Yesterday I talked about arriving to your cruise ship. Today I want to talk to you all about my routines on set sail day. Although I only began cruising in 2004 there are some routines for me that I feel I must adhere to or risk ruining my cruise. For instance, I think you should be on board the ship as early as possible. I try to time it. I know that if you get to the cruise terminal too early, you just stand around and wait and might get on board 5 minutes ahead of someone who arrived 2 hours after you. There's a sweet spot for arriving at the terminal. For my upcoming cruise, boarding time is 1:30 p.m. With that in mind I'll plan to be at the terminal at 1:45. Getting there at 1 or 1:30 would be pointless. Those people might get on board 5 minutes ahead of me.
See here's the thing... All of the people on last week's cruise will start disembarking around 7:00 a.m. if the ship makes it into port on time and clears customs without any issues. It takes a minimum of 5 hours to offload the ship. While the ship is being offloaded, housekeeping is frantically cleaning every square inch of the ship. That means there is no way they could possibly start loading people on before noon. They need that hour and a half cushion to 1:30 just to be safe. They NEVER start boarding early, but I have experienced several times when they have started late. It just depends on weather conditions, customs, food deliveries and whether or not there were any emergency evacs from the last cruise that they had to deal with. (You'd be surprised at how often an ambulance is waiting when the ship arrives in port.)
So, anyway, I like to arrive to the terminal 15 or 20 minutes after the boarding process was scheduled to begin. I have been an hour before it was scheduled to begin before and I have been 2 hours after it was scheduled to begin before. Suffice to say this is one instance where the early bird actually doesn't catch the worm. Getting there later, you might think you could avoid the over-zealous early birds, but in reality, with 3,000 people to get on board, they have lines at all times. I find that an hour or two after the ship begins boarding a lot of the people who had to fly to the port city are arriving from the airport. If you can get to the terminal before those people, it's a victory.
When I was preparing for my first cruise, I looked at what time the ship was scheduled to set sail and in my mind, I thought that I just needed to be on board by then. My travel agent quickly set me straight. He told me that you should be on board as early as possible. It doesn't matter what time the ship is going to leave. Get on board as early as they will let you. His reasoning was that you paid for that boarding day and all of that food is sitting on the ship just waiting for someone to get on board and start eating. Why stop off at a restaurant on your way to the ship and pay for food when you could be on board eating what was already paid for. Also, the earlier you are on board the earlier your vacation begins and you can start relaxing. Besides, there are a ton of things to do on the ship from the moment you arrive.
Once you have checked in, there is one more line that you must go through before boarding the ship. It is the photo line. Here your entire group poses for a photo in front of a life preserver or mock up of a ship or logo. Then later the photos are available for purchase in the ships photo shop. For some reason, this photo is always the worst one of the cruise for me. I'm not sure why but I usually take it too seriously and it turns out to be an awful photo. Two cruises ago, my travel buddy, Jenny and I decided to pose for all of the ship photos in humorous positions. If I can't look pretty, I may as well look like I'm having a great time, right? But for some reason, the pre-boarding photo is still a serious photo for us and I think this cruise will be the one where that ends. In fact I'm thinking of bringing props....
So once you are on board, what do you do? I go straight to my cabin and drop off my carry-on luggage. Usually the cabin steward is lurking around at that point so you can meet him. I always ask him to keep me well supplied with ice for the duration of the cruise. He generally will tell you when muster will be and let you know to get in touch with him if you have any needs, questions or concerns. After that I leave the cabin with my cell phone, seapass and camera. My luggage hardly ever gets to the room for a few hours. You see other peoples luggage all up and down the hallways but I always just assume mine will be among the last to arrive and I'm usually not disappointed. With that in mind, I usually carry whatever I intend to wear to dinner on the first night in my carry-on just to be safe. I've never had an instance in which my luggage didn't make it to the room prior to dinner time. But there is a first time for everything, right?
Armed with my seapass, camera and cell phone, I head up to the pool deck if the weather is nice and have my first "boat drink" of the cruise. This is when you have to take a few pictures of yourself with your cell phone to post on Facebook
A) so that all of your friends know that you arrived to the ship safely
And
B) to rub it in that you're standing on the deck of a cruise ship with a "boat drink" in your hand and they are at home trying to figure out what they will wear to work tomorrow.
