Roll Calls Out of Favor

[FLAHAM]

My coming cruise is on the Prima next month (mid-February).  The Roll Call has few entries and only two in the last six weeks (one of them was mine complaining of lack of activity).  My pre-pandemic cruises had lots of Roll Call entries that were often both interesting and helpful.  Is this the new normal?

[Turtles06]

I love CC Roll Calls. But sadly, I think Roll Calls began declining even before the pandemic. Many folks have migrated to another social media site, where you must join with your full real name. Not all have followed though.   Lots of folks have objections to that site (and its role in spreading disinformation). Also, depending on your living circumstances, it’s not necessarily too smart to be broadcasting your travel plans to the entire world. (Please don’t tell folks not to be concerned about supposedly private groups on that site.)
 

A separate issue is that I think Roll Calls are more or less popular depending on the type of cruise and how much there is to plan for and discuss such things as private shore excursions. Not so much with your standard Caribbean cruises, much more on a Med cruise, etc. 

 

In any event, I agree that Roll Calls aren’t what they once were, which is a loss imho. 

[mcmomny]

I have always found roll calls helpful and have been mystified that no one has joined the roll call I started for our Jade cruise in July, I was beginning to think it was me!

 

I don't use other forms of social media, just CC and Trip Advisor which I will continue to do!

 

So many helpful information I have gathered over the years using these two platforms!

[Cruise5life]

Ive also noticed lack of participation on this site when it come to roll calls but I  noticed a lot of meet and greets on other media pages.    
I have 3 cruises coming up and they all have m&g’s.     
1 I know for sure the cruise line has approved and we have a room.  And like 130 people going 

and the other 2 cruises are working on them now.  

Edited January 2, 2023 by Cruise5life

[phillygwm]

I created a roll call for my November 2023 cruise, both here and at the other place.  Over there, we have 20+ members.  Here it's few people and infrequent posts.  Many/most of the travelers on my sailing are cruise and NCL vets as it's the finals for the poker tournament so there won't be as many questions re: how the drink/dining packages work etc.  Plus, we're still 10+ months out.

 

As for a M&G, someone else will need to step up if they want one because I've never attended those.  I'm just one of those people who find it awkward/painful mingling among large groups of people I don't know.

[mainecruisefan]

It is really hit and miss. Some cruises and cruise lines are very active on this site. I am looking at a transpacific on Princess and there are many posts each day for the upcoming cruise. With NCL and MSC lately there have been fewer and fewer roll calls that I have noticed. I think it may have something to do with the target customers.

 

On the Gem in May, the M&G was a CC and (other social media site) hybrid combination. The same organizer did both.

 

I actually check this site before booking a cruise because it gives me a chance to hear what other passengers are planning. Some of the best excursions I have taken are with other CC members off the ship.

[TrumpyNor]

It is also a fact that the large majority of passengers on any cruise have never even heard about CruiseCritic....

[Markanddonna]

I discovered that on our last two cruises in 2022. On one, the other social media page had more postings and it was half and half this past November. We have somewhat backed away from being with strangers onboard the ship. We still enjoy dinner with others but meeting for drinks and games isn't on our agenda anymore. COVID was spread in the games CC group in April, and we learned from that experience (didn't participate in that activity.)

 

We find that booking small excursions with CC or the other groups is still a great benefit. I had no problem filling two vans of 15-16 people each in Ashdod, Israel. The other two excursions had one full van. Others who tried to get CC roll call folks interested weren't as lucky.  I don't think they made their minimum. 

 

I agree that I don't like posting my travel plans on social media.

[eileeshb]

the roll calls are definitely a lot quieter these days. I set up the roll call for my cruise in october and so far only 2 others have joined, I also setup the group on the other site and have a half dozen or so on it. It's still a long way out and it's an alaskan cruise very late in the season so I suspect it won't be super busy on either forum.

[bonnyweed]

I was so embarrassed at my last Meet and Greet, (pre- COVID)  that I won’t be attending them in the future. I am NOT sharing details on the specific cruise because the organizer of the Meet and Greet was NOT the problem and she was appalled as well.

Probably about  30 guests attended and there were several NCL officers and department heads attending.  We were provided with 2 large trays of pastries and juice which was lovely.

