Every other room?

[jack168]

I remember hearing a while ago from somewhere/someone that they were booking every other room and switching them on the next sailing. Is this still being done?

[jticarruthers]

Dont think this is true, we had adjoining cabins on one cruise. There are definitely lots of empty cabins so possibly partly true that they "speed up" turnaround by opening up clean rooms and then cleaning the "used" cabins for the next turnaround but its not an "every other" layout.

[CruiseGus]

Not likely now that sailing are head upward in capacity.  Report of around 70% on a number of ships.

With no major outbreaks and all the testing and vaccine requirements, I easily see royal at full capacity buy early next years, or at least as many berths as they can fill.

Carnival has been running with 70% capacity since the restart and only one minor incident that was before the went to the testing and mask indoor policy they now have.

[twangster]

Maybe some cruise line did this, but I haven't seen it on Royal, MSC, Carnival or Princess.  I had people on both sides of me on all of them.  

They are opening the ship in sections.  Not long ago suddenly a ship had new balcony cabins available and the deck plans showed them all together in one area.  

[Matt]

19 minutes ago, twangster said:

Maybe some cruise line did this, but I haven't seen it on Royal,

Ditto

[Galveston Steve]

Not on Independence or Liberty. We’ve had neighbors on all 4 of our cruises. 

[Egeria]

We can assume Freedom is now sailing above 50% because they reopened WJ for dinner. 50% was magic capacity number that would trigger the WJ buffet reopening for dinner. On the reduce capacity sailings it was never every other room but, sections of the ship that where being isolated in case an outbreak did occur, they could relocate all the infected passengers to a contained area of the ship. 

[bmccall7503]

See, it looks to me like they are. In early 2020 (before the world shut down) we booked a family cruise with 4 cabins in a block - 2 for our family of 4 and 2 for my brother in law's family of 4 (who live in another state). All four in a row on Allure for this coming Thanksgiving - which at that time was still expected in Galveston by now. However, when we got moved to Liberty, they added a room between my family's 2 cabins and my BIL's family's 2 cabins, and as of now a mock booking still shows empty cabins on either side of that block. My mother & father in law also have no neighbors on either side of their deck 6 balcony. Maybe we're just super lucky (so far)????

[JohnK6404]

On 10/11/2021 at 1:46 PM, jack_c4321 said:

I remember hearing a while ago from somewhere/someone that they were booking every other room and switching them on the next sailing. Is this still being done?

Definitely not on Oasis last week. Even though we were at reduced capacity, we had neighbors on both sides of our OV balcony stateroom.

 

[Zeena]

I was on a TA on Allure which RCCL canceled and switched to the new Wonder.   My friend and I were in rooms next to each other, per our request, on Allure.  Our new reservations are on opposite ends of the ship.  We were told they are booking every other room on this ship.  Still no explanation on why my room is bow and the other is stern.  We are still trying to work it out.

[Debsters41]

We had neighbors on our Allure September cruise, interior category

 

[jack168]

4 hours ago, Zeena said:

I was on a TA on Allure which RCCL canceled and switched to the new Wonder.   My friend and I were in rooms next to each other, per our request, on Allure.  Our new reservations are on opposite ends of the ship.  We were told they are booking every other room on this ship.  Still no explanation on why my room is bow and the other is stern.  We are still trying to work it out.

Interesting, I guess they're doing every other only if there is a very small number of people.

[barjpoe]

Well, on our Odyssey cruise last month; we were in a JS on deck 13 & there was someone next door. BUT just got an email from Royal saying they're going to move us to another JS to 'While we've been working around the clock to get our ships back to cruising, we've had to change how our guests are spaced out onboard to ensure proper social distancing' ; like-for-like' cabin. This is on our Allure sailing 11/14.

[WAAAYTOOO]

We’re booked on Allure 11-14 and 21.  We did not get such an email.  Maybe it’s just specific decks

[GKMCruising]

6 minutes ago, WAAAYTOOO said:

We’re booked on Allure 11-14 and 21.  We did not get such an email.  Maybe it’s just specific decks

Maybe if they have large chunks of empty cabins on a floor they're trying to use those to "balance" the ship out in terms of capacity, so to speak?

[cdixon22]

On 10/11/2021 at 4:12 PM, Galveston Steve said:

Not on Independence or Liberty. We’ve had neighbors on all 4 of our cruises. 

Did you have to make reservations for the shows on Independence?  If so how/where did you make them?

[SpeedNoodles]

I will be beyond sad if I lose my Owner's Suite on Odyssey in January.  Although maybe we're safe because there are only 2 Owner's Suites on entire ship.

[FionaMG]

I wonder if it might also have to do with staffing levels. On our recent Harmony cruise we (DH and I) were adjacent to SIL+BIL (as booked, and there was no attempt to move us) and the room next to them was definitely also occupied, so no spacing there between non-acquainted passengers. However, our cabin steward, told us that each of them had been assigned 7 cabins, so maybe they're switching people out when there are too many (whatever that means) cabins occupied in any given section.

[twangster]

This has to be related to the wave of emails going out where people are being moved.  

The hand of the CDC is all over this.  We'll know soon enough.