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Relocating after a cabin fire (the entire story)

moakie

By moakie,
in Royal Caribbean International

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moakie

moakie

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........I'm back. Sorry, I'll try to wrap this in as small a package as possible.

So we go to the customer service desk and ask what's up? "They're still cleaning, just a few more minutes sir. I'm checking for room availability and you can get your belogings shortly." The DW and I have a seat. Our conversation goes along the lines of "Gee, thats a bummer. Look at the bright side, maybe we'll get a better cabin." Yeah I know, wishful thinking.

But anyways , we're standing in the atrium in our bathing suits waiting to retrieve our things for nearly two hours at this point. We are getting kind of antsy as we are supposed to be getting ready for the show. I finally go back to the desk and I say "Look, I understand you have quite a mess up the hall there, this kind of stuff happens. But we would just like to get the wife's Sea-Pass and my hearing-aid and I'll be out of your way and you can do your thingand we'll come back later." The response was "Sorry sir, just a few more minutes to clean your room.":confused: (I'm confused even the captain said we'd be relocated over the PA.)

I ask, "I thought we were to be relocated?" the response was "Sorry,ships full no rooms are available." I see the fire doors get opened and I get up to basically "help myself" back to the room. The stink in the hallway is terrible of course (a closet full of burned synthetics and general building materials) you get the picture. About 3 doors from ours the blueboy crew and a room attendant(not ours) are heading me off at the pass. I tell them I just want my hearing-aid and the wife's Sea-Pass. Up behind me come the person from the service desk.They responded, "Oh, no problem we're almost done here. See? your carpets are only wet up to here." As he points to the foot of our bed! "We just need to use the vac one more time." "What about the smell?" I ask. "Big fans in hall, it will be gone by the time you return from dinner." :eek: NOW I am getting #issed.

On the way to dinner I run into our room attendant and even she seems kinda shocked we were not moved. After dinner, we return to find the hallway carpets all scraped up,the ceiling panels all taken apart and the hallway now stinks even worse due to the water and humidity. Worse yet all this crap and burned material has been piled outside my door and there isn't a "blueboy" in site. My wife trys her hardest to calm me down and off to the Viking Lounge we go...

 

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moakie

moakie

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Mokie, may I offer a suggestion...type it in Word, or even Notepad and then copy and paste it on to the thread...

Ah... That's how it's done. :o I'm not quite up to speed on this whole BB thing. I"ll take thatadvice. Catch me later. Sorry for the suspense folks!:)

FYI The poster (me) is male, a mechanic in his forties. And this whole event is taking place on our 20th wedding anniversary.:eek: Plus they screwed up our Chops reservation to boot!

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bunting

bunting

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I think she is referring to the maintenance workers who wear BLUE overalls, I could be wrong but that is my take on it.

 

Hi Sue

 

The Blue boys on RCI tend to be Deck crew, the maintenance guys used to wear grey.................

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moakie

moakie

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Ok, here we go. I hope this works. BTW A blue boy is the maintenance crew worker(overalls is right). That is what RCI calls them. It is not derogatory.

……..So we turn in for the night. I’m still #issed about the whole stinking (literally) thing.

We go to bed and I don’t smoke so the stink REALLY bothers me, not so bad for wifey, She doesn’t know why I’m so pissed (CAUSE IT AIN’T SUPPOSED TO BE THIS WAY!:mad: ) I finally get up and go out in the hall and lug all the burned stinking crap down to the fire doors and leave it there. (I should have brought it to the atrium.) I return to the room and realize in my bare feet the carpet is still damp.(FIGURES!). I return to bed in such a sour mood that I don’t even get any anniversary “treat”. (Yeah, add one more to the insult pile!). During the night I get up to use the bathroom, I get out of bed and SQUISH, SQUISH, SQUISH goes my feet!! :eek: AURGH!!!!!!!!! Soaking wet floors now! All along the side of the bed the water has come under the wall. What the %#@&?? I go back to bed disgusted.

Now one of the best parts of my vacations is that I’m an early riser and I love to get up and out to see things come up to speed for the day. I noticed when you do this on a cruise ship if you’re up to photograph the sunrise; you’re going to have the ship to yourself. Try it if only for one day of your next cruise. The solitude of seeing the whole ship without any pax around is cool as well.

Look at my avatar, a picture taken during sunrise approaching Belize after rainy weather the day before. I took that picture when 98% of the pax were still asleep. They never knew what they missed! None the less, I just wanted to tell you why the hell I was up so early the next morning. I got more pix, when and had my 1St breakfast of the day in the Windjammer. Got wifey some of that mm-mm good RCI coffee to bring back to the room and proceeded to almost drop it when I returned. For there in the hall was about a dozen blueboys at work stripping out all the carpets bedding and furniture from three rooms before ours to about three rooms after as well as all the rooms across the hall! The room beside us had the carpeting scraped up soaking wet and left in a pile overnight. The water had seeped under the walls over to our room. All of the pax had been relocated except us! The #issed off meter just went to a very bad position for me. I promptly went to the service desk told them what room I was in and demanded to be moved.