The officers and department heads made themselves available for questions.  The questions they got were rude.     CC = Cruise Critic passenger.  NCL = NCL officer or department head.
CC. Why did you get rid of my favorite brand of juice? 
NCL.  We were purchasing 2 different brands of the same juice so we discontinued carrying the brand that few people requested.

CC. Well that kind of juice is my favorite and I don’t think it was right for you to just get rid of it.  It seems like all you care about is money.

NCL.  Yes, we did feel it was a duplication and our vendor no longer carried it.  It would be prohibitively expensive for us to involve an additional vendor for the least favorite brand of this juice

CC. I knew it. It’s all about the money.

 

It went on and on with petty complaints and no compliments.

 

The cruise line doesn’t have to provide the staff, meeting space and food treats for these Meet and Greets.

 

While the bellyaching was well underway, someone dropped a croissant onto the floor.  Being too lazy to pick it up, he attempted to kick the croissant under the table.  He kicked too far and the croissant went into the foot traffic of the small line of people waiting their turn for pastry.  It was promptly walked on and ground into the carpet by someone else.

 

Then for the gift exchange.  The person next to me got a pen emblazoned with the name of a state.  She had given a gift basket with some coffee and jams from her state.  Several fellow cruisers went to the pile of gift bags and pulled the gift tissue aside so that they could find the more substantial gifts and keep if for themselves.

 

I thanked some of the officers and managers who attended.

 

My mom and I left and said Never again.

 

I do like Roll Calls; especially when there are people looking to do some alternative shore excursions. 

Edited January 2, 2023 by bonnyweed
Typo

[mking8288]

It depends, sometimes, on the ship, dates & cruise itinerary, etc. - we are on a number of social media platform but post/use and share/join with care as to those private group with care ... and, 100% agree that, for privacy & safety/security reasons - no plans to be listed elsewhere with full names, hometown info & travel itinerary with ... sometimes, hundreds of strangers lurking & poking.  Identities can be faked and DOB, etc. can be misleading and stolen, etc. and their cybersecurity breaches are well known.  

 

Was at 3 M&G in 2022, 1 held without any ship's junior officers attending, and 2 with them - one was a disaster b/c it got "hijacked" by someone from the other group & poorly organized.  One was fairly successful, good attendance & had a fun slot pull ... (the one held without any ship officers also had a slot pull)  There was no sailway gathering, partially b/c few felt comfortable to mingle closely together - same for not having any cabin crawl (except, offered in a modified manner, that if someone wish to see or privately tour a particular type of cabins and others on the roll call is in one, arrangement made)  Nowadays, I'm personally still not in favor of organizing 20 to 30+ CC'ers to roam thru another passenger's cabin, touching & leaving behind airborne devils, etc. - and/or having to spray disinfectants and wipe down surfaces before & after.  I see these as among some of the reasons for not seeing robust M&G and roll call.  

 

Still answering "silly" questions and helping each other with online check-in, port info, ground transfer & pier check-in tips, strategies to bidding upgrades, and tricks after final payment, etc.  

 

At the same time, CC's hosts/admins have been, to be direct on this, loosely moderating and safeguarding rules & enforcing (or not) how the other platforms are sometimes semi-openly recruiting and using CC to their "advantage" for the free onboard gathering.  Every now & then, I checked some of the relevant roll call threads and see that happening, and nothing being done about putting a stop to be nearly open about going to the other place(s) to exchange details, etc.  For example, take a look at this one - they just sailed, not putting anyone in trouble for the past, I hope - when I saw this a while ago & went back to look at it again recently - for a somewhat related reasons about one of the ports ... left me shaking my head, urgh !  

 

To be fair, CC also has its open presence on the "alternate" site and not talking about TripAdvisors or Google ... being a "Local Guide" but I don't write/post there about cruising.  

[Cruise5life]

45 minutes ago, SeaShark said:

 

Actually it would. Just because one person, or even a few people, in a FB group are also on Cruise Critic doesn't mean that a M&G for a mostly FB group is a Cruise Critic M&G. I think how the group is represented to NCL does matter. Do the officers onboard think they're meeting a Cruise Critic group or do they know they have a room full of FB folks "using" Cruise Critic just to get an event?

