Crew staffing levels

[*Miss G*]

5 hours ago, mcrcruiser said:

you miss the point

 

Did I?  Your question:

 

5 hours ago, mcrcruiser said:

How different except the entertainment part is a hotel from a cruise cabin?

 

- A hotel does not take me cruising to different ports.

- A hotel does not bring me ice twice a day.

- Food and beverages in a hotel are not available 24 hrs/day and they certainly don’t  include them in the cost.  (R-C Club Level does but not around the clock.)

- Housekeeping does not clean my room twice a day.  (I have consistently had cleaning and turndown service without requesting it.) In fact, I can barely get Housekeeping to clean my hotel room, even if I wanted them to; let alone with a smile on their face.

- Insert “except the entertainment part” here.

 

 

Edited March 31, 2023 by *Miss G*

[kazu]

5 hours ago, mcrcruiser said:

Imo Celebrity is hands down the best not Princess which is cut from the same Carnival corp mold  .We had 2 great cruises on Celebrity Soltice in March .No staff shortages No entertainment shortages  .Great food & quality

 

Cliff - if your experience on HAL was so bad (and I didn’t hear any complaining from you on board the Koningsdam) and Celebrity was so good - then the answer is simple.  Sail Celebrity and go to their board to laud your experience, cancel your HAL Hawaii cruise and sail with Celebrity.  

 

And yes, I’ve sailed Celebrity, NCL, Princess,  Disney et al.  

[Destiny0315]

5 hours ago, mcrcruiser said:

We definitely know the differences between a great cruise & one that is below standards .Comparing HAL to Celebrity is truly a non comparison .Celebrity hands down is far better in ALL departments .We have done very recent cruises on both lines do we can tell the vast differences 

So now that you have cancelled your "last" HAL cruise (he posted elsewhere that he did today) which was scheduled for next March/April there will be plenty of time to spend planning your future cruises with Celebrity and enjoying the vast differences which I hope to read about on the Celebrity board. 

Edited March 31, 2023 by Destiny0315

[mcrcruiser]

3 hours ago, kazu said:

 

Cliff - if your experience on HAL was so bad (and I didn’t hear any complaining from you on board the Koningsdam) and Celebrity was so good - then the answer is simple.  Sail Celebrity and go to their board to laud your experience, cancel your HAL Hawaii cruise and sail with Celebrity.  

 

And yes, I’ve sailed Celebrity, NCL, Princess,  Disney et al.  

Jacqui my DW can no longer fly due to a ear problem . If we could fly yes we would be sailing Celebrity & RCL .However , neither sail from San Diego . Additionally ,the parking & logistics at the world Cruise Center ,San Pedro .LA County is a night mare to sail from for older people with handicaps like us.

There seems to  be  such a disregard for the truth when it comes to this cruise line . Short staffing any ship makes for problems . There really is no problem in getting people to work the ships but ,it certainly is apparent that the short staffing is a deliberate move by management  regardless of how it impacts the pax .   imo sooner than later more & more people will see how short staffing HAL's ships impacts their cruising experience with higher cruise prices added to the pain especially ,if they cruise other  upscale lines 

BTW we already cancelled one HAL cruise on Zaandam  for several reasons .

. 

[JanDom]

17 hours ago, mcrcruiser said:

Imo Celebrity is hands down the best not Princess which is cut from the same Carnival corp mold  .We had 2 great cruises on Celebrity Soltice in March .No staff shortages No entertainment shortages  .Great food & quality

Have been on Equinox, 2x Eclipse and Infinity - and we will never book X again … extremely over priced and long lines in the restaurants and we often had to eat lunch in our cabin or at the pool somewhere because it wasn’t possible to find a table at the lido.

So if you prefer X than go for it as we go for HAL. But then also change the forum to X.

 

[aliaschief]

Just saying there has been and continues to be some issues now and then but that being said;  there have been many people who have been reporting here on CC stating they loved their cruise.

Edited April 1, 2023 by aliaschief

[JanDom]

What I want to say is : we made mad experiences with one cruise line, so we don’t book it any more. But we know that there are lots of people loving it, so it’s totally fine for us.

On our last tui cruises we also recognized that food and service were worser on each cruise. So we won’t book it the next years. But I know there are a lot of people still loving tui.

 

We understand and accept this. But when this happens to us, we maybe write about our bad experiences but that’s it. We don’t tell in this reviews how much we love other lines and tell the carnival corp a mold …

 

The informations about carnival were very interesting, because the past years they got a lot of bad reviews, so it is nice to hear that service was going well on this ship.

 

[OlsSalt]

How about this one - we stopped cruising one higher end line because the service level was too high to the point of being annoying and intrusive. And the food was too rich and fussy, to be a waste if we did not eat it all. Such a problem, eh?

 

The line was just more deluxe than was our own tastes and comfort levels. 

 

So we did not stop cruising with them because they were bad; just the opposite - they were "too good".  (And much pricier for those extras, that we simply found we did not really want or even like.)

 

Bonus, we got to cruise probably three to four times more days  with HAL than had we stuck with  the higher service line. That was our value-added tradeoff. 

[Navybikermom]

On 3/31/2023 at 12:07 PM, Hllb said:

Having not been on a HAL cruise yet, I can contribute little to this conversation except...in a bar, waiting for waitstaff to notice you and come over if usually a recipe for long wait times. I get that might be different on a ship, but in a busy bar, if you want a drink, you go up to the bartender and order them, and take them yourself. Perhaps this is part of HAL wanting to bring in somewhat younger crowds. It doesn't seem odd to me to go to the bartender directly, unless I'm somewhere that also serves food. Yes, the waitstaff eventually come to your bar table, but it may take them longer than you'd like.

That’s what I did on the Zaandam in January. I was tired of confused/blank looks when trying to order a Harvey Wallbanger, so I went to the young bartender in the Ocean Bar and told him how to make it. After that, I just had to walk up to the bar, catch his eye, and nod. He knew what I wanted and how I wanted it, and he got a great tip toward the end of the cruise 😁. Emerson was his name. Wonderful young man with a great personality.