“Why sir?” was the answer. I was beside myself. I explained that the floors were soaked and the stink was terrible. “Oh, ok wait a minute.” Clickety, clickety, click. Within fifteen seconds….. “O.K sir I’ve found a room available for you, here is your key, pack your things and call us and we’ll have them moved for you right away.” :confused: Now I’m really confused. I’m about to say … and DW simply says DON’T.

In a slightly humorous way, our new room smelled like exhaust for it was right beneath the ships smoke stacks. The mechanic in me wasn’t bothered in the least:D , wifey on the other hand though this room stank. But hey, we can live with that. Better that sleeping in the “fireplace” room! After moving in and taking DW to breakfast and a couple chapters by the pool, I return to the room and find a note on the door. It basically says, sorry for the inconvenience due to the fire, we are sending to you a complimentary bottle of wine and some petit fours for your enjoyment. We look forward to welcoming you back in the future! I then sought out our former room attendant to give her a well deserved tip. (NONE of this was attributed to her). She sort of let on that she too was surprised we weren’t moved. And I could see why, our room was now stripped to the core as well. She says,” Thank you, well I hope to see you in the future.” I honestly didn’t know what to say, but I think the look on my face said wonders.

Later, after lunch when we were swimming and doing the Foo-Foo thing at the pool, I went to get a book in the room and found another note taped to the door. (What now?) Almost same word for word form letter stating now they would like to clean our clothes if necessary and as a measure of good will they would like to give us a voucher of XX% off of a future sailing, same stateroom yadayadyada. (Ok, after all that happened, this part stunned me. I’ll admit it.):o

I can provide deeper answers to all who inquire. However, All said and done even though RCI continually stubbed their toes on this, they eventually did step up to the plate.

The odd part is upon disembarking when all those people keep getting called to “come to guest relations” I thought we would be one. You know, a face to face apology or something perhaps? NOPE and not only that we were never even called to see if we received the notes that they stuck to our door. I f some smart alec kid took those notes and I never received them, how do you think my flight home would have been.

Although this is a long winded post, In closing I still had a good time concerning every thing else. There were other screw ups as well concerning RCI dropping the ball, but I don’t want to be labeled as a complainer, so those will slide for now.

XX% means we will be returning to Belize and Cozumel in the spring. I hope things go a little smoother then.

P.S. Ship is beautiful, Food was good, The entire rest of the staff was excellent as well. Can't figure out how one would be a chair hog either. The boat was full and never once was availability an issue.Although I could give a rats @#$ what people wear to the dining room, We dressed up every night:D . So there. Fire suit is on. Flame away!

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Merion_Mom

Merion_Mom

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Moakie, thanks for coming back and telling us the full story. I am glad that whatever compensation RC finally gave you was satisfactory, and you are going back on the Enchantment (a GREAT ship!) for another cruise.

 

I think that you realize now that <"I have a friend who............" stories> just do NOT come out right. ;)

 

Were all of your clothes ruined? I would think that those that were in the closet itself would have been a complete loss, but what about your other things? Were they ok, or did water and/or smoke ruin everything?

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iheartbda

iheartbda

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Happy to hear that there was some type of resolution for your unfortunate experience. Seems like you handled it well, unlike the people who rant about never cruising with a line again because there weren't enough hangers or some other ridiculous thing.

 

Just be glad that you weren't one of those people being called to guest relations. Those are usually the people who haven't or couldn't settle their onboard accounts, something that would be embarrassing.:o

 

You survived one fire, don't think you need a special suit.:)

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Glama

Glama

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I enjoyed reading your story, thanks for posting it. I would have been a bit distressed at having to spend one night in the smelly, wet cabin. I would have been even more distressed if they told me that day that the ship was full, and they couldn't move me, then viola', they find a cabin the next day. But, I'm glad they moved you, and compensated you. I hope the compensation was satisfactory.

 

Did you have cruise insurance? If so, will they cover the cost of any items that were ruined by the smell/fire? If NOT, I would politely insist that RCI cover those costs.

 

Enjoy your next cruise!

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moakie

moakie

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Moakie,

 

I think that you realize now that <"I have a friend who............" stories> just do NOT come out right. ;)

 

Were all of your clothes ruined ?

Actually it worked perfect. If you read the responses I got they were delivered exactly as I hoped, .... "if it were me"...... "What I would consider fair,"....... Etc. all with out people asking me for details. Me, the OP, was pretty much left out of it other than a mild poke or two for the troll,stir the pot, rumor mill type accusations. Your self included.:) (but that's OK, I've spent enough time reading these posts to regard your comments as a good word of authority here.(really)) I realised you were just trying to expose the truth back then. Sorry for the suspense, but I thought it was only fair to see how RCI handled the problem before I came here the story. THAT would have definitely turned into a bashing thread.

