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 has 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 the 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, but not exclusively, 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. The Eclipse actually has an on-ship band, as did the Island Princess, and that is a defiant stand against an industry practice of cheap, canned musical scores instead of real musicians while singers and performers 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 bummers as well, 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 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 been so many generations of cost cutters stripping what ever program is left over from the last "analysis" that soon we will have to pay a gangplank service charge just to get on or off the ship. The pandemic almost bankrupted the cruise industry, but they forget they weren't alone.

The 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.

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

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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/MeKFr8bPaFs

The Cruise to Aruba - Home Again

Thursday is a great day at sea. The faint, white smoke from the funnels drifts slowly upward as it dissipates in the amazingly clear blue sky, staying almost directly over the ship. We are making 11 knots with a trailing wind and a following sea, the sun is shining and Mother Nature is at peace with the marketing arm of Princess Cruises. Everything is as advertised.

 A really nice way to wrap up a cruise. We do all the touristy things we think will interest us, from touring the galley (at least the tour is still free, but they are hawking a $29 Chef's cook book. Yes, I bought one) and attending free health maintenance seminars. We tour the ship to see if we've missed any decks or crannies that are unique, and we head back to the library to check out one last book. Or was that Friday? No, it had to be Thursday because we turned the books back in on Friday. That's what's great about cruising when all goes well: you lose track of time and that is the whole idea. 

Thursday is the Captain's Cocktail Party, followed by the last of the two formal dinners. Lobster tonight! Must be Thursday! We take in the show in the ship's theater, “What a Swell Party,” a tribute to Cole Porter, but the strain of constantly being on is showing on the the dancers and performers. The show is a canned, prerecorded production but it is still a pleasure to watch the entertainers do their best, even when the cruise is about to wrap up. They do two shows a night so it isn't a cakewalk by any means. 

Friday is another laid-back, enjoy-the-cruise day. Weather is perfect and we head for the theater at 10:30 am for a Chef's culinary demonstration, followed by the Galley tour. OK, so the galley tour was on Friday! Award winning Executive Chef Giuseppe de Gennaro and his comedic side kick, Maitre d' Nicola Furlan, put on a memorable demonstration of cooking pasta, including the over-the-shoulder pasta fling to see if it sticks on the wall. If it does, it is ready! It did, to the delight of the audience. 

Some last minute shopping from the ship's stores, and spending an hour or so standing on deck seven forward watching the flying fish as they skip away from the ships' bow wave and one last lunch in the buffet. Tonight the luggage is picked up from outside your stateroom for transfer to the dock as soon as we land. Everything you have left goes in your carry-one luggage or bags. The last call for placing your luggage in the hall way is 11:00 pm, so we have plenty of time to change after we eat and lay out the clothes for the trip home.

We eat dinner one last time, and once again we get to hear Buster Poindexter.

One of the few traditions that seems to be carried on every Caribbean cruise regardless of ship or cruise line is the dessert on the night of the final dinner, and how it is served. Our German friends were somewhat startled when the lights in the glamorous dining went down after dinner and “Hot, Hot, Hot” began to play on the dining room speakers. The conga line of servers and waiters still wind their way around the darkened dining room carrying Baked Alaska on their heads, singing and generally having a good time as they have done on every cruise we have sailed on. The lights finally came back up and everyone took photos of their by-now-famous desert. I have never seen so many different sizes and types of digital cameras! They came out of nowhere. I think were pulled out of thin air. Everybody seemed to have at least one!  

 As our waitress held out the Baked Alaska we were to be served so we could photograph it, I realized the rum flambe on top has been replaced with an LED candle. Ahh, progress! Actually, safety is the reason for the change and it doesn't affect most the people who could care less anyway. Just another point of nostalgia for us old cruisers who still remember the good old days.

As we finally say goodnight and turn in, we reflect on what has been a pretty good cruise, especially considering the rough weather of the second and third days. Tomorrow we will be back in Port Everglades to disembark.

Will we be back? Oh, I'm sure we will, we just don't know when or which cruise ports we want to visit. Only one thing is absolutely certain: It won't be on the Oasis of the Seas. Having two thousand passengers on a ship is more than enough for me.

George

Reflections: The S/S Norway, our favorite ship

Cruise to Aruba - Boarding

From part one : http://piddlepaddler.blogspot.com/2012/03/crown-princess-to-aruba.html

Boarding the huge ship was smoothly done, but I can't say the same for just getting to the ship to start with. With the convoluted routing and redirects through the construction that dominated the port and the various security control points as we entered Port Everglades, I was really glad I left the driving to someone else. We used a charter-bus to make the 180 mile trip from Port Charlotte to Ft. Lauderdale so I wouldn't have to figure out the parking nonsense in the congested port area. We had friends of ours with us from Germany who speak very little English, and I simply didn't need the added confusion factor or a failure to communicate.

