Lost Reservation!!!

To celebrate my wife’s 70th birthday, we sailed on the Celebrity Eclipse on August 28, an 11-night Canadian Maritime itinerary. First the good: Service was excellent. Our Cabin Attendant was superb and the staff in the bars and restaurants also were gracious, quick and accommodating. All of our ports were interesting and worthwhile. Most interesting was a very thorough “Behind the Scenes” excursion on the ship. It covered almost everything—including the bridge and control room. Fascinating! Now for the bad: the ship is outdated and in need of refurbishment. Our Concierge Cabin was the smallest and most poorly laid out among any ship we’ve been on (20 cruises). Small, few storage spaces, and two—yes TWO—electric outlets. The worst aspect of our trip was that our reservation somehow was LOST! We are “Elite” travelers with Celebrity. We know how to preregister, complete all requirements, and obtain our “Express Passes” to board. After enduring terrible traffic getting to the Boston port, we were asked to get in a line (we had a 1:30 boarding time reserved and it was 1:25pm). After waiting about 15 minutes it was our turn. We presented our Express Passes and Passports and, after a lot of head scratching by Port staff, we were informed that there was no record of us being on the ship; our reservation was gone. We were moved aside and Port personnel tried to figure out what happened. After about 30 minutes of Port staff looking perplexed and impotent, I asked to speak with someone from Celebrity; several staff were milling about. After being insistent, a Guest Relations person came over. We explained the problem. It took about 20 minutes to figure out that somehow our reservation was overridden by someone on the ship with the same last name—how this could happen is befuddling. She had us pose for photographs (everything in our preregistration was lost), were issued our cruise cards, and we were told to get back in line to board (the line now was 40 minutes long and erroneously we thought the Guest Relations person would walk us to the front of the line, given that we now were 75 minutes later than our boarding time; not to be!). Then, as we got to the front of the line to go through security to board the ship, our just-issued cruise cards revealed on the staff’s screen two people that were not us! The security guy asked “is that you?” A blind person could tell that the two people were not us. We again posed for photos and were granted access to the ship. This fiasco continued to unwind during the cruise. Our cruise cards were not recognized at the Muster Station, in the Casino, at a Bar, and for a variety of other uses. Our credit card info was gone. Each time, we went to the Guest Relations desk on the third level and fairly disinterested staff said that they fixed the problem. They did NOT. Also lost were the arrangements to have balloons and a Happy Birthday greeting waiting for my wife; this was remedied days later when I complained to the Concierge. Most egregious is that we NEVER received so much as an “I’m sorry this happened to you; we’ll do everything we can to fix the problem.” No one was contrite. No one even hinted at an apology. So, while the cruise was enjoyable in almost every respect, the dilemma at the outset cast a pall over the trip. While we will continue to travel with Regent and Holland America, our days of patronizing any vessel under the Royal Caribbean International umbrella are over. We suspect they could care less about losing a customer—this assertion based on their caring less about losing a passenger’s reservation and, then, doing nothing to make it right.

Okay