The Rock and Roll Cruise – 2025 - Part 1 - Another look at Cruising
I'm writing this sitting on our wind-blown balcony six stories above the ragged Caribbean Sea, watching flying fish sporadically erupt from the white caps below to escape our nine hundred and ninety ton behemoth as it plows toward Cartagena. This is the prime reason we cruise. To us, there is nothing else like it. On our first cruise back in the last century we had to go on deck to experience this as the best cabin back then had only a small, round porthole. It didn't open and we could hardly see out of it, but we were thrilled to have a view of the open sea. The majority of the other two thousand, four hundred and twenty two passengers on board the M/S Rotterdam are either immersed in their cellphones as they lounge throughout the observation lounge, busy playing bingo, dozing around the pool, or symbolically pulling the magic silver arm of the ever present one arm bandit. The mechanical arms have long disappeared, though, now players simply hit the big, lighted "repeat bet" button to spin the animated characters that mesmerize them into pumping continuous, uninterrupted sums of money into the machines for the enjoyment of doing it again, and again and again. The new machines even have WiFi built in so you can swipe your room card or even a credit card which your room key is already linked to before you sail, and continue spending money without interruption. These cruisers don't even know there are flying fish or endless stretches of Sargasso seaweed that stretch to the horizon.
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| We enter the Windward Passage headed to Curacao with Cuba in the distance |
We stopped cruising altogether for ten or so years in protest of the drastic drop in quality of the dining experience when the cruise industry decided to force customers into the added expense of "specialty" dining at an additional charge to the passage. That was our last cruise with our once favorite line, the one we first cruised with and had previously cruised with three times, but no more. We have since sailed with Princess, Celebrity and now with Holland America, all of which are similar in services and costs. The itineraries are even similar, but the corporate philosophies are different enough to distinguish them from each other. Unfortunately, paying exorbitant prices, even for common beer, has became the de facto standard now across the entire cruise industry, and what an industry it is.
We departed Port Everglades in Ft Lauderdale and were the fourth of seven cruise ships awaiting our turn to head to sea. These are not little ships. Almost all of them carry over two thousand passengers and many carry as many as five thousand paying customers. As soon as we cleared the breakwater, we could see three more behemoths south of us from the port of Miami also headed toward open water. Many are most likely toodling to the nearby Bahamas as the private island gig has become another source of cruise revenue subtly included in the itinerary. Our first stop is one of these islands as this corporate controlled type of "destination" has become a standard among the traditional basin cruisers. Keeping the revenue stream in house, so to speak.
An opinion is worth exactly what it cost to hear. It doesn't take long to evaluate the unsolicited linguistic barrage to determine its value to a listener who has knowledge, but may unfortunately be misconstrued as fact by an avid, naïve, trusting listener. The main difference between opinions and knowledge? Opinions are free. You hear them all the time. They may be entertaining, but usually not worth repeating. I cautiously listen to opinions because every once in a while a great story emerges from the vast self-indulgent wilderness of ignorance. Such as one we heard recently from a woman who advised a potential cruiser that food on Holland America's ships was heavily geared to the Dutch palate. In her case, that’s not even an opinion, simply an assumption, but most certainly not knowledge.
But then, maybe it simply doesn't matter. People are going to enjoy whatever they've spent their money on regardless of how much pain, agony and disappointment a little research may save them. We watched in awe this morning at the street market in Curacao as a bewildered vendor had a middle aged American tourist, obviously from one of the four cruise ships crammed into one of our favorite port cities, ask him if three US dollars was enough for a banana. Not even the entire bunch he had offered her, just one, single banana. He slowly shook his head up and down and said, "Yes, that is enough." Obviously she has never before in her life purchased a banana. The old, bedraggled vendor avoided looking at us as I think he was as embarrassed as he was surprised. But let's face it, nobody turns down free money.
