The Cruise - Part 2

The Costly Life on Board

One thing that really bothered me on the cruise was that once you're on board their boat, you're trapped. I'd had my head filled with visions of unlimited drink (non-alcoholic) refills and free ice cream but sadly that was not to be. Everything cost money - and it cost much more money than it would on land. It was all on their terms.

Water and coffee/tea was free but that was it. Orange juice was free at breakfast time only. They also wouldn't let you fill containers. I should have brought a funnel.

The pool was free too - but that was closed for most of the trip partially because it was too rocky but also because they decided to do maintenance during our holiday - thanks again guys!! (grr)

Kids club was free - and as I mentioned before, that was fantastic for the boys.

The deck chairs were free too, but since the pool was out, none of them were vacant. Even worse, people would get up and "reserve" them for the entire day by leaving their stuff on them. It was frustrating.

Tristan on deck on one of those days when it was too rough and too windy to use the pool... apparently...

I was so desperate for a deck chair that I went for a walk around the boat looking for a free one in a different area. I finally found a free one - in fact, several free ones, in a nice part called The Oaais. It was a kid-free area but otherwise nothing special. I no sooner sat down when I was approached by a staff member. She was very apologetic (I found that most staff members hated having to do awful things to guests) but she said she'd have to charge me $10 to sit there. I got up immediately. I'd like to say that I left a fart on their expensive chair but I couldn't exactly manage one at the time. A pity.

Trivial Improvements

Things started to improve as we got into shipboard life. Maree and her family quickly found their feet and started branching off into activities like Bingo and Trivia. We didn't actually attend bingo as it's not our thing but unfortunately that meant that we missed seeing Michael do the "chicken dance" for having called out Bingo! unnecessarily.

Maree won Trivia very early in the piece. It seemed really impressive at the time but now, following our failed joint efforts to repeat the feat, it's likely that the crowd was smaller when she played. Trivia was actually a lot of fun and the person who ran it had a great sense of humor. He put up with all of the "Batkins or Bollykins" (as we called our teams) behaviour dropping comments about "what kind of laugh is that?" at my giggle and pointing out when we smiled excessively. He even showed interest in Hayden's ice cream.

The rest of the shows were not particularly overwhelming, though the comedy guy was pretty funny. Actually, I'm not sure if he was funny or if it was just my mother laughing which made him seem funny. There was a music show which was painful to watch as they tried desperately to NOT give away a free cruise. In the end they resorted to some rather offensive and cheating antics to save money. We went away feeling very sorry for the contestant who had been humiliated on stage for nothing.

Restaurants

After a while we realized that the buffet food wasn't entirely edible and switched to the restaurants. We celebrated Joanne's birthday there one night and it was great. Of course, eating in restaurants had its drawbacks and the kids were barely controllable during meals. Tristan could have opened a shop with the selection of clothing he made from various serviettes.

Tristan displaying the headscarf variation of serviette wear.

Fortunately there was only one night when the kids got so out of hand that they started knocking drinks over and climbing under the table. Other than that night, it was great to be able to have meals with the entire family (including Maree's family and my parents) at the one table. That doesn't happen at home because we don't have an eleven-seater table.

One night at the restaurant was so rough that we kept almost falling off our chairs - and across the table. Amazingly, nothing was spilled that night.

Movies on the Boat

I'd also been told to expect constant movies on the boat but in truth they only did one per day. None of them were action flicks, they were all talky and distant and they weren't generally the best. The first one we tried to watch "The Lottery Ticket" was barely in English, being primiarly in jive. As such, it was mostly gibberish to the kids. At one point, after an all-jive group conversation in a park, Tristan asked me if they were all drunk. We walked out a few minutes later.

Then there was "the social network" which I had been keen to see. They started the movie much earlier than the advertised time and so while we and others thought we were walking into the beginning, we were actually walking into the last 15 minutes. We didn't bother watching any more movies after that - although the kids got one every night in kids club (all ones they'd already seen though).

Shore Leave

Well, that brings us to the end of Part 2 of the Cruise. What? Shore leave... oh yes. We were supposed to be stopping in New Caledonia on the third day of the trip and we were all looking forward to it because we were all going a bit stir crazy on the boat - or is that Cabin Fever?

But then the captain announced that we would be sailing for two more days. Apparently there was a tropical cyclone which was too close to our destination - no kidding, we'd all been looking at it on the weather charts for two days but this was the first time they actually acknowledged it. Instead of making three island stops, we were reduced to one - and even then it wasn't one that was on our schedule.

A lot of passengers were upset and angry. I saw one girl burst into tears upon hearing the announcement.

I'll cover shore leave in the third (and hopefully final) post on the cruise. The wait should give you a taste of what we went through....