Mary and I returned from our bi-annual cruise on the Grandeur of the Seas 4 weeks ago.
Here is a quote from the Royal Caribbean web site
“Why Our Cruise Ships?
Each ship in our fleet is packed with incredible features that make your journey unforgettable.“
As it happens the ship went through a refit earlier in 2012 year so our expectations were high for and enjoyable and comfortable experience.
This hope was initially dented when we boarded. We made our way straight to our cabin to drop our carry on bages before setting of to explore the ship. Our cabin was 4070 which is located third along the corridor from the Centrum. The Centrum is a beautiful 7 deck high atrium which was to be a focal point for many entertainment activitied throughout our 11 day cruise. It did look very good on first impressions – but that “good feeling” lasted no more then about 5 seconds as walked through the Centrum past the R Bar towards our cabin. We were greeted with a quite over whelming stench of raw sewerage! This was completely unexpected in this centre piece of grandeur ;-(
Initial feeling was that his would be a passing occurance and things would get better as soon as we set sail. In fact this was not to be the case and we were to experience this unwelcome smell each time we left our cabin and passed through the centrum – which we needed to do each time we left our room to engage an any activity. There were a few occassions when the area was stench free but I would estimate that 95% of the time this unwelcome phenominum was present.
We did complain to the customer service desk and were told that many people had also done the same. This was of no real consolation to us and there is no doubt that this had a profound negative impact on our enjoyment of our holiday which otherwise was excellent.
The Captain and First Engineer held a Q & A session in the Centrum when the matter of the stench was raised by three passengers. We were told that the smell was caused by the installation of a new sewage treatment plant at the recent refit. Apparently, wind direction can cause fumes from the sewage storage tanks to enter the ship – this was the cause of the effect we experienced!!!!!!!!. My impression was that this was being passed of as normal occurance when a new sewerage plant is installed as it takes time for “the natural bacteria in the tanks to build up to a sufficient level to process and decompose sewage matter efficiently”. I am afraid that this lame explanation did not reassure me that things were as they should be!
If this is a “normal ” phenominum then I am afraid that I will certainly need to revise any plans for future cruise holidays. Interestingly, in our past 4 cruises we were never subjected to this sort of situation – so how it can be considered to be normal – seems to counter our previous experiences.
When we returned we did some googling to see if there was any other comments about this problem. In fact it seems this has been an ongoing issues and a number of former passengers have commented about it on various forums. See the following critic sites which can be easily found by googling the following search string “granduer of the seas reviews”
Cruise Critic .co.uk
www.Cruise.co.uk
there are more sites which all tell a consistent story across a number of cruises by this ship. So there seems to be little evidence that Royal Caribbean is dealing with this problem. This is in my view a very unacceptable situation.
Onboard I filled in a complaint form and then on our return home I emailed to the “Crown and Anchor Society” to ask what address I can use to write to the Managing Director of Royal Caribbean about our experience. My wife also filled in a lengthy survey and raised the issue of the stench – and we have had no response to any of these communcation RCI. Four weeks have passed I have not even yet recieved an acknowledgement that my email has been received. It would appear that Royal Caribbean’s policy when faced with complaints of this nature is to simply ignore them.
I have held of publishing this post in the hope that I would revieve a response to my email – but it seems that even the RCI loyalty club ( the Crown and Anchor Society) does not consider that this problem warrants being acknowledged and responded to.
I am very dissappointed that we have had to endure this experience. But even more of a concern is the lack of any response from Royal Caribbean about it.
Should people paying for a 5 star experience be subjected to the equivelant of living in the middle of a sewerage plant? To be honest I have in the past visited a sewerage plant and the smell there was not nearly as intense as the one onboard the Grandeur of the Seas. Perhaps the ship should be renamed “Grandstench of the Seas”
My wife Lynda & myself can confirm the accuracy of this blog. We were located in a cabin 5th along in a corridor just off The Centrum and had the same issues with this constant bad odour throughout the cruise. We also complained to the Customer Service Desk & made comments in the ‘end-of-cruise’ questionnaire but have had no correspondence/ feedback from Royal Caribbean regarding the issues we raised regarding this bad odour. It appears that Royal Caribbean are well aware of the issue but prefer to ignore it along with the passenger complaints. They make a big play on ‘passenger loyalty’ but this is a one way loyalty if it means they have to admit that they have constantly ignored an on-going problem. Perhaps others reading this blog have managed to get hold of alternative Royal Caribbean e-mail addresses, which can be used to raise the issue at a higher level within the organisation. I’m sure Jim Buchan along with others (such as myself) in a similar position would welcome such information.
We had the same experience during November 7-21, 2012. The stench was horrible, unbearable, it was inhumane. I have read blogs from 2004, and this problems appears to have been an ongoing problem, since now the Ship is also knows as “the Sewage of the Seas” I think Royal Caribbean should be responsible for pain and suffering, because they exposed guests to toxic fumes, and also the Environment, because all of this was a big Pollution also to the Ocean. This is an issue that should really be brought about to the Company for compensation to all the guests, specially those who endured to have to move to others rooms.