Grand Caribbean Cruise

We were supposed to go snorkeling and swim with stingrays today but all the stingray tours were canceled due to bad weather (it was sunny and 85 degrees…it was just god-awful terrible weather). Well, we think it was canceled because of weather, that’s what the locals told us, anyway.

The fine folks at Carnival Cruise Line never bothered to tell passengers that the excursions were canceled so hundreds of us went ashore (a 1 hour ordeal involving a ferry) expecting that everything was going to go according to plan. After we were dropped at the pier, we were all looking for the Carnival people to be holding stingray excursion signs to lead the way….but they weren’t to be found. Carnival didn’t even send an employee ashore to tell us, we were just abandoned there to fend for ourselves.

I wonder if Carnival has some arrangement with Grand Cayman where they guarantee to deliver a certain amount of tourists (in the interest of local commerce) in exchange for some sort of compensation. I also wonder if 1/2 of the tourists would have stayed on the ship had they known their excursions had been canceled. I wonder if Carnival chose profits over doing what’s right for their passengers in this case.

I cannot think of any other reason why Carnival would choose to withhold this information. I inquired at the info desk regarding this. She told me Carnival had no way of knowing the excursions were canceled beforehand. They knew enough to not send an employee to guide us to our destination. What crap.

Here is a shot of our ship while we were on the tender heading into Grand Cayman.

This boat is packed wall-to-wall with people. It’s a holy roman bacchanal orgy. To give you an idea…the cruise director, Kris, made several announcements bragging that there were 3364 passengers aboard the cruise ship Valor for this trip. Yet Carnival’s own web site states that the ship’s capacity is only 2,974 people. Sound like a recipe for disaster (of Titanic proportions) if you ask me. I’m not complaining…drunk college kids are a lot of fun (but I’ll kick their asses if the ship goes down and they get in my way).

Sorry gang. Carnival’s WiFi (which costs $.75 a minute), is pretty flaky and pretty much sucks. Flickr stalls when I try to upload even low res photos (yes, with full signal strength) and this very post cost just me five bucks because it’s so slow. Gmail doesn’t load either….so I can’t check email.

Hopefully there will be a faster connection on land once in Cozumel.

Jody and I are having fun. I’m writing and taking pictures every day….I’ll post as soon as I get a good WiFi connection.

Update: Buyer Beware: If you purchase WiFi services from Carnival from your laptop in your cabin, NO WHERE on their Intranet does it state that you won’t be credited for unused blocks of time. So don’t buy any more than you have to.

I bought a 100 minute package, and when I was coming close to using it up, I purchased another 100 minute package. When it became quite obvious that the WiFi connection was substandard, unusable, and not worth the money, I stopped using it…never tapping into my second package.

I stopped down to the Internet office and spoke with the Carnival Cruise Internet Manager, Tim, asking if I could get credited for the unused time.

Tim was rude, dismissive and completely unprofessional (and a dork, if you want to know the truth).

Tim told me that if I had “made a mistake and accidentally purchased more time because you clicked the wrong button”, he could credit the account no problem. But since I knowingly made the purchase but simply didn’t use the time, “It’s not my problem”.

“It’s not my problem”, he said.

I’m standing there like…did you just say that to me? It’s not your problem? Did you really just said that to a customer? I was flabbergasted.

Cruise Tip: If you buy more Carnival WiFi time that you need, lie about it to Tim, and he’ll credit your account. Otherwise, it’s not his problem.

Okay, so its 7:25am, and even before the sun has risen, there are dozens and dozens of books, and beach bags, and towels neatly arranged on the choicest of lounge chairs up on the Lito deck.

Not a person in sight, though. Did I mention that it is still dark out?

What the…ahhhh, I see what it going on here. I turn on my heel to walk back to the cabin (to share my smart detective work with Jody) when I spy evidence of a timeless Spring Break rite-of-passage. Last night’s vomit is still clinging to the side of the boat. Classic.

Sun Strategy #1: Stake your claim and grab a lounge chair before the other passengers are even out of bed, otherwise you don’t stand a pina colada’s chance in hell of getting a seat in the sun.

It’s 7am. I know this because of the loud thumping of techno music and dancing bodies coming from the gym, which is, presumably right above our cabin. This must be why they call it the ‘Fun Ship” and not the “Rest & Relaxation Ship”. No worries, though, we wanted to get up and make a day of it anyway.

