Do you want to take a vacation and have an awful time? Do you want to spend a lot of money for a vacation only to find out you would have rather flushed that money down the toilet? If your answer is yes to the above questions then I suggest that you take a cruise on Royal Caribbean.
8 of us from work decided a year ago to save our money and take a nice cruise to Bermuda on Royal Caribbean......WRONG!!!!!!!!!! When we docked in Bermuda we spent the first day on the beaches. On the way back we were in a bus accident, thank God none of us were hurt badly, we basically just got a few cuts.
To make a very long story short.........The police came onboard that night to take our statements about the accident. It was when we were at dinner when they showed up. They went to the main desk asking for us and instead of paging us or looking up what dinner seating we had they basically did nothing other than left a message on our phone telling us the police were onboard for our statements and that they would be back the next day at 10:00 A.M.
We knew that 10:00 would be too late since we wanted to take the Ferry and go over to Hamilton for some sightseeing and shopping. We asked the desk to please call the police dept. and tell them to come onboard at 9:00. The following day we find out that they NEVER called them and we ended up waiting until 11:30 when we finally said, "Forget this the ship is leaving here at 4:00 P.M. and we haven't even seen Hamilton yet so we went back to our cabins, got ready and left the ship.
We had 1 1/2 hours to see Hamilton before we had to get back on the Ferry in order to make it back to the ship on time before it departed. As we got back on some of our names were being paged, when we answered the page we were told that the police are onboard to take our statements.
The communication between the Royal Caribbean employees to us and the police were awful. I spoke to a woman from Royal Caribbean and the bottom line was this..........The staff are NOT obligated to page or find you onboard, they do though have to leave a message on your phone in the cabin.
Now, like I said to the women on the phone, "if we had committed a crime and the police were onboard looking for us DON'T TELL ME that the staff wouldn't have done everything in their power to find us". Also why is it that they didn't page us the first night that the police came but they surely paged us the next day an hour before the ship was to leave.
I am SO disappointed in Royal Caribbean and their unprofessional staff not to mention that we lost an entire day because of their lack of communication. We all saved up all year long for this trip only to have it ruined by them.
I have heard a few bad things about Royal Caribbean but I decided to go anyway (MY MISTAKE). I have been online reading not so good things about them I had only wished that I would have read all of these articles before wasting my money.
Royal Caribbean you got us this time but it will NEVER happen again, thanks for a cruise that none of us will EVER forget!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! People before booking with them PLEASE go online and research the things that I have read about them AFTER I got home.
Re: Karen's cruise experience-
Winston Cole
Publisher, Planmycruisevacation.com
I did contact Royal Caribbean Cruise Authorities regarding Karen's greviance and the following is their respose;
Dear Mr. Cole:
Thank you for your e-mail regarding Karen's cruise with us. We appreciate the opportunity to address her concerns.
As it is never our intent to disappoint our guests in any way, we sincerely regret to learn of the unfortunate event described in her e-mail, and apologize for any inconvenience she or her travelling companions experienced. While we certainly sympathize with her situation, we must kindly advise that, due to privacy constraints, we are unable to discuss or disclose information concerning her reservation. However, should Karen wish to forward her concerns directly to us, she may send them to our Corporate Guest Relations division. Again, we extend our genuine apologies for any disappointment encountered.
Mr. Cole, thank you for bringing Karen's inquiry to our attention. It is never in our best interest to lose any of our clients. However, we understand that despite our best efforts, we are unable to satisfy all of our guests the way that they would like. We regret that she has decided not to sail with us in the future. We want nothing more than our former clients to be happy, even if they are not traveling with us. We will continue to strive for excellence.
Sincerely,
Tricia Brereton
Corporate Guest Relations
What an Awful Vacation?
Winston Cole
Publisher, Planmycruisevacation.com
I am sorry to hear about your unfortunate encounter during your cruise vacation. I wonder what Royal Caribbean Authority has to say about this? I will contact them and try to get their version of the story. Besides the incident with the police how was the rest of your trip? How was your accommodation? What was the service like? Did you like the food? Where there lots of things to do? How did you find the entertainment onboard? Surely not all of their staff were discourteous.
While we are waiting to hear from Royal Caribbean Authorities. My advice to you is next time please do not allow such incidents to ruin your entire vacation. I like to look for the good in all things. Sometimes things do not always come up to our expectation. But I take the view if life throws you lemons see if you can make lemonades out of them. You put a lot into your trip and Royal Caribbean staff may have acted unprofessionally or not taking time to contact you or the police promptly. But please next time do not allow that to ruin your entire trip.