We found the first day of our first cruise to be a pretty daunting experience. There were thousands of passengers and friends in the area when we arrived to board. It appeared to be organized chaos. We wondered what we had gotten ourselves into. But let me tell you how we came to be on our first cruise, first before I explain our “questionable” start to our first cruise.
I had always wanted to try a cruise. Our first cruise occurred by default. Six months before my 70th birthday, my wife asked me what she wanted for my birthday. I said a new set of golf clubs. Her answer was “not until you improve your golf”. My golf at that time was inspiring. I then suggested that I would like to see the Wanaka War Birds shows in New Zealand only to find that the show had been the week before. It only happened every two years. So I suggested the cruise. My wife had resisted the idea in the past. But now I had the opportunity to get to do one.
Thus began the planning. With the help of a friendly travel agent, we selected Princess Cruises, which specialized in cruises for our age group. The cruise ship entered the Pacific from Brisbane in November. Now that you know how the cruise went, let me tell you about our first day on the ship.
Let me start by noting a few words my wife said to me as the boat cruised down the Brisbane River and we sat in the Princess Theater with hundreds of people in life jackets in the span. “I do not want to be here”. How did this come about?
We had no idea what it would be like to have 2,000 people trying to board the ship at the same time. As first-time sailors, we read our instructions that people who have cabins on our deck should arrive between 1:00 pm and 1:30 pm to board the ship. We did this to find “organized chaos”. We left our bags at the loading point and headed to the departure lounge to find a tangle of people going from one place to another. The officials told us to go to the Portside shopping area, get a coffee and come back in 30 minutes.
We did this, returning to find that the chaos had subsided somewhat. So we join a zigzag line to go to the registration point. 30 minutes later we had our boarding pass and a boarding number. We were then asked to sit and wait for a call to board. Meanwhile, hunger began to flourish. We didn’t have lunch earlier because we thought we’d have time to do it on the boat. We received the call to board, went through all the checkpoints and arrived at the ship where they checked our cards and took a photo of each one of us. With a little guidance, we found our state room, started unpacking after a quick but unsatisfying lunch when the call for all passengers to report to their muster station came over the ship’s public address system. We were “dragged” and struggled our way down with hundreds of people to our assembly station for safety training required by Australian law.
Now this brings me back to my wife’s words: “I don’t want to be here.” Once the safety briefing was over and we were back in our status rooms, slowly unpacking and relaxing, things started rolling. When we showered, dressed for dinner, found our table in the restaurant, met our dinner companions and our waiter, five hours of chaos were finally over. Now we were ready to enjoy our first cruise. We did that.
Soon we will embark on our fourth cruise. We learned a lot from our first cruise. We now arrive at the cruise terminal as boarding is about to begin. This reduces the craziness and there are fewer people around and the boarding process is over quickly. Some more experienced cruisers say they board late in the embarkation period as they find their boarding is less of a hassle.
Once the boarding process is complete, the real fun of the cruise begins. If it was a fun experience, we wouldn’t be about to have our next cruise.