Cruise 2025 - The Rock and Roll Cruise - Part 1 - Another look at Cruising

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. 

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. 

My wife and I started cruising way back when weekend trips to the Bahamas were 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.

Next - Part 2 - Revisiting Curacao

Cruise 2024 - The Anniversary Cruise - Part 1 - Shoving Off

OK, so I've been goofing off all morning instead of writing. I'm sitting on our old fashioned balcony of the aging Celebrity Eclipse high on the eleventh deck doing nothing but playing solitaire on my tablet and watching the mild-mannered ocean slowly drift by.

The Celebrity Eclipse at Port Everglades, Ft Lauderdale, FL

Ilse and I arrived at Port Everglades in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, yesterday, Monday, November 25th, 2024, with plenty of time to spare to board the Celebrity Eclipse. We are taking our ninth cruise, again in the Caribbean but this time to the southern chain of the Lesser Antilles, celebrating both our sixtieth anniversary and my eighty-second birthday. It will be a ten day cruise, which for us is the perfect duration. 

After the usual security checks and mandatory shuffling about, we are soon in our 11th deck cabin dropping off our carry-on luggage and changing clothes. We are quickly up on deck checking out the food courts. The upper deck buffet is usually the best place to grab a quick hamburger and French fries, or just about anything else they can think of. The Eclipse has such a variety of food available they even have large sections dedicated just to UK and Asian tastes. Our British friends call it the "Piggery."

Adios Ft Lauderdale!

We sailed past the high-rise condos alongside the Stranahan River, main cut on our way out to the Atlantic Ocean in the late afternoon sun. We had been delayed for about an hour as the ship's public address system kept calling for Michael somebody to please come to the customer service desk. Apparently Michael finally made it and we were underway. 

We noticed the huge Bon Voyage banner was missing from the 15th floor balcony of one of the high-rise apartments that I wanted to incorporate in my video. Funny how some of the minute details from past voyages are hard to forget.

Everyone we meet is typically excited as we all explore the ship and try to figure out where the dining rooms are. We catch a few of the entertainers performing around the ship and are excited by their talents. This will be a good cruise as Celebrity prides itself with its on-board entertainment and a real ship's band. We hit the bed early, but not until catching the first show. It has been a fast, occasionally tense week. Any time you have a passport involved, it usually is.

Port Everglades fades into the sunset

Day 2

This is our first morning on board, known in the industry as Day 2. It is a quiet, postcard type of day all cruise companies want in their advertising. Ilse pointed out a Brown Booby, flying low against the almost calm seas. It is the only bird we see for several hours. We are on the starboard, the right side of the ship and we are aft, or toward the stern, the rear of the ship. We usually reserve a cabin well forward but this cruise was pretty well sold out early so we were glad to get any cabin as long as it wasn't near the elevators. We find later the elevators run length-wise rather than across the ship, and they have their own alcove so the passengers on this ship are not inconvenienced by late night elevator traffic and noise. There are no elevators aft, or toward the stern so we have no worries about noise.

Since we headed out the Mallory Channel between Freeport and the cluster of "private islands" during our first night at sea, we got to watch the last of the island nation slip out of sight over the horizon from our starboard balcony cabin. It turns out not to be the end of the Bahamas after all as five hours later the Turks and Caicos islands, or cays, are due west of us. 

We are toodling, and I really mean foot dragging, or inner tube paddling, toodling. I could keep up with the cruise ship with my old pontoon boat and its top speed wasn't quite eighteen miles an hour. We left Ft Lauderdale yesterday twenty hours ago and we are still in the Bahamas. After our turn around yesterday, Monday, I thought the Captain might have to speed it up a bit to make Tortola by Thursday morning, but apparently not. Oh, did I forget to mention we turned around and headed back to the pier about thirty minutes after leaving Port Everglades? We didn't have to go all the way back to the dock because we were met by a big, fast boat of some kind that quickly disappeared to the other side of the ship. Soon afterward, the Eclipse once again did a full turn and headed back toward the open sea. By then it was the dark, open sea, away from preposterously illuminated east coast of Florida.

