Review Skew

[Georgeny]

Reading recent RCL reviews here on CruiseCritic I see good honest reviews that clearly demonstrate a downward trend in many areas. Depicting a far lower mark on the 5 circle overall review than what appears. Oasis for instance has not been receiving very many pluses in several areas yet Cruise Critic system draws its overall current review status from over 3,700 reviews most of which are well outdated. That obviously skews the overall rating versus a more current rating which should be far lower than the 4 star showing. I would suggest that overall status be based upon an established review time line of 6 months to a year to provide a more current overall rating. I would imagine this would hold for cruise line reviews. The Oasis we sailed last year service and dining wise is not the Oasis I am reading about recently. So our very good review of 2022 should not really be factored into what is the current status.

 

George in NY

[ARandomTraveler]

That's a good idea. I'd like to see that on all reviews (hotels, Amazon etc). I'd like to see both actually, the overall score that includes the whole history of reviews, plus the 6 month score. That way you can see how consistent (or not) the scores are over time. 
 

 

[HicksRA]

They’ll ride the long term average as long as they can. 
If the overall ratings were only based from January 23 to present (about the time they pulled the plug on food quality and overall service) the ratings would be dismal at best. 

Edited June 30, 2023 by HicksRA

[time4u2go]

1 hour ago, Georgeny said:

Reading recent RCL reviews here on CruiseCritic I see good honest reviews that clearly demonstrate a downward trend in many areas. Depicting a far lower mark on the 5 circle overall review than what appears. Oasis for instance has not been receiving very many pluses in several areas yet Cruise Critic system draws its overall current review status from over 3,700 reviews most of which are well outdated. That obviously skews the overall rating versus a more current rating which should be far lower than the 4 star showing. I would suggest that overall status be based upon an established review time line of 6 months to a year to provide a more current overall rating. I would imagine this would hold for cruise line reviews. The Oasis we sailed last year service and dining wise is not the Oasis I am reading about recently. So our very good review of 2022 should not really be factored into what is the current status.

 

George in NY

Have you contacted Cruise Critic directly with your suggestion?  There's a "Contact Us" link at the bottom of the page.

 

For the record, I agree with your suggestion.

[ShillyShally]

Great suggestion, I try to take all reviews with a grain of salt, but consistent negative recent ones start to show accuracy!

[Georgia_Peaches]

It’s also helpful to read reviews on other sites as well to kinda formulate your own average based on what people are saying outside of cruise critic. 

[deliver42]

#1. Cruise Critic accounts for a very small part of the cruise passengers.

 

#2. More people, in general, voice negative reviews than positive reviews.

 

#3. As Georgia-Peaches said, look at other sights.

 

#4. Go on a cruise and make up your own mind.

[RedJessi]

You could be the ripest, juiciest peach in the world...and there are still going to people who don't like peaches. Which is to say, nothing will please everyone. However, I think there is value in knowing that out of the 25 most recent reviews, 20 of then gave 2 stars or less. 

[xtremegk]

This is the second thread I've read today that talks about a bunch of negative Oasis reviews. Am I missing something? I've been keeping a close eye on Oasis, as we sail her in August. Most recently, I've read two live/semi-lives, which I certainly would not class as negative.

[neverbeenhere]

49 minutes ago, deliver42 said:

...

#4. Go on a cruise and make up your own mind.

 

This is the method we use.

[alfaeric]

Being positive is tough here, as the OP implies, it’s a clearly a lie. And many others that are happy are accused of working for a cruise line. 
 

Things have changed, but not by that much wrt that. 

[taglovestocruise]

1 hour ago, deliver42 said:

#2. More people, in general, voice negative reviews than positive reviews.

 

There you go 👍. Happy cruisers go with the flow and don't report being pleased.  Grumps are usually never happy or satisfied and spend their time looking for faults and making lists of things needed to be reported.  Years ago we were on a Allure Westbound transatlantic, one of the best cruises we had ever been on. Great weather, happy crew, MDR and free food were above average.  Stage and production shows were excellent. As usual for a TA the ship was sailing at 70% capacity resulting in, no lines, plenty of loungers in pool area, promenade seating was always open. Got home and could not believe the negative reviews from fellow cruisers, hard to believe they were on the same sailing as us. 

[smokeybandit]

Reviews are inherently skewed negative. When I read Reviews for any tourism related service, it's usually pretty easy to filter out the unreliable reviews 

[Tree_skier]

6 hours ago, Georgeny said:

Reading recent RCL reviews here on CruiseCritic I see good honest reviews that clearly demonstrate a downward trend in many areas. Depicting a far lower mark on the 5 circle overall review than what appears. Oasis for instance has not been receiving very many pluses in several areas yet Cruise Critic system draws its overall current review status from over 3,700 reviews most of which are well outdated. That obviously skews the overall rating versus a more current rating which should be far lower than the 4 star showing. I would suggest that overall status be based upon an established review time line of 6 months to a year to provide a more current overall rating. I would imagine this would hold for cruise line reviews. The Oasis we sailed last year service and dining wise is not the Oasis I am reading about recently. So our very good review of 2022 should not really be factored into what is the current status.

 

George in NY

People tend to complain more than compliment.  By spreading those negative reviews across time CC mitigates against the unreasonableness of of some reviews.  