Update: Turns out the gym is on the other side of the ship. Must have just been some loud kids.

We received a follow-up email from Orbitz’ customer service regarding our upcoming trip (which is still more than a month away, BTW).

They wanted to, “ensure that you have a remarkable vacation” and provided us with additional information about online registration, online access to our travel documents, Funpass details and other useful stuff about our itinerary.

I appreciate this attention to detail. This cruise was a reasonably large investment and I do appreciate that they are keeping in touch and reminding us that they have all of the details covered (so we don’t have to worry about it). I only mention this at all because I generally don’t have a whole lot of faith in big corporations “getting” how important the customer experience is. I think Orbits gets it…or at least their Marketing Department gets it. Either way, I don’t care…. I’m feeling pretty good about the trip, and that’s all that matters.

At the conclusion of the email they say, “We hope you enjoy your cruise vacation!”

Ha! I think they might really mean it!

We just ordered up “Caribbean Ports of Call” because we need to start thinking about our offshore excursions. We need to decide between the Xunantunich Mayan site in Belize or the Mayan Ruins of Tulum (Ultramar) in Cozumel. Once the book arrives we will give you a full report on which Mayan ruins excursion we chose and why!

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At long last, my husband and I had finally agreed to go on vacation. A real vacation…not with friends (not that we don’t love our friends) and not with family (not that we don’t love our family). We did a tremendous amount of research, contemplated our old standbys (Disney) and decided we wanted the perfect combination of relaxation, beaches and ‘interesting” things. So…a cruise seemed like the perfect option. Now a cruise to the old standards (St. Maarten, St. Thomas) was simply not going to fly, because as I said, we needed the unique balance of relaxation, beaches and “interesting” things. We finally found the perfect cruise, to the Exotic Western Caribbean which included Honduras, Belize and Cozumel…plenty of beaches and plenty of ruins (also known as “interesting” things).

We booked our cruise through Orbitz and it was a thoroughly pleasurable experience. But I should caution you, it took a fair amount of time to sort through the details, secure the deal we had seen online, and ensure that all of the requisite information was correct. The Orbitz Cruise Specialist was helpful and accommodating, contacting Carnival Cruises to secure our past passenger number (we had cruised on Carnival literally a decade before) and when he encountered a glitch in his booking process, again contacted Carnival to ensure we would receive all of the benefits that a past passenger is entitled to.

Almost instantaneously after completing the call with the Orbitz representative, I received confirmation emails that allowed me to log on to Carnival and complete all of the necessary outstanding paperwork (citizenship, etc.) which would expedite our boarding process and also establish our cruise accounts so we can begin spending money the moment we board. We were also provided with a link to check our cruise documents which would be updated to reflect any new information. I logged on again this week and was able to secure our flight information (we booked flights through the cruise line when we contacted Orbitz) and am able to schedule any of our shore destinations or special services well in advance of boarding the ship.

The whole process was as easy as pie (okay…that is not an expression that applies to me, ask my family about the apple pie I made one Thanksgiving), but it really was not complicated or difficult. I would recommend Orbitz any time and also am a big fan of the Carnival online options which I am certain will see me as a visitor a half a dozen or more times before our departure.

Visit the Orbitz Home Page for the latest deals (Just click the ‘Cruises’ tab, enter your zip code and click “Go”…that’s what we did).

My wife and I usually enjoy vacationing with friends and family, but this year we’ve decided to finally take a trip on our own, just the two of us…our first vacation alone together since our honeymoon 13 years ago.

After going round and round for months about where we should go, we pulled the proverbial trigger and booked a cruise on Carnival Cruise Lines. We’re going to Belize, Cozumel, George Town and Roatan Island. It was relatively inexpensive, considering it included airfare, all of our meals, plus accommodations for the week. And so we thought, what have we got to lose?

The whole idea for this site began when started doing research online, trying to figure out where we wanted to go and how we wanted to get there. We couldn’t find any good resources that told us what to look for (and what to look OUT for) when booking a cruise vacation. It was frustrating, and I got to thinking…Since I am an amateur blogger and photographer, and I do Internet Marketing and PR for a living, wouldn’t it be great to start an online journal and capture the whole cruise experience from start to finish so that others could learn from what we learned!

And so that is the story of how the Grand Caribbean Cruise site was created. We hope that you enjoy it. We’ll let you know how it goes!