Home for the holidays?
27 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
in travel Tags: cabins, Caribbean, Christmas, create memories, Holiday, Home for the Holidays, mountains, Thanksgiving
Have you ever spent a holiday traveling with your family on a vacation instead of being home for the holidays? I had several friends this week who were vacationing for the Thanksgiving holiday. I have often wondered what it would be like to be away from home for a holiday like Thanksgiving or Christmas.
I was very envious of one of my friends who cruised this week and spent the week traveling around the western Caribbean soaking up the sun while I was back home in the cold, dreary, November weather. I am positive my turkey and dressing would have tasted much better gazing out over the blue waters and white, sandy beaches while the sun warmed and bronzed my skin.
A daughter of some friends shared the holiday with the lovable characters of Disney World. I can only imagine how beautifully the parks were decorated. I bet the costumes that the cast of characters were dressing in was magnificent.
To be home for the holidays among all your family is something that a lot of people would not want to give up. I wouldn’t want to do it every year, but some time I would love to experience a Thanksgiving sailing in the Caribbean. Or maybe Christmas spent in a cozy cabin in the snowy mountains surrounded by those I love most could make a wonderful memory to last a lifetime. I hope to create those memories sometime soon.
Hurricane Irene disrupts cruises.
31 Aug 2011 2 Comments
in cruising, Royal Caribbean, travel Tags: Caribbean, cruise message boards, cruisecritic, cruiselines, cruising, Hurricane Irene, hurricane season, passenger compensation, Royal Caribbean, Travel, travel agents, travel delays
Well, just as I had previously blogged about, the news stories are clogging up the chat boards with accounts of sailings being altered because of Irene. This article from CruiseCritic.com talks about how the different lines have handled having to leave passengers behind due to early departures. Most of the cruiselines chose to offer as a good-will gesture, compensation for their passengers who were inconvenienced. One line even went as far as putting left-behind passengers up in a hotel and flying them to meet the ship at the next port. The article makes a point of saying that the lines that chose to do this for their passengers are “heroes” while Royal Caribbean International who chose not to, well within their contractual obligations, are “zeros.”
I think it’s great that the other lines chose to compensate their passengers for being inconvenienced by mother nature. Kudos to them! If I were one of those passengers I would be thrilled. As one message board poster pointed out, it was good PR for them. In my opinion, those other lines chose to do it because they couldn’t afford to have any bad PR.
I don’t think any less of RCI for not throwing a bone to their inconvenienced passengers as some message board posters have commented, saying that they will now choose another line to cruise on. Great! That just means there will be less lounge chair hogs for me to have to fight with to get a chair on the pool deck. 
Look people, if you know you’re cruising in hurricane season, and you know a hurricane has been forecasted around the time of your sailing, PAY ATTENTION! The cruiselines update their websites continually as they receive information about the storm, so check it….. often. Call your travel agent to find out if departure times have changed. This is one of the reasons I always fly in the day before departure. There is no rushing to get to port, especially if the departure time is moved up. The cruiselines give you every opportunity to receive up-to-date information, but you need to put a little effort into it yourself. If you don’t want to have to deal with these types of issues, don’t cruise during hurricane season.
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