The Captain came on the ship's loudspeakers and apologized for a medical emergency as one of the passengers had to be evacuated from the ship. We think that's what he said. His heavy Greek accent over a loudspeaker mounted hundreds of feet away did nothing to clarify his message. He might have said they slowed the boat down so Michael and his wife could come on board for the Thanksgiving dinner as they missed the boat in Ft. Lauderdale, but then again, who knows?

At any rate, we are not speeding. This is our sixth trip down the outside of the Bahamas toward San Juan, and by far the slowest. It is also by far the smoothest outbound leg we've ever had from Florida. The weather is perfect with mild winds and partly cloudy skies.

We anxiously boarded the Eclipse, a sister ship of the Millennium we sailed on three years ago, in Ft Lauderdale, hoping nothing drastic has changed since we last sailed with Celebrity Cruises. We picked a Solstice Class ship because we loved the Millennium when we sailed on her just after the pandemic in 2021. The huge, newer Celebrity Beyond was berthed next to us and we were convinced then and there that the Eclipse is big enough.

One thing about the newer ships that we don't like is the typical income maximizing philosophy that the entire cruising industry is stuffing up everyone's agenda: More passengers per ship means more revenue in a shorter market cycle. It also means far more people trying to dine, exercise, drink, or just co-exist in a confined, encapsulated environment. We chatted with passengers who have cruised the newer line of bigger ships that Nostradamus has apparently prophesied to be the financial salvation of the cruise industry. Not one of them liked the new pseudo balconies that are standard on the Celebrity Apex class ships! The new balconies are not real balconies, but simply an extension of the room with a huge powered picture window that drops halfway down on the glass wall facing the ocean.

On the other hand, while the majority of loyal, veteran passengers prefer smaller ships and better service, the great, susceptible masses just don't seem to care. Drink, play in the pool, drink some more, and pretend they don't have a care in the world. They love the bragging rights about being on the biggest or newest ship, no matter how uncomfortable or unaffordable it really is. It used to be called the Emperor’s Clothes syndrome, I have no idea what they call it now.

Canapes in the afternoon - Nice touch

Apparently, most passenger can not entertain themselves for seven hours much less seven days, so the cruise lines have figured out how to do it for them. Mickey Arinson and Knut Kloster understood a long time ago that the mainstream population will gleefully go into hock simply to be entertained. Their resulting cruise empires have turned weekend gambling getaways from Miami Beach into a world-wide, mega billion dollar industry.

My wife and I are old school, we still read. My wife is a convert to the ebooks as are most of the passengers lounging around the pool. Cellphones and tablets are everywhere. USB charging stations are now far more important in the cabin than reading lamps. I still lug around paper books, though. I even brought a hard-cover book I've been trying to reread for months. We still listen to music without videos. We love good entertainment and love the onboard, if not somewhat truncated, musical and Broadway shows. We do not care about glass blowing or the politics of old Rhodesia, have never played Scattergories or any "team sport" on a cruise ship.

I'm not on a ship to take a final test to see how much I learned about any text book subject. We did sit through a karaoke show one time to help a friend, but that's about it. We were impressed in one on-line video we watched about the Eclipse's supposedly outstanding library. Well, maybe once upon a time, before the shelf's went empty, but today, it's mostly open-aired display of wooden shelving. The few books available are well worn.

Well, how about the other intangibles? The areas where Celebrity had out-shown its competitors when we sailed on the Millennium were often sadly diluted or even non-existent. A ten day WiFi package for the two of us is the same amount I pay for over five months coverage at home. Even as addicted to it as we are it is not a smart choice for us. For a supposedly up-scale cruise line, nickel and diming the passengers beyond covering the price, not just the actual cost of the cruise itself, has become a science, not just an art form. It is perpetual to the point of being oppressive. There are no free enhancement sessions or classes: they all have a sales hook. 

