Cruising Tips

Spending a week on a pleasure boat takes a certain things that other forms of travel and other types of vacations do not. It is here that I would like to point these out for you. As we get along into this, you’ll find this page about the ship quite handy, and yes, there’ll be pictures.

And so we begin, below the fold.

First off, I feel the need to mention that once you are on the boat, there is very little you need to worry about. Just about anything you want can be found by just asking someone wearing a nametag. If you see the Captain wandering about, I seriously doubt he’ll personally deliver you a Singapore Sling, but he’ll pass your request on to someone who can.

It is before you get on and off the boat where you’ll need to have packed your patience. You and 1400 other people will be doing the “Hurry Up and Wait” routine, showing your “papers” to nearly a dozen people for more than an hour, with each of them scrutinizing different sections of each part of your ID package.

The Mom, who was very gracious in gifting this trip to the wife and I, made sure to remind me that I was not allowed to bring a firearm onto the boat (we were never in international waters, so there was no skeet shooting on this trip). I did, however manage to use some tricks I learned long ago to bring more than enough anti-personell cutlery with me on board.

One bit of info you might find funny is that my Gerber Belt Tool was confiscated by Cruise Security before I got on the boat. The reason: it had a locking knife blade. Nevermind that the blade is only 2.5 inches long and is otherwise a pair of pliers; the blade locks and it was a 15 minute bitch to get the thing returned to me on Friday. Do not bring yours, it will only waste your time and draw unwanted attention to you.

Another FYI is that you’ll need to remember any run-ins with the law you have ever had. There was a guy on board who was singled out by Canadian Customs, along with nine other folks on board, and taken off the ship when we reached Nanaimo. The group were made to sign paperwork swearing that they wouldn’t leave the ship in Prince Rupert. He was in his 30’s and his stated offence was a car theft conviction in his late teens. My brother, who had a somewhat similar offense during the same time in his life was in the group of ten.

I didn’t know it at the time, I thought these were just people tendering into Nanaimo early, but this is his group being taken to Customs. Why they couldn’t sign the papers onboard, I will never understand.

So when I was in Prince Rupert, I bought him a hat.

The pic is a bit blurry, but it says “Canada Kicks Ass”. They kicked his ass, anyway. He was mildly amused at my gift.

OK, now that you are onboard, it is time to go to your room and drop off your luggage so that you can begin exploring. As you make your way to your room and then once you get inside you will notice two things: First, the rooms are quite small (approximately 171sqft). But that is OK because you’re only going to be sleeping in them and there is over 300,000 square feet for you to explore. You might not think that getting a room without a window is a good thing until you try sleeping during the day. Also, unless you’re up above Deck 10, the window will most likely be splashed with rain, etc, so save your cash.

The second thing you’ll notice is that the dirtiest thing on the boat are your hands. There were Hand Sanitizer dispensing orbs on stands just about everywhere and your easily trained/paranoid fellow travellers will block intersections to use these damn things. I didn’t like them myself, the stuff left my hands sticky. I used water.

Speaking of water, the showers work well and the water temp ranges from steam to what the boat is floating in. However, there is something funny about the water; I could never get my hair clean enough with it, though “bed head” was never a problem, so it evened out.

Unless you have a severe balance problem, there really isn’t anything you need to worry about in terms of the boat rocking. I am by no means a sailor, but my sealegs came to me pretty quickly. It got kind of rough on the second night, but even then it wasn’t bad at all. Think of it this way: If you can stand riding on a train, these ships should be no problem.

Now the boat I was on, The Mercury, Measures in at 866ft long with a 105ft beam across. There are nine floors for passengers to occupy; Deck 4 to Deck 12. There are no less than ten separate bars on these decks because apparently alcohol plays a very large part in the “cruising experience”, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

There is also a two-story formal dining room, a non-formal buffet area that runs half the length of the ship, three pools, three sets of elevators (ten elevators total), a movie theater, a theater with a live show stage, two night clubs, a full spa, a library, a casino, four basketball courts, a three-story foyer with a spiral staircase, a full-on Duty Free shopping mall and, for those folks who are so dense as to feel the need to exercise while on vacation, a workout room with on-staff trainers.

But back to the alcohol; I don’t know if it is in homage to the sailors of old or the fact that no one will be getting behind the wheel of a car for a week or that they normally drink this heavily, but after the first hour on board, 75% of your fellow passengers will be on their way to a very strong buzz. The only way to compensate for this is for you to start in on the hooch yourself.