 

Should the poor service or experience be a systemic issue the reviews will catch up over time.  

Edited June 30, 2023 by Tree_skier

[Liljo22]

1 hour ago, xtremegk said:

This is the second thread I've read today that talks about a bunch of negative Oasis reviews. Am I missing something? I've been keeping a close eye on Oasis, as we sail her in August. Most recently, I've read two live/semi-lives, which I certainly would not class as negative.

There is an overall increase in negative reviews over the last 6 months.  She was just using the Oasis reviews as an example.  I don't think this is exclusive to Royal though.  Go look at all the mass market boards and there are complaints about diminished quality of food and service.  All the lines are saddled with large amount of debt taken on during the shutdown in order to stay in business.  We are living in a different cruising environment right now and some people do not like it.  

 

Cruising is a lot of money.  If you don't feel its worth the money any longer, you need to find something that is worth it to you.  Personally, I still feel it is worth it.  I don't care about twice a day cleans.  My vacation is not ruined if my dinner service is slow or it takes a little longer to get a drink at the pool bar.  

[HicksRA]

I agree that more negative ratings are submitted by unhappy cruisers than positive ratings by satisfied cruisers.
BUT, if their complaints are valid, shouldn’t they be considered??  

I normally expect to have a pleasant experience, thus no real motivation to write a review. If the cruise sucked and I wanted to alert others, there’s much more reason for me to comment. 

[LobsterStalker]

4 hours ago, RedJessi said:

You could be the ripest, juiciest peach in the world...and there are still going to people who don't like peaches. Which is to say, nothing will please everyone. However, I think there is value in knowing that out of the 25 most recent reviews, 20 of then gave 2 stars or less. 

>>>> YIKES !!

[ARandomTraveler]

6 hours ago, xtremegk said:

This is the second thread I've read today that talks about a bunch of negative Oasis reviews. Am I missing something? I've been keeping a close eye on Oasis, as we sail her in August. Most recently, I've read two live/semi-lives, which I certainly would not class as negative.

I think they're talking about the reviews on the actual review page on Cruise Critic. I've posted the link for you below (scroll past the first review, which is just a random "featured" review. But if you want to read them in order from newest to oldest, scroll past that one and start with the ones that say "1-10 of 3,728 reviews"

 

https://www.cruisecritic.com/memberreviews/getreviews.cfm?action=ship&ShipID=368

Edited July 1, 2023 by ARandomTraveler

[RB9643]

4 hours ago, HicksRA said:

I agree that more negative ratings are submitted by unhappy cruisers than positive ratings by satisfied cruisers.
BUT, if their complaints are valid, shouldn’t they be considered??  

I normally expect to have a pleasant experience, thus no real motivation to write a review. If the cruise sucked and I wanted to alert others, there’s much more reason for me to comment. 

 

If it truly sucked, you would see more than one bad review for a sailing. There were 4000 others who didn't post a review.  I think I'd just stick with your first sentence.

 

 

[happy cruzer]

It might be that the Cruise Critic demographic is changing with many people going to other social media?  But if you are a match for the demographic then the review provided might be more useful.

[Georgeny]

16 hours ago, Tree_skier said:

People tend to complain more than compliment.  By spreading those negative reviews across time CC mitigates against the unreasonableness of of some reviews.  

 

Should the poor service or experience be a systemic issue the reviews will catch up over time.  

 

I don't disagree for most part but add. Cruise reviews are different from many reviews as I find they highlight both good and bad rather than just overly criticize.

 

I don't feel that mitigation of reviews is bad just that time frame is too long a period. Six months to a year would be reasonable. This are moving mechanical entities that overall performance is changeable by so many factors. Seasonable itinerary change, homeport change, and such can also drastically change a ship performance and feel. Therefore more recent reviews can be very telling.

 

Read my overall review of our recent sailing of the Liberty, for example, is positive except for one area. dining and food quality. Recognizing that food is a very personal  like or dislike I offer for what it is worth. However I also note that since in my 39 years of cruising over 100 cruises over multiple lines I have NEVER before been taken back by the actual type, prep, and quality of any menu! To me that says something about the state of RCL's changes.

[bigque]

Since my first cruise on Sovereign of the Seas in 2008 which had a lot of negative bad reviews, I learned to experience each ship on my own and not giving a rats a$$ how bad reviewers of that particular ship might think it is. If I would have went by the reviews of Sovereign back then I wouldn’t be cruising today. Back then everyone was saying you had to go on Freedom Class or Voyager Class to have a good time. Oasis class had not come on board yet. 

[KroozNut]

Remember the old saying (which is true IMO), that typically only the unhappy disgruntled folks are likely to take the time to write a review. And those folks typically represent a small percentage of all cruisers. Think of the thousands of cruisers who absolutely loved their experience and don't bother to write about it.

[deliver42]

I haven't had a bad cruise experience on Royal yet, but I don't write reviews. The reason being what I like won't be everyone's cup of tea, and visa versa.

[goldfish65]

You can spot the reviews by people have an axe to grind, those who have made their own problems, had unrealistic expectations, or are miserable, entitled people who are never happy. 

Edited July 2, 2023 by goldfish65