Excursion help on board (or lack thereof)

[Skid]

After seeing the post from an Adventure OTS cruiser that I copied below with my reply, I am wondering if this type of occurrence is more prevalent than I ever would have expected. Has anyone else experienced this?
Other staggering thing- stopped by the Excursion desk afternoon before St. Lucia. 2 ladies working there actually told us they have no idea about the island- they had never been there themselves, and had only been working for 3 weeks. They were certainly honest, but didn't expect to be told "Uh- your're on your own!".
This same thing happened to us on Anthem in 2015 and it was even more ridiculous. The only 2 people from the excursion department were both on vacation at the same time. The rest of the staff was new (literally the third day for one of them) and not one of them had ever been to that particular port (Barbados). 
Fortunately, the guy from the jewelry port shopping desk knew everything and did a great job in guiding us. We informed corporate of his extra effort. 
I think I will start a separate thread. Will be interesting to see if this has happened with any type of regularity.

[BrianAlt]

Almost sounds like a gag.  I mean, I'm sure they have the basic information available to them.  Might not be all that helpful, but it would have been something!

[Skid]

36 minutes ago, BrianAlt said:

Almost sounds like a gag.  I mean, I'm sure they have the basic information available to them.  Might not be all that helpful, but it would have been something!

Anthem has iPads. The staff knew absolutely nothing. They sat down with us, looked at the screens, and read what they saw out loud, as if we didn't know how to read. We wished it was a gag. Of course, now we research excursions prior to sailing!

[FManke]

18 minutes ago, Skid said:

Anthem has iPads. The staff knew absolutely nothing. They sat down with us, looked at the screens, and read what they saw out loud, as if we didn't know how to read. We wished it was as gag. 

Sounds like we made the right decision to pre-book all of our excursions ahead of time. 

[Matt]

To be fair, I never assumed the Excursions staff were any kind of experts on the destinations we visit.  They are there to take orders and answer basic questions about the excursions offered. Granted, after a number of cruises they often get a good feel for these ports, but I wouldn't figure them to be local experts.  Or am I missing the point of the original post?

[Skid]

30 minutes ago, Matt said:

To be fair, I never assumed the Excursions staff were any kind of experts on the destinations we visit.  They are there to take orders and answer basic questions about the excursions offered. Granted, after a number of cruises they often get a good feel for these ports, but I wouldn't figure them to be local experts.  Or am I missing the point of the original post?

I see your point, Matt. However, the group I encountered couldn't even answer basic questions. I agree they should not be expected to be experts, but when they are so new and inexperienced as this particular crew was, they should at least be working along side a "veteran" or two. To be clear, I was not annoyed at them personally. I felt badly for them for the position in which they were placed. I was just wondering how often this had happened.

[DocLC]

There usually is a port or destination expert onboard that you can see outside of the excursions staff.

 

[Matt]

16 hours ago, Skid said:

they should at least be working along side a "veteran" or two.

I totally agree with this

[FManke]

Are you sure they are not splitting their time between working at the excursion desk and the RC website IT dept.?

You seem to get the same results.

[Stephanie]

That was our experience on Anthem as well.  The excursion help desk person simply showed us how to operate the ipad.  To play devil's advocate, the shore excursions are 3rd party contractors that RCCL has contracted to provide the excursions.  So, I kinda get that it's difficult for the crew to know much about the excursion itself aside from how to book it and where you meet on shore.

[DunkelBierJay]

I've gotten a couple of good tips about ports (not necessarily excursions) from the CD or entertainment talent staff especially if they have been working that itinerary for a few months. I never thought to ask the excursion staff about particular details about an excursion. I would get that here or on Cruise Critic.

[DocLC]

42 minutes ago, Spiegeje said:

I've gotten a couple of good tips about ports (not necessarily excursions) from the CD or entertainment talent staff especially if they have been working that itinerary for a few months. I never thought to ask the excursion staff about particular details about an excursion. I would get that here or on Cruise Critic.

As have I. The CD's staff can be an amazing wealth of information and they were the ones who convinced us to try a Baltics cruise after I asked them about it and the ports.