 

No, none of our things were ruined again the fire was across the hall.

 

.........unlike the people who rant about never cruising with a line again because there weren't enough hangers or some other ridiculous thing....

Which is why I thought people would enjoy this story. I figured we could use a breath of fresh air from the typical "cruise disaster story"

 

I enjoyed reading your story, thanks for posting it. I would have been a bit distressed at having to spend one night in the smelly, wet cabin. I would have been even more distressed if they told me that day that the ship was full, and they couldn't move me, then viola', they find a cabin the next day. But, I'm glad they moved you, and compensated you. I hope the compensation was satisfactory.

 

Did you have cruise insurance? If so, will they cover the cost of any items that were ruined by the smell/fire? If NOT, I would politely insist that RCI cover those costs.

 

Enjoy your next cruise!

I,as you, felt the exact same way about that.That was what enraged me most. They told me "it became available" as if someone had checked out over night. Last I looked, I didn't see a Heli-Pad on the ship :D

No need to insist on cleaning smelly clothes, RCI stepped up on that themselves.

 

The weirdest thing about the whole cruise in hindsight was the start. The fire itself was in the cabin across the hall. Although by now, we know the fire was started because the light came on on a life vest, it was during muster after put on my lifejacket we noticed that my light was on. I was looking around at all the other pax and didn't see any other beacons flashing.(kinda felt:o ) then after about 20 minutes it went off on its own. And yes it did feel warm after twenty minutes. These are supposed to be water activated lights. You think one of the staff would have said something then. (I know we thought it was odd.)

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FL_Cruiser64

FL_Cruiser64

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Ok, here we go. I hope this works. BTW A blue boy is the maintenance crew worker(overalls is right). That is what RCI calls them. It is not derogatory.

……..So we turn in for the night. I’m still #issed about the whole stinking (literally) thing.

We go to bed and I don’t smoke so the stink REALLY bothers me, not so bad for wifey, She doesn’t know why I’m so pissed (CAUSE IT AIN’T SUPPOSED TO BE THIS WAY!) I finally get up and go out in the hall and lug all the burned stinking crap down to the fire doors and leave it there. (I should have brought it to the atrium.) I return to the room and realize in my bare feet the carpet is still damp.(FIGURES!). I return to bed in such a sour mood that I don’t even get any anniversary “treat”. (Yeah, add one more to the insult pile!). During the night I get up to use the bathroom, I get out of bed and SQUISH, SQUISH, SQUISH goes my feet!! AURGH!!!!!!!!! Soaking wet floors now! All along the side of the bed the water has come under the wall. What the %#@&?? I go back to bed disgusted.

Now one of the best parts of my vacations is that I’m an early riser and I love to get up and out to see things come up to speed for the day. I noticed when you do this on a cruise ship if you’re up to photograph the sunrise; you’re going to have the ship to yourself. Try it if only for one day of your next cruise. The solitude of seeing the whole ship without any pax around is cool as well.

Look at my avatar, a picture taken during sunrise approaching Belize after rainy weather the day before. I took that picture when 98% of the pax were still asleep. They never knew what they missed! None the less, I just wanted to tell you why the hell I was up so early the next morning. I got more pix, when and had my 1St breakfast of the day in the Windjammer. Got wifey some of that mm-mm good RCI coffee to bring back to the room and proceeded to almost drop it when I returned. For there in the hall was about a dozen blueboys at work stripping out all the carpets bedding and furniture from three rooms before ours to about three rooms after as well as all the rooms across the hall! The room beside us had the carpeting scraped up soaking wet and left in a pile overnight. The water had seeped under the walls over to our room. All of the pax had been relocated except us! The #issed off meter just went to a very bad position for me. I promptly went to the service desk told them what room I was in and demanded to be moved.

“Why sir?” was the answer. I was beside myself. I explained that the floors were soaked and the stink was terrible. “Oh, ok wait a minute.” Clickety, clickety, click. Within fifteen seconds….. “O.K sir I’ve found a room available for you, here is your key, pack your things and call us and we’ll have them moved for you right away.” Now I’m really confused. I’m about to say … and DW simply says DON’T.

In a slightly humorous way, our new room smelled like exhaust for it was right beneath the ships smoke stacks. The mechanic in me wasn’t bothered in the least:D , wifey on the other hand though this room stank. But hey, we can live with that. Better that sleeping in the “fireplace” room! After moving in and taking DW to breakfast and a couple chapters by the pool, I return to the room and find a note on the door. It basically says, sorry for the inconvenience due to the fire, we are sending to you a complimentary bottle of wine and some petit fours for your enjoyment. We look forward to welcoming you back in the future! I then sought out our former room attendant to give her a well deserved tip. (NONE of this was attributed to her). She sort of let on that she too was surprised we weren’t moved. And I could see why, our room was now stripped to the core as well. She says,” Thank you, well I hope to see you in the future.” I honestly didn’t know what to say, but I think the look on my face said wonders.

