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Mailbag Monday: April 23, 2012 Edition

Written by T.I. Cruiser on April 23, 2012 · Leave a Comment

Here is another Mailbag Monday. Do you know how early you can book a post-cruise flight home, is it necessary to exchange your currency when in a different country or are you planning on cruising out of New Jersey. If any of these questions pertain to your particular situation you will probably want to pay attention to this Mailbag Monday. If you have any questions you would like answered please feel free to contact me so we can get things figured out.

Post-cruise Flight Home

How much time should we allow from the time the ship docks until our departing flight?

Normally cruise ships will dock around 7 or 8 o’clock in the morning. However, before anyone can exit the ship you will need to clear customs. The time it takes to clear customs can vary with some ports being faster than others. After that you will be disembarked by group with the group being determined by various criteria. The variable you can actively control is by letting the cruise line know when your flight departs. A various times during the cruise process (from booking through the last night) you will have opportunities to notify the cruise line of your flight plans. Make sure you do not miss these opportunities particularly if you have an early flight. You need to allow yourself enough time to exit the ship, get transportation to the airport and jump through all the rings associated with going from curbside drop-off to actually boarding the flight.

Cruise Currency Exchange

Is it best to use US Dollars or Eastern Caribbean Dollars in St. Lucia?

Since U.S. dollars are so widely accepted there is no need to deal with currency exchanges. However, you do need to keep in mind that you will probably get your change back in local currency. Most places will post the exchange rate (oftentimes 1 to 1) but some others may only post prices in EC (Caribbean dollars) so familiarize yourself with the exchange rate. If you are carrying an iPod or Smartphone just get an app.

Now if you are making large purchases that require a credit card you do need to be aware of any currency exchange fees your credit card provider charges. When these transactions happen they will probably take place in the local currency which means your bank may charge a fee (usually 3%) to make the conversion. Not every card will have a currency exchange fee but you should check before making the purchase as the fee can be substantial if making a large luxury purchase. If in a situation where you are bargaining you may be able to use the currency exchange fee as a bargaining chip.

Cruise Ships leaving from New Jersey

Are there any cruise ships leaving out of New Jersey?

If you are looking for a cruise out of New Jersey as opposed to New York you will be looking for something out of Bayonne. The best choices out of Bayonne NJ are Celebrity and Royal Caribbean. Most itineraries out of Bayonne are either to Bermuda or the Bahamas.

The ships you will be choosing from are the Royal Caribbean Explorer and Brilliance of the Seas or the Celebrity Summit. Now, depending on the time of year these ships will be going to the Bahamas, Caribbean, Bermuda or New England so you will need to make sure which itinerary you want to take. All of those ships are top notch and Bayonne is a nice drive-in port but if you want to expand your options to New York City your choices will really open up. With the inclusion of New York as a possible port of embarkation Disney, Princess, Norwegian, Holland America, Carnival and Even Cunard all enter into the equation as possible cruise lines. That’s not even all of the choices. If you decide the drive into New York is worth it, your available options really do increase fivefold.

Mailbag Monday: April 16, 2012 Edition

Written by T.I. Cruiser on April 16, 2012 · Leave a Comment

This is apparently the Titanic version of Mailbag Monday. I guess with the 100 Anniversary of its sinking just having taken place there were quite a few questions about the ship. Here are a few that I picked out as they seem to be the ones that popped up the most.

Was the story of rose and jack true from the titanic or where they made up?

I was watching Titanic a few days ago and it made me wonder if the part of the movie with Jack and Rose is true or made up. I asked my mom about it and she said jack and rose weren’t real but could have been based on a real story.

As far as I know the story of Jack and Rose was something conjured out of the imagination of Cameron in order to help facilitate the telling of the story. Now, that isn’t to say a similar story couldn’t have taken place, just that the story presented in the movie was made up. There was an actual person named J. Dawson onboard the RMS Titanic but that was nothing more than a coincidence. An interesting aside is that after the movie came out, droves of fans went to the grave site of the real life J. Dawson to leave flowers, pictures and ticket stubs.

How luxurious was Titanic First Class compared to today’s standard?

In the movie it looks like the Titanic was way more luxurious than today’s cruise ships, but that could just be creative license and movie magic. Compared to the ships we cruise on today how luxurious would sailing First Class on the Titanic be?