 

You may think it doesn't matter, but when the time comes that NCL catches on to this, they will discontinue the M&Gs for everyone.

Personally.  Wth’s the difference. But you can twist and try an intrepid it anyway you’d like.   Lol.  I have to pack.  Lol.  

[SeaShark]

2 minutes ago, Cruise5life said:

Personally.  Wth’s the difference. But you can twist and try an intrepid it anyway you’d like.   Lol.  I have to pack.  Lol.  

 

You can't see the difference between honesty and dishonesty? If you really feel that there is no difference, then why not just be upfront with the cruise line about the source of your group? I'm sorry, but it appears that my moral compass points in a different direction than yours.

 

LOL, "intrepid" is the aircraft carrier museum in New York City, LOL

[phillygwm]

1 minute ago, SeaShark said:

Again, if it doesn't matter, then why not just be honest about the source of your group? Why would someone not want to just say "We have a Facebook group and we'd like to have a Meet & Greet."?

 

Well sure.  Or, as is frequently the case now, there's quite a bit of overlap.  Just say that it's a combined M&G.  

 

My question is the premise of the argument:  Why would it matter to the cruise line if I have 50 people from here or 50 people from someplace else?

[jbcallender]

I had a similar experience on my last cruise.  Then after the cruise, I figured out why.  Of the 1500 or so passengers, 1250 were French Canadians whose preferred language was mostly French.  The roll call had very little activity on it.  The good news i is several of us got to know each other and met up onboard.

[European_CruiseGirl]

My cruise has a veeery low roll call attendance here on CC so I joined a couple of weeks ago the roll call of ”the other site” that cannot be named here. 
 

Cannot say that the experience has been good. The knowledge of CC people is so high that I cringe at the other site’s roll call. Just after joining it I browsed the discussions a bit and just reading three discussions found three big mistakes in what people were telling to each other on how NCL operates, what is included and what is not, port stops etc. I really had to stop myself and just write a polite happy happy introductory message about myself and not start to immediately correct people 🙃 That would not have been a good start. I joined another roll call there too…same problem. Wrong info given to each other. 
 

So although I am now on this other site’s roll calls I will definitely consider cc to be my main source of information and knowledge exchange for cruising. It is a shame that the roll calls have moved so much to the other site from cc as frankly it seems that the knowledge level there is very low compared to cc. 

Edited January 2, 2023 by European_CruiseGirl

[Mademypoint]

I coordinated our M&M on Joy this past May and had a great turnout. We did have some officers that turned out but they did not have the appetizers or beer/cider samples they did in the past. I find that participation on CC is not the same as it was in the past but that might be due to people just being glad to get back on ships and forgetting about on board activities.

There were people on another site that participated in pub crawls, poker runs, etc so I think these days it's being active in multiple places.

The m&M was absolutely CC and people who turned up signed in with their names. There could have been people who were not on here that came to it, but it was made clear this was Cruise Critic and when they signed in, if they weren't members they would've needed to indicate that.

Edited January 2, 2023 by Mademypoint

[gmbhardy]

13 hours ago, Turtles06 said:

I love CC Roll Calls. But sadly, I think Roll Calls began declining even before the pandemic. Many folks have migrated to another social media site, where you must join with your full real name. Not all have followed though.   Lots of folks have objections to that site (and its role in spreading disinformation). Also, depending on your living circumstances, it’s not necessarily too smart to be broadcasting your travel plans to the entire world. (Please don’t tell folks not to be concerned about supposedly private groups on that site.)
 

A separate issue is that I think Roll Calls are more or less popular depending on the type of cruise and how much there is to plan for and discuss such things as private shore excursions. Not so much with your standard Caribbean cruises, much more on a Med cruise, etc. 

 

In any event, I agree that Roll Calls aren’t what they once were, which is a loss imho. 

 

I don’t think it’s fair to generalize. The Panama Canal cruise I’m on next week has a very active roll call. Almost 17 pages and 400 posts. Lots of information sharing, excursion discussion etc. More than 250 people have signed up for the “Meet and Mingle”.

