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Guest beware sailing from Civitavecchia


RorySC

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Guest beware, and make sure when sailing on Wonder of the Seas from Rome If your sailing is a "Interport, (2) itineraries on the same ship" be ready for problems. We have been out on multiple sailings for the past month. Independence from Port Canaveral prior to flying to Europe, then onto Odyssey,  then finally Wonder both from Civitavecchia. We were never told that Wonders sailing originally started in Barcelona, and that if you board in Civitavecchia you are not included in certain amenities. Main problem is with the Royal App. Because we did not board with the original sailing in Barcelona, the app is very basic for us 1200 that boarded in Civitavecchia. No booking anything with the app. No dinner reservations, no show reservations "and they are scanningsea passesto get into shows now", no excursion reservations, no tapping the kiosk to view your photos, no viewing your account, ect. When you want to make any reservations, you can atempt to call during the hours that the restaurant has someone to answer the phone, and or wait in line at guest services. Keep in mind that for my sailing Thursday to Thursday there were 1200 of other angry and or upset guest who had the same issues. Now for guest who boarded Wonder Saturday to Saturday "the main sailing" had 5 days head start to fill all the reservation slots before you. For us that boarded Thursday, the festive feel when you board is pretty much nonexistent. No sail away parties, no exciting feelings of thousands of fresh new people boarding with you. When you board, all the other guest for them, it was just another port day. I spent the first 2 days literally working. Working the phones, standing in lines in attempt to make reservations and fix issues. Now to add insult to injury, after spending 2 days and hours and hours trying to fix everything come Saturday when the original "Barcelona sailing, turn around day" happened everything we finally got set up in the computer was wiped out. Because it was turn around day, going into a new sailing everything started from zero and because we have no access to the app, we had to start all over again with calls and standing in lines. We tried working with the representative in the Diamond Lounge,  but she was experiencing all the same issues with long hold times and reaching the right people during certain hours and don't forget I was 1 cabin of 2 of 1200 people with the same issue. When trying to speak with Management in CS and work up the latter all they can say is sorry. Royal Caribbean App is not set up to handle 2 itineraries at the same time. After 22 years sailing with RC, working our way into Diamond + being as they say Loyal to Royal,  I do not feel that they have been loyal to us. We have sailings still on the books including a 27 night sailing out of Australia in April,  and we are diligently shopping to rebook with another line. Yes this is long, but if I can help that this does not happen to another guest would make us happy. 

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I think the problem is that Royal doesn't inform about these differences beforehand and then of course people are disappointed because they don't expect it and are used to a different experience.

I also have a booking for next year departing from Rome and only learned about interport and the problems by accident. Luckily I know about it now and I think if you are prepared for it, it's not half bad.
A search here revealed that the topic has been discussed covered before and there are also people who have had a slightly different experience and also gained something positive from it, e.g. here:

 

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So sorry this is happening to you and the other 1200 guests.

I had never heard of Royal doing a sailings like this (Thanks @Mr, Cruiser for the link).  Where x number of passengers board on a Saturday for seven days in one port.  Then at then at one of the ports of call they board more passengers who don't get off in the next few days with the original passengers. (I know some cruise line does this with 14 day cruises out of Barbados, where you can board for 7 or 14 days but each one in Barbados)

I can see why Royals IT had trouble with this as it would be very complex programing. The concerning part would be the reservation disappearing altogether, but understandable if they did a cruise reset on the app at the conclusion of the first itinerary.

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We did this cruise in 2015 on Allure.  We were able to book all reservations on line but this was pre-App.  We booked shore excursions and they were not wiped out on turn around day, neither were our dining reservations.  The only issue we had was that the dining staff treated us like we didn't belong or matter.  I believe the problems are due to inexperience since so many new crew have been hired.  Let's hope they get back to what it was in 2015 soon.

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19 minutes ago, Reigert2008 said:

Did you use a travel agent to book this?  I'd suspect a good travel agent would have been aware of the interporting and at least been able to prepare the guests for differences or suggest an alternate sailing.

Yes I use a very good agent from MEI, I originally book this sailing downstairs @ Next Cruise, then transferred over to MEI. While I started to have these issues, I immediately contacted my agent who responded to me very quickly even know it was 1:30 in the morning where she is located because she just happened to be on a cruise out of California herself. She opened her system and noticed that it is not listed as a Interport sailing. She even went on to say that none of the sailings are listed as Interport anymore because agent atempt to steer customers away from them because of these issues. I guess it would not be so bad, if they had dedicated people onboard to help with all these issues during Interport. But being that there were so many if us took a lot of time. Yes the terminal was very fast and quiet, yes the saftey briefing was quick and they did it in person, but in today's world in technology I can not see why this could have not been fixed months ago. I am sure is there POS system or something in the Casino went down. It would have been fixed right away.

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1 hour ago, Mr.Cruiser said:

I think the problem is that Royal doesn't inform about these differences beforehand and then of course people are disappointed because they don't expect it and are used to a different experience.