Maintaining a good buzz is also essential because of the location of the main pool area. While there is no roof over the pool or the half dozen assorted hot tubs surround the pool, it sits three stories below the fore and aft towers and one story below anything else, so it is very much out of the wind and quite nice even when the sun is playing peek-a-boo.

A goodly number of your fellow passengers have little to no modesty, especially if they’ve been drinking heavily and they will be walking around not just the pool area but the whole ship in various stages of being dressed. Depending on your own modesty, approximately 10% of your fellow passengers will be better looking than you, another 10% will be as good looking as you and the other 80% may just give you cause to claw your eyes out of your skull when they drop their bathrobes to go for a splash.

Again, the only way to compensate for this is to keep your buzz going. Luckily the alcohol is not all that expensive when compared to a regular bar. They order it by the case and sell it by the gallon. However, if you just want a Coke, you can fork over $2.25. Everything is sold in cans or bottles and there are no beer taps or soda fountains. The wife and I ended up sneaking a half-rack we bought while in Prince Rupert onboard in her backpack to save some money. Next time we’ll put a case into our main suitcase, that way there’ll be room for souveniers on the way home.

Speaking of money, your American dollars will technically buy you nothing onboard. Before you board, you will be required to give the cruise company your credit card number, to which they will charge everything you buy on board from drinks to stuff from the Duty Free Stores. We’re not heavy drinkers and the wife and I were still able to rack up $95 worth of liquids in five days (plus a very special $130 purchase I made), so I would really not like to see the tabs rung up by some of our fellow passengers.

About the only thing your dollars are good for on board ship is to tip the people providing the services. Unless you want your end of trip tips charged to your card, bring about $100 in small bills for your room stewards, formal dining room waiters and various waitstaff.

Speaking of the waitstaff, you’ll meet folks from just about every continent except North America on board. They work seven days a week for around fourteen hours a day (with the occasional “Lunch Shift” off). But before you get to feeling sorry for them, speak to a few of them. I talked to a guy who had been doing this for over 10 years and had one hell of a plan: He’d work the job for nine months out of the year and then schedule the end of his contract to take place at a tropical port of his choosing, where he’d take a three month vacation with $30K in American dollars.

The Duty Free Shops sell everything from over the counter meds to books and magazines to jewelry and clothing and, of course, cigarettes and alcohol. The store selling the alcohol was, without need for a comparison, the busiest of the stores, selling items at half the price of my home state’s government controlled stores. They also sell things you’ll never find in a Washington State Liquor Store

I didn’t purchase one of these 4.5 liter bottles of Black Label, but having never seen one in person before, I had to get a souvenir picture. There was also an $1150 bottle of Remy Martin for sale, though I don’t know if it sold.

Film is quite expensive onboard, so bring plenty if you’re a shutterbug. Also, there is a fee just to use the computers and there is an additional fee ($0.75 per minute) to hop on the internet, so bring as much memory for your cameras as possible.

Do not forget your sunglasses. Northwest Canada in September is sunny and the glare off the water will wipe your eyes out.

The formal dining room is almost exactly that. No flip-flops, shorts, t-shirts or tank tops are allowed in there. A nice pair of jeans will get you by, but khakis are a better idea. Also, one of the nights you are on board there will most likely be a formal dinner. Ties are optional, suits, slacks and a dress shirt are not. I brought a very nice pair of casual shoes that made the grade. Your Nike sneakers will not. Other than that, as long as you’re not naked, you can wear just abotu anything you like (Deck 14 is for the naked people).

Since I never got fully switched over to sleeping at night, I was usually up by 0300. Having this entire ship to myself during these early morning hours was one of the highlights of the trip. Although there was one night when the Navigator Club, my favorite hangout (Deck 12, Forward), was still pumping full of Gen-Xers discoing to really bad 80’s tunage at 0400. I took my reading material to the Pavillion Night Club (Deck 7, Aft) and hung out there.

About the only other thing I can think of to comment on is the food. To put it simply, you won’t eat this good anywhere else, and it is all free. 5 course formal dinners, custom pizzas at midnight and personal waffles in the AM if you want and a buffet that rivals anything you may have seen in Vegas.

Literally, you’re living in a floating high-end resort for five days for under $300 a head.

Like I said in the above post, the wife and I are already planning our next trip.