Short Cruises 101 Part 4

Changes, Changes, Changes

It's the evening of day 2 of the cruise and we just got back from a tour and a eco jetraft ride on the ocean. It is the last few days of April, 2009 and Kevin and I are quite contented about our day's adventure. When we returned to the ship, we heard an announcement. Due to the recent directive from the CDC resulting from a recent outbreak of the swine flu, we will no longer be disembarking in Ensenada. A quick maintenance stop will take place, all excursions will be cancelled and instead the ship will have an additional full day at sea. Not great news as we were looking forward to stopping in Ensenada the next morning, however, I really appreciated the effort the cruise line made in sending us information on the change, providing us with a new itinerary of activities and fun things to do on our extra day at sea and what felt like their truly caring concern over our safety. Throughout the entire cruise they actually provided us with suggestions on how to stay healthy, informed us of areas throughout the ship where we could use alcohol based sanitizers that were between bathroom locations and even equipped each stateroom with Zycam in case anyone was even remotely feeling the sniffles. For the previous 48 hours, in most of the public areas on the ship with television, CNN was on and blasting updates constantly on swine flu. The previous day we heard there were an estimated 138 victims, the next day the numbers almost quadrupled. Needless to say, we were disappointed. Both Kevin and I were really looking forward to our Jeep Adventure and Winery Tour. So suddenly the ship was on hyperdrive, all staff would have to gear up for another full day of service. On port stop days, most passengers leave the ship so service staff can pare down and rest. For our cruise that was not an option. In the upheaval, the staff was wonderful and did not waver in their quality of service, for that, I am very grateful. Kevin and I found a comfy spot watched sports and had a fun time just hanging out and having some cocktails after lunch.

Things I learned on this segment of the trip:
1) Carry sunblock. You can burn when you are on a ocean raft even on a not so sunny day. And for the ladies reading this, good makeup can sooo hide an icky sunburn. Yee Ha!!!
2) Make sure to charge up your cameras prior to excursion days, you will need them ready to go in the morning to ensure you capture all your photos and video.
3) Depending on the port, you actually can get things you need on the port stop. I picked up some video tape at Radio Shack on Catalina Island and it was comparably priced to what it was in Los Angeles.
4) A change might be disappointing but you never know what activity can take its place. Even though we were disappointed, we remembered the most important part. It is not the activity that makes a vacation, it is the company.
5) Cancelling an excursion guarantees additional money in your sail and sign account. So yeah we were onboard ship for another day, but we had cash to spend any way we wanted on incidentals. I almost sprinted to the $10 store on the Lido deck. Far be it from me to not enjoy my financial windfall.
More to come in our final installment of Short Cruises 101