James Cameron is undoubtedly one of the greatest directors in the history of directing, but he’s not a historian. The film “Titanic” was made by Cameron as a means to entertain more so than to create awareness. So, while the creators of the film attempted to remain as historically accurate as possible in the end they were making a feature-length blockbuster movie and not a historic documentary. What I mean is they needed to embellish certain aspects in order to drive home the message they were trying to convey. One of those messages was the difference between the classes. Cabin size, dining rooms and use of public space differed from one class to the next. These days there really aren’t classes of passenger on cruise ships with the only real difference being the size of your cabin.

So, overall the experience of passengers in first class on the Titanic was only over luxurious compared to fellow travelers in lower categories. The difference between what the first-class passengers of the Titanic experienced and what the average cruiser experiences today doesn’t even compare. The rooms they had were huge for the time period but nothing compared to the most expensive suites on our cruise ships. They had no shops, no large pools, one dining room a library and one band. Today we have ice skating rinks, zip-lines, multiple pools, numerous dining facilities and more onboard entertainment than anyone could even dream of experiencing over the length of a cruise.

Did the crew really lock “Steerage” passengers down below as the ship was sinking?

In the movie Titanic it shows that third class passengers got locked below, did this really happen? I heard that only 1 out of every 4 third class passengers survived so it must be true but why would someone do something as cruel as locking people in a sinking ship.

Once again I think this was a plot device embellished to drive home a point. It’s pretty doubtful that the ship’s crew actively locked passengers in the lower decks of the ship. What probably happened was communication just wasn’t very good and rather than opening the gates people who had no idea just how bad things were perished while waiting for orders. I’ve read that some stewards did allow women and children to go to the upper decks but some refused to leave due to not wanting to split up a family. You have to remember there were a lot of passengers onboard who either didn’t speak enough or spoke very little not allowing them to have a full understanding of exactly what was going on.

Women and Children First?

Written by T.I. Cruiser on April 13, 2012 · Leave a Comment

Does the old adage “women and children first”, still hold true. Well, according to a couple of researchers from Sweden, it never did in the first place. Economists Mikael Elinder and Oscar Erixon of Uppsala University (Uppsala, Sweden) recently conducted a study dispelling the saying as a “myth”. According to their report the truth is that in the event of a ship going down men, have had a much higher instance of survival than either women or children. In fact, you could say their data is the complete opposite of what we all have been led to believe.

Every Man for Himself

The two researchers have put together an 82 page report which breaks down 18 of the world’s most tragic maritime accidents. They have found by analyzing the logs of those ships and the lists of each ship’s passengers and survivors that the gap in survival rates not only favors men but it isn’t even that close.

Those 18 maritime disasters account for over 15,000 deaths at sea. When you break down the numbers into categories the findings end up being a bit surprising. On a percentage basis only 17.8 percent of the survivors of those disasters end up being women while nearly twice as many men survive (34.5 percent). This is a complete contradiction to what happened onboard the RMS Titanic where 73 percent of the women survived. However, when citing the Titanic data, one must mention that fact that the Captain not only gave the “women and children first” order but also threatened to shoot anyone who did not comply; definitely not the standard muster procedure. One of several odd facts in the study makes reference to there being no female survivors in three of the shipwrecks.

The Captain Must Go Down With the Ship

If I had to reference one point that definitely took me by surprise it’s the number of officers that safely make it off the ship. While we all know Captain Edward Smith of the Titanic did go down with his ship, we were led to believe Captain Schettino (the scum bag that he appears to be) was drastically veering away from protocol by leaving the Costa Concordia. The truth is the crew fleeing the ship before all of the passengers are offloaded isn’t all that rare. Captains and crew are shown to be 18.7 percentage points more likely to survive these sorts of maritime catastrophes than the ships passengers. That isn’t to say the Captain and crew just abandon their passengers in a Schettino-like fashion. When everything has been done, that can be done; abandoning the ship may be the only course of action that makes sense.

It’s funny how something as idyllic as a phrase can trick us into believing there is some sort of protocol that is followed when a ship starts to go down; especially when the data actually gets examined. In the end I guess it all comes down to one thing, survival of the fittest. The reason the crew sits at the top of the survival pyramid is they are infinitely better prepared. In the event of an accident, when the “ship” hits the fan they know the fastest route to the nearest lifeboats. The next tier on the survival pyramid belong to the men who undoubtedly use their superior physical strength to make sure they survive; while the women and children are stuck at the base and left to fend for themselves.

Now I would like to believe if I were on a ship that started to go down, I would behave chivalrously but I hope to never put that theory to the test. How do you feel about the evacuation protocol? In the event of a cruise ship disaster do you think “women and children first” can be observed?