Joe01

Yes - saw the CocoCay post. Did they not realise that that would infuriate people further? Not the best way to treat a loyal market, especially since many can't fly to the USA for a cruise to CocoCay for a variety of reasons. I love Royal, but I did lose some respect for them yesterday. It's bad to remove a ship, but the way that it was handled moved the situation from bad to atrocious.

I fail to see how Brexit is the reason Rccl is pulling Indy out of SH. I've been cruising since 2007 & have only cruised Rccl & Norwegian. Since 2014, I have noticed how not only has Royal prices been increasing fairly steady by no huge amount, imo; but, the cost of many of the onboarding prices as well as reductions in perks & the pushing of products & packaging.
Now I certainly contribute this to their Amp-Up investments. They have known long before 2018 of their Amping investments plans & have been pricing according in increments. That's the price of paying for Mega-ships, new & Amped private islands, amped ships live Mariner/Navigator and more to come, as well as the New Icon LNG technology, plus whatever bells & whistles that comes with all of that.
As far as Indy moving...it simple to me, given, Indy(a Freedom class ship) is a warm weather ship compared to Anthem which is built for either climate. Sales are truly down in the SH arena, because of the exorbitant prices, given credence that both ships currently in that market, at Rccl cost, is not feasible...so one ship had to be moved to booming region that hope to cash in on the new amp private island...like sales of some of the recent amped ship.
Rccl will continue this business model, because of the huge investments made on their overall Amped-Up Program...higher cost and nickle & diming is to be expected; and, as long as they continue to roll out the mega-ships(170,000+ ton), don't expect them to be customer friendly anytime soon. We all are paying for the latest & greatest and until Norwegian, Carnival, MSC, Virgin start rolling & increasing the competition for the latest & greatest, Rccl will continue cornering the market.

They didn't reduce capacity in the UK during the recession 10 years ago, even though Indy was their flagship at the time that the recession began. Might be some food for thought.
And if Brexit was going to be as devastating as you predicted, why did RCI even consider having Indy back in 2020?

It will probably be a while until they are released. Hoping Indy does 7 nighters - Navigator and Mariner are wasted on the 3/4 night cruises.

They didn't reduce capacity in the UK during the recession 10 years ago, even though Indy was their flagship at the time that the recession began. Might be some food for thought.
And if Brexit was going to be as devastating as you predicted, why did RCI even consider having Indy back in 2020?

They didn't reduce capacity in the UK during the recession 10 years ago, even though Indy was their flagship at the time that the recession began. Might be some food for thought.
And if Brexit was going to be as devastating as you predicted, why did RCI even consider having Indy back in 2020?

Sorry but that’s simply not true. I’m in the UK, I work for a large organisation and do not know anyone, including myself that has changed the way they book holidays (vacations) due to Brexit. 

I'm not here to talk politics, but I can't really see how Brexit would affect ship bookings. 

At this rate, I would be better moving to the States! 

@twangster
It has nothing to do with Brexit. It was due to them having extremely high prices and not enough people booking. 

The prices for Royal Caribbean Compared to the many other cruise lines out of Southampton are ridiculous. When they were released the message boards on facebook and such like were all disgusted with the pricing structure compared to the US. I get that US will be cheaper due to many many more ships but the UK pricing is awful IMO.
 
That's why I choose to fly elsewhere and cruise

Here is what I found on Twitter:

I'm not here to talk politics, but I can't really see how Brexit would affect ship bookings. 

I don’t see any uncertainty whatsoever in the UK we are thriving ? 

I'm not here to talk politics, but I can't really see how Brexit would affect ship bookings. 

@twangster
It has nothing to do with Brexit. It was due to them having extremely high prices and not enough people booking. 

At this rate, I would be better moving to the States! 

@twangster
It has nothing to do with Brexit. It was due to them having extremely high prices and not enough people booking. 

At least the Caribbean had 2 already. Now Europe has 0. I was kind of hoping to do one in 2020, but that's now out the window.

Very, very bad idea.
Complete slap in the face to the UK market. And we get stuck with the cr*p Anthem instead. There go my plans to do a Scandinavia cruise on ID.
Which ship to sail now?

Narrow, creaky, bad design. Not enough outdoor pool space, the Royal Esplanade was a con. I did like the Bumper Cars and North Star, but both had insanely long queues.
Quantum Class are my least favourites in the fleet. Glad I tried Anthem but wouldn't sail her again.

Jewel has a few Fjords sailings in 2020 out of Copenhagen and Brilliance offers 1 from Amsterdam.

Wow!! That is just not right!!! 

The folks that work in the AquaTheater, Two70 and Theater are staff. They are among the Cruise Division which report to the Cruise Director.

This is an interesting topic which I've done some research on, so please excuse my rambling. 
There are 3 categories of employees on ships: Officers, Staff and Crew. The officers include individuals such as the Captain, Hotel Director, Chief Engineer, Cruise Director etc.
There are two Captains who are exclusively assigned to one ship and they rotate 10 weeks onboard and 10 weeks off (when one is on, the other is at home and vice-versa). For Cruise Directors, the average contract length is 4 months on, 2 months off, but this varies depending on the Cruise Director, ship, itinerary. Some take shorter contracts, others switch between ships, so it's less clear cut for them. Officers tend to work in rotations but it does sometimes work out differently.
Staff are mid-tier (if that doesn't sound snobbish). They usually have the chance to be promoted to officer status. The 3 staff positions that come to mind are the Cruise Director's Staff, Youth Staff and Sports Staff. CS and SS work 6-9 months onboard and 2-3 months off and I believe YS work around 5-6 months and 2 months off. These particular jobs usually attract people from developed/Western countries. In these jobs, they tend to do a different ship each contract and don't really rotate with each other
As for wait staff, they fall into the "crew" category and tend to come from developing countries, not making a lot of money and have the harshest working conditions. I believe that they do contracts around 8 months on and 2 months off and work around 10 hours a day without a day off. Doesn't sound fun but it's better than what they would get in their home countries.
They all work for their entire contract length without a day off. They all work hard and party hard.