IT Issues

[donaldsc]

My next cruise will be my 1st Atlas Cruise and I certainly hope that once we get onto the ship it meets our expectations since the cruise login has been awful. Very few cruise companies have a user friendly booking site but the Atlas site is more difficult to use, is less organized and less passenger friendly than any I have ever used.  Their WEB site designer probably flunked out of coding school and almost certainly did not pass their database design classes.

 

All databases have a field that lets you find a specific record.  For a cruise company this would normally be the booking number which is unique to all the people in the booking group.  If you enter the booking number into the record all of the data in this record for all the people in the group should be available.  If you are entering passenger data into your record typing the booking number should let you enter or modify every passenger in your group with the same booking number.  Every other cruise ship WEB site does it this way EXCEPT for Atlas.

 

Atlas does things differently.  They assign a booking number that applies to EVERY passenger in the group and then a different loyalty number to EACH of the passengers in the group.  Here is the way it works in practice.  I had to enter then passenger data for my wife and I.  I logged into Atlas to create my cruise account and had to create a password and username for the account which is normal.  As part of this process I also had to enter my personal loyalty number.  However and this is the kicker because the account included MY loyalty number this meant that anything I entered applied ONLY to me and not also to my wife.

 

Now this is where the Atlas stupidity starts.  Unless I missed something it was impossible to for me to enter any of my wife's data into this record at this point.  I had to set up a completely new account with a new user name, password and loyalty # for my wife.  Two passengers; 2 accounts; 2 passwords; 2 loyalty numbers.  Imagine if a family of 5 or 6 people were traveling with the same booking # - 6 people; 6 accounts; 6 passwords, etc.  To make it worse unless I missed something I couldn't even do this on my computer since when I opened the the Atlas App it automatically went to my account and I could not figure out how I could tell it that I wanted to set up a new account for my wife.   I had to do it on her computer.  Not surprisingly the common data that I put into my account did not carry over to her account. 

 

Before I set up her separate account I called Atlas customer service.  The person who answered understood the issue and asked for my wife's passport data and said that I did indeed have to set up 2 accounts but she would take care of it.  She asked for my wife's passport data and said that the rest of our common data would be imported from my account.  Five days later I get an e-mail for Atlas saying the my account was OK but I hadn't created my wife's account yet.

 

This idiocy has not occurred with any other cruise line I have sailed on.  They have you enter all of your passengers into the cruise account as long s have the same booking number.

 

Can you imagine what is going to happen when I try to book excursions on the Atlas cruise,  I will have to do each reservation twice.  What about dinner reservations - do you think that they will assign us to the same table?

 

Sorry for this ranting and if I just missed something that definitely not obvious to me I apologize to Atlas.  However this is one hell of a way to make a good impression on avery experienced but new Atlas passenger.

 

DON

 

 

[ridethetide]

The good news is that you do not need to make dinner reservations!!!

[mnocket]

Cruse line customer facing IT systems are notoriously poor, and Atlas' is near the bottom.  In fact their whole pre-cruise customer experience is terrible.  The strange thing is they know this, claim they are working on it and yet haven't fixed it.  The Atlas CEO did a Q&A on CC about a year ago (pinned at top of forum).  Here's what he said....

 

We understand the importance of a consumer-focused website that provides comprehensive and user-friendly information to both prospective and current booked guests. We are working on improving our online platform to serve our guests and travel partners better and provide a seamless experience from the initial browsing stage to post-cruise engagement.

 

While I don't have access to specific timelines or release dates, I can assure you that our team is diligently working on the development and implementation of an enhanced website. We are dedicated to making this investment to facilitate easier access to information, streamline booking processes, and provide better tools for exploring excursions and other offerings.

 

Please don't worry- we are committed to delivering a customer-focused website to elevate the overall guest experience. As soon as the new website is ready, we will promptly announce its launch and look forward to providing an improved online experience.

 

OK, so when asked about why no improvements have been made in October of last year, here's what Atlas said....

 

The new website is in development and is coming along nicely. At this time we expect to launch the new site in late Q1 next year. Just a few more months to go and ask for your continued patience as we work through this comprehensive project. 

 

We're now about to head into Q3 and nada.

 

He was also asked about the poor pre-cruise experience.  He replied that he had brought on a Guest Experience manager to address these issues.  I'm not sure much has improved on that front either.  

 

All-in-all, I think the onboard personnel are great, but the corporate management leaves much to be desired.

[GICNJC]

I was the onw who asked last year about the web site and was provided with the Q1 launch.  The only improvement was on listing of potential cruises,  With out input, I venture to say their priorities have changes due to financial issues (they sold off one of thier planned ships to Windstar). Managment continues to miss read their clientale by not properly interacting with them once they book a cruise.  On ship the crews are fantastic. 

[Host Jazzbeau]

Windstar is getting two of their ships.  As long as you weren't planning to take a helicopter ride, this could be a win-win:  Windstar has a great reputation, and these ships will be a big improvement over their existing yachts.  [Without any knowledge, my guess is that if this works out for Windstar they will buy more ships from Atlas to replace the ex-Seabourn yacht fleet.  Atlas owns the shipyard, so they can make money selling ships to other cruise lines.]

[YoHoHo]

Re: IT issues - just wait until you get on board. Bad, poorly designed and executed. I dont understand how anyone could have signed off on the User Interfaces and the connectivty design.

 

A. room service menus are only online on the TV. cant navigated page they move automatically. Hope you've memorized the page before it moves to the next.

 

B. Movies. Listing are Alpha ordered. Next page, next, next, next... (no looping back) So if watching "Zorro" you get a lot of "nexting" to do in order to get back to it. There is no "resume watching, pick up where you left off". So next, next, next, next. then can restart the movie from the beginning, and then next next, next, 20 or 30 (?)seconds at a time. So needs many "nexts" to get to where you left off IF YOU REMEMBER THE TIME LINE. VERY BAD.

 

C. Lots of pax complain of the wifi. I am not sure it IS the wifi but rather internal networking. TVs freeze. presentations freeze. the wifi freezing I suspect is in fact the networking. The "IT tech" on board was not an IT tech but one of the engineer team given this unfortunate tasks. mostly advises to disconnect and reconnect. He is the point man that will call to the land based provider and accepted a lip service answer from them (based on my IT background).

 

The front desk persoanlle waste a great deal of time assitng pax with getting their devices connected. over and over. There is no cost saving here using this solution. But  maybe mgmt is unaware (head in sand)?

 

Without a proper redesign or a new provider this will not work. Maybe it works for Mystic when running river cruises but not here on the ocean. They need a proper solution.

 

rant over

[Primus]

Just returned from a B2B on the Navigator. The Wi-Fi worked everywhere on the ship except in our stateroom which is where we wanted to use it.  Hallway, aft deck, restaurant, lounge, auditorium, pool, etc but not our stateroom.  It even worked on shore across the Thames from the ship. Reporting the problem did not help.

Edited June 12 by Primus
wrong ship listed

[ukpylot]

As someone who cruises a lot on Holland America it is hard for me to fathom there is a worse cruise line booking website. I'm about to pull the trigger on a Feb 25 Antarctica trip so am "looking forward" to seeing just how bad it is. Glad I am at least forewarned.

[ukpylot]

Well I see what you mean, finally pulled the trigger on my booking online and the payment confirmation screen was a bunch of errors, no such reservation, invalid departure date “0” but I did get an email so it looks like it did go through.

 

Now to se up our myAtlas accounts but there’s no loyalty id in the email so looks like I will have to make a call!