While we still laugh about the old days when the purser was not allowed to show a passenger's tally until it was slipped under the cabin door on the last night of the cruise, it was never the astonishing, often astronomical shock it is today, even if you can go on line at any time to see it. Having free unlimited coffee with breakfast, but being charged five dollars a cup for coffee with dinner is absurd. Six dollars and fifty cents for a small bottle of water is equally dickish, and unfortunately is a sign of worse charges to come.

Pallet after pallet of bottled water is loaded at Ft Lauderdale.
At $6.50 each they would remain unsold on land.

On-board guest services, formerly known as the Concierge, has always been a fine line between accommodating customer complaints and deflecting those who try to manipulate the service. The staff is trained to maintain the corporate profile as well as the corporate bottom line. But lately, I find they are more of an extension of the corporation's marketing arm. Pullman's famous bedbug letter seems to have become the backbone of desk responses, although they do their best to fulfill most requests, including some really bizarre ones.

When we sailed earlier this year on the Island Princess, my travel agent mentioned Princess Cruises offered military rewards for veterans, all I had to do was present my DD-214–every veteran has one–and my customer profile was updated within a day without question. The customer service on that Island Princess also helped us resolve an issue that involved a hotel, a shuttle bus driver, and a handful of port people with an issue we assumed to be a lost cause. We had an overlooked tablet returned to us from a hotel after two days of effort, excellent service! I can't say as much about Celebrity. After an unpleasant encounter with one of the staff at the desk, I was brusquely informed they had nothing to do updating my customer profile. According to the service desk, that was my travel agent's job. Next! 

How about our first breakfast in the main dinner room where my wife's omelet was simply a fast-food pre-mix. We were quietly informed by the wait staff to next time ask for "fresh eggs." Not as bad as the horrible experience we suffered several years ago on NCL that extinguished our desire to ever cruise with them again, but if Celebrity isn't careful, they will get the same reputation for bland, barely edible food. Forcing the average cruiser to pay extra money for the specialty restaurants just for palatable food is not a good business plan. We sailed four cruises on NCL in the past, but their loss of value, mainly in the dining room, has removed them from our choice of cruise lines.

The industry has stripped down the costs so tightly the on-board jobs are no longer appealing the Europeans who dominated the food services before the COVID pandemic. While the reduced incentives for crews is still attractive for some southeastern Asian nationalities, the majority of staff are younger, most having less than three years experience as the pandemic forced many career staff and crew into retirement or other off-ship careers. 

The industry is squeezing the hired help as hard as it squeezes its customers. I couldn’t help but look up Royal Caribbean’s SEC filings just to get a handle on today’s cruising business. So if you’re interested, in 2023, the CEO of RCCL - RCCL is the parent company of Celebrity Cruises - earned $17,216,276 as opposed to the average RCCL employee who earned $18,073 for a CEO Ratio of 953:1. The S&P 500 average is 268 to 1. Makes that bottle of water mean so much more, doesn’t it?

We were glad to see some things haven’t changed, at least not on Celebrity Cruises. The Eclipse actually has an on-ship band - as did the Island Princess - and that is a defiant stand against a growing  industry practice of cheap, canned musical scores instead of real musicians. Singers and dancers on those ships do little more than strobe-lighted karaoke. Watching live shows is a pleasure we have come to love while cruising. We have seen some great performances at sea. We've seen a few performers we didn't care for, but not many. We know these costs are above what other cruise lines expend for entertainment, but I am willing to pay the cost up front. I would rather pay for all of my cruise expenses up front rather than watch my credit card balance balloon on a daily basis.

The first show we catch on the Eclipse is one I recommend for just about anyone, the Rebels, and here I contradict myself. They brought their own music, but seeing the complexity of the show I know why. Don't be fooled by the hard rock attire and show-like posturing–the act is an homage to Rock and Roll–the opening number is the overture from Phantom of the Opera. Outstanding performance.

