Roll calls
 

On our first cruise a few years ago, there were at least 100 people on the roll call. It was nice to meet some of them and many put together excursions that were good and saved money.

The number of people joining roll calls seems to have dwindled to almost nothing. Opinions, please.
Do many cruisers not know about roll calls?
Are they not interested?
Are they somehow finding other groups on Facebook?
Because there are so many websites for booking cruises, are fewer people looking at cruisecritic.com?
Except for some on NCL's website, I have not found others.
If there are non for your cruise on cruisecritic, how do you find any roll call for your ship?

I don't why there aren't more of them. I always join mine but rarely post anything because I am looking for information (e.g. independent shore excursions) rather than inane chatter so common to Facebook.

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Vic's travels: http://my.flightmemory.com/vogilvie

I have always checked (note read) roll calls and not post anything unless there is something interesting. I used to go to the meet and greet and I have stopped dong that too.

Reason? Too many people not interested in helping others but there just to boast.

At the roll call, there seems to be more newbies posting and no one seems to be answering any questions and no one seems to taking the "lead", or organizing thing. Maybe in this new age, people are less trusty and more skeptical?

I have always said that the people here are friendlier and are more than willing to help. That's why I post here and "read" there.

I have also find the info there are "tainted" at times but questionable reviews. There were reports of scandals years ago over cruise line employee posting reviews of cruises that they have not been on with generic comments that were cut and pasted. Then there were reports of incentives given to people to post favorable comments. I think by and large, those things had been cleaned out but just like here, we see advertising and self promotion from time to time.

Speaking of that "other site" just looked at their Viking River cruise reviews. Could not get past the first one for the Viking Ingvi. The first page is all 5 *, most are by first and only time posters and those with more that one post have given 58 to other Viking cruise. One guy even submitted a post for the same cruise twice two mos. apart. "fake news. " :D.

Similar to TripAdvisor reviews!

Larry, maybe they are really good and deserving the 5*?

That's why I do not like the reviews there, the star system is subjective and relative, but relative to what?

If you stay exclusively in Four Seasons, Ritz Carlton and JW Marriots and better hotels when you travel, you will not rank any ship higher than 3*s.

If you typically stay at Motel 6 or 8's, everything is 5*.

Or if you are a shill then its a 5* too. :S-.

Are they that good? Hell no!
If you look at reviews on cc of other ships no where do you see such marks. There is variety. Some praise, others roast and still others are in between. That's normal. To have every single post with a 5* rating and most by one and done members is to me way too obvious. Hey it's stacking the deck. Don't forget I'm from Chicago as in "vote early, vote often."

I think it might be due to cruisers not knowing about cruise
critic. Just returned from a Princess cruise & ran a
meet & greet wherein very few had joined.

Caveat: If you do chair a meet & greet,send reminder
notes to pax cabins as folks tend to forget after they
have signed up.

I think there are people who read roll calls and people who go to the meet & greets. I used roll call for a South America cruise to join one private group tour and also was able to contact someone who had posted about wanting to share bird guides. I also posted some info about a fairly new and inexpensive hotel in Valparaiso that it seemed many people didn't know about and how to use public transit from the airport to Valpo and also from the Ibis to the port. I think I went to the meet and greet only to say hi to the organizers of the group tour.

As far as meeting people on a big cruise ship, it seems you just run into the same people repeatedly, eg those who like to walk laps, or do to the same activities, even if it's just the people who like to walk laps.