us since it is a for profit corporate entity.  No different than Campbell’s soup or GM.

 

This is easy.

 

Find a cruise line that does not have interconnected HACV and plumbing systems so you can have total control over these expectations and are not vulnerable to other passenger's misuse of these common systems.  Or find a cruise line where you know all passengers play by the rules as posted. There is a difference in the original passenger bases among cruise lines as well, mainly by depth of cruise experience.

 

I wonder how you find out up front about these dry dock deficiencies, so  you can cancel any unacceptable ship that you feel has cut corners.

 

Business deal or not, any good company also wants to build intangible goodwill, as much as having a profit incentive fee for services relationship. HAL's smaller ships have earned that emotional connection for us. Not so much as their ships get larger and larger.

 

Easier to get paying customers by building loyalty to the brand than have to market 100% brand new customers every time a ship sets sale. So even if they play loyalty games with us, we are happy to reward them with our continued business. We appreciate they think brand loyalty is worth their efforts to generate it. We don't feel duped. We feel we are in a mutually beneficial relationship. But it is not blind loyalty, as stated above.  Little about the larger HAL ship experience rings the same bells for us. 

[iancal]

We want a ship where the cabin HVAC is in good working order, the plumbing works with no mouldy smells from previous plumbing leaks that were not properly remediated or on a ship where the cruise line thinks that it is fine to minimize dry dock time and do repairs/upgrades whilst revenue passengers are on board.

 

We find everything else......food, service, entertainment, crew so variable with and between the mass market cruise lines.  Now, we spend more time comparing ships than we do cruise lines.  They all seem to be migrating to the lowest common denominator. We can just as easily have a wonderful cruise on any of them as we can a mediocre.  We do not believe that any one of the mass market lines is that much better than the others.  Different perhaps, but not appreciably better.

[iancal]

It is fairly straightforward to avoid dry dock screw ups.  We simply do not book ships that are just going into or coming out of dry dock on any cruise line.

 

Same for inaugural cruises where the cruise lines seem to use revenue passengers to subsidize all those complementary  cabins for   PR, corporate, and media types as well as close off many venues for their exclusive use.

 

We do not book a ship without first checking out the historical on line reviews.  We also ask our TA about comments back to her.  Plus, we tend to avoid the older ships that have fewer optional dining venues Or a history of customer issues.

 

These are far mor important to us than the logo on the funnel.

Edited February 11, 2019 by iancal

[Hawaiidan]

With regard  to the air condition and heating/ vent systems on ships.  and this goes for high rise buildings and hotels as well.   Fire code regulations require the systems  to be built in zones and work on positive pressure principal  Each zone  supplies a specific group and  is isolated from the other zones and systems by dampers and such.    

Because these systems all work on maintaining a equal positive pressure a puncture or break in the zones ducts acts to render the other parts of that zone non-operational...ineffective.      With the zone pressurized a cabin who opens his door to smell the salt air and hear the sea, effectively screws up all the other cabins in the ship.   All the air. hot or cold will be pushed out the offenders  ducts and into the outside.   Thus  the system  will never equalize till the door gets closed.       This is also why you can not open windows in hotels or office buildings that are more than 4 stories in height............

[iancal]

We like HAL but we do not have blinders on either.

 

 It is one reason why we never book directly with any cruise line.  We appreciate straight goods and customer feedback from our TA.     Cruise line CSR’s are hardly going to recommend that we don’t book a dog of a ship or one where certain cabin area is referred to by on board staff as ‘the flood zone’.