AndyatSea

If you love the Flowrider try the Sydney to Singapore repo sailings, 14 nights with an older demographic, when we did one last year there was only 200 or so kids onboard. Most days the biggest line for it was 10 people and there were a couple of days we had it to ourselves for a full session.

The difference

There are several issues at play here. The first is probably the biggest issue I have noted on cruise ships. The overbearing entitled traveler, while we all feel entitled to get what we pay for, they feel the rules don't apply to them and demand, stamp their feet and threaten to complain should their every desire not be allowed. They basically intimidate the crew into giving in. The fact this works means there are not hard and fast policies in place and the crew clearly don't feel confident they will receive the backing of the cruise line should a complain be lodged. So many time I have seen people like this and it really makes my blood boil. As much as I wish to intervene the issue with people like this is they truly believe they are in the right and won't be shamed or told otherwise. The other issue is security training, while I have no idea what kind of training is provided by the various lines, the big issue is events like this is the don't happen everyday. You can train in defensive tactics till you are blue in the face but the training environment and real life situations bear no resemblance. When the moderate resistance you encounter in a training environment is replaced by a person hellbent on causing as much damage to others, kick, biting, scratching, grabbing hold of certain sensitive parts of the body, training can quickly go out the window as survival mode kicks in. Some will run and hide and some will revert to using what ever they can to get the job done. While the kicking is not a good look, I can understand how it came about. You also have to look at the fact the video clip is a brief segment of the entire incident, there is a lot we didn't get to see which is why its never a good idea to pass judgement as you don't have all the facts.

The reason no charges would have been filed yet is due to the complexities of maritime law. The geographical location of the ship at the time of the crime does matter as far as jurisdiction. Australia has the Crimes at Sea Act and some complimentary legislation. The Australian Attorney General has to give permission for charges to be laid and must consult with the ships flag state.

Unfortunately alcohol is the easy target when these things happen. No doubt alcohol contributes to a degree as it lessen's inhibitions. However the people responsible for events like this overwhelmingly have no respect for others and personal responsibility is a completely foreign concept to them. Problem is there is no easy solution to this as it's learnt from childhood through bad parenting. It's then re-enforced through generally poor penalties for there behavior. The family in question were apparently causing problems from day 1 of the cruise. The fact it took until day 8 for them to be confined to their cabins is disgraceful. If it is indeed the case the 25% credit is far from acceptable when the when clearly other passengers were basically living in fear for the majority of the sailing. The simple fact is the vast majority of people can consume alcohol and have a good time without ever cause much bother to anyone.

Explorer has a repositioning cruise to Singapore at the end of the 18/19 season in Australia, after that who knows until they tell us.

I'm sure when RCL relaxed the beverage package policy so all adults in a cabin did not have to buy one they expected more from their customers. However and not surprisingly it was abused to the point the policy was changed back. It was something people were happy to boast about on various forums generally justified because RCL is a big company so its okay stick it to them. Only problem with that is eventually it's the customers that do the right thing that pay the price for their behavior.

Pretty much every press release for Spectrum states it's being designed for the Asia/Pacific region.

The cap for the Deluxe Package is $14 for cruises out of Australia.