The good the bad and the bedbugs.

Let me first start by telling you a little about myself. My wife and I have been married 7 years and have three children ages 5, 3 and 1. I served in the Marine Corps for 8 years and was honorably discharged at the rank of Staff Sergeant. My wife and I both work in a hospital, I am a director of housekeeping and my wife is a nurse manager. This was our first vacation without the kids since our honeymoon.

The Bedbugs….

On the last night of our cruise, my wife began to get dressed when she noticed a bug on her blouse. She brought it over to me and I knew Immediately that it was a bedbug. Obviously we were upset that we have spent the last 3 nights in a room with bedbugs, I went down to guest relations with the bedbug in a water bottle to make management aware of the situation. I patiently waited in line and when I got to the desk asked the staff if we could speak in private. We stepped to the side where the rest of the guests would not be able to hear and I explained that we have a bedbug issue in our stateroom 1118 and gave her the water bottle so that they could verify that it was in fact a bedbug. I asked to speak with the chief of housekeeping and the representative said she would see what she could do. A couple minutes later she came back and thanked me for my patience as well as handling this matter discreetly as not to upset the other guests. I was told that the chief would like to meet in the room and that he would be up shortly. I returned to the room and let my wife know that I spoke to guest relations and that the housekeeping chief would be up in the next few minutes to speak with us. 40 minutes later…. No one responded. You can imagine our frustration, waiting in a bedbug infested room not know where to sit or stand for 40 minutes with no response. I then called guest relations only to become more upset. The attendant that answered at first had no idea what the issue was and then when I explained it, she simply said that they had another emergency going on and that they would get to us when they could. I again went down to guest relations, waited in line and told them that their response was unacceptable. Even if it were true that they were dealing with another emergency as simple phone call or moving us to another room so that we were not in the room with the bedbugs would have been better than nothing. At this point the guest relations attendant that dealt with the initial complaint stepped in and apologized, she called the person who she spoke with initially and asked why our situation had not been dealt with. After her call she apologized and said that someone would be up to speak with us and asked that I go wait in the room again.

The Bad….

About 15 minutes later the Assistant Guest Relations and Housekeeping chief knocked at the door. They apologized for the issue but seem very insincere, almost as if they did not want to deal with us. I took this opportunity to point out other deficiencies in the room. Two things that I noticed over the previous 3 days but did not mention because we were having such a good time was that the mirrors were not cleaned and there was blood on the wall over the bed. The Assistant Housekeeping Chief seemed to take exception with me pointing out these issues and told me that the mirrors were clean but did acknowledge the blood on the wall. It was determined that due to the infestation of bedbugs we needed to be move to another room, unfortunately they did not have any rooms on the same deck so we were sent to the 9th deck. The room was still considered an aqua class room, but it did not feel to be up to the same standard. The balcony was poured concrete, the phones were not upgraded and there were no tissues in the room.

You tube Link:

https://youtu.be/74DsPIInHr0