Posts Tagged ‘Explorer of the Seas’

Share Your “Over the Top” Cruise Stories With Us

There’s something about cruising that lends itself to “Over the Top” stories. A recent example is the story of a family that excitedly arrived at the pier to check in for Liberty of the Seas in honor of their son’s Bar Mitzvah. There was only one problem: the family had no documentation for the son whatsoever.

Notwithstanding our and travel agents’ efforts to communicate the documentation requirements in brochures, eDocs, web sites and various other ways, these guests did not have anything for their son. Incidentally, we are currently in the process of making the documentation requirements easier to understand in order to help spare any future confusion and last minute emergencies. 

eDoc

With the sand running out of the hourglass and no family back home, which was a thousand or so miles from the ship, they were able to arrange for a friend to break into their house via the back door window, find and fax the necessary documents. The Bar Mitzvah present was preserved with minutes to spare. In honor of this family’s determination (unfortunately not in honor of their advance preparations), I ask our readers to post their “Over the Top” stories of what they or people they know have done to get on a cruise.

A related topic is things that guests, especially children, do to express their appreciation for having experienced the Wow on a Royal Caribbean cruise. I recently received through Customer Relations a phenomenal bound and desktop published PowerPoint from a 5th grader named Abigail. She had a page for every letter of the alphabet to explain something about her cruise on Explorer of the Seas. She did this as a project for school but also sent us a copy. I brought it to my staff meeting and all of the leaders of our brand wrote a comment to Abigail about her work. So my question for our readers here would be, what are the best expressions of appreciation for a cruise that you have ever heard about or seen first hand?

BY:Adam|17th August, 2010 21 Comments

A Letter from Sam Davis (Burn Advocates Network) Regarding Royal Caribbean’s Relief Efforts in Haiti

While my blog lately has covered topics other than Haiti, the country and its people has not been far from my thoughts. We continue to transport pallets of supplies on each and every ship that calls on Labadee. The outpouring of support from the community has been unbelievable, with pallets and pallets of needed supplies coming into our warehouse every day from all over the country.

Below is a letter I received from Sam Davis, founding director of the Burn Advocates Network, whose organization is providing much needed medical attention to Haitians hurt and injured during the earthquake. We are thankful that we can continue to assist organizations, such as the Burn Advocates Network, that make a difference in lives of the Haitian people.

Dear Mr. Goldstein:

I wanted to take a moment to thank you for your company’s generosity. I was blessed to travel to Haiti aboard your Explorer of the Seas cruise ship last week. There, at their Labadee dock, your staff and I oversaw the offloading of over 65 pallets of medical supplies and emergency food. In addition, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines donated 200 mattresses, bedding, and hundreds of pounds of clothes donated by the crew for this relief effort. With the precise teamwork of the Explorer’s ship and ground crews, the entire shipment of 65 pallets was unloaded onto the piers, providing 60,000 pounds of aid. After a one-hour convoy, we reached our destination in Cap Haitien, Haiti, where not a single package was damaged, delayed, or diverted. In other words…

“From Dock to Doctor” in 6 days!

Many of these supplies went to For Haiti With Love, a 24-hour FREE emergency clinic specializing in burn care. In the last few weeks, they have treated thousands of earthquake victims. While in Haiti, I also formed a relationship with the Justinian Hospital run by the government of Haiti. There Dr. Andre Voltain, Chief of Medicine, and Dr. Jean-Gracia Coq, Chief of Surgery, informed me that they lacked an oxygen generator and had only one x-ray machine, a beat up C Arm, which had been down for several weeks, scarcely the equipment expected at a hospital of three hundred plus patients. During my short stay, two gravely burned Haitian children had to be airlifted to Shriners Hospital in Boston because the equipment to save them did not exist.

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BY:Adam|18th February, 2010 9 Comments

“Wave” Booking Season, Board of Directors Visit and Staff Captains…All a Part of this Week’s Schedule

A full five day work week to start the new year. What a different feeling than one has during the dwindling weeks of a year’s end. For one thing, we are now beginning the so-called “wave” booking season. One of the consequences of this is a strong desire every three minutes or so to ask our colleagues in revenue management how the bookings are going. In reality, the booking volume isn’t so radically different than at other times of the year. The “wave” hasn’t been as pronounced in recent years as it was 10 years ago. Nevertheless, because a significant % of the year’s business remains to be booked, we are all anxious to extrapolate what we are experiencing to guess at how the year might be. It’s hard to tell if our friends in revenue management really like the extra attention or not.

One of the members of our Board of Directors, Bill Reilly, was in the office today. He is the Chair of our Board Committee on Safety, Security, Environment, Medical & Public Health. He was in for one of the occasional briefings we give to him. Bill is a great asset to the company, having served as Administrator of the EPA under the first President Bush. Gary Bald, our Senior VP responsible within management for the same five areas of Safety, Security, Environment, Medical & Public, arranged the briefing for Bill. Senior members of Gary’s team presented the latest developments in the different areas. I sat in on part of the discussion and as always, it makes me very proud to be a part of a company that works so hard to do the right things and to do them well. Often, we are exploring completely new terrain, especially as it relates to the environment.

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BY:Adam|7th January, 2010 9 Comments

An Opportunity Seized in New Jersey

One of the great things about being at Royal Caribbean International is you get to be part of something where you can say “no one has done that before.” Understandably, most readers would quickly think of our ships. After all, the delivery of Oasis of the Seas will mark the eighth time we have established a new standard of innovation on the water – if you’re counting, that would be Song of Norway, Song of America, Sovereign-class, Vision-class, Voyager-class, Radiance-class, Freedom-class and now Oasis-class.

But today I’m not thinking of the ships themselves, but rather one of the places we go – Cape Liberty Cruise Port in Bayonne, New Jersey. Proud home of Explorer of the Seas and next year also home to our sister brand’s ship Celebrity Summit. Just over two weeks ago, Cape Liberty celebrated five years since the first call of Voyager of the Seas.  Since then, 1.552 million guests have embarked on cruises at Cape Liberty on a total of 308 sailings. And we have consistently achieved some of our highest embarkation ratings in Bayonne.

When I think back on my 20+ years in the business, the creation of Cape Liberty strikes me as one of the most amazing developments of all.

Celebrating the opening of our H1 pier at Cape Liberty Cruise Port

Celebrating the opening of our H1 pier at Cape Liberty Cruise Port

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BY:Adam|1st June, 2009 25 Comments