dmwnc1959

The horror! 🤣

What an excellent way of putting it. Can’t begin to tell you how many people I’ve talked to that won’t go on a cruise because they don’t want their ship to sink like Costa did in Italy. Or have my ship catch on fire like that one Carnival did the other day. Or get Norovirus like that news report said the other week. Or get abandoned on some African island like what I heard on the news last night. Or, or, or. It becomes an echo chamber of perception becoming reality.

Which is exactly what’s happening at someone’s house right now. But not mine. 🤣 🤣 🤣

In 2024 I wouldn’t put it past them to give them that chance. Which is why I’m safer in New York City. But you go ahead and go to Egypt and Morocco this year, I’ve already been there - when it was safer. Glad I got my world traveling out-of-the-way when the world was a better place. Didn’t have to worry about being stuck in some Third World country.

I’ve walked down the streets of Manhattan, visited Philadelphia and Cleveland, and been to a lot of cities in the past few years that get a bad rap for high crime. I don’t think I’ve visited any countries lately where some fringe group will kidnap you and kill you. Just saying.

From the US State Department website

Keep in mind that this is a very tiny island off the western coast of Gabon and Equatorial Guinea, roughly the same square mileage as Key West. It would most definitely be different than doing a land trip through Egypt, Kenya, or Morocco. I’ve been to all of those places, but in the 80s when it was much safer. Don’t think I’d go back there again these days.

‘ABANDONED’ sells better. And didn’t Spicolli get back in that class, invited back in by the mean old teacher, even had a pizza delivered? Some people always have their cake and eat it too. Except everyone shared in that pizza!

Despite all the bumps and bruises the cruise line has gone through in the last several years, this recent indecent not withstanding, we will all continue to cruise until they can spread our ashes off of the stern into the churning ocean. As an old Navy guy, that’s my wish.

Funny thing is, I don’t even live in Pennsylvania but the closest big airport to me is Pittsburgh 🤣. NC happens to be an old stomping ground. I was actually booked first on the Coral Princess doing the Panama Canal, and after a very long time of weighing all of the information kept Norwegian Jade.

Meant to say as a first time with NCL. This will be like cruise #54 or something, I started decades and decades ago on Carnival and worked my way around most the entire rodeo. Have another cruise booked in the Spring of 2026 with Holland-America doing Alaska again (this will be Alaska cruises #8 and #9), and looking at doing a 14-night B2B cruise on Carnival Celebration in December 2026. NCL will always be on the back-burner for me, not because of what happened here in this recent incident. And not because of the bad reputation NCL gets sometimes as a nickel and dime operation. I’ve just really enjoyed the Royal-class of Princess a lot. Plan on getting back there eventually. Maybe this next cruise on NCL will change my mind.

Enough said. 😎

Yet despite all of this, my 😢 ‘reputation’ here of being 😉 ‘the agitator’, and the countless threads I’ve started and posted in questioning NCL, I’m still booked on a 32-night cruise from Florida to Alaska, already have my pre-flight hotel booked in Pittsburgh, already have six shore excisions booked, and will be booking my pre-cruise hotels this Friday. For a cruise that’s still a year away. Despite all of the appearances on how this was handled by both sides, I’m still going on my cruise as a first-timer. And I’m pretty damned excited about that.

It won’t even be a week. Once we all let this thread die it’ll be a matter of days. There will always be some other NCL controversy that will take precedent!

… or the NCL cheerleaders, or the stockholders who think they have a financial obligation to protect NCL, or the people that have traveled NCL all of their life and think it’s the best cruise line ever and the NCL can do no wrong. Those shoes fit on both feet.

Sort of like the very recent news story of a travel agent who stiffed 50 people (?) Then boarded the ship, leaving them on the pier. That news story is pretty much forgotten.

Still, not the hardline abandonment NCL would like to think by saying it all falls back on the passenger at their expense.

I find it extremely reckless that any cruise line would schedule a ship through a high piracy zone. There are plenty of other places in the world that will not put your passengers at risk, or require a military escort and the onboarding of extra security and ammunition. Sounds like a money grab by NCL.

So, there is some ‘admission of guilt’ by NCL.

So, the blanketed warning statistics and quoting of safety levels in Caribbean and Mexican ports, those are seemingly worthless based on the fact that cruise lines go there ALL the time. 🤔

It has already been reported at NCL plans on reimbursing these passengers for all of their expensive getting back to the ship. ‘Norwegian noted the passengers were responsible for making their own travel arrangements to rejoin the ship.’ “Despite the series of unfortunate events outside of our control, we will be reimbursing these eight guests for their travel costs from Banjur, Gambia to Dakar, Senegal," a cruise line spokesperson said. "We remain in communication with the guests and are providing additional information as it becomes available."

People have short attention spans, and this news story will be forgotten the next time there’s another bomb dropped or massive snow storm in April. Climate change and war have that effect on news. Yes, NCL will continue to fill their ships, and cancel ports of call that they never had any intention of going to, and people will continue to experience poor Haven experiences, and complain about bad food, and all of the other threads that happen on cruise critic, And NCL will continue to fill their ships. 😎

It’s been reported by several news outlets today.

It was a posted earlier someone booking a six hour, round-trip train excursion to Berlin, and that there was no way they weren’t booking it through the cruise line to avoid such an incident. Now, imagine that there had been a train derailment, or some factor that delayed a train full of people getting back to the ship. And wasn’t there relatively safe boat excursion in the Bahamas recently when it sank out from underneath them? Good thing it was close by.

Had this happened to a bus load of ship-sponsored shore excursion passengers in the Caribbean or Alaska would you still be defending the cruise line? I guess in your eyes - and the eyes are so many people here - the cruise line can do no role.