Traveler

Wow , calling it "some bumps" is really good example of using euphemism. Some bumps is to drove on a new road which still has some small holes in it which you feel from time to time , what they have done here is to divert everyone to a new road that someone forgot to build a bridge over a 1000 feet abyss which exist on the first mile.

Try to clean the cache . Sometime it helps with the bad request message.

The site continue to improve . Now I am getting actual link for the cruise documentations and the countdown was added to the dashboard

Make you think on the future of the smaller ships , Currently we can see in the plan for the next 5 years ships from Voyager class to Oasis, nothing else So for the next five years some of the small ships will pass almost 8 years from the last time they were updated . Dose it meant RCL decided to abounded anything smaller than Voyager and focus only the big ports ?

Yes, I saw that the 14 cruise came back and the 7 is sold out , So things looks better for now , please do not delay the ship back to Barcelona on the 14 If you see anything not working well make sure to tell them to fix it . Any most important have a wonderful cruise.

They will keep increase until the point they wills see decrease in the number of sells ... basic strategy when you have captured customers. I also book the zip line and the jet skies for 76 (zip line) and I Think more and less the jet , but weather did not allow us to use it so it was cancled

Did not decide yet what to think about it , first I never been to CocoCay (most of my Caribbean cruises were on Oasis class) I Do like water parks (I was in Atlantis 3 times and planning to come back again) , not sure I liked them part of a cruise , but I can choose if to use them or just stay on the ship/go somewhere else on the Island so I not really mind. Regarding the price , I Guess there will be two level of price , one for the 7 cruise nights which will be from 60$ and up , just think about combo of water slide + water park + maybe zip line price ? also you can compare for the price of getting to Atlantis water park (although you are getting also to see the aquarium). to get there money back I think they will also sell and all inclusive weekend gate away , maybe some bundle of 3 days around food , Alcohol and the water park ... not envy the cruise stuff (mainly the cleaners) that will have to work on one.

They are getting very good at that , but again it is all targeting new traveler , sadly they now that whoever is loyal to royal will not leave them due to such things , By the way , usually after sells planner sells ends there are few days the price stays the same but then it will raise again until the next "One time sell" ...

The good news is that now cruise planner is working from the new site , the bad news the online check in link stopped working . So I have checked in using the old site and it was fine but know in the new site under room details I see that now only my spouse appears under the next month reservation . Hey I guess we can not have it all ...

Sorry , but this letter is even worse . Saying that the problems are due to people having duplicate accounts can not explain the useless UI , nor the fact you need to give your cruise details every time you want to access cruise planner or starting online check in. its just an insult to our inelegance

14-April from Barcelona

Thanks, I tried it again now and it went OK , Still do not find how to go to my cruise documents but I guess , online check in will be enough. I wanted to look on it as I am on guaranty room and when I got the email which indicate mu documents are ready I thought they might assign me the room already

got an email few hours ago that my cruise document is ready and a link to download it. The link brings me to the new login page and from there I do no have any clue how to get to it , any idea ? (I tried also to do online check in but got error message)

Regarding why they are not rolling back , it might be they already pass this point , meaning the new DB already have new customer records and they did not plan how to migrate it back to the old DB. But I start to think something else happened here , I think they not really planned to start and use the new site but some disaster happened to the the old DB and records were deleted , moving to the new DB was the work around. All the required adding information we are being ask to enter leading me there. Anyway this just my theori , hope I am wrong

1. Wonderland - love the short ribs and the desserts 2. Giovannis - the best filet on the ship. 3. Sabor - should I really need to explain. 4. Izumi 5. Chops - if it is crowded the service can become very slow and annoying (happened to me twice on different ship) 6. JR

I finally figured out what is going on its not really about IT issues but more of a marketing trick . Here is what I think might happened : The CEO got some survey about how people do not like the RC website and keep complaining about it over the social media (mainly in some message boards) He ask the CIO what can be done to improve it , which he replays (very enthusiastic) that they create a new project with new site and a new DB throwing in the air buzzwords like "Digital, Micro services, DeBOPS , clouds, big data etc ...". The only thing, this project will cost more than 700 M $ (which we all know will be at least twice) and I will need 500% increase in the IT team + some new executives IT manager to run the project The CFO that heard the required budget automatically refused and remind the CEO about the stakeholders + the board that will not like it , not to forget the yearly E level bonuses which will be under risk as they are tied to the EBIT. The CEO, who remembered suddenly the new cars he promised to buy to his kids (I wanted to say the new boat he wanted to buy for himself but , well not sure how much a cruise line CEO wants to have a boat as his hobby) understand that a new project is not an option and ask what else can be done. Then the marketing come with a wonderful idea , create a mock up site that will imitate a new site , this site will stay for two three weeks. The site will be so terrible that RC customers will beg them to bring back the old site and no one will dare complain anymore about the current site. And all of that without spending too much money , I think its genius

Might be that they are sold out but even the 14 is sold out and still there .oh well another wonder about the site

Hi , I am on the 14-April Symphony cruise , until today when I have done some mock up reservation (to check what is available ) I always got the 31-March 5 day pre cruise , and 3 7 nights dates in April (7,14,21) + the 8 nights on the 28. Today I saw that the 31 and the 7 gone , and I can see cruises only from the 14-April (which is fully booked). Dose anyone heard anything about it ? is there some delays ? Usually when cruise is fully booked they still show it with the fully booked indication. I hope it is no more than another glitch in RC site.