[Nilbog]

CC is more of a travel site, specializing in cruising.  People on CC come to learn new things and share information based on their experiences.  While there are some misleading posts on CC, for the most part people are trying to share the right information.  The other site is geared towards things other than cruising, and misinformation is much more prominent there.  People on that site are much more inclined to share rumors and 3rd- and 4th-hand stories that may have at one time been based on fact, but were led astray.  The cruise lines know CC is cruise/travel related, and are willing to work with those people.  CC has built up a reputation with the cruise lines that the other site hasn't, and probably won't.

[Turtles06]

23 minutes ago, gmbhardy said:

I don’t think it’s fair to generalize.The Panama Canal cruise I’m on next week has a very active roll call. Almost 17 pages and 400 posts. Lots of information sharing, excursion discussion etc.

 

Well, if you look at the second paragraph of my comment, which you quoted, you'll see that I specifically noted that Roll Calls may be more or less popular depending on the type of cruise.   I'm on a Panama Canal cruise Roll Call for a sailing later this month; the Roll Call is now at 23 pages and more than 500 posts.  I think these are examples of more interesting cruises that generate more Roll Call activity. 

 

But I do think that, overall, Roll Calls are less active than they used to be. I'm just going by my own personal experience of more than 13 years here on CC. 

 

[beerman2]

13 hours ago, phillygwm said:

I created a roll call for my November 2023 cruise, both here and at the other place.  Over there, we have 20+ members.  Here it's few people and infrequent posts.  Many/most of the travelers on my sailing are cruise and NCL vets as it's the finals for the poker tournament so there won't be as many questions re: how the drink/dining packages work etc.  Plus, we're still 10+ months out.

 

As for a M&G, someone else will need to step up if they want one because I've never attended those.  I'm just one of those people who find it awkward/painful mingling among large groups of people I don't know.

 

[beerman2]

13 hours ago, phillygwm said:

I created a roll call for my November 2023 cruise, both here and at the other place.  Over there, we have 20+ members.  Here it's few people and infrequent posts.  Many/most of the travelers on my sailing are cruise and NCL vets as it's the finals for the poker tournament so there won't be as many questions re: how the drink/dining packages work etc.  Plus, we're still 10+ months out.

 

As for a M&G, someone else will need to step up if they want one because I've never attended those.  I'm just one of those people who find it awkward/painful mingling among large groups of people I don't know.

If it wasn’t for CC roll call 15 years ago, we wouldn’t have meet a couple we now consider “family”. Meet on CC, had a pre-cruise get together and the rest is history.

 

So much fun and laughter, wouldn’t have it any different.

[bonnyweed]

Well, it is sad that this has turned into a source of tension.  I have learned a ton of cruise information on these boards over the years.  The Roll Calls for me are a chance to learn about recommended tours.  Most importantly, it has allowed me to join custom shore excursions to give me some insight into the people that live in these destinations.

The Cruise Critic Meet and Greet is NOT something I will participate in again as I explained earlier.

So, I will likely go to the other site’s Roll Call too especially if it has more participants who may be interested in creating some custom shore excursions.

 

As to who “owns” the right to do a Meet and Greet; I don’t care.  It is of no interest to me.

 

Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if the cruise lines discontinued hosting these meets.  Especially if they have to listen to a litany of complaints.  Added to that, the argument about which group has meeting rights is something the cruise lines will have no interest in entering the fray.

[SeaShark]

2 hours ago, Turtles06 said:

But I do think that, overall, Roll Calls are less active than they used to be. I'm just going by my own personal experience of more than 13 years here on CC. 

 

No doubt that you are correct. Having been here as long as you have, you certainly remember that while CC has always had many different types of posts, there was a time when the main focus of the people here was on the joy of the cruising experience.

 

With the continued rise of all of the different social media sites, CC has changed. We've seen the rise of folks that come here simply because they are perpetually aggrieved and are seeking advice on obtaining "compensation", we've seen the rise of people who embrace the word "critic" and who advocate non-stop bashing (and you're a "cheerleader if you DARE think otherwise), and we've seen the rise of people who, for whatever reason, want to handle their booking(s) themselves despite having no experience or expertise and they rely on this site to be their free "help desk" for every little problem they encounter. These three factions have basically drowned out anyone and everyone who was/is here for the joy of the cruising experience.

[FLAHAM]

In my experience, in most instances a broad range of senior officers attend and address the group.  Twice, the captain invited the group to follow him into the bridge.