Is X Blocking Cabins to Curtail Capacity?

[sakigemcam]

Was just poking about in availability for our March cruise, post-payment deadline and my guesstimate is that maybe 1/4 cabins are free, which, if all others are occupied would certainly mean more than 2000 passengers. 

Wondering if they have been blocking off availability to ensure reduced capacity?

Thank you.

[WestLakeGirl]

Yes they ate blocking off staterooms

[jelayne]

They have cabins blocked for isolation for guests and crew who test positive. 
Some TA have blocks of cabins that aren’t turned back until very close to sailings not.  So what you see in looking at the booked cabins isn’t a true indication of what you will encounter. 

[Jim_Iain]

They are blocking off some for isolation but my understanding is bookings have been light and then many cancellations at last minute due to covid and flight cancellations.

[LGW59]

13 hours ago, sakigemcam said:

Was just poking about in availability for our March cruise, post-payment deadline and my guesstimate is that maybe 1/4 cabins are free, which, if all others are occupied would certainly mean more than 2000 passengers. 

Wondering if they have been blocking off availability to ensure reduced capacity?

Thank you.

Yes

[Jeremiah1212]

Isolation cabins will be blocked off like large chunks of deck 6 on some ships. The rest are not necessarily blocking specific cabins, rather they are capacity controlling if necessary. Say there are 50 Aqua cabins open. They all may appear open and bookable, but if the limit is 20 of 50, after any 20 of those cabins are booked, the category will be closed. With light bookings and high cancelations this hasn't come into play often.

[cgolf1]

I do wonder what the % is that they block off? I am guessing it is higher then they want to cruise with knowing that a certain % will be lost at the testing time. That testing time will be the highest stress time for us for sure. They probably treat it like airlines that overbook knowing there will be some no shows.

[graphicguy]

Thinking they're preparing for the worst and hoping for the best in case of a potential COVID outbreak.  Who knows what the percentages are, though.  I'm thinking they now have a decent track record of what to expect of passengers who might contract COVID.  Doubt they'd tell the public what that is.

 

The cabins used for quarantine are something of a secret.  I saw one report where they said it was an entire deck.  I doubt that very much.  But, I'm also certain it's more than one or two cabins, also.

 

But, of all the cruise lines, it seems they've done the best job in keeping C-19 reduced to near 0%.  Sporadically have heard some cases on different Celebrity ships.  But overall, they've really done well with it.

 

That said, as others point out, the airlines cancelling routes and flights, along with the ever changing procedures at different ports have no doubt contributed to the lower passenger numbers.

 

I'm sure the financial community is happy they have revenue flow, however.

Edited February 2, 2022 by graphicguy

[cruisestitch]

On silhouette last week all of the cabins on deck three were blocked off. On reflection this week only one hallway is blocked off. That doesn’t mean they’re booking passengers into the other hallway, and in fact I think they are not. But you can walk from the forward elevators to the atrium on deck three on reflection where you couldn’t on silhouette.

[graphicguy]

3 minutes ago, cruisestitch said:

On silhouette last week all of the cabins on deck three were blocked off. On reflection this week only one hallway is blocked off. That doesn’t mean they’re booking passengers into the other hallway, and in fact I think they are not. But you can walk from the forward elevators to the atrium on deck three on reflection where you couldn’t on silhouette.

I also think given the open guest cabins, many crew are staying in what would normally be guest cabins.  I believe that's part of the reason some guest areas are blocked off, also.

[Algebralovr]

On RF at Thanksgiving and the NYE cruise, one hallway on deck 3 was blocked, the other was open because the accessible Oceanview rooms were in use.  

[Arizona Wildcat]

4 hours ago, graphicguy said:

Thinking they're preparing for the worst and hoping for the best in case of a potential COVID outbreak.  Who knows what the percentages are, though.  I'm thinking they now have a decent track record of what to expect of passengers who might contract COVID.  Doubt they'd tell the public what that is.

 

The cabins used for quarantine are something of a secret.  I saw one report where they said it was an entire deck.  I doubt that very much.  But, I'm also certain it's more than one or two cabins, also.

 

But, of all the cruise lines, it seems they've done the best job in keeping C-19 reduced to near 0%.  Sporadically have heard some cases on different Celebrity ships.  But overall, they've really done well with it.

 

That said, as others point out, the airlines cancelling routes and flights, along with the ever changing procedures at different ports have no doubt contributed to the lower passenger numbers.

 

I'm sure the financial community is happy they have revenue flow, however.

Recently the CDC report showed Covid cases on every cruise.  The exact numbers and ratio of crew to passengers has been difficult to impossible to locate.

[wrk2cruise]

10 minutes ago, Arizona Wildcat said:

The exact numbers and ratio of crew to passengers has been difficult to impossible to locate.

 

And Celebrity has recently changed to keeping that to themselves as well and just reporting an overall approximate percentage.  So much for transparency.

[Denny01]

We cruised on Apex in Nov ‘21 with ~1,600 passengers. Being a numbers fanatic, I had a spreadsheet to see what SRs were booked and open. It appeared a large number of Deck 6 SR were not available for booking and it was reported and later confirmed X had that set these for crew and passenger isolation. But the rest was open and I had our cruise at about 50% booked just prior to departure and that was close to what the ship reported once aboard. 

 

So X doesn’t appear to be blocking SRs to reduce passenger bookings, the numbers are due to us Not booking cruises right now. Which kind of makes sense.

 

den

[cruisestitch]

1 hour ago, wrk2cruise said:

 

And Celebrity has recently changed to keeping that to themselves as well and just reporting an overall approximate percentage.  So much for transparency.

The captain on reflection just now reported two passenger cases.  That seems pretty precise to me

[cgolf1]

2 hours ago, wrk2cruise said:

 

And Celebrity has recently changed to keeping that to themselves as well and just reporting an overall approximate percentage.  So much for transparency.

Does the actual number really matter. Locally they haven’t reported numbers even during omicron. What percentage the ship should be more than enough. 

[canderson]

3 hours ago, Arizona Wildcat said:

Recently the CDC report showed Covid cases on every cruise.  The exact numbers and ratio of crew to passengers has been difficult to impossible to locate.

I wonder how @nocl made out with his FOIA request.  Haven't seen him around here in a while.

[bucfan2]

10 hours ago, Arizona Wildcat said:

Recently the CDC report showed Covid cases on every cruise.  The exact numbers and ratio of crew to passengers has been difficult to impossible to locate.

Recently the World Report showed Covid cases in every city.  The exact numbers and ratio of gov officials to humanoids has been difficult to impossible to locate.  Moving on.

[Momma Rene]

23 hours ago, Jim_Iain said:

They are blocking off some for isolation but my understanding is bookings have been light and then many cancellations at last minute due to covid and flight cancellations.

Yes, our flights were changed along with seats that I booked in October for my April cruise.  Going through the trouble of terrible connections, seats, etc. has made me think twice about our upcoming cruise.  I'm sure other people are feeling the same way.  

[wrk2cruise]

15 hours ago, cgolf1 said:

Does the actual number really matter. Locally they haven’t reported numbers even during omicron. What percentage the ship should be more than enough. 

 

I'm an engineer so data is important to me.   I can make my own interpretation of the data.  It's interesting that they give the actual numbers when very low then go to more vague interpretation when numbers are worse.  Cruise lines don't have a great reputation with full transparency.

 

I've been on 7 sailings since the restart so I'm not afraid of the environment, just want the data to make decisions.