Category: Comparing

The Routine Blues

On By D. EndoIn Comparing, Goals, Ship LifeLeave a comment

After going on the world cruise, I’m now relaxing by doing one of two itineraries. We’ve mostly been doing Western Caribbean runs with ports in Mexico, Belize, and Honduras, and we’ll start again doing Bahama runs later this year. I have to say, part of me misses going to new and exciting ports every time. There was so much to do and see. From finding a small restaurant while wandering Yokohama to going on an African safari, I was busy exploring every chance I got. It was exhausting. Sometimes, it was nice to be stuck on the ship to catch up on sleep or laundry. For one of those cruises, we had 8 port days in a row. I usually only pack enough clothes to last me a little over a week, so I was cutting it a bit close. Everything was so new on that contract. Now, it’s the opposite.

I’m only getting off the ship a couple of times a week even when I can get off. I’ve been to the ports we’re going to many times, and we’ll be back there soon enough. For that reason, I don’t feel like spending money since I have to pay tourist prices for everything off the ship. Even the onboard specialty restaurants have lost their luster for me. It does help that they don’t have a late night Johnny Rocket’s on the ship anymore. Goodness knows I would be going there way too often. Since I’m not leaving the ship all that much, I think I might try organizing a Dungeons and Dragons group on the ship. I’ve tried playing games with my immediate coworkers, but they don’t always have the drive to play like I do. I’m sure if I reach out, people will come. Even before, one of my players was talking about it and caught the interest of someone from engineering. Unfortunately, I was never able to talk to this person to ask him to join. I’m hoping being able to advertise a group will increase the likelihood of a game happening. I have plans for three games I would run. The first would be a new player campaign group with pre-written characters playing adventures from a book of beginning campaigns I got off of Kickstarter. The campaigns won’t last too long before I end it and start a new one. Hopefully, I can cycle through a bunch of new people and give them a great introduction to the game. The second will be a drop-in campaign with a western theme, where I could take anyone who was available to play. The final would be on would be a group that uses an app that randomly generates a dungeon. The best part about this one is that I could participate since I don’t know what is in the dungeon since I did nothing to prepare it. All I would need to do is facilitate the game which is a lot easier. Plus, there is also the chance that there are other people who are able to DM like me but don’t get a chance to due to not having enough players. I’m just super excited for the possibilities.

Oh, and my New Year’s resolution this year is to lose weight and to be more social.

Counting the Days

On By D. EndoIn Comparing, Ship LifeLeave a comment

When I first started cruising, I was stuck doing 3 and 4 day cruises to the Bahamas. After dry dock, the schedule shifted to 4 and 5 day cruises to accommodate going to Cuba and Mexico. On my next ship, I was doing two week cruises due to being in the Pacific and then Europe. My last contract had me doing 10 and 11 day cruises to the southern Caribbean. Now, I’m back to 4 and 5 day cruises after doing 7 day cruises at the start of my contract. I now know what length of cruise I enjoy.

One thing I should clarify, when I refer to the length of a cruise, my count tends to be one day shorter than the average tourist. For example, this cruise I’m on right now, I would consider it a 5 day cruise. If you look at advertising for the same cruise, it’s billed as a 6 day, 5 night cruise from May 26th to June 3rd. The advertising isn’t wrong, rather, we usually set sail with new passengers the same day the previous cruisers leave us. It just makes more sense for us to refer to that 6th day as simply the 1st day of the next cruise. Plus, it’s not like passengers are doing a whole lot that day they leave.

Anyway, I think my ideal cruise length as a worker is somewhere between the 7 and 11 day cruise. These lengths allow for a good variety of options for ports as well as allow the entertainment to take a more leisurely pace. A 7 day cruise is especially nice as it is quite easy to match activities to the day of the week. If the cruise is longer, it just takes forever to get back to your home port and do some shopping. It can be quite tedious with all the waiting. Shorter cruises tend to need to pack more into them. If you take pretty much all the entertainment of a 7 day cruise and cram it into 5 days, you get what my schedule is doing right now. To be fair, the schedule is at the whims of the Cruise Director, and some of them feel the need to do everything a longer cruise would provide. They’re not wrong, but it is a lot more work for me and my team.