Bernd and Agnes, our friends from Germany

There were seven, huge, state-of-the-art cruise ships being boarded simultaneously in one of the busiest cruise ports in the United States. To say the port was jammed with traffic would be an understatement. The bus trip was easy enough for us, but our driver had my heartfelt sympathy as guard after guard made him move the huge bus after we finally got next to the correct ship in the terminal area. Two guards actually stood in front of the bus at one time, each pointing for him to go in a different direction. Whoever outranked whom finally won, and we again did another five point turn in the confines of a parking garage! Our driver finally got fed up once he was satisfied he was close enough to the entrance and just turned off the ignition. Hordes of porters pushing empty luggage carts descended on the undersides of the bus, and once they started unloading, it was obvious no one was going to move the bus. This driver earned his tip, even with his momentary lapse on the highway. This was his third shift in two days. Welcome to the new America.

Princess had us print everything from the Internet beforehand, so all we had to do was follow our yellow color through the terminal to our designated seating area. We never saw our luggage again, but it was also pre-tagged and color coded just like we were, so I wasn't worried. It had always shown up in front of our stateroom late in the evening on previous cruises, so I expected the same service here. 

After an hour and a half wait, we signed in with the efficient, courteous staff, they were actually quite funny, and after getting our plastic, embossed gold room keys, which are also your boarding cards, we were on our way up the forward gangplank. Ten minutes later we were checking out our stateroom, ready for a tour of the ship. I react badly when being herded and avoid places like Disney World like the plague, but Princess has this down to an art form and the whole procedure was quite painless.

Much of the chatter on deck was French, German, even Russian, with only a few passengers speaking English. The English speaking passengers were the only ones to benefit from the new, expanded safety briefing, however, which had formerly been known as the Parade of New Shoes, or technically, the Life Boat Drill. Over 800 of us listened intently to the Captain's 22 minute safety address over the Public Address speakers in the ship's theater, the “A” muster station, I couldn't help but wonder if we could all get out of the theater in time in case of a real emergency.

The first real shock of new-age cruising came shortly after the lifeboat drill. We went up to the forward pool deck bar and ordered drinks. I simply ordered a Budweiser. Apparently a brand hard to find among the many better known foreign labels. The smiling young woman presented me with the charge slip, they only accept your pre-approved credit card, and watched blandly as I read it several times. No matter how I turned it around, it still came out to six dollars and four cents, gratuity included. Wow, my first and only beer! The grand old days of cruising are over! My wife pointed out it was a sixteen ounce can, rather than the standard twelve ounce size. Doesn't matter, it was a six dollar can of Budweiser! This would be a cruise of abstinence. Well, within reason, of course. Remind me to check the futures market on beer. It may be a better investment than oil.

With heavy, overcast skies and winds steady at over thirty knots out of the northeast, most of the passengers standing outside on the railing had their arms folded tightly in front of them with their shoulders scrunched up to their ears as we crossed out of the protected anchorage and into the open ocean. Most looked like they wished they still had on their northern, cold weather jackets. 

As we watched the pilot disembark well outside the protection of the channel and head back toward Ft. Lauderdale, we wondered just how rough it has to be to get these people worried.  

The Crown Princess weighs over 112,000 tons, and that was probably before they loaded us, the fuel, the food, and who knows how many cases of Budweiser.  Actually, the net registered tonnage is only 83, 977 tons, so the gross tonnage of 113, 561 tons is when we cast off from Port Everglades loaded to the gills.  In that bloated condition she draws 28 feet of water.  In other words, you couldn't put her in your swimming pool unless your pool was 29 feet deep.  At 950 feet long, (that's over three football fields, I think, or over three soccer fields, or something else that makes you say, “Wow, that's long!”) she still shuddered and shook in the 30 knot crosswinds like my Golden Retriever when I give him a bath. 

The in-room television said we had “moderate seas” at four to seven feet, with an across-the-deck wind of 30 knots. We were constantly shaking. Of the five cruises we've done, this one was unique. We had lulled and waited all night in 20 foot seas not far off Palm Beach on our very first cruise many years ago and thought the slow, rolling wind blown waves were as bad as it got, but that ship, the old Sunward II hadn't protested like this one. The constant, quick jerks back and forth that occasionally caused quick side-steps and spilled drinks were new to us.But then we went to dinner and all was well with the world! Our decision to cruise once again was affirmed. Excellent food and outstanding service! I'll even wear a tie if I have to. Personally, the casual dining at one of the three buffets is great for a quick lunch, especially when everyone in your party is off doing their own thing, but the dining room is one reason we cruise.  The food is really good at the buffets, and table service is excellent there as well, but it is not personal.  When you eat in the dining room, you get to meet people like Antonio, our waiter and Alphonse, an assistant Maitre D' who cater to your every whim.  We only wore jackets twice, which to us was a nice change from the Mickey D atmosphere that surrounds the deck area that many of the passengers seem to enjoy.  Love great food!  Love great service!

But, times they are a'changing.  A guided tour of the ship from the bridge to the engine room is still available, but now instead of gratis or free of charge, it costs a staggering $150.00!  Even airline executives must look with envy at the cruise ship industry's ability to gouge their customers. 

Five of the seven cruise ships boarding passengers at Port Everglades, Florida.
The Oasis of the Seas is on the far right

Next: Day One to Aruba