It was nice to get into the
room to dump the carryon Bag, the 24 pack of water, her Toiletry bag and a still
no bird… OK enough with that!
Now SHE hands HIM the
letters that were handed to them at check in but he didn’t bother to read. Now they did and low and behold… all the
ports except Bimini are closed to cruisers and the only way you can get off the
ship is if you have booked a Celebrity sponsored shore excursion.
W.T.F.?!?
Sounds like a bunch of BS to
force you into their excursions rather than you’re doing your own thing but they’ll
check it out later. It was time to meet
Steve at the guest services to get the rooms sorted out.
What’s that you ask about sorting
out rooms?
We'll part of the deal
with Steve and Ellen getting free rooms from all their Casino Play was that even
if they wanted to just give us one of the rooms, that isn’t how it works. They each had to be in one of the rooms, so
officially, Steve and I are in one room on one reservation number and Ellen and
the Dragon Lady are in the other on a separate reservation.
Now remember this little
fact as it will play out in several instances later.
And since they couldn’t do
the swap before sailing, we had to wait until we were on the ship to move
Chucky into the same room as DL and Steve in with Ellen, which of course required getting new keys made for the appropriate cabin occupants.
Of course now, Guest
Services Supervisor Salvatore, is not quite following the request.
It seems that the cruise
had a large contingent of LGBTQ cruisers and he figured, 2 guys in one cabin,
and 2 ladies in the other… wellll, Yeah, we could understand his confusion when
we wanted to swap the combination.
So after a couple repeats
of the issue, Salvatore is Sicilian as is Chucky who finally tries the explanation in
two languages and suddenly Salvatore goes,
“Ahhh Si, Si Signoré, ora ho Capito”.
Now He Gets IT!
With the room situation sorted
out and the proper key card/sailing pass in hand, it was time to address the closed port issue, which has a particular
importance for Steve, Ellen and their son-in-law Bob.
S&E and their family had
been vacationing in Aruba for over 30 years and the reason they chose this particular cruise and itinerary was that Bob had flown in with the cremains of his late wife Lesley, S&E’s daughter, to
scatter her ashes in several of her favorite places on Aruba.
Now, not being able to get
off the ship unless with a Celebrity sponsored Excursion, put a crimp in
the plan. It would be impossible for any
of the excursions, most of which were rapidly selling out, to make the 3 or 4
stops they needed to accomplish their mission.
It looked like they had to
come up with a new plan, but were not too sure how.
Salvatore suggested we
consult with the excursion desk to see if they may have a solution. But of course with the handout given at check
in, the line at the excursion desk wound around the waiting area like a python curling
up for a nap.
Since we had to complete
the safety drill we decided to do that first and come back later.
Now-a-days in the digital era, the safety drill involves a few innovative steps. Rather than head
out on the boat deck and stand around in the heat for an hour until everyone
for that muster station shows up, you can do most of it on your phone using
the Celebrity App that we had to download prior to boarding. It allowed us to watch a video of the safety briefing, listen to the Ships Emergency Signal blast, and then check in at our Muster
station, which was actually in one of the Specialty Dining rooms.
While there, the
delightful young lady who scanned our Room Key to check us in for muster, informed
us that she would be giving a Glass Blowing demo on Deck 15 at 4:00pm and invited
us to attend.
Since we had both been to Murano, Italy - at separate times of course - Steve and I thought that
was a great idea and we might just do that after lunch while the rest headed to
the casino to check in with the Casino Host.
But for now, it was time to head up
to the deck 14 and the Ocean Café to discuss the port dilemma over a delightful
lunch, with plans to go back to the excursion desk later when it wasn’t so busy.
Once again, this got out
of hand so we'll continue this Saga, in the next episode of “Do they or Don’t they
Get offa da Boat”
Ciao 4 Now
Uncle Chuck &
The
anxious to see what HE comes up with,
Dragon Lady