When my wife and I started cruising way back when sailing to the Bahamas was introduced to compete with Miami Beach hotels which could offer Frank Sinatra or Sammy Davis, Jr, but not gambling, the cost of getting passengers on the ship was basically the break-even point. The covers came off the one arm bandits and the poker tables as soon as the ships crossed the US territorial limit of twelve miles. All passenger spending from that point on was profit. Kind of the Black Friday of cruising, just on a per-cruise basis.
While that basic philosophy still holds, is cruising far more costly now than when we first started? Not really, if all you consider is base passage. The formula is unbelievably complicated and convoluted, but the base fact is larger ships and more passengers per cruise have kept the costs per hour of operation low so the occupancy recovery rates have not soared with the inflation index in general. The difference, however, is in the total cruise cost to the passenger. Aye, matey, and there's the rub! Today’s pirates of the Caribbean are all MBA’s.
We are the only people we can see sitting on any of the balconies. Watching the azure seas topped with wind blown white caps is as captivating as watching the graceful seabirds soar wistfully alongside our balcony as if to study us as well. We even know where we are by the types of seabirds that accompany us, or leave us as the case may be. They occasionally plunge headlong into the sea, usually chasing a flying fish startled into flight by our bow wake. We are easily pleased. All we need with our priceless serenity is good service, good food and good evening entertainment. This cruise we might opt for a warm, cackling fireplace, which might be nice too, since the ship’s temperatures are kept quite chilly. We could adjust the room temperature or even turn off the air conditioning, which we could not do on a previous Princess cruise ship.
The main dining was cold enough for most women to carry sweaters or at have least covered arms. The low temperature may be to help control the insidious norovirus, the most common cause of gastroenteritis, that stows away on today's cruise ships. In the old days, they used rat collars on the mooring lines to keep unwanted pests off the ships, today it is soap and water placed outside the communal food areas. That analogy would get me a question mark in English class, but the effects of both are the same: protection from something that would spoil the cruise.
One thing that did not make this cruise pleasant was the foul-smelling casino on deck three, the same deck as the shopping area. Oddly, the casino was jammed, even during the morning hours. So was the overflow area on the deck below, temporarily filled with arcade style slot machines that had many of the same players sitting for hours on end as if rooted to their chairs. At least the area on the deck two is a non-smoking area. All of the players are "older" than the average age of the sister line Carnival's passengers, and we simply did not find this market on the last four cruises we did on previous Princess Cruises or Celebrity Cruises. The casinos on the Millennium, the Eclipse, The Island Princess, the Crown Princess and even the old whichever Princess we started with were barren by comparison. The Eclipse had far more employees and staff in the casino than players the entire ten day cruise to Barbados.
When we booked our current twelve day cruise through the Caribbean on Holland America Line we were told the entertainment on the ship would be more sedate than we had experienced with other cruise lines. Princess and Celebrity both had on-board bands for live music with their evening theater shows, which we both really enjoy to cap off our day of sailing. Holland America has elected to go with prerecorded soundtracks for their stage productions. The singers are singing to backing music, which while flawless, still feels like karaoke. The other ships also had continuous music in various locales around the ships during the day, from small popular music groups to single entertainers playing piano or guitars. Holland America, we were told, had classical music ensembles for daytime enjoyment, but we've found on this cruise there is only one string trio that has played regularly, and we’ve only come across them in the evening once. They later had a single steel-drum, or pan, player, who was very good, if not oddly out of place.
The daytime activities, other than the Crow's Nest game room seem to be dominated by fee based activities such as bingo that has a card fee. The entire pulse of the ship appears to be broken into forty-five minute segments and oddly many seem as afterthoughts. Almost like musical chairs. Time's up! Time to run to something else to get a good seat for something that will last for exactly the next forty-five minutes. It tends to be exhausting. The pool area and the casino seem to be the only activities that even resemble cruising from the bygone eras, but they also have a different flavor. The only activity that seems to stay packed is the casino. There are many activities to keep many cruisers occupied, but for the first time ever on a cruise, we surprisingly found by the second afternoon we were bored. We are obviously not gamblers and we don’t cruise to play bingo. Time for the balcony and a good book.
