The Perfect Storm: A Theft on Board the Ruby Princess

George and I have been cruising together since 2009.   We have taken at least one cruise every year since then…so I would consider us seasoned cruisers.  It’s not that cruising is our preferred travel method, but it gives us a chance to sample lots of places, so we know where we want to spend more time in the future!  That being said, we were really looking forward to this Hawaii cruise because we worked really hard this summer…and needed the rest and relaxation!

We boarded the ship on October 23rd, with our son and his fiancé.  After a very stressful and disorganized embarkation, we started to get settled in for a great vacation.  On October 26th, George and I took a nap…while the kids went to the casino.  You can imagine our shock and excitement when the kids came back to the room and told us that Alex had won $10,000 in the casino!  Later that evening, Alex went to cash out his winnings.  Immediately, he placed the white envelope in our safe…along with our wallets and passports (which is where we always place these items).  We checked to see if there was a Wells Fargo in Hawaii, so he could deposit the money while we were in port, but there were not any accessible branches.  

After spending a few days in Hawaii, we were on board heading back to San Francisco.  On November 3rd, Alex took $100 from his envelope and headed back to the casino.  He continued his lucky streak by winning $286!  At that point, he cashed out with his original $100 and his $286 in winnings and came back to the room to let us know!  At that time, he said that he was back to original winnings (because he spent a little money while on the islands).  He took the whole envelope out and decided to count his money.  

Much to his dismay, there was over $1000 missing from the envelope.  How could that possibly be?  That money was kept in the safe…and never left unlocked.  Alex was sure he did not spend that money.   After counting and triple counting, it was definitely short and we were certain about the amount of money that had been taken from the envelope by Alex during the week.  Besides the four of us, the only other person we know that has been in our room is our room steward.  But…how could that be?  The safe was locked!!!

I convinced the family that we needed to go report it to the guest services.  Upon our arrival to the guest services desk, they advised us that we had to fill out a report, which we did.  They contacted the security team…and then the wildest story unfolded before our own eyes!  A story that could only happen in the movies.  First of all, we were told that security wanted to search our room.  Were they implying that one of us stole it from Alex?  As crazy as that sounded, we told them it was fine for them to come search the room.  We went back to our room…and then received a call that security wanted us to come back down to the front desk to meet with them.

We showed up back to the front desk and was whisked up to the Wheelhouse Bar.  The security officer had printed copies of our pictures and all of our information.  It almost felt as if we were the ones under investigation.  The officer asked questions…and told us they wanted to search our room.  We advised him at this time that we did not want any one in the room without us being there.  They said they would contact us later.  We went back to the room to wait…but did not hear anything.  

We swung by the desk a little later and were told that the security team was in a drill…and they would contact us later.  We never heard back from them.  Prior to dinner, we decided to head back down to the front desk.  No one had contacted us, our room had not been searched, and we still had no idea what was going on.  On our way to the elevator, we were stopped by our room steward who looked terrified.  He knew that money was missing from our room…and wanted us to know that the day before he saw his supervisor coming out of our room.  When he questioned him about it, he said he was changing the battery on our door.  Then later that evening, the supervisor gave our room steward and the neighboring room steward $500 each and asked them to deposit it into their accounts for him.  Does it seem a little suspicious that it coincided with the timing of our missing money?

We went back down to the front desk and requested to speak with security again.  We wanted to share that we had just gotten this information from our steward.  The security officer was not happy that we were told this information…but assured us they would continue the investigation and get with us the next day.  The next morning, we received a call from security asking for Alex to come to the Wheelhouse with George.  I guess they did not want myself and Jessica there (because we were the most vocal about the incident).  That did not stop us though, we all went down as a family.

I won’t bore you with all of the details about the lack of customer service and poor communication with us, but I want you to know what and how this happened to us, so you can prepare and protect yourself better than we did!  

This is what we know about what happened: 

A housekeeping supervisor (with over 30 years with Princess), entered our room under the guise that he was changing our battery in our door.  He was seen by our room steward, who asked him why he was in there.  While he was in our room, he used the master key to our safe, which was not checked out to use in our room.  He opened our safe and took a little over $1000.  He then tried to “launder” the money through other crew members, so it would not be traced back to him.  Our battery on our door was not changed (as he said) because it was at 55% charged when security checked.  According to security, we were the only room he went into, implying that we might have been targeted?! The security officer claims this was just the perfect storm…we disagree. We think this theft goes deeper than the surface.

What we do not know: 

How did he know Alex won in the casino?  Has he done this before and gotten away with it?  Were there other people involved…like people in the casino?  Why he would risk his career over this amount of money?  How long was he in our room?  Did he take photos of our passports? And Credit Cards?  

The crazy thing is that if he had taken $100, we probably would not have even noticed, but because the money was won and not brought on to spend, we knew the exact amount in the envelope.   And I suspect that other people have been in that exact situation!

Here are some things you can do to protect yourself:

Do not cash out casino winnings until the last night of the cruise

Do not keep large amounts of cash on your person…use credit cards for purchases.

Upon reading more about cruise ship theft, we have found that you can store valuables at the Purser’s Desk.  

Bring your own travel safe and store it in your locked luggage…not foolproof, but at least they have to work harder for it.

We did what we THOUGHT was the right thing…we put the money in the safe (because the name implies that it will in fact be safe there).  Someone violated our personal space and made us feel unsafe for the rest of our trip.  This has put a damper on our vacation.  It caused undue stress…and I don’t think any of us will be cruising again for some time.