A whirl-wind tour of the news about Royal Caribbean International…..

• Steiner Leisure will continue to run the spas aboard Royal Caribbean International ships, including both of the Oasis class.

• Royal Caribbean International hopes to realize an 11% gain in fuel efficiency over the next five years.

• Royal Caribbean International is sending eight ships to Europe in 2010. They include three Voyager class including Voyager, Navigator, and Adventure of the Seas. Adventure, who has been sailing out of San Juan almost exclusively since her launch, will now pioneer cruising out of Malaga, Spain. Two Radiance class, the Jewel and Brilliance of the Seas are deploying, as are Splendor and Vision of their namesake Vision class. Independence of the Seas returns to represent the Freedom class.

• Royal Caribbean International is joining with Universal Orlando to offer the kind of Cruise-Land vacations previously best associated with Disney. They go a step further however, in providing options for more itinerary lengths. Where the Disney packages were for joint cruise-land trips of 3 to 5 days, Royal Caribbean International is moving forward with 7 night outings with Freedom of the Seas. It is described as being part of a “Way More than a Cruise” program. This I find curious, as I had thought we had seen the last of the older marketing tag-lines. All told however, it sounds like a wise enough move. Universal’s family or parks appeal to the post-Disney age range, yet retain some leverage in conjunction with using the existing Nickelodeon relationship.

• Employees of federal, state, or local law enforcement and fire departments across the U.S. will get a 20% discount on Royal Caribbean.

•  Booking for Allure of the Seas has begun!

That didn’t take long!

Royal Caribbean International is joining with Universal Orlando to offer the kind of Cruise-Land vacations previously best associated with Disney. They go a step further however, in providing options for more itinerary lengths. Where the Disney packages were for joint cruise-land trips of 3 to 5 days aboard Monarch of the Seas, and 7 night outings with Freedom of the Seas. It is described as being part of a “Way More than a Cruise” program. This I find curious, as I had thought we had seen the last of the older marketing tag-lines. All told however, it sounds like a wise enough move. Universal’s family or parks appeal to the post-Disney age range, yet retain some leverage in conjunction with using the existing Nickelodeon relationship.

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If you have been keeping tabs, you know that Royal Caribbean International has been pushing hard to ramp-up their youth programming in recent years. The coming of the Voyager class brought with it a massive amount of raw space dedicated to youth programming. Freedom built on that with dedicated pool space. Oasis appears likely to add massively to what all previous class’ of ship have featured.

Recently, new programming options were announced for the fleet, which will be welcome to many families.

Parents can get Huggies brand diapers and organic baby food ordered for the cruise and send to the stateroom. That helps in not having to pack half a trunk full of them prior to departure. You can borrow Fisher-Price toys, which again, is good to not need to haul that stuff onto the ship. This works for some ages better than others, but the partnership with Royal Caribbean International likely will ensure plenty of Peak-a-Blocks for the toddlers.

Much of the change seems to focus on assisting families be together at meals and activities, but aid in shepherding the wee-ones off to their own events. The “My Family Time Dining” will accelerate serving to kids and have their meal done in 45 minutes, with food arriving right after sitting down. After dinner, ships counselors will come and take the kids to youth activities, allow parents to continue to eat at a normal pace. Dinner itself is being geared towards the kids, which was a key point my wife and I have discussed. Cold Fruit Soup and some main courses aren’t always to the kids desire. So they are adding kid-friendly and healthy options, go so far as to serve them on a special place mat. I hope that it allows for coloring. A special $7.95 Lunch and Play program will keep the kids in the Adventure Ocean, with a box-lunch and supervision from during the mid-day period.

A new baby stroller program for morning walks on-deck, and a battery of co-branded programs for the youngest cruisers are going to be launched, as will an upgraded in-cabin babysitting offering. They are keeping the teen disco open until 2 a.m. Which has the mixed virtue of keeping the kids hidden, but then flushing them back outside late at night.

The program is due to roll-out across the fleet this July.

I have a five year-old daughter and a three year old son. After our first cruise, my wife, who is the assistant director of the top private daycare in our city, and I both poured hours into how we would handle the logistics taking future cruises with children. So I have had a keen eye on the youth programs on Royal Caribbean International for years. What I see, I like. The programming is helping to bring down barriers to family cruising. In truth, this should have happened a long time ago, but that said, at least it is happening now.

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Many of you have noted the articles in various blogs discussing the “Royal Champions” of late.  Specifically you have been reading about those among this group of selected web personalities who have spoken of cruises on Royal Caribbean without disclosing their status when posting to different forums. Some of you may be reading this and hearing of them for the first time.  And at the risk of a massive and to many, boring post, I offer some background on the matter, and on the future of this websites.

Royal Caribbean hired a company to seek out people who spoke favorably of the line.  These people were dubbed “Royal Champions.”  There are presently estimated to be between 50 and 75 people whom are so named by the company.   In 2007 a group of these people were invited to take a cruise on Liberty of the Seas, during her pre-inaugural schedule.  I was one of those people.  There were no strings attached to this cruise, and that was said in plan terms when I was called by way of my Crown and Anchor entry with the company.