The on-board music channels are not even on the level of decent elevator music. The five onboard channels all sound like the AM radio on my fathers old 1957 Ford and at times the music even sounds familiar. We use a small blue-tooth speaker – Holland America allows small speakers for in-room use – to listen to our own music because the ship’s fare is just plain terrible. By contrast are the live bands and their consistently great performances, especially the outstanding performances by the Rotterdam’s house band, the Rolling Stone's Lounge Band. They play three, forty-five minute sets each night, and they stagger their start times with the other two music venues so as to create a continuous availability of entertainment, but moving room to room to stay entertained can be aggravating. I think it has to do with beverage sales, but I'm not sure how. Again, life in segments.
Here's another opinion, one that seems to have taken a foothold in the cruising industry itself which is surprising with the unabated, ingrained numbers crunching associated with cruising operations: Old people only like classical music. The fact that all of the Rolling Stones, the iconic rock group whose name dominates the entertainment motif of Holland America Lines are all over eighty years old. So are many of their fans, and that is not an opinion, that is a fact. I don't know how long the current band members will be on board the ship, but the group we saw were on par with any professional band we've seen. Definitely the entertainment highlight of the cruise. Thinking we belong on the younger "party" ships? I'm eighty-three, but remember, most of the real Rolling Stones are older than I am. Swifties would be disappointed, but not my crowd. Rock on! They even packed the dance floor. Not much past 11:00 PM, but the jubilant fans were there in strength until the age appropriate sandman entered the room. We found the great group in the BB King Blues Club to be a bit too brassy for us, and definitely tuned solidly to soul music, not rhythm and blues. If you’re expecting rhythm and blues in the vein of Keb ‘Mo, BB King, or any of the great R&B artists, you’ll be disappointed. On the other hand, if Mo-Town is your sound, while they may a bit loud for most, they are perfect for that genre. They are really talented musicians and entertainers.
The food in the main dining room is very good, as opposed to the cruise line we abandoned for trying to force us into the specialty dining venues. Holland America would prefer that here as well, but they have only reduced the availability and selections here, not the quality of the food itself. The added costs to the base passage are the biggest changes in cruising. One of our fellow cruisers just paid an additional $65 dollars to dine in the Pinnacle Grill and then paid an additional $12 dollar surcharge because he ordered a certain cut of steak, and it wasn’t even Chateaubriand. He could have dined in the main dining room as part of his passage, so in effect, he paid three charges to have his steak. That's not an opinion, that is a fact. Whether it was worth it or not is an opinion.
So, if you pay a couple of thousand dollars for a cruise using today's business model, plan on paying half of that amount in addition to your cost before you disembark if you plan to replicate our memories of hedonistic indulgence of days gone by. One new cost is Internet, something we don't miss like the media-addicted traveling companions we share deck space with. Cell phones are everywhere on the cruise ship, from the always fully occupied Observation lounge to the pool areas. When Wi-Fi was first introduced on cruise ships, it was an added value, now it is simply another lucrative revenue stream. A rather large one if you plan on cruising with your teen age children or football addicted spouse.
New cruisers don't know there was a better way, so they pay outlandishly for the once-included services that attracted us to cruising in the first place. Even on higher end cruise lines such as the three I've mentioned, the facial tissues now are so poor you have to blow your nose with great caution. Bet you never read that admonition before, but it is symbolic of everything from the odd paper towels to even the basic dining selections that cautiously skirts passenger rejection. Even the famous drink packages, where you supposedly prepay the costs of drinks, all drinks, not just alcohol, actually only cover a portion of each drink. On Holland America, the difference of cost of any drink over $11 on our ship during this trip will be charged to your account. House brand red wine, either Cabernet or blend is $18 a glass, so you will be charged $7 a glass even if you bought the drink package ahead of time. Read the fine print and budget accordingly, unless of course, money is no object.
Some of the former services are no longer available at any cost. But then again, it all depends on your own opinions. Kind of like happily paying three dollars for a banana.
George
Coming Soon - Part 2 - Revisiting Curacao
