Shore Excursion purchased through RCCL almost got us killed
Complaint
Peter Koo
Country: United States
A warning to any possible cruiser:
Time: April 2010, Spring Break.
Cruise: RCCL, Mariner of the Sea, Mexican Rivera
Location: 1st Port of Call, Mazatlan.
Destination: Papantla Flyers Show and Resort Beach Afterward
This was a trip planned by my wife. I was not too sure about going down south of the border since we have seen lots of stories about bodies without heads. We normally book Disney Cruise but Disney Cruise was not sailing in the west coast at this time. We also decide to book RCCL since we can have a mini suite for about $3,700.00 for a family of three versus $5,500.00 for a second deck with a port hole on Disney Cruise. The bottom line, you get what you paid for.
First sign of problem, remote control for the TV is not working because the battery cover is broken and RCCL tried to fix it with scotch tape. I requested a second one and that one was also not working. I had to wait until 2:00AM to get a remote that kind of worked. Sign #1, RCCL is so cheap that they can not afford to fix the bad remote and they need to use scotch tape to hold the remote together.
We check out the kids program on the ship and you can tell the crew was not very organized. It give you a feel ing of chaos and you have that bad feeling of leaving your kids there. The crew was not trained to use the equipment or the equipment is defective since they have to yell out of their lung so the kids can hear them. I wonder why don't they use the microphone system. It is day and night compared to Disney's kids club. BTW, the schedule for the kids area is sporadic. If the schedule covers lunch time, you need to pay $9.00 for lunch for your kids. I thought all the food was covered on this ship.
1st port of call, Mazatlan. We got up early and got to the theater to get ready for our shore excursion. We did this excursion with Princess Cruise 4-5 years ago so we have some knowledge of how this excursion should happen. To our surprise, after been lead to the pier, we would handed to a local Mexican lady who barely speaks any English. She direct our group of about 25 to 30 people to walk toward the street. We thought we were boarding a tour bus, but to our surprise, she led us to the taxi line and start to break us up into group of 3 to 4 people and direct us to ride the local city taxi. She was busy directing traffic and throw some quick direction to the taxi driver. Our family of three, me, my wife and our 7 years old daughter was hustled into this really old and clucking taxi. During the chaos, she muffled something to the taxi driver and the taxi driver just nodded to her and started driving.
Since we don't speak any local language, we have no idea if the driver got the instruction from the local tour guide. After 5 minutes on the road, the driver trying to speak to us in Spanish. I assumed he was asking us where we were going. To our shock, he has no idea where we are suppose to go. We tried to explain to him that we should be going to this show place called " Papantla Flyers Show" but he just looked at us with a deer in the headlight look.
This is the time right after "Mazatlan Disco Shooting, 6 Killed" two month before. This taxi took us to unfamiliar part of Mazatlan and the driver is completely lost. To make the situation worse, this taxi is so old and falling apart that the temperature gauge is climbing toward red zone. I maintain my own car at home so I know the health of a car by just listening to the way the engine and transmission's noise. This taxi is ready to fall apart any time. To make the situation worse, this driver don't care about the rising temperature. I tried to point to him that the temperature is in the red by pointing at the gauge. All he does is look at me and smile. I start to tell my wife to check the doors and make sure the door can be open from inside in case the car catch on fire from the over heating of the engine.
Finally, after about 15 minutes of overheating, the car finally stopped running and broke down at side of the street. He signal us to stay in the car while he try to find water. We decide that it is way to dangerous to stay in a car that smoke/steam is bellowing out from under the hood. We got out of the car and start to walk, yet we have no idea which direction to walk. This is when we noticed that along the beach, every 100 feet there is a military personnel sitting in a chair with automatic rifle on their shoulder. We found out later that these military personnel was there to guard the beach for the tourist safety.
After walking aimlessly for about 5 minutes, the taxi driver caught up to us and signal to us to get back in the taxi. Since we have no idea where we should go, we got back into the taxi and the taxi struggled for another five minutes on the road and died again. This time, we got out of the taxi and start walking toward some shopping area, still lost and have no idea how to get to where we suppose to go. We were weary about catching another taxi fearing that we don't speaker the language and who knows where the driver could take us. While we were walking on the road past a restaurant, a lady was speaking to us in English trying to invite us to have meal at her restaurant. We looked at her and shook our head and kept on walking. She were not giving up easily and walked onto the side walk to try to talk us back into the restaurant. If we were in a better mood, I would definitely dine in her restaurant just because of her sales effort. We explain to her that we need to get to the "Papantla Flyers Show" and our taxi broke down. She told us in her limited English that we were walking the wrong direction. She helped us flag down another taxi and told the taxi driver where we need to go and waved good bye to us. I will never forget her hospitality. This new taxi driver told us that he actually lived in USA for about 7 years and speaks fluent English. We told him what happen to us and he told us that Mazatlan has not been safe lately and at night, you can hear gun fire going off in the inland away from the beach. This is where he told us why the military is guarding the beach for the safety of the tourist.
