Tamara Lush
Journalist Given Free Cruise For Two Day Smooze
RCCI Majesty Of The Seas - February 23, 2007
The mail bag at Cruise Bruise had been heavy the past few weeks. So much so, that we had begun to archive email after only a quick preview, in order to keep things running here. Then, there was the email from Tamara Lush.
On the surface, I was ready to send it to archive, to look at next week if things slowed down. But, I was intriqued that this journalist would contact us to show us a story she had authored. It seemed odd to me; odd enough to take a few minutes to click the link in the email to read the story.
I quickly skimmed the story trying to find the meat and potatoes of the article, and in doing so, wasn't finding anything that was really earth shattering. So, I moved on to page 2, and skimmed some more. That is when I caught it, the message she was trying to send.
The message of the article didn't get shoved down your throat. Instead, it was a loose knit series of events that painted an entire picture, and a strong message. Suddenly, I got it. Royal Caribbean had used the relaunch cruise as an opportunity to sway journalist and tour operators' opinions of the Majesty Of The Sea, which has one of the worst sanitation records historically, for a ship owned by a major cruise line. It was a propaganda cruise, to smooze, booze and chew their way into positive reviews by the travel industry mouth pieces. Tamara Lush did not buy it.
The article she wrote was about Royal Caribbean Cruise Line, more specifically about the Majesty Of The Seas. This vessel was first launched in 1992, and has just been through a month long refit. Let me stop right here to fill you in on the history of the Majesty Of The Seas, so you can better understand what she was getting at. Knowing the history of Majesty, I was especially interested in what she had to say.
Majesty Of The Seas had become not only a cruise line public opinion liabilty but a cruise industry liability as well. Our coverage of their sanitation reports brought front and center their filthy vessel, plagued by cockroaches in the gallies. Their July 10, 2006 inspection infestation contributed to a low score of 90 on a CDC inspection report that included 52 violations. I am not talking about a single dead cockroach in the corner of a deck.
There were live cockroaches crawling on the grill, in broad daylight, as well as dead cockroaches with feet in the air on the same grill. This is a real sign of a severe infestation problem.
Had this been the first incident of cockroach infestation, there might be some public understanding. However, though not written up continually for cockroaches found during inspections, we did see cockroaches noted on many other inspections. This indicates the problem was continuous, just not identified continually.
A year prior, in the July 15, 2005 inspection, the vessel report specified:
"NUMEROUS ADULT, JUVENILE, AND NYMPH COCKROACHES WERE NOTED IN VARIOUS AREAS OF THE GALLEYS. THESE LOCATIONS WERE AS FOLLOWS: THE HOT GALLEY VEGETABLE STATION UNDER THE 3-COMPARTMENT SINK AND STEAMER UNIT CABINET THE BAKERY ON THE DECK BEHIND THE FLOUR STORAGE AREA BETWEEN THE TWO MIXERS THE BAKERY UNDER THE 3-COMPARTMENT SINK NEXT TO THE LARGE MIXER THE PASTRY AREA ON THE DECK NEAR THE PREPARATION SINK THE DISHWASH AREA ON THE DECK BEHIND THE WASTE BINS NEAR THE SOILED DROP OFF"
Prior to that, the ship had a violation for not actively monitoring pest activity in January 2005.
February 16, 1997 they received violations for cockroaches "Three adult cockroaches were observed in the corner on the left side of the oven and Two cockroaches were observed in the storage bin of the frozen yogurt machine." They failed their inspection, with a score of 85 and were held in port.
Then again on April 13, 1997, a horrifying sanitation report indicated "The above ovens [production galley] were infested with cockroaches. They were given an 86 score inspite of this, and allowed to board passengers (85 is failing).
At this point, it is worthy to note, that the top ships in the industry have never had a violation for cockroaches. This is not something that is a common problem onboard cruise ships. In fact, very few ships have received one or more violations for cockroaches. Yet, this ship has repeated violations over a long period of time, which tells anyone who cares to think about it, this ship has a filthy galley. That fact is supported by other violations on their inspection reports.
The crew of this ship has a history of sanitation negligence, racking up a long list of violations for filth, having never achieved a score of 100 in the history of this vessel. Given the crew is changed continually, this means the root of the problem onboard Majesty Of The Seas is a corporation neglect problem.
Inspections that had violations for cockroaches were as follows:
August 25, 1996 - cockroaches in production galley
February 16, 1997 - cockroach in cold pantry, cockroaches in oven, cockroaches in yogurt machine
April 13, 1997 - cockroaches in ovens, crew galley urinals overflowing onto the deck
August 24, 1997 - cockroach on countertop
January 24, 1999 - cockroaches in juice machines, cockroaches in cardboard boxes on beverage counter, crawling on wall near pot wash
September 5, 1999 - cockroaches in soup station coffer dam, employees handling dirty dishes then clean dishes without washing hands in between
February 9, 2001 - 57 violations, cockroaches in juice machine, cockroaches in refrigerator on food, cockroaches under hot plates
July 15, 2005 - 61 violations, cockroaches in vegetable station, cockroaches near flour in bakery, cockroaches near sinks
July 10, 2006 - 52 violations, cockroaches in hot galley crawling on grill
This means if you think their cockroach problems are gone, think again. For a problem to have gone on for so long, there are serious staff and upper management problems. A refit will not solve that, nor will a smooze, booze and cruise relaunched party.
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Tamara Lush
Journalist Given Free Cruise For Two Day Smooze
RCCI Majesty Of The Seas - February 23, 2007