Later, after lunch when we were swimming and doing the Foo-Foo thing at the pool, I went to get a book in the room and found another note taped to the door. (What now?) Almost same word for word form letter stating now they would like to clean our clothes if necessary and as a measure of good will they would like to give us a voucher of XX% off of a future sailing, same stateroom yadayadyada. (Ok, after all that happened, this part stunned me. I’ll admit it.):o

 

I can provide deeper answers to all who inquire. However, All said and done even though RCI continually stubbed their toes on this, they eventually did step up to the plate.

The odd part is upon disembarking when all those people keep getting called to “come to guest relations” I thought we would be one. You know, a face to face apology or something perhaps? NOPE and not only that we were never even called to see if we received the notes that they stuck to our door. I f some smart alec kid took those notes and I never received them, how do you think my flight home would have been.

Although this is a long winded post, In closing I still had a good time concerning every thing else. There were other screw ups as well concerning RCI dropping the ball, but I don’t want to be labeled as a complainer, so those will slide for now.

 

XX% means we will be returning to Belize and Cozumel in the spring. I hope things go a little smoother then.

 

P.S. Ship is beautiful, Food was good, The entire rest of the staff was excellent as well. Can't figure out how one would be a chair hog either. The boat was full and never once was availability an issue.Although I could give a rats @#$ what people wear to the dining room, We dressed up every night:D . So there. Fire suit is on. Flame away!

 

Oh well. I was very alert before you wrote your story. And you probably could tell that I expected one of those stories (RCI gave me my entire cruise for free but I want more). I am pleasantly surprised (how was that "assume" thingy again :D).

 

Though I am curious about the percentage, you feel that you were adequately compensated, so I am good with that.

 

You did what I expect of any cruiser: take adversity in stride and do the best. That's how I would react as well. And that's not just a saying it because our first cruise was a nightmare as well. Granted not with a fire or a cabin relocation (though I'd hoped for a vessel relocation :D), but we too faced adversity head-on and dealt with it.

 

Good job. And sorry for your inconvenience. ;)

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Rancher Dave

Rancher Dave

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Glad to hear it all worked out for you in the end. I am reading the last 12 hours of updates in here as DW and I plan out NYE cruise along with 2-3 days at WDW afterwards before coming home. When you mentioned RCI cleaning all the clotes, what came to mind is oh boy would that stink if it were to happen right before disembarkation to WDW. I'd have one really upset DD.

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Merion_Mom

Merion_Mom

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I,as you, felt the exact same way about that.That was what enraged me most. They told me "it became available" as if someone had checked out over night. Last I looked, I didn't see a Heli-Pad on the ship :D

 

Actually, I could offer a couple of plausible scenarios.

 

Guest entertainers, lecturers, family members of on-board crew/staff and others may have had some cabins on your sailing. Overnight they may have been able to move a couple of them to accommodate you. (ask some relatives to move in together, etc.)

 

I am NOT trying to make up excuses for RC; perhaps they *weren't* on the ball on this one, or maybe they really did need the time to clear a cabin for you.

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moakie

moakie

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Actually, I could offer a couple of plausible scenarios.

 

Guest entertainers, lecturers, family members of on-board crew/staff and others may have had some cabins on your sailing. Overnight they may have been able to move a couple of them to accommodate you. (ask some relatives to move in together, etc.)

 

I am NOT trying to make up excuses for RC; perhaps they *weren't* on the ball on this one, or maybe they really did need the time to clear a cabin for you.

Actually, I did think along those lines. The room we did get smelled of exhaust fumes and the toilet was broken with "slap-dash" repair. (possibly a common "complaint room" (it was directly beneath the stacks on deck 8 and very well couldv'e been cobbled together at last minute....er hour... er.... Day..:rolleyes: ) But after a night in the "fireplace suite in the rain forest" I wasn't going to say a thing.

All I wanted all along was simply a clean, dry room. Some sort of apology wouldv'e been nice too.

 

PS. It was your posts that made me bring back the rest of the story once RCI did their part. You keep many of us in perspective.:)

 

I hope everyone now has a better understanding why they shouldn't get so uptight when they don't have enough hangers.:D

 

Things couldv'e be far worse for us. All we kept thinking about was the poor coulple who actually HAD the fire in their room. :eek: That's what kept us in perspective.

 

People just need to understand that sometimes bad things just happen. It's how a business handles the situation that matters most.

 

I'll return to RCI again. ...and I'm looking foward to it too!

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