Cruise Ship Changes Needed?

As I'm sure you heard, last week the Carnival Triumph had a little fire in the engine and some lack of electricity problems.  Ok, a fire and lose of engines, floating adrift in the Gulf of Mexico.

Most of what I know about the conditions on the ship I learned from 20/20 this past weekend.  No power on the ship, no bathrooms, no hot food, sleeping on the deck.  Onion sandwiches I could deal with, sleeping on the deck, that's fine too.  But the bathroom, that's where I draw the line. Using red hazardous waste bags as your bathroom while there are overflowing toilets, that's a health issue.  It's compounded by the fact that the Carnival Splendor had similar issues 2 years ago when they had an engine fire.

The other thing that was interested is that the ship was about 3 days closer to Cozumel then it was to Mobile, Alabama.  But, they decided to go to Mobile, allegedly because not all passengers had passports.  While that is a legitimate concern, and was probably a factor in the decision to go to Mobile, I'm sure there was a lot more going into that decision. 

I also found it interesting that 2 ships in the area met the Triumph and gave some sort of assistance.  But I wonder if there is anyway passengers could have been offloaded to those ships.  I'm sure there are a ton of issues with space on the other ships, where they are in their itineraries, how to choose who gets offloaded.  But when your choice is 4 days at sea in squalor, then sleeping on the floor of a lounge on another ship doesn't seem like such a bad option.

I have one recommendation, which I have no idea of the feasibility of, but it certainly sounds reasonable. 

How about isolated back-up generation that can power emergency lighting and toilets.  Seriously, how many ships have to go adrift without the toilets working before we realize that this problem needs to be addressed?

I'm not going to swear off cruising because of this or the other recent events in the industry.  But, I'm starting to wonder about Carnival's ability to handle emergencies. 

How about you, are you reconsidering cruising?

Not all Doritos are created equal

Back in 2002 I took a cruise with my mom and my sister on Carnival and one of the stops was in Cozumel, Mexico.  I insisted on going to the Mayan Ruins at Tulum with my sister and I experienced my first bit of tourist scamming.  I should mention that at the time I collected key chains from the places I went.

The excursion starts with a boat ride to Playa Del Carmen.  It was about 30 minutes and the boat moved very fast and bumped on every single wave as it crossed the channel separating Cozumel and Playa Del Carmen.  It was not a good crossing for those who get sea sick, I saw a couple white bags around the boat.  Then we took an hour long bus ride through Mexico.  While I certainly wouldn't describe the area as ghetto, it certainly didn't feature nice homes of the locals.  More like small wooden houses a step above shacks.  We had one stop about halfway there at a souvenir shop offering cheesy Mexico souvenirs. 

Once we arrived at Tulum we were offered the choice of taking the tram (for a charge) or walking the mile or so to the ruins.  Since it was, as an old friend used to say, "Africa Hot," we took the tram. 

After we finished looking at the ruins we went to market/souvenir area to look around.  I was looking at the key chains when I was approached by one of the workers.  Apparently, the key chain was real silver and cost $80.  The guy tried to get me to buy this key chain.  When I practically laughed at $80 he asked how much I was willing to pay, it was real silver after all.  I offered $8.  I might have had a key chain collection at the time, but I doubt any of them cost more then $10.  The conversation didn't last long, but it was a nice try by the guy.

After that we went to buy some snacks, this was a fairly long day with no lunch break.  My sister and I decided on a small bag of Doritos and a bottle of Gatorade each.  But we were in Mexico so the Doritos flavors were written in Spanish.  We opted for the bags that looked like Nacho Cheese and Cool Ranch flavor and in total paid about $7 for the Gatorade and Doritos, a bit of a rip off for the time.  When we got on the bus back to the ship we opened up our Doritos and quickly found out that not all Doritos are created equal.  The orange bag of Doritos was not Nacho Cheese and the blue bag was not Cool Ranch.  I believe one ended up being a jalapeno pepper flavor and was not very good.  I don't remember the other flavor, but it also was not very good.

I would have chalked it all up as a funny tourist mistake - except I was hungry at the time!  But it was a good lesson that when you travel things are not always what that seems - sometimes it works out and other times it does not.  And of course watch out for people trying to sell you overpriced crap.  At least the $80 offer was so insane that I couldn't take it remotely seriously.