I also have a booking for next year departing from Rome and only learned about interport and the problems by accident. Luckily I know about it now and I think if you are prepared for it, it's not half bad.
A search here revealed that the topic has been discussed covered before and there are also people who have had a slightly different experience and also gained something positive from it, e.g. here:

 

They worked so hard to transition all of us over to the app and that took some doing. Even just last week announced that pre booking of things are now set in stone, that they are not coming back at all. Many where hoping that it was only a Covid thing, but nope the decision is now final. When you are only a small group of lets say 1000 attempting to fight a group of 4500 who had 5 days head start you don't stand a chance. Also let me say, that when we went to the MDR, we felt like the Bastard Child of the room. All the tables have already set, and in use for 5 days. Now here you come and they try to fit you in where there is room. We always for many years pick Late seating, and shared tables. Now we join this sailing in the middle and we are now My-TIme for dinner. We hate MT dining....it is a total mess and unorganized. You would have thought that they were prepared area for the new guest coming.  ALSO on Barcelona turnaround day....you better be up early to get breakfast. Breakfast on that day us from 5:30am to 8:30am and what a mess, because you have all the craziness of all the announcements and people pulling bags all though breakfast areas while they wait for there numbers to be called. In 3 different languages. 

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34 minutes ago, RorySC said:

Yes I use a very good agent from MEI, I originally book this sailing downstairs @ Next Cruise, then transferred over to MEI. While I started to have these issues, I immediately contacted my agent who responded to me very quickly even know it was 1:30 in the morning where she is located because she just happened to be on a cruise out of California herself. She opened her system and noticed that it is not listed as a Interport sailing. She even went on to say that none of the sailings are listed as Interport anymore because agent atempt to steer customers away from them because of these issues. I guess it would not be so bad, if they had dedicated people onboard to help with all these issues during Interport. But being that there were so many if us took a lot of time. Yes the terminal was very fast and quiet, yes the saftey briefing was quick and they did it in person, but in today's world in technology I can not see why this could have not been fixed months ago. I am sure is there POS system or something in the Casino went down. It would have been fixed right away.

That's good to know!  Thanks!

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2 hours ago, RorySC said:

They worked so hard to transition all of us over to the app and that took some doing. Even just last week announced that pre booking of things are now set in stone, that they are not coming back at all. Many where hoping that it was only a Covid thing, but nope the decision is now final. When you are only a small group of lets say 1000 attempting to fight a group of 4500 who had 5 days head start you don't stand a chance. Also let me say, that when we went to the MDR, we felt like the Bastard Child of the room. All the tables have already set, and in use for 5 days. Now here you come and they try to fit you in where there is room. We always for many years pick Late seating, and shared tables. Now we join this sailing in the middle and we are now My-TIme for dinner. We hate MT dining....it is a total mess and unorganized. You would have thought that they were prepared area for the new guest coming.  ALSO on Barcelona turnaround day....you better be up early to get breakfast. Breakfast on that day us from 5:30am to 8:30am and what a mess, because you have all the craziness of all the announcements and people pulling bags all though breakfast areas while they wait for there numbers to be called. In 3 different languages. 

 We were recently on the Wonder from Barcelona and I mentioned to my husband how unfair the breakfast situation seemed to continuing cruisers.  They close down everything early like it is a regular disembarkation day even though it’s just a normal day for 1/4 of the ship!

However, you do have the luxury of booking shows for the second half of your cruise before the new cruisers join in Barcelona. And I heard, although I’m not sure how true it is, that they held back spaces at shows for those boarding and each port so neither group would be completely locked out.

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25 minutes ago, berkeleykel said:

 We were recently on the Wonder from Barcelona and I mentioned to my husband how unfair the breakfast situation seemed to continuing cruisers.  They close down everything early like it is a regular disembarkation day even though it’s just a normal day for 1/4 of the ship!

However, you do have the luxury of booking shows for the second half of your cruise before the new cruisers join in Barcelona. And I heard, although I’m not sure how true it is, that they held back spaces at shows for those boarding and each port so neither group would be completely locked out.

Yes the breakfast thing was not cool, but as far as booking shows early was not the case. Sometime after midnight on turnover day the internet was turned off. Was turned back on after 11am. Not that it mattered because we can not use the app. So we had to wait till the new guest boarded but those folks were booking from inside the terminal becausethey have access to the app. So you have to make a choice of waiting for the bookings to open after 11am, and not get off the ship and tour Barcelona,  and when you get back from a day in Port you have long lines at CS on day 1 for the new arrivals that are long. You get the point.

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1 hour ago, RorySC said:

Even just last week announced that pre booking of things are now set in stone, that they are not coming back at all. Many where hoping that it was only a Covid thing, but nope the decision is now final.

Booking of "things"? I guess what you mean is you can't book shows and maybe onboard activities before you cruise. Yeah, it would be a pity if you could never book it in advance again. But as long as you can do it on the first day on board, it's OK with me too.

 

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I really only had one major issue; we boarded early, so we were able to book all of our shows "in person" on the promenade once we got onboard.  Everything before Barcelona went into the system immediately (I assume they held back some slots for those of us boarding in Rome). 

The only "post Barcelona" show we asked for was in the comedy club.  Since they couldn't book us yet, they wrote down our request on a piece of paper and they said they would book us once it opened. 

Not sure what happened, but we mentioned it offhand to the Diamond Lounge concierge and he told us to come back and check with him to make sure it was handled correctly.  Turns out he was right, we were not booked for it yet, and he quickly got us added.  I'm really happy I checked, as otherwise we would have showed up that day and been turned away!

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We sailed on Wonder in June and experienced the issues with the app.  Overall, I would classify it as an annoyance - not significant enough to keep me from booking another interport cruise.  We spent extra time in Rome so sailing from there vs Barcelona was worth the minor inconveniences.

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