Sea Princess 7/9/05 North Atlantic Cruise Review

Sea Princess 7-9-05 Itinerary and Pre-Cruise
Onboard the Sea Princess
Dublin, Ireland
Greenock, Scotland, UK
Reykjavik, Iceland
Akureyri, Iceland
Tórshavn, Faroe Islands, Denmark
Lerwick, Shetland Islands, Scotland, UK
Flaam and Vik, Norway
Stavanger, Norway
Oslo, Norway
Review Conclusion

Life Onboard (and the Herd Mentality)

The concept of Independent Cruising is most applicable while in port, but the philosophy easily extends to our utilization of time spent onboard.

Cruisers tend to act with a definite herd mentality. They have this notion that there is always a best thing to do, and by God, that is what they want to be doing! From the moment we arrive at the dock to check in, we see herd mentality in action. We arrive at noon, and lines are long, tempers short. We fight our way onto the ship, and head right for the waiting buffet, piling our plates high to the ceiling. Then we look for a place to sit down, and we usually have to look very hard. And so forth.

It doesn't have to be this way. The Independent Cruiser avoids the herd at all costs, starting with embarkation, when we arrive well after the earliest stated embarkation time. Worried we might miss something good? We are missing all kinds of things at home, and that is precisely why we are on vacation in the first place! So we relax, we see what we want to see, do what we want to do, and we utilize our knowledge of crowd psychology to avoid the herd. Here are some ideas:

1. Given a choice of early or late seating, we always choose Late Seating. Why? Most cruisers prefer to eat, see a show, and go to bed, in that order. On cruises that are longer or more scenic, where the average passenger age is higher, this is particularly true. In fact, they prefer to go to bed early, and will leave right in the middle of a show to do so. Late seating allows us the flexibility to change tables if need be, to see the less packed late show, to enjoy a pre-dinner cocktail or listen to music and socialize before dinner, and on port days, we don't have to rush to dress for dinner, and can relax or even take a nap after a long day in port.
2. Most of the time, there is no good reason to rush off the ship on port days. We look at the tour schedule, and together with our own plans, we decide whether to leave the ship before the tours, or sleep in. Usually, the decision is obvious, and the herd is all lining up at the buffet at the exact same time, so we avoid them.
3. When possible, we eat a relaxing breakfast in the dining room as opposed to grazing at the buffet. Another option, particularly attractive if we have a balcony cabin, is to order room service breakfast. When there are lots of half day tours which leave early (a common practice), we often find the buffet nearly empty when we go to eat as the herd heads to the tour meeting areas. Even on Sea days, when there isn't a good time to eat at the buffet, the other options are almost always better.
4. Lounging in the sun on the pool deck is a very popular activity on pleasant days, and that is where the herd will be. But they have to eat sometime and that is when we strike! Somewhere around noon, we can always find an open lounge chair. Yes, they will leave a towel behind to mark the spot they hope to return to, so you might have to clear away one to get a chair, but don't let that trouble you. Lately, Princess is doing the clearing, including personal belongings such as books, and putting them in numbered bins. Anyway, all cruise lines say chairs may not be reserved, in the theaters, or on the pool decks, so if you see an open chair, take it. We go easy on the sun, as long exposure really isn't very good for you, and our formal pictures look ridiculous if we are burnt to a crisp.
5. We don't attend bingo, tour talks, shopping talks, disembarkation talks, etc. Most of the port information is available in writing, and these talks are endlessly repeated on TV anyway. If we are sufficiently prepared, we aren't missing a thing. Sometimes a cruise line will offer port enrichment speakers, or other talks on subjects such as economics, genealogy, and the like. These talks are great, and often under attended. We have disembarked many ships, and there isn't anything we can learn at these talks that isn't written down and delivered to our cabin. We do attend the lifeboat drill. Safety first.
6. Our main goal on sea days is to relax, and rest. Sometimes the best spot for that is our personal balcony, if we have one. Other times, a less traveled indoor or outdoor spot is ideal to curl up with a good book. We walk around the ship, and explore all of the decks and we find these quiet little spots to relax.
7. The worst day of the cruise is the last day. Our bill comes to our cabin, our bags are already packed and long gone the night before, and we say goodbye to our cabin attendant, who is also having a bad day cleaning all of the cabins for the next set of cruisers. What to do? Eat, of course! We like to finish a cruise in the dining room, and we linger. The herd? We find them on the deck of embarkation, usually sitting on every available spot, including stairs. When our number or color is called, we can quickly get off the ship, recover our bags, etc., starting from any deck on the ship. So we don't camp out on the disembarkation deck. Sometimes we have an early flight. It happens. But we told the purser about this a few days prior, and are among the first to get off, anyway. If our definition of early doesn't match the cruise lines, we lie, and make up an earlier flight, so we are among the first to leave. But usually, we don't care, we have plenty of time, and we would just as soon eat breakfast as sit at the airport.