Dinner is nice as we have a reserved table in the main dining room and the food is good. The service is outstanding as we have the same wait staff as the first night and they already have taken notes about our foibles and fancies. Of course I start with my French Onion soup, the one single item I measure every cruise by. It passes with flying colors. 

We get to hear the assorted staff gather at our table and sing "Happy anniversary to you," - it was our 60th -  as they delivered a piece of chocolate cake with a straw-berry stuck in the frosting. We celebrated our  50th on a different cruise line that did not leave us with pleasant memories, so we were thrilled Celebrity once again made the experience memorable.  

This piece of cruising remains basically unchanged from when we started cruising almost fifty years ago. Well, almost unchanged. Back then, coffee was included with your dessert, now it is a five dollar per cup add-on. It is good, but it ain't Starbucks.

Happy 60th Anniversary! Whee! 

There have many generations of cost cutters stripping what ever program "excess" is left over from the last "analysis." I would not be surprised to see we may have to pay a gangplank service charge just to get on or off the ship.  We've done three cruises since the pandemic almost bankrupted the cruise industry, and from what we've seen, the industry is once again straining to attract younger, more affluent and, apparently, far less demanding passengers. Is cruising still a viable, competitive way to spend your precious vacation money and time? Yes, but believe me, it has changed since our first cruise, a four day Norwegian Cruise Line Bahamas cruise, way back forty-two years ago.

While most casinos in Las Vegas still have free drinks for gamblers, that concept is long gone from the cruise industry. In fact, on-ship casinos do not generate the revenues of the past years and has created a need for additional, off-setting charges. Disney does not have casinos so that revenue source is not included in their business plan. Viking dropped casinos altogether, and both Azamara and Windstar have removed theirs. The customer profiles are changing drastically and quickly and the cruise lines are responding accordingly.  The casino on our last trip, a fifteen day trip through the Panama Canal, rarely had more than a handful of people at any time we looked. Of course, it was always the same passengers, but it represents a change in tastes and spending the cruise lines can not ignore.

Cheapness doesn't leave a good taste in my mouth, and I have a feeling it is going to get worse. It won't get better because it was better before. Obviously the executives didn't like it. At the current charge of $5.00 a cup for plain coffee, I figure I drink at least fifteen dollars worth at breakfast and wonder how long it will take before some astronomically rewarded executive figures out how to offload the cost onto my room charge.

I predicted the money master executives would kill the golden goose if they got worse, but they got worse and the geese still trample each other to get on board.

A 22 minute video taken from Ft Lauderdale to Tortola can be found at: https://youtu.be/6eXEjGZkjDE

Next: Honk! Honk!  Tortola https://piddlepaddler.blogspot.com/2024/12/cruise-2024-anniversary-cruise-part-2.html

*******************************************************************

PS: To Anonymous, who left the comment "Well, this doesn't make me want to cruise, ever again. Glad you had a good time!" 

Ilse and I have been cruising for many years, and while not the extensive sailors as some, we know what we love and what we miss about cruising. Many of the the inexperienced newcomers to cruising are caught unprepared for the the charges incurred on today's cruises, even after prepaying for very expensive drink and WiFi packages and off-shore excursions. 

It is an exciting adventure and a wonderful way to vacation and make new friends, but times, they have been a-changing for quite a while now.

While cruising is the only way we know to sail the high seas, seeing natural vistas and sights that can not be found anywhere else, we have met people who skipped out on leaving gratuities for the ship's staff because they had run out of cash. We obviously love to sail on cruises, but I won't write sales copy for any cruise line. I have an agreement with them: I pay them for their services and they let me cruise on their ships. They are free too impress me anyway they want, and I am free to write about it as long as I document everything. Nothing I write is fabricated.