Where to Travel

On By D. EndoIn Comparing, Cultural, Ports, Ship LifeLeave a comment

When I was helping with a tour once, I heard a father lecture his kids about how lucky they were to be in the midst of so much culture and they should appreciate it. It was clear that this was not their idea of a vacation. Being surrounded by history simply did not interest them in the way it interested their father. As a result, the kids seemed bored and had started to mess around. Now I’m not saying that learning about a different culture is boring and it’s better to go somewhere else, but if you get to choose where you go for vacation, I’m finding it best if you understand yourself.

When choosing a vacation, ask yourself what you want to get out of it. If you’re choosing for a group, will everyone also find something they enjoy? Cruising to an island beach is a great choice for a vacation if you’re into that. Keep in mind, there may be nothing to do on the beach except lie in the sun or swim. The Caribbean and the South Pacific is perfect for this kind of get away. Maybe you want you want to immerse yourself in a foreign culture or use learning history as your way of escaping. Europe and Asia hold some incredible ports. Perhaps you want to see the majesty of nature. Alaska, Norway, and New Zealand have some spectacular views even if they are seasonal and a little cold.

Do your research. How long do you want to spend at sea? How long can you stand with your group? I personally dislike the 14 day cruises. It’s not like I don’t have fun, but it’s just such a long time to be out. It might be better to stick to a weekend cruise and see how you like them. How much do you want to pay? Some things get included in the price while others will cost you a pretty penny extra to add to your enjoyment. How big should the ship be and, by extension, the crowds? Big ships also mean more people flooding off when you get to a port. For some places, that doesn’t matter, but other times, this may ruin a vacation.

These are just some of the things that go through my mind when someone asks about cruising for the first time.

Oh, and the ship might move. Some people are under the impression that with these modern cruise ships are so big, you won’t even know the ship is at sea. This is a friendly reminder that you will be in the middle of a large body of water and attached to nothing. River cruises might get away with no rocking, but all bets are off for seas and oceans.

Big Ship vs Little Ship (Part 2)

On By D. EndoIn Comparing, Ports, Ship LifeLeave a comment

While cost can be a major factor as to how big a ship you would want to build, there are other factors to take into consideration, such as ports you can use and structural design.

When dealing with the larger ships, not all docks were designed to take ships of that size. Even the docks that are large enough may be somewhere away from the tourist areas and require shuttles. Any time there is no dock able to accomodate a ship for a port, tendering is required. Tendering is when the ship anchors in safe waters and smaller boats are brought to slowly load and unload passengers from the ship. This is very time consuming and can cause discomfort for guests as the tender boats move more in the water than the ship. This also means that if the ship has to leave earlier than expected due to weather, they have to predict this and pull people out even earlier or just skip the port that day. Some places will never have a port even for the smallest Royal Caribbean ship. Others spend the money to encourage more ships to come in.

One of the best examples of ports being restrticted by size is the Majesty of the Seas and Havanna, Cuba. When it set sail in 1992, it was the largest ship in the world. Now, it’s the largest ship in the world… that goes to Cuba. Havanna doesn’t seem to have the option of having larger ships dock at a shipping pier like some of the other cities do. Majesty is also one of the largest ships that can go in and out of the port of Tampa. There is a bridge at the entrance of the bay that is just high enough to clear the highest point on the ship. I’ve been on the top deck while going under this bridge. Bridges that have boats pass under tend to have lights hanging down so any helmsman can see where the highest/center point of the bridge is. All they have to do while sailing under the bridge is line up those two lights and steer straight through. Majesty has to make sure their smokestack is either just to the side of the lights or they risk hitting them. It was kind of scary how close we got.