There are many other situations where crowd psychology can be employed. Do you really care about meeting the captain? Personally, we prefer our captains to be on the bridge looking for icebergs and whatnot, but at the returning cruiser party, we enter through the door opposite to where the captain is shaking hands. If the line to meet the captain is on the port side, we enter on the starboard side.

Think of a herd of cruisers like a herd of Antelope in Africa. These antelope, especially those at the center of the herd, eat a lot of trampled grass. Those on the outskirts of the herd get nice, fresh grass. They are more likely to be eaten by lions, but they also see the lions first, and can run...fast... It's the middle of the herd that has a problem with egress.

The Independent Cruiser always tries to take the Road Less Traveled.

NEXT: Avoiding bad cruisers

Avoiding bad cruisers

The Independent Cruiser operates on the fringe of the herd, and sometimes that means interacting with those who seemingly came on the cruise with the explicit intention to ruin our vacations. Well, probably not, but we've had plenty of occasions where their effect was the same. These bad cruisers must be avoided! Here are the archtypes:

Bus 1 people

This is a Princess term, invented by our Australian friends Camron and Richard, but it applies to a certain type of personality that can be found on every cruise line. What they noticed was that although Princess would send out as many as 10-20 busses on any given tour, all seeing the same sites, that some folks weren't happy unless they got to be on the first bus, bus 1. They will get up very early to accomplish this feat, eschewing the regular breakfast service to have the early breakfast service, and head straight to the waiting lounge to exhange their tour tickets for the prized bus 1 sticker!

Yes, the busses all go to the same places, and sometimes bus 1 is not even the first to depart, or the first to arrive at a photo op (and that drives these people nuts!), but they wouldn't have it any other way. What drives them is super competitiveness. Bus 1 has to be better than bus 2, right?

These folks also suffer from checklist syndrome -- the need to be able to say to their friends and co-workers that they have been everywhere, and done everything. Remarkably, these people often fail to see much at all. The bus will stop at a monument, they will get out, sniff the air, perhaps snap a photo, and get right back on the bus before someone steals their seat! And then they will wait, annoyed, while the bus refills. At the end of the day, they have their checklist of the things they saw, and their precious sticker, and that is about all. No memories of good times had, or people met, or anything really...

Bus 1 people lead the herd to be sure, so when we see one (their stickers on their shirts will say something like E1, where E is the tour designation, and "1" is the bus number), we make sure we are going in the other direction. You don't want to get trampled at tea time.

Wet Blankets, Whiners and Chronic Complainers

Cruise Line staff are not perfect, and things regularly go wrong. The Independent Cruiser is among those who will complain appropriately and succinctly to the proper authority when something needs fixing. But there are cruisers who take this to a whole new level, and they are to be avoided completely.

Their goal seems to be to show that their standards are well above everyone else. When you hear someone say: "when I was on Celebrity, they did X, and here they do Y", we are wary. This may be a legitimate comparison, told to us for our amusement, or information, but often it is intended to start a bitch session about the cruise we are presently on. What happens when the herd gets involved? Well, cruise ships have turned around and gone back to port due to a herd of passengers who are upset, usually about the spread of norovirus, and work each other into a frenzy.