After ten minutes ride in the taxi, we finally got to our show place and our group was just walking out of the show. After this fiasco, both my wife and I have no interest in the show any more. We sat through the show wondering what could have happened.
After we got back to the ship, I was just glad to be alive from the adventure and don't feel I want to rip someone's heads off for this screw up. Normally, I am the one with the short fuse and have no problem to let people know that they screwed up. My wife is the one that normally will just walk away from the situation and try not to make a scene. Not this time, she was furious. The best way to piss of a women is to put her kid in danger. RCCL broke this golden rule with her and I have not seen her so pissed off before. It was kind of funny because I never have seen her wanting to get to the bottom of similar case before. She files a complain to the customer service desk after we got back but we did not get even a phone call from RCCL. What pissed her so much is that she is the one that planned the excursion and no where in the description did it states that we need to ride a local taxi operated by an unknown driver who could have been a serial killer.
What troubled us so much is that RCCL basically took the lowest bid from the local tour company and never bother to find out if this tour company have the right equipment. Obviously this low bidder did not own any bus, thus the only way is to shuttle the customer using what is available which is the local unauthorized taxi. My wife checked with the front desk every night to try to find the person whom is responsible for this adventure. Every time she was told to check back later and the supervisor is not available. It has been almost two years now and we are still waiting for some type of acknowledgement from RCCL.
Buyers beware, you get what you paid for. We took the $1,500 saving compared to Disney Cruise and almost lost our live on this trip. Ask you self, is your family's live worth the $1,500 saving? RCCL surly don't give a crap about your family's safety as long as they get their bottom line.
If you have a better story about RCCL then mine, let share it and I would like to read your RCCL adventure.
BTW, if you have kids, pay the extra for Disney Cruise because it will be money well spent!!!!!
RCCL, we are still waiting for your apology!!!!
Time: April 2010, Spring Break.
Cruise: RCCL, Mariner of the Sea, Mexican Rivera
Location: 1st Port of Call, Mazatlan.
Destination: Papantla Flyers Show and Resort Beach Afterward
This was a trip planned by my wife. I was not too sure about going down south of the border since we have seen lots of stories about bodies without heads. We normally book Disney Cruise but Disney Cruise was not sailing in the west coast at this time. We also decide to book RCCL since we can have a mini suite for about $3,700.00 for a family of three versus $5,500.00 for a second deck with a port hole on Disney Cruise. The bottom line, you get what you paid for.
First sign of problem, remote control for the TV is not working because the battery cover is broken and RCCL tried to fix it with scotch tape. I requested a second one and that one was also not working. I had to wait until 2:00AM to get a remote that kind of worked. Sign #1, RCCL is so cheap that they can not afford to fix the bad remote and they need to use scotch tape to hold the remote together.
We check out the kids program on the ship and you can tell the crew was not very organized. It give you a feel ing of chaos and you have that bad feeling of leaving your kids there. The crew was not trained to use the equipment or the equipment is defective since they have to yell out of their lung so the kids can hear them. I wonder why don't they use the microphone system. It is day and night compared to Disney's kids club. BTW, the schedule for the kids area is sporadic. If the schedule covers lunch time, you need to pay $9.00 for lunch for your kids. I thought all the food was covered on this ship.
1st port of call, Mazatlan. We got up early and got to the theater to get ready for our shore excursion. We did this excursion with Princess Cruise 4-5 years ago so we have some knowledge of how this excursion should happen. To our surprise, after been lead to the pier, we would handed to a local Mexican lady who barely speaks any English. She direct our group of about 25 to 30 people to walk toward the street. We thought we were boarding a tour bus, but to our surprise, she led us to the taxi line and start to break us up into group of 3 to 4 people and direct us to ride the local city taxi. She was busy directing traffic and throw some quick direction to the taxi driver. Our family of three, me, my wife and our 7 years old daughter was hustled into this really old and clucking taxi. During the chaos, she muffled something to the taxi driver and the taxi driver just nodded to her and started driving.
