Last Wednesday, Royal Caribbean’s Adventure of the Seas canceled two port calls after the ship’s cruise ship’ “fixipod” propulsion unit device lost oil as the ship headed to port in St. Kitts.

Royal Caribbean says that it placed oil booms around the ship to contain the leaking oil, and its engineers began addressing the problem.

Since then, cruise passengers and family members ashore have expressed concern with what happening with the ship and whether there will be a delay or changes in the itinerary of the cruise which leaves today.

Their concerns intensified after the cruise ship lost all propulsion last night.

There have been on line discussions whether the “fixipod” will be repaired before the ship goes into dry dock on March 30th. The ship has limped back to San Juan at very low speed this morning. It looks like there have been additional issues which slowed the ship down further. At this point it looks like today’s cruise may going forward (still anyone’s guess) but it’s less than clear how much of a delay there will be in boarding and/or sailing.

As usual, the discussion seem to be only when the ship will sail, not whether it’s safe to cruise on a ship with 5 – 6 days of propulsion problems.

Cruise Critic members have expressed frustration over what they perceive as a lack of communication by Royal Caribbean. One member posted:

“They’ve posted NOTHING on the agent site, consumer site, their FB page, nor either the Public Relations nor regular twitter feeds, and I’ve asked!

And, no one knows diddly when you call….”

On March 21, Royal Caribbean posted this one tweet:

“Adventure is sailing a modified itinerary due to a delayed departure from St. Kitts for required work on the ship’s fixipod.”

But nothing since then. It’s surprising that a multi-billion dollar corporation which spends literally hundreds of millions a year in a big marketing campaign can’t figure out how to utilize Twitter and Facebook (both are free) to communicate with their guests and the public.

I have not heard anything about whether the cruise line intends to compensate the passengers for the missed ports of call. Anyone know?

If you were on the cruise, please leave a comment or join the discussion on Facebook. If you have photos or a video of the tugs bringing the ship into port in San Juan, please send us a copy!

March 24, 2014 Update: This is the most inept PR handling of a cruise problem I have ever seen. Read about Royal PR #FAIL: Royal Caribbean Keeps Adventure & Navigator Passengers in the Dark.

Photo Credit:

Top: CC-BY-SA-3.0/Matt H. Wade at Wikipedia

Bottom: Kvaerner Masa (image of Voyager of the Seas)