Cruising with the ‘Cruise Lady' - November 201
I've been on cruises before. On various cruise lines, with various groups of people, friends, family and spouses. But for my parent's 50th wedding anniversary, they wanted to go on a cruise with the "Cruise Lady" – a cruise specialist, who arranges specialty groups on existing cruises. This one was to the Western Caribbean, featuring ancient American history scholar, John L. Lund from BYU and Michael Ballam, renown singer/artist. (See Wikipedia listing in footnote)
My first reaction was, "No way, I'm not going on some cruise designed with lectures and private concerts. That will cut into my play time on the boat." But because it was for my parents, and it was going to 2 locations that I have always wanted to scuba dive, (Roatan, Honduras and Belize), I agreed to go.
First of all, you must know, Virginia, there really is a Cruise Lady. Granted we did not actually meet her until the first day on board the ship, but she does exist. Cruise Lady Cruises are part of a regular cruise; ours was on the Carnival Valor, departing out of Miami. You can book the same cruise directly with Carnival or with another travel agent, but to take part in the special activities that the Cruise Lady agency had prepared you must book the cruise through her agency. It does cost a bit more. Not much. We compared the prices, it was around $100 more for the Cruise Lady cruise. We felt it was worth it – my parents especially, both of which are big Michael Ballam fans.
We actually went to the Cruise Lady office in Sandy, Utah to set up our booking. You can do it all over the phone, but we were local, so we did it in person. The staff there is really great and helped to explain all the details of the cruise and cost and cabin choices. There are a lot of details to booking a cruise. More than you would think. To book the cruise, you need to decide cabin position, inside, outside, balcony, window and level, all of which has a different cost. They you determine early dinning versus late. Once the cruise is booked, you need to figure out travel to and from Miami, the transfers to the port, and all within the specific time frames. Luckily, the folks at Cruise Lady were very patient and helpful with making all the arrangements.
Then of course, actually not of course, more like in addition to all that, you have to register on Carnival's website so you can set up your on-board account, print your boarding passes and luggage tags. These are little pieces of paper that you print out yourself and MUST take with you, to get on the ship and get the luggage to your room. Did I mention that the registration process on the Carnival website is kind of a horror show. It is time consuming, and at times confusing, but you get there eventually. You can also register for your shore excursions on their website. We decided to book most of our shore excursion ourselves with local operators, but ended up booking one through Carnival. More on that later.
Cruising as a vacation is great. Cruising as a family vacation, and I mean an extended family vacation, including older parents, older single siblings, teenagers, pre-teens, youngling, is a really great vacation. Cruising allows everything to experience the things that they enjoy during the day, or or off the ship. Then at night, as the ship sets sail for the next destination, the family comes to together for a great dinner and the tales of the days activities begins. At least that's how is was for my family. Being that this was a 50th Wedding anniversary celebration, we also had in our party couple friends of my parents. There were a lot of different directions that our group wanted to go.
But let's talk about the details of the adventure and a couple of tips and tricks to make your trip as smooth and enjoyable as possible.
Steady Your Mind – Mentally prepare yourself.
As with most things, I find that if I have prepared myself mentally for the task at hand, it goes much smoother, or at least it goes according to how I think it will go.
For the cruise experience, my counsel is to understand that 3,000 passengers and 1,200 crew will be on the ship at one time. The ships are adequately prepared to conveniently handle the massed when in route and in normal sailing operation and they do their best the rest of the time to make it as easy as possible. But you have to figure that 3,000 people, with luggage and lots of special requests are trying to get on board within a short time frame, for every departure, every tender, every docking, every dinner, every breakfast and every embarkation. Then to get taxis and transfers back to the airport and so on. So – steady your mind. Expect there to be lines of people, people wanting to go exactly where you want to go. Realize that this too is part of the experience. Besides, where do you have to go in a hurry? To dinner? To breakfast? To the showroom or the island excursions? Sure you want to get there now, but it will be there. Relax, except delays and enjoy your friends, family or make new ones while you all wait in line together belslovar.ru.
As per Wikipedia: Michael Ballam (born 1952) is the general director of the Utah Festival Opera, a professor of music at Utah State University, an accomplished operatic singer, pianist and oboist. His professional operatic and recital career has spanned nearly three decades and four continents. Ballam, a native of Logan, Utah, has performed in the major concert halls in America, Europe, Asia and the Soviet Union, with command performances at the Vatican and the White House. His operatic repertoire includes more than 600 performances of over 70 major roles. He has shared the stage with the world's greatest singers, including Joan Sutherland, Kiri Te Kanawa, and Placido Domingo, performing regularly with companies such as the Chicago Lyric, San Francisco, Santa Fe, Dallas, St. Louis, Kennedy Center and San Diego Operas. At the age of 24 he became the youngest recipient of a Doctor of Music with Distinction in the history of Indiana University.[1] He is well known for his strong support of musical arts in Cache Valley, Utah.
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