Something else to worry about as you get bigger and add more things is the design of the ship. Weight distribution on a ship is very important. While engines are heavy and tanks at the bottom of the ship provide ballast, the more you add to the top, the more you raise the center of gravity on the ship. Think of the ship like a tower of building blocks on a tray. It’s fine while just sitting on a table, but if you have to move it, you may want to think more about how the tower is built so it won’t topple over as the tray moves. The theory is simple. As long as the center of gravity is supported, it won’t fall. This is why pyramids are such stable shapes. Not only is the center of gravity low, the base supporting the weight is wide. The captain of the Explorer of the Seas once said the ship should theoretically be able to recover from a 45° roll while it is intact. Nothing that isn’t tied down tightly will be where it’s supposed to be, but the ship shouldn’t capsize. Keep in mind, a 15° roll is enough to send a grand piano flying across the stage, with or without brakes. If you think the solution is to add more weight to the bottom or widen the ship, that is correct. If you do that, though, the ship has to sit lower in the water which increases drag and the time it takes to hit full speed or stop due to the momentum of the ship. Canals that would shorten trips may have to be excluded because the ship won’t fit inside them. When the ship has to be taken to a dry dock, options for the largest ships in the world become rather limited.

I still have more things to talk about, but I’ll leave the topic here for now.

Big Ship vs Little Ship (Part 1)

On By D. EndoIn Comparing, Ship LifeLeave a comment

For those who don’t know, Royal Caribbean has some very large cruise ships. If you look at the top ten largest cruise ships in the world, seven of them are owned by Royal Caribbean. So that does raise the question, is a bigger ship better?

Ships are expensive to build in both time and resources. The latest ship to the Royal Caribbean fleet cost an estimated $950 million to make for a 1,142 ft long vessel. That’s over three football fields long! In addition to having a guest count of 4,180, the ship boasts a multi-use roller rink space that can be used for bumper cars as well, an aqua theater for diving shows, several specialty restaurants, a surf simulator, mini golf course, a central park, several stories of rock wall, and so much more. That’s one of the nice things about the bigger cruise ships. There becomes more space to add other things besides rooms for sleeping. My first Royal Caribbean ship was the largest in the world when it was built in 1992. They only managed to fit one theater, one specialty restaurant, and one small water park for children. Even if you are trying to build a small cruise ship, say to do river and coastal cruises, it can still cost quite a bit. American Cruise Lines’s latest ship, the American Harmony, cost $40 million for a 269 ft vessel. So, not quite a football field long. Ultimately, larger ships mean more passengers so the cost of running the ship can be much more spread out. When looking up an Alaskan cruise for Royal Caribbean and American Cruise Lines, you find much different prices. Prices for a room start at $8,090 for a ten night cruise aboard the American Constelation with a guest population of 175 for American Cruise Lines. On the other hand, Royal Caribbean charges $1,429 per passenger for a cheap room on their 11 night voyage with a guest population of 4,180.

These are a lot of numbers, but what am I getting at? If you were to sell all rooms at the cheapest price available without any discounts (neither of which would ever happen, but this is useful as an illustration), the money coming into American Cruise Lines for this singe trip would be $720,010, while Royal Caribbean would take in $5,973,220 for their cruise. This is how American Cruise Lines makes their money, but, even with all that money, Royal Caribbean is probably just breaking even.

You see, American Cruise Lines includes pretty much everything on the ship with the cost of the cabin. So that’s all the food, drink, and most shore excursions that you don’t have to pay extra for. Not only that, but every room has a window if not a balcony. Royal Caribbean takes a different approach. While there are many things free, such as the buffet, the production shows, and the sports activities on the ship, you can buy things to enhance your voyage like specialty dining and shore excursions. This is how Royal Caribbean can make money to keep building bigger, more extravagant ships. Though, if you want a window, you better be willing to spend more money. The cheap cabins aren’t very big and they are in the middle of the ship, but if all you want to do is sleep there and keep your things safe, not a bad choice.

There is much more to this debate, but I’m already rambling. I’ll continue this topic another time.