Our First Cruise and Last Cruise
October 2009
Well, despite my best efforts to book a cruise line that is suppose to be a good one, I failed. This being our first cruise there were certain expectations set forth by friends who were seasoned cruisers. We were told the following:
1. Don't worry about motion sickness, you won't even feel the waves….Whu??? Really, what kind of joke is that? Thank god I was not naïve enough to go without some sort of precaution. We packed wristbands for me and Bonine for Andy. THANK GOD!! By the time we reached the high seas we were both feeling the effects of it. The only time we felt good was when we were sitting in bed or at a table. Walking around? Huh! That was miserable. It would also appear that we were not the only ones feeling the pain, as we observed the people around us with the tinge of green around their faces.
2. The food is great! Expect to gain some weight. You can not get around the food!...Again, let me say Huh? What food? We went looking for the food and did not find it. Our first meal was a lousy burger on the pool deck. Andy thought it was ok, but I think he was just hungry. Not content to settle there I decided to wait for dinner. We went to one of the sit down restaurants and ordered conservatively, I did not want to over eat. After all there was still plenty of time to gorge ourselves. I ordered the baby shrimp cocktail and sea scallops. Andy ordered the ceasar salad and tortellini. My shrimp cocktail I, code for "bay" shrimp cocktail, was some sort to shrimp hash and cocktail sauce. I passed. Ceasar salad was good. Scallops were good except there were only 5 of them, and I would not exactly call them "Sea" scallops. They were again of the "Bay" variety. (ie a little small for this girl's appetite.) The scallops were accompanied by some sort of cheesy paste disguised as grits? The tortellini? Lets just not speak of them. I decided that since the meals were inclusive we should just finish up and go to another location. Why not? What else was there to do, right. We skipped dessert and headed to the other restaurant. Can you believe it? It was the SAME menu! Another pass. After hanging out in our room for awhile we decided to hit the buffet. What the heck. I was not feeling really well and needed something comforting. There was indeed a buffet and there was food but it was not really hitting the spot. I had asparagus, which was good and mild which made me feel good, there was turkey piccatta? Pass. French fries! Fresh and crispy, the way we like it. We both needed the salt. After about 10 minutes I see what I had come for, a PASTA BAR! Yippie! I was finally going to be reallllly satisfied. Let me say again, wellll. While standing in line for the pasta I started feeling the pings of …throw up. Yup! It starts to hit me. Pass. We took dessert back to the room. Neither of us ate it. We just had to lay down. The final word on the food, the fries were great! Did I mention they ran out of coke?
3. There is so much to do on a cruise. You won't be board. Let me first of all point out that I am currently on the ship on this computer writing this blog. Hmmm. Well, we headed to the casino and checked it out. Unfortunately, we were both feeling a little sick from the motion that standing in a room with loud noise and smoke was not cutting it. Shopping? Yes, there was plenty of that, but again, Andy and I do not buy, cigarettes, jewelry or chachtkies. Especially the overpriced kind. (remember, I am way too cheap for that.) There seems to be a lack of open space. By open space I mean areas that you can sit at outside. I was so looking forward to sitting outside and relaxing. But the areas that are outside were crowded and always full of very loud music and cigarette smoke. I fear that I am getting old.
4. You can totally relax on a cruise…HUH??? What up with the 8am wake up alarm EVERY morning? Yup. Every morning at the strike of 8am, the flippin' cruise director would make some sort of announcement I could not understand THEN thought it would be cute to sing some freaking "good morning" song. Just kill me. As if it that was not enough, the first morning, they decided to do a staff emergency drill, which meant that they would sound the alarms. The second morning was to the lovely sound of some sort of maintenance on the boat. Was there one morning that they were not doing some sort of work on the boat? That would lead you to think that maybe we should go to bed earlier and get our rest in on the other end. Well, well, well. That was not to happen either as there were partiers up the hall making all kinds of ruckus. On another night, they were playing the music sooooo loud we could hear it 2 decks below the bar!
Now that we are back and we have been fully scammed… I think the reality is, cruiselines are like the airlines. They have cut back. The days of ice cream for snacks on a 3 hour flight and appetizers on real china with silverware in first class are over. Which leads me to believe truly luxury cruising is also gone