July 8, 2011

SEA DAY enroute to FTL

On the Eastern leg of the Caribbean is the most difficult part of the cruise…two sea days back to back. Everyone gets a little tired and cranky. This is balanced out by the two port days back to back on the Western leg; Labadee, Haiti and Falmouth, Jamaica. It is now July 13, and I am having to think back to last cruise. The most memorable part is the night of July 8. I happened to be in the office for a minute when the phone rang. It was Guest Relations, and when I introduced myself the girl said, “Oh, I didn’t expect to actually get you, but there is a guest here that wants to say goodbye.” I told her I would be right up.
When I got up there, who did it happen to be, but my “Von Trapps”! They wanted to specially thank me for making their cruise so memorable. Alexa actually cried when she hugged me goodbye. What a great feeling that I had had such an impact on their vacation, and in such a positive fashion!

I tried to get to bed early, but because I had debark in the morning, and had to get up at 0430, it just didn’t happen. I couldn’t sleep at all. Back to my normal insomnia. It is hard though when you are used to going to sleep at 0200 to go to sleep any earlier. I watched the hours tick on by with no sleep in sight. Finally about 0300 I fell into a doze that ended when the alarm went off.

Debark is an interesting process. You have to be good to get over 6,000 guests off ship in a timely and smooth fashion. So with no coffee, and no sleep, there I was directing people to their exits. The way it works is, the previous night all the bags are put out by the guests into the hall. The stateroom attendants take it all down to I95 where it is marked by number.

Everyone has a copy of their number. As the luggage is taken off ship, the numbers of that section are called. It sounds simple, but it is not. The stateroom attendants are up all night long working on this. There are other options though. You can sign up for express debark, which means you take your own bags with you, and you can disembark at any point you wish. There is also Valet, where the bags are taken to the airport for you, checked in, and you pick them up at your home airport. This too means that you can disembark at any time. The rest wait for their number to be called as the section of luggage offloaded is completed.
We had a great team, and we were actually done by 0900, which is rare. The luggage handlers did a great job as well, and they had all the luggage off loaded by 0830.