Worshiping at the space age plastic bathroom alter seems an entirely legitimate thing to bitch about to us, but blaming the cruise line for failing to sanitize your own hands before and after (if you intend to eat with your hands) you use the buffet strikes us as just a bit hypocritical. Strangely, it seems to have become standard cruiseship med office protocol to tell a patient they have food poisoning rather than a potentially communicable virus (See Dawn Princess Review). Why would a cruise line rather have you think they poisoned you than that you failed to wash your hands? They fear the crowd frenzy mentioned above, and norovirus is such a well-publicized item at the moment.

At any rate, we digress. Wet blankets complain about plenty of other things that don't involve bathroom antics. If the ship is rocking due to force 8 winds, they accuse the captain of....something... We're never quite sure why the captain has much control over this as his course and equipment to negotiate said course are preordained. This is a little like our daughter complaining that we used to spin the car on the Teacups ride at Dinseyland when she was very young. OK, we did, one of us anyway. And I suppose a reckless captain could forget to put out the stablizers or whatever, and cause excess rocking, but how often does that really occur. Not often, we would assume.

Of course, cruise ship food is a favorite topic of disfavor. It's not hot enough, it's too spicy, it's not big enough, it's too much, it's flavorless, it's......awful...we have heard it all. And sometimes, the food isn't very good, especially on older ships, and at the buffet. But the food is often remarkably good considering their constraints of much less than fresh daily meats, fish, vegetables, and other ingredients, and the sheer number of passengers served each day. For the most part, it's pretty good, and getting better. Yet there is always one cruiser we meet, who just can't stop complaining about the food.

The service is another hot button. And this brings us to the subject of tipping. The Independent Cruiser tips, and tips well, because we bother to talk to the crew about thir personal lives, just as we talk to those of other cultures while in port, and we know how difficult their life is, how hard they work, and for the most part, how pleasantly and efficiently they perform their jobs. Would you clean anyone's bedroom and bathroom twice a day for $7 (standard $3.50pp daily tip times two)? If you are going to rip the service people on a ship, you better have an airtight case. And before you fail to adequately tip a waiter or cabin steward, you should think very carefully about how much money you are paid for doing a hell of a lot less!

Anyway, we have seen cruisers eliminate the tips from their accounts, and then fail to show up on the last night of dinner, after 13 nights of full service, just to stiff the waiters (and not have to face the music). Why? Because we were offered another lobster, and they were not. Never mind they didn't eat the first one entirely, and admitted they would have turned down such an offer, as they were small eaters. And shame on us for not seeing through these people, and shunning them, so that maybe they would have left a lot sooner, and at least saved our poor waiter some work!

Look for cruisers who are having a good time, and spend your time with them. These naysayers deserve a vacation in isolation, or as parents say, a long, long timeout!

Takers

There are cheapskates -- and we consider ourseleves to be pretty frugal -- and then there are "Takers". We have to know the difference. Some cruisers have spent every dime getting on the ship, and just can't spend much more. Others just pretend that is the case. But a taker is always stalking, always wary, and ready to lift those last dozen meringue cookies before you get your mitts on even one! Actually, that would be a "pig". We have seen them too. Those long, loose-fitting smocks with the big pockets are perfect for saving a plate of cookies for "later".

Anyway, since the Independent Cruiser is a joiner We sometimes get taken in by the Taker archtype, buying drinks, inviting them to parties, sharing cars, etc., until we suddenly realize that all the giving and all of the taking is in one direction. Unfortunately, all we can do is be alert, as these types have a way with infiltration.


Fortunately, we have met far more great people on cruises -- and not just in the Independent Cruise category -- then we have met of the types above. We have made great friends on cruises, and making new friends is one of the best parts of cruising. Just watch out...