Once the pictures have successfully uploaded to Facebook, the rest of the day is yours. I generally like to walk around the ship and find where everything that I am interested in is located. I cruise by the dining room and find my table so that I know where all of my dinners will be spent for the week. I go by the shops even though they won't open until the ship leaves port. I locate all of the places that you can get pizza or ice cream whenever you get the urge. For some reason, I usually go by the spa and fitness center although, I have no intentions of getting "fit" during the cruise and I have officially sworn off cruise ship spa services. Then finally I make it to the buffet for lunch. By this time, it is usually around 3 in the afternoon and the pickings can be a little slim so late in the afternoon. But you can always get a hot dog and some fries if all else fails.
After eating, I'll head back to the cabin to see if the luggage is there yet. If it is, I'll spend time in there unpacking and organizing. Cruise ship cabins are remarkably small. I mean, think of the smallest closet in your house and then put two beds and a sofa inside of it. That is how big a cruise ship cabin generally is. So, I find that unless you find a place to keep everything and get it all stowed that first day, the cabin is not going to be a very welcoming place to come back to each time you leave. Also, the cabin steward is coming into your cabin several times a day to clean, pick things up, and turn back beds. The less stuff you leave laying around, the easier his job is and the better service you will receive. So, I believe an hour of unpacking and putting everything away on that first day is time well spent. Usually by the time I have finished unpacking the signal is sounding for muster.
If you haven't experienced muster before I'll tell you that over the years it has gone through some changes. I can only assume that now, since the tragedy that occurred on the Costa Concordia last year it is probably back to more of a formal thing where you actually have to pay attention than it had become in recent years. When I first started cruising, you were required to put your life vest on before leaving your cabin. As you approached the stairs a crew member would look at your life vest to be sure it was properly fastened and stop you and help if it wasn't. They also looked at your muster station which is stamped on your life vest and sent you in the appropriate direction. Once you got to the correct deck, other crew members repeated this process until they get everyone out to their stations. Once there, your name would be checked off of a list to ensure that they had successfully gotten everyone to muster. After all of the names were checked off the captain would make announcements over the ships PA system and then you were released.
In recent years, they stopped requiring that you even bring your life vest with you. I was a part of one muster that occurred in the ships atrium rather than out on the deck at the actual muster station. Another muster I attended didn't take place until the next day. Thank God the ship didn't go down that first night... Everybody brought drinks and it had become kind of the muster party. Generally at muster, the biggest concern is that you might go blind from all of the camera flashes that are going off. The picture to the left was taken two cruises ago. Note the absence of life vests. This is also the one that took place on the day after we left port. The two below were taken five and a half years ago. On this occasion, we had to put the vests on prior to leaving the cabin. That's my mom and niece, by the way. She has grown up since these photos were taken. Last week she was elected homecoming queen (the niece not the mom....).
I think the thing that I look forward to most of all the first day has become dinner. Not because I am particularly hungry, after all once you arrive on the ship you are given non-stop access to all the food you can possibly eat for the duration of your time on board. The reason that I enjoy that first dinner so much is that you get to meet your dinner companions for the week. Now, many cruise lines are going to "my time dining" and such where you just walk into the dining room at any time and they seat you at a different table each night. I HATE THIS! I like the old school dining where you sit at the same table each night, you get to know your waiter and his or her assistant and you might be seated with a group of people you have never met before but over the course of a week you become very well acquainted. I always request a large table at the second seating. On a few occasions even after making this request I still got a small table. Once my mom and I spent the week at a table for 6 and she and I were the only ones who ate there all week. It was very disappointing. I mean I like talking to my mom, but we were already sharing a room. We could talk to each other all day and night if we chose to, why would we want to sit at dinner with only one another for company? Now, if I were assigned that same table, I would simply ask the head waiter to move us to another table.
Once I asked to be moved to another table because I was traveling alone and nobody showed up to dine with me the first night. They seated me with a table of two older couples who took me under their wings and we spent the entire week on excursions together, meeting up on deck and just having a good time. On the Mediterranean cruise, we were seated at a table with a 30-something couple and two sisters who were traveling together. We had a terrific time with them. On the Celebrity cruise, we were at a table of 3 couples all of them older than us. One of the ladies was kind of crazy but it gave the rest of us a lot to talk about and we all had a great week.
Well, I could go on forever on this topic. But I will end now. I must get some work completed so that I can work on my travel lists tonight. Make it a great Tuesday.
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