July 15, 2003
Alaska: Part I - Cruising
Well, we've been back from the cruise for quite some time now, and I've pretty much got my thoughts on the matter properly rehearsed and organized, so here's Part I of my summary of that experience.
We sailed on the Royal Caribbean Vision of the Seas, which is quite impressive. Twelve or so decks, two pools (one outdoor, one indoor/outdoor with a roof that opens), a gym, spa, various bars, lounges and discotheques, a small shopping mall, a casino, a thousand-or-so seat theater. And they had other shippy stuff, too, like lifeboats and gangways and anchors. Our stateroom was very small and on the inside, so we didn't get a porthole. What we did get was absolute darkness (which is quite pleasant, for sleeping) and the gentle vibration of the ship's engines. It would have been nice to be able to look outside, but I loved how easy it was to get to sleep in that environment.
I have to say that I really like travelling by ship. Since we live downtown, we had only a fifteen-minute drive to the boat and then Bang! -- we were there... on vacation. No endless waiting and lining up and dealing with the whole airline experience, just check in and start having fun... the whole hotel moves.
One of the interesting things about travelling by boat is the "muster drill" which is where they make sure you know how to get off the boat in case it sinks. It's pretty funny -- I wish I'd had my camera -- because every passenger on the whole ship has to put on their huge, orange, hilariously cumbersome lifevest and line up (men in the back, women and children up front) at their muster station under their designated lifeboat. Ours was number 13, which I'm sure made a few people a little uneasy.
I'm a pretty unstructured guy, so life aboard a ship is not really for me, because everything runs by the clock. Dinner at time X, show at time Y, activity W at time Z. You get the idea. For the most part this didn't bother me too much, but I did occasionally find it frustrating. Plus, I forgot my watch at home.
The thing everyone tells you before you go on a cruise is how good the food is, and how much of it there is. They're right. The food is generally quite good, and there is tons of it. Our waiter told me you could eat something like 17 separate meals a day, not counting room service. The plates at the breakfast buffet were big enough to hold two or three breakfasts. I know this because every morning I ate at least two breakfasts at once. (Mmmm. pancakes and scrambled eggs and assorted fruit and sausages (two kinds) and cereal and toast, etc.). I'd drop my practically overflowing platter of victuals onto the table, and Stella would just stare in disbelief. For my part, I'd stare at the two pieces of fruit or whatever she'd have on her plate and wonder aloud "is that all you're eating?" Of course, her breakfast only looked sparse in contrast to mine, which could have fed a small English village.
Dinner was another matter entirely. I like to think of it as a three-star gourmet cafeteria. There is assigned seating for dinner (we were at table 38) and with your table comes your very own waiter, head waiter and assistant waiter. These are three of the four members of your shipboard "personal team" (the fourth is the guy who tends to your stateroom while you're out eating). The menu changes every night, and the quality and presentation of the food is quite good, considering that they're feeding over 2000 people. Still, despite the fact that the food was good and the service excellent, I eventually just got tired of all that eating. I ended up with some kind of fancy-food overload and just wanted a pizza or hamburger or something.
During the trip to Alaska there are three "sea days", which are days where you don't stop at a port. That leaves you a lot of time to explore the ship and take part in the many costly activities, like gambling and bingo. All that exploring is good exercise, too. Since a large fraction of the passengers are elderly and/or moderately disabled, the elevators are overworked, and if you don't want to spend your days waiting for them, then you have to climb many, many stairs. The main passenger areas were from decks 4 through 12 and the decks are arranged so that no two things that you want to do in sequence are on the same deck. So you have lunch on deck 9, and then want to read by the pool deck 9, but first you have to go back to your cabin on deck 8 to get your book. Then there's a muster drill on deck 5. Then you could go to the library or card room on deck 7. Dinner is on deck 4, but you have to go back to deck 8 to change, after dinner there are bars are on decks 4, 6 and, 9, 10 and 12. After awhile you don't mind waiting for the elevators, except that they're always full of old people and there's no room, so you wind up taking the stairs anyway.