I'm sorry you no longer want to cruise again after reading my blog. I just want my readers to know how we found this really enjoyable, once in a lifetime cruise to be as memorable as any we have taken before, you just haven't read that far yet. Hopefully I can entice you to read more. I'm sure you will enjoy our call on  Barbados 

George   

The Panama Canal Cruise - Part - 1 - The Love Boat

 

Our return to cruising back in December of 2021 was a marvelous experience, not just because of the ship, the Celebrity Millennium, or our itinerary in the eastern Leeward Islands of the Caribbean, but also because we had the classic, spotless ship practically to ourselves. COVID restrictions were being slowly lifted and cruising had just resumed following the industry-wide shutdown caused by the COVID-19 epidemic. We happened to pick the second cruise of the Millennium’s return to full service. There were only several hundred passengers on a fully staffed ship designed to carry over two thousand. There were as many crew as there were passengers, and needless to say, the service was outstanding.

We concluded the ten day cruise following the mask and cleanliness requirements, especially when in the many ports of call and did not suffer any illness of any kind. There were several passengers confined to their staterooms who apparently had tested positive for the infection and we found later one deck had been assigned as a restricted area for those who fell ill to COVID, but the affect of the precautions on the cruise was unnoticed by most of us. 

The cruise was so enjoyable we visited the future cruise office on board the Millennium after the mid-point of the sailing and booked our dream cruise, a full transit of the Panama Canal. The Millennium was being repositioned from Ft. Lauderdale to Los Angeles early next year and the timing was perfect for us. We excitedly made our cruise deposit and began planning even before our cruise was over. We disembarked in Ft Lauderdale full of enthusiasm, thrilled that our return to cruising had reaffirmed our memories of our past cruises. We began planning about visiting friends in California as we incorporated the upcoming Panama Canal cruise into an extended adventure. We were back! Cruising was great again.

Unfortunately, after months of planning and anticipation of our “bucket-list” cruise, Celebrity Cruise line abruptly informed us of a major change in plans and within days, the highly anticipated cruise faded into the mist of disillusionment. We were offered a similar cruise on a different ship, and at a different time, but no option for a refund. The new schedule was impossible for us to accommodate, so we had to settle for “ship’s credit” for some future cruise. Ship’s credit has become the new refund in the industry, and we grudgingly accepted that resolution, feeling as if we would really be surprised to ever recover our down payment. And then life got in the way, or more specifically, Hurricane Ian, and we began to wonder if we would ever get back to sea.

We did. After a two year hiatus – mainly spent spending three months cleaning up after Hurricane Ian and then pulling up our Florida roots and moving to Athens, Georgia – we decided to try again, and this time we pulled yet another rabbit out of the hat – the Love Boat.

After settling in our new home in Athens, Georgia, and facing the prospect of our first “cold” winter, we decided to find a cruise that included a full transit of the iconic Panama Canal. We needed a respite from our moving and resettling chores and the foreboding winter weather as well. Princess Cruises, which we have sailed with twice before, offered the Island Princess with 2200 passengers and a crew of 900, a perfect size cruise ship for us. It was scheduled to depart from Ft. Lauderdale just after New Years and arrive in Los Angeles fifteen days later. We booked the cruise and started packing. We resumed our plans for an extended vacation in California as well.

We were thrilled to book a cruise on the ship, which we were told, is the namesake of one of the two ships used in the television series of long ago. Technically, it is the “other” Love Boat, the Island Princess, not the Pacific Princess, and it’s not the original ship used in the series either, but rather it’s namesake, a specifically designed Panamax for Panama Canal passage, launched in 2003. The original Love Boat has already met its ignominious end on the beaches at Alang, India, as did the marvelous SS Norway, both cut up for scrap after setting the standards for cruising that evolved past them. We were fortunate to sail on the SS Norway years ago, and this was a unique opportunity to sail yet on another iconic ship. We would soon find out the Island Princess, as pristine as it is, like the Millennium of our last cruise, is also approaching the end of its service life in mainstream cruising.

Step 1 - Get to the port! 