Since we don't speak any local language, we have no idea if the driver got the instruction from the local tour guide. After 5 minutes on the road, the driver trying to speak to us in Spanish. I assumed he was asking us where we were going. To our shock, he has no idea where we are suppose to go. We tried to explain to him that we should be going to this show place called " Papantla Flyers Show" but he just looked at us with a deer in the headlight look.
This is the time right after "Mazatlan Disco Shooting, 6 Killed" two month before. This taxi took us to unfamiliar part of Mazatlan and the driver is completely lost. To make the situation worse, this taxi is so old and falling apart that the temperature gauge is climbing toward red zone. I maintain my own car at home so I know the health of a car by just listening to the way the engine and transmission's noise. This taxi is ready to fall apart any time. To make the situation worse, this driver don't care about the rising temperature. I tried to point to him that the temperature is in the red by pointing at the gauge. All he does is look at me and smile. I start to tell my wife to check the doors and make sure the door can be open from inside in case the car catch on fire from the over heating of the engine.
Finally, after about 15 minutes of overheating, the car finally stopped running and broke down at side of the street. He signal us to stay in the car while he try to find water. We decide that it is way to dangerous to stay in a car that smoke/steam is bellowing out from under the hood. We got out of the car and start to walk, yet we have no idea which direction to walk. This is when we noticed that along the beach, every 100 feet there is a military personnel sitting in a chair with automatic rifle on their shoulder. We found out later that these military personnel was there to guard the beach for the tourist safety.
After walking aimlessly for about 5 minutes, the taxi driver caught up to us and signal to us to get back in the taxi. Since we have no idea where we should go, we got back into the taxi and the taxi struggled for another five minutes on the road and died again. This time, we got out of the taxi and start walking toward some shopping area, still lost and have no idea how to get to where we suppose to go. We were weary about catching another taxi fearing that we don't speaker the language and who knows where the driver could take us. While we were walking on the road past a restaurant, a lady was speaking to us in English trying to invite us to have meal at her restaurant. We looked at her and shook our head and kept on walking. She were not giving up easily and walked onto the side walk to try to talk us back into the restaurant. If we were in a better mood, I would definitely dine in her restaurant just because of her sales effort. We explain to her that we need to get to the "Papantla Flyers Show" and our taxi broke down. She told us in her limited English that we were walking the wrong direction. She helped us flag down another taxi and told the taxi driver where we need to go and waved good bye to us. I will never forget her hospitality. This new taxi driver told us that he actually lived in USA for about 7 years and speaks fluent English. We told him what happen to us and he told us that Mazatlan has not been safe lately and at night, you can hear gun fire going off in the inland away from the beach. This is where he told us why the military is guarding the beach for the safety of the tourist.
After ten minutes ride in the taxi, we finally got to our show place and our group was just walking out of the show. After this fiasco, both my wife and I have no interest in the show any more. We sat through the show wondering what could have happened.
After we got back to the ship, I was just glad to be alive from the adventure and don't feel I want to rip someone's heads off for this screw up. Normally, I am the one with the short fuse and have no problem to let people know that they screwed up. My wife is the one that normally will just walk away from the situation and try not to make a scene. Not this time, she was furious. The best way to piss of a women is to put her kid in danger. RCCL broke this golden rule with her and I have not seen her so pissed off before. It was kind of funny because I never have seen her wanting to get to the bottom of similar case before. She files a complain to the customer service desk after we got back but we did not get even a phone call from RCCL. What pissed her so much is that she is the one that planned the excursion and no where in the description did it states that we need to ride a local taxi operated by an unknown driver who could have been a serial killer.
What troubled us so much is that RCCL basically took the lowest bid from the local tour company and never bother to find out if this tour company have the right equipment. Obviously this low bidder did not own any bus, thus the only way is to shuttle the customer using what is available which is the local unauthorized taxi. My wife checked with the front desk every night to try to find the person whom is responsible for this adventure. Every time she was told to check back later and the supervisor is not available. It has been almost two years now and we are still waiting for some type of acknowledgement from RCCL.
Buyers beware, you get what you paid for. We took the $1,500 saving compared to Disney Cruise and almost lost our live on this trip. Ask you self, is your family's live worth the $1,500 saving? RCCL surly don't give a crap about your family's safety as long as they get their bottom line.
If you have a better story about RCCL then mine, let share it and I would like to read your RCCL adventure.
BTW, if you have kids, pay the extra for Disney Cruise because it will be money well spent!!!!!
RCCL, we are still waiting for your apology!!!!
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