Those invited were required to pay their own way to the ship, expenses while onboard, etc.  A number of people within this group were invited to attend one of the Oasis of the Seas “reveals” in 2008.  I was not among that group, though I might have been invited, I don’t recall.

More recently the entire group has been asked to update their personal information in what most regard as preparation for one or more events leading to the launch of Oasis.  However, it is the cruise on Liberty of the Seas which is at the crux of the current hullabaloo.

To my personal knowledge there are people from many circles among the Royal Champions who were on Liberty.  They include most notably, frequent and positive speaking posters from among the membership of Cruise Critic, a large cruise focused website I’m sure you all know well.  I’ve more recently become absolutely certain that people from Cruise Mates, and several other forums were invited on the cruise, though it may not have been due to posts on those forums.  Suffice to say however that the people on the cruise had access and use of every forum online.  I was not invited as one of these people.

In addition, there were people sent on the cruise who were given the trip as a reward for contests as I recall.  Some of these trips were given out by radio contests in New York City if memory servers.  Also among the group were select blog writers, posters to the ancient Usenet group Rec.Travel.Cruises, and yours truly.  The ship was also full of Crown and Anchor members of mostly Diamond level or higher, not all of whom I’ve learned were happy to have others aside from the many travel agents and VIPs aboard.

As to those who became known as Royal Champions, their going was well known to the online community at the time, and it was all very exciting as I recall.  It did spur questions as to how folks were selected at the time, and the running discussions lead many people to suddenly attempt to woo attention by “talking-up” Royal Caribbean as they assumed was needed to “join” the groups being talked about.  That behavior has persisted to present day, and frankly it is one reason I simply gave-up on reading several forums more than once a year on average.

I was confused about how exactly I was invited until a reception aboard ship when I had a chance to shake a few hands, make a few contacts.  In talking to several people aboard, it seems I may have been something of a novelty.  I am not sure if I stand as unique, but I did not meet any other person who was the owner and operator of a website akin to this. The cruise was to me a great validation of the years of hard work I had already put into Royal Caribbean Fan, and has very much inspired me to redouble my efforts to improve the site.

So we come now to more recent months.  A note went out to people who had been among those “Royal Champions” asking for updated contact information.   The comments posted online mentioning this lead to broader questions as to what “Royal Champions” were, and what they did.  This lead some consumer issues blogs and others to find an old entry on the website of the marketing company that developed the first list of champions.  The result has been that an ugly mess has spilled into the blogs and online forums about “Royal Champions.”

The main thrust of the critical comments is in the feeling that people in this group mislead people online by posting reviews of their trip. Or that subsequent comments were intended to curry favor with Royal Caribbean.  Likewise, the line itself is being attacked for the program itself.  What will come of it for the events that involve Royal Champions is hard to say.  I’ve observed there are a surprisingly large number of people who simply did not know they were even part of the program.  And these were people actually on the ship in 07.  The fuss also seems to be about something that is as common a practice in many industries as you can count, and has been stirred up mainly due to a few people being over zealous and people be jealous.

For my part, you know what you get when visiting a website called Royal Caribbean Fan.  I was proud of being invited on the cruise I took, and hope to have the chance to do it again.  I dislike the idea of not telling folks that a given trip or cruise was taken for free, or whatever else might prove to be the case.  How, if at all, will this impact how I do things here?  To begin with, I am going to alter the Terms of Service to require people  reviewing a cruise to disclose if they were receiving that cruise in exchange for some form of consideration.

Moving forward, I do expect to partner with travel agents and companies to aid in building the size of our community.  I expect these partnerships to take several forms, and what I or the site gains from it will vary.  The most immediate project will be to provide promotional cards about this site to willing agents and business’.  The purpose being simply to aid in developing a growing base of users.   Some degree of reciprocal promotion is possible here, and the degree I allow that will depend.

Next, I have been asked by several travel agents, about the idea of promoting cruises they are organizing, on this site.  I don’t want this site to become overwhelmed with promotions, so how many people I form partnerships with will depend.  What I do for these cruises, and the consideration given in return may vary as well. I expect that if a group cruise promoted on this site were to sell-out, I may receive some discount, large or small should I be able to go myself.  The site may gain direct promotion to the people booking on these cruises through their agent, for which I may also create forum areas for those groups to discuss their trips.

I do plan to expand my territory online, which will mean a few things.  First, I’ll be adding some other projects, such as Cruise Aficionados and Cruise Travel Gear, to touch on other areas of the industry that I don’t want to mix with Royal Caribbean Fan.

Lastly, I intend to offer my services to travel agents and other business’ which might want to bolster their own web operations. Times being what they are, to not take advantage of my skills seems nuts.

In the end, this site is my baby, and I intend to walk softly and treat it well.

The Mariner of the Seas has arrived in its new home port of Los Angeles where she will commence cruises to the Mixican Riviera.  Building up to the arrival was a film festival, and aboard the ship, Carol Channing and Cloris Leachman lent star power to the cruise.  Channing screened Thoroughly Modern Millie, while Leachman, fresh from her PR bounce from Dancing With the Stars, performed her one woman show.  On shore, a film festival was billed as the first of an annual series.

Mariner of the Seas is the first Voyager class vessel to sail from the west coast.  She is the second to last of the class to have been built before Freedom of the Seas.

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