For the first time in our cruising experience, we can not simply drive to the port of embarkation. Not trusting airline delays, we book a flight a day early so as to minimize the possibility of missing the boat. That’s not an idiom, we really didn’t want to miss the boat. We fly from busy Atlanta, the busiest in the world, to Ft Lauderdale – a modest, under two hour flight – and stay in one of the several well-known chain hotels not far from Port Everglades. The cruise port, less than three miles from the International airport, has become a thriving, modern passenger cruise terminal, complete with parking garage for those who drive to the port. It now rivals its nearby neighbor, Dodge Island, the Port of Miami less than thirty miles away. Arriving a day early also gave us the opportunity to have dinner that evening with great friends, Bob and Patricia, who drove up from Miami. We enjoyed a great Cuban dinner, something we dearly miss up in Georgia, and reminisced about old times. The dinner set the tone for the entire cruise.

Port Everglades

The hotel, while spotlessly clean, showed it’s primary business is the constant flow of one night guests departing the next day on cruise ships and appears to have no interest in investing in maintenance or upkeep as that would be apparently an unnecessary expense. They had shuttle bus service to the cruise port, for an additional fee of course, that ran multiple trips beginning fairly early the next morning and each was filled with excited, shuffling passengers, all with various carry-ons strapped over shoulders and every possible color and size of four wheeled luggage made on planet earth.

Step 2 - Boarding - A short wait

One feature of Princess cruising I really like is their medallion. It was mailed to us at home a week or so before the cruise and even though I now know how my dog feels when the vet scans him for an implanted chip, I really found it to be a time saver. The medallion is a small disc with an RF chip containing your pertinent information. Lost your wife? Just ask the closest staff member to locate her. Piece of cake. After presenting our passports and scanning our medallions, we were soon on board and since we didn’t have to wait on checked in luggage, dropped our backpacks and carry-ons in our stateroom and headed for the food on the upper deck. 

We made the mandatory stop by our assigned lifeboat station, scanned our medallions yet again, and reminisced about the pushing and shoving of the old days. It isn’t really nostalgia because I don’t miss the old Parade of New Shoes, also formerly known as the mandatory life boat drill. It now takes a few seconds to complete the safety requirements and you are free to do whatever you want.

The open buffet is extensive and well replenished, and while we were sitting, looking over the other ships and boats around the port, my wife got a cellphone call from our overnight hotel. The maid found a tablet under her pillow when she made the bed. Normally, my wife, who always reads at night, would have put it on the top shelf of the headboard as the sandman slipped in, but not having a headboard, she had simply slipped her Kindle electronic reader beneath her pillow. Out of sight, out of mind, and we simply forgot it was there.

The next four hours, right up to casting off, were intense, with phone calls to the hotel, the shuttle company staff, drivers, and of course, on board customer service. I used my phone to deactivate her Kindle in case it couldn’t be recovered, and when we finally got a photo from the driver who delivered the forgotten tablet to the port showing who he had handed it to - it was of the back of an unidentifiable woman, dressed in a blue suit, taken as she walked away.

We shoved off almost immediately after, and once again pleaded our case to the sympathetic staff at customer service, but alas, there was no word or information about the lost Kindle. They checked again with the boarding crew, to no avail, and said simply they would do their best to find it. While they were helping us, they copied my DD214 to prove my military service. Most cruise lines offer a small discount to veterans, but I hadn’t submitted the required form ahead of time so I brought a copy with me. A few keystrokes and the document was on its way to corporate headquarters. My approval was received early the next day.

Leaving Port Everglades

The first night dinner is always informal as many suitcases have yet to be delivered to the staterooms and cabins, but we passed on the dining room and ended up in the Horizon Court, a great open food service area forward on deck 14 offering something for everyone. 

It was a gray, overcast sky by the time Ft Lauderdale was but a bright spot on the distant evening horizon. When we finally retired to the cabin, tired but excited, Ilse began to realize how much she missed her Kindle.

An old fashioned Kindle. 

Next:  Cartagena - https://piddlepaddler.blogspot.com/2024/11/the-panama-canal-cruise-part-2-cartegena.html

Video:  A 26 minute video of this blog, including Cartagena, is at  https://youtu.be/TYM5Q9L6sEo