Nothing here yet , I do not think they will send anything before they will first fix their site.

I agree with you , we do not know the complexity of the data base and the old system , not how many records and what is the size , I Will give them that . Yes , it might take 4,5 days , and since it is being done rarely it can also be acceptable , but they could at least send people an email before explaining the system will be under upgrade for the next few days so if anyone want to reserve something he better do it before. Well even if they planned that it will be only for one day and something happened and now it is 5 days then they could put some message on the site or even send an email . Lets hope that the issue will be gone soon and we can all enjoy from a new wonderful site that will help us to enjoy the to cruise on our favorite cruise line

Totally agree with you , even now they could have send some email ...

You are right with the steps but there are more to it : 1. Decide the migration method (everything on the same time or in groups) if you decide the second method you need to create some bridging application so it can route you to the right application (new and old) and allow the customer cares to find you in the right DB . Also you need to think about catch-up process (if you migrate history data first and just migrate the online data during the rollout window) 2. Non functional testing to the new site - will it be handle the required load , how to operate it , security , security etc ... 3. interface testing - test no issues to connect to the external interfaces (for example credit cards) and no handshake issues. 4. Roll-out testing - test how long all the migration and interfaces pointing process is taking , do try runs, repeat it until your team know what they are doing and you are ngetting it done in the time which the business can agree with. I have the feeling here the RC upgrade process was lacking 5.Train your CSRs and help desk people with the new site so they will be able to handle the support. 6. Bring more help in the first few weeks post migration to handle the extra load on your call centers as many people will call with issues , check that your current facilities (switchboard, PCs, office space) is enough to support the extra load. 7. Rollback method - decide on your rollback method , practice it , decide when is your no rollback point and most important , do not be afraid to take the call to do rollback. 8. BCP - Business continuity plan - decide how the business will continue to work , messages on the website for people what to expect , manual operation during the transition period, catch up if needed , etc (actually point 5,6 is part of it) 9. End user training - create a videos , demo site, FAQ and other materials to explain the end user how to work with the system , whatever you can to reduce the questions and calls. There are much more things that need to be done , but ,well not sure if this is the forum :-) , usually such projects ct can take many month, mainly if the system is very old. Things starting to change now with DEVOPS methodology but still tons of work to do.

Although I could login with the direct link (thanks @rjac and I I found a dissimilar that "even if you do not see same things between the site and apps do not worry it will be ok" I would wait with any updates until the site will be stable. My recommendations, if your cruise is not in the coming week wait with any updates transaction on the site (cruise planner changes for example) as RC did not finished the migration/upgrade process and things can be lost during this process. So unless anyone wants to spend hours with RC customer care trying to find were is the special restaurant your order and paid for , just wait for Monday or Tuesday . My next cruise is in one month from now and that is what I am planning to do. By the way , if anyone looking for a CIO job in a major cruise line , it seems to me that one going to be available soon

Wow , this is a poor production roll-out , I just do not envy whoever responsible for that, it look like very bad planning . Yes, as @twangster said such upgrade projects are very complicate but there are ways to avoid it. as part of my job I am responsible to bring projects to production and it can be much better (well if I want to keep my job anyway): 1. Dress Rehearsal until you have perfection the plan , timing and automation. 2. If your migration takes so much time (4-5 days !! , which I do not really understand why), migrate all the history first (which is not changing) and during the roll out period update the online information (which you have much less) , do not try to migrate something and than catch up. 3.Notify you customer before so they can do urgent changes if they needed , put some message on your website with estimate time to return to normal , do not wait for people to try and catch you on the phone. 4. Your planned upgrade takes much more time ? , rollback, bring the old site on , do some lesson learn and more DRs and try again on another date. 5. Your data is too big to migrated in few hours , create some co living application between the old and new sites and divide the population to several migrations while keeping the other customers on the old system There are many other things that can be done , but I think it was boring enough One good thing I can take from this indecent , next time when one of our customers will complain why I am asking his system to be partially down for few hours during major upgrades I can refer him to what happened here.

Just booked a day ago Symphony OTC 14-April-18 , hope it will be ready by that time , if not I have my old Symphony booking for September