Life Aboard the Misery of the Seas

I have decided that being retired gives you perspective. In the scheme of things, two weeks doesn’t make much of a difference. This trip has not been THAT bad. Sure, we didn’t get to get off the boat for 12 days, and we missed the opportunity to see those beautiful spots in Spain that we were so looking forward to, but on the other hand, it isn’t like they starved us or made us do dishes. You should hear the complaints flying around here. Apparently after the announcement last night that we were taking off at approximately 1:00 AM for Barcelona with no stops until we arrived set lots of people off. There was some sort of protest rally down on the promenade deck main street which is another reason why the large ships with those crowded areas are a bad idea.

Royal Caribbean has provided us with $100 per cabin credit for each of the two stops we have missed. Most of the charges on our account are for wine, so that $200 of credit has provided us with the wonderful benefit of free wine in exchange for lost stops. Maybe those people complaining only have two weeks of vacation and they feel ripped off that they had to spend the entire two weeks on board the ship, even if it was not very expensive and the wine was free! Although Mike and I aren’t bent out of shape, there are plenty of people that are, and when they get together the mass of people starts to growl.

After all those years of management consulting I learned a thing or two about customer service and I have to compliment our weary captain and the cruiseline for their handling of these problems. He has very professionally taken arrows for the problems and has fielded a complaint session in the largest theater. He has negotiated with headquarters and earned us a discount against a future cruise equal to 20% of the purchase price of this cruise (admittedly, that isn’t a big number given the price we paid).

The onboard staff is equally disappointed not to being making the stops but they are working hard to make sure we enjoy ourselves. They have rallied to design a ton of entertainment and games to keep us occupied when we would be walking around Saville and Malaga.

As the days at sea have progressed we have been setting the clock forward one hour every day to account for the time difference between EST and the time in Barcelona. For some odd reason, the time change occurs at 11:30 AM when we jump to 12:30 AM. This means that lunch comes immediately after breakfast unless you get up real early to eat. We have been skipping breakfast and eating lunch when we wake up. To save money on this cruise Mike and I took our usual inside cabin, so we sleep in a pitch black and very quiet room. This morning we slept in so late that we almost missed lunch. Take heart though, we didn’t miss it.