KmomChicago

Thanks Odie. The review is already helping me compartmentalize, pack that other stuff away for some hours at a time.

This guy is just one of several reasons I am less inclined towards leisure travel going forward. I really hate leaving the furs.

What I really don’t get is why anyone ever thought this door plug was a good idea. If some of the 737’s won’t need a door in that spot, how about we don’t pre-cut a hole there in the first place? Obviously they cut all the same door holes in every 737 in the same places, then plug some of them after the fact. This seems an unnecessary risk and I question how a plugged hole would ever have equivalent structural integrity to the original uncut fuselage. Actual doors are risky enough. I speculate (but don’t know, not an engineer) that seams and secondary structural additions in general are preferably avoided and add all sorts of longer term maintenance considerations even if they are safe and integral at time of manufacture.

So IMHO, Boeing is really the problem here, not Alaska Airlines, though they absolutely erred in failing to immediately investigate pressure alarms on previous flights of this specific aircraft. Most disasters are not due to one error or failure but rather a series of safety lapses, any one of which, prevented, might / probably would have avoided the situation. Every day heroes in manufacturing are doing their jobs and preventing failures and we never know about it. Real heroes don’t wear capes. Yes I know how to evaluate a deviation, thank you very much, and I have done so as much as I can get the info on this incident. I have used disasters like Space Shuttle Challenger and the compounding pharmacy fungal meningitis outbreak as learning examples for quality training. It is chilling and amazing how lucky everyone was related to that flight. You just don’t get closer to disaster yet incredibly evade it very often. We will be flying on a 737 though not the exact model that failed. Anything can happen and I understand the risk of flying as well as the safety statistics compared to other forms of travel. The risk is very low but the consequences are about the worst. Ironically with the heightened awareness and related oversight, possibly this will be the safest flight of my life. Or perhaps not.

I work in pharma quality and I have a natural risk-based mindset. This serves me well in my work. My work is sometimes scary because of the risk involved and I have a whole lotta respect for that risk. See a pattern? Humans are imperfect and always will be. Quality control is about robust systems that reduce potential impact of the inconsistency and risk of the humans. Reduce as it’s almost impossible to eliminate risk entirely. Unfortunately. Even following quality systems to the letter cannot always guarantee perfection but it is by far the most important, effective, reliable strategy. Nothing gives me worse nightmares than learning about a poor quality culture in a high risk manufacturing organization.

Alaska Airlines. So imagine you have a cruise planned and you wait for flights to become available and find exactly what you want on a highly rated airline you’ve never flown and book it and forget about it for a while and a few months later, a plane LITERALLY FALLS APART IN MIDAIR.

So I am not going to get too far into it prior to embarking, but in addition to my job reorganization and its stress, I am also dealing with a significant unforeseen personal family issue. Significant enough to outweigh the stress of reapplying and interviewing without a guarantee of staying employed. I’m still grappling with how much to share as it will 100% impact this trip. If a crystal ball would have told me about all of it, there’s no way I would have scheduled this trip for May, 2024. Full stop. Yet here we are, heading right into it regardless.

@ninjacat123 hello buddy. Great to have you as always. ❤️ @HeyJut Yeah I do have slight FOMO about this decision as Breakaway class was off to the side, waving its arm around saying “pick me, pick me” and I didn’t. Too many great options, what a problem. 😂 @crzndeb I also hope you’ll share your impressions. I would only go on the same ship 8 times if the port was walking distance from my home!! 😂 I did Celebrity over 20 years ago and it was very nice but the industry has evolved so much that those experiences are no longer very representative. Edge class is a little on the small side for me but the style and amenities and food and entertainment obviously more than compensate, and as they say, bigger isn’t always better. I have loved almost everything I have seen about that class of ships. @AKR2011 yeah the timing on the work situation is a drag but I plan to bring it! Thanks for the encouragement! Hope to hear about your cruise as well! Enjoy! @TNVolnteerCruiser great to see you here, thanks for the support. ❤️ @MeganGC1983 I will be watching you too! @Coralc I searched her posts and they linked me to someone doing a live on her current cruise where she’s adding a few comments.

@mslaabs thank you for the advice, much appreciated. I’m assuming there will be sufficient deck space if helipad is off limits but I will see who I can sweet talk into special dispensation. 😊 I do plan to attend whatever talks they have onboard about such things. My understanding is Princess and HA are better about having naturalists and other expert guides onboard to help you make the most of things but I assume there will be a glacier talk or something. Lastly ship exploration is probably my favorite cruise activity so I will also try to scout alternatives and have a plan in place. The teens will probably watch it all on their virtual balcony. 🤷‍♀️

Anyone who’s been on an Alaska cruise: What are the main things needed on this cruise that wouldn’t be necessary on other cruises? Stuff that a newb might forget? Also here’s my drink package for this cruise, leftover from Adventure of the Seas 5 years ago. I also bought one of the packs of bottled water from RCI. Pretty racy, I know.

Fun fact or at least I think so. I wrote to my US Senator Dick Durbin in May of 2021 to tell him it’s time for congress to move along toward providing cruises the guidelines to resume safely. As you can see he replied about actions taken, all of which I already knew but I thought it was time we ‘splained what the people want. I like to believe every little bit helps and who knows if he was prompted by me and asked someone in that department or committee or whatever if they were progressing at all on the issue? In any case cruises did resume soon after. You do have representation, talk to your politicians!

@A&L_OntThanks, the kiddo thought so too! Most importantly, high school graduation is now officially a fait accompli! @SenatorsFan good to have you along, friend. 🙂 @DeanDeeDee welcome and thanks for traveling along! @blarko great to have you along, thanks. 🙂 @BohJang thanks, I could say the same of YOUR style. 🙂 @Cscomedygrl hopefully controlled adventures, right? Dorks like me don't like things to get too crazy. @princess76021 there she is! Let's do our best to make minimal use of the Oh Crap button, shall we? Fingers crossed!

So the reason I started live reviews was simply because of a happy accident related to the pandemic of all things. We sailed Adventure of the Seas in August 2019, but had nothing booked in mid-March 2020 when everything came to a halt. In November, 2020, there was pretty good looking data that we were 2-3 months from a vaccine. That didn't mean necessarily that cruises would be able to resume right away. But I assumed, EVENTUALLY cruises will resume. I looked at the school calendar for 2021. I took a shot in the dark and booked Mardi Gras for the 2nd week of August, the last week before kiddo's school would start. Ended up being the 2nd commercial sailing of a brand new ship, first in its class for Carnival and a real game changer. We also had the benefit of the ship being less than 2/3 full, roughly 4k passengers on a ship that can hold 6.5k. I knew there would be exceptional interest because of all that, so I figured people might be more willing than usual to tolerate my mindless babbling, and the rest is history. ParoDeeJay, a pair of cruise bloggers who are not here on CC but well known on other platforms, were aboard with me and THEY BECAME SICK WITH COVID LATE IN THE CRUISE!! Luckily I had not fangirled them much other than saying hi to Jay when I passed him in a hall on embark day. My family and I got every Covid booster as soon as possible and never did catch the original variants. We did finally come down with a mild case of omicron which had not at that time been covered by the original vaccine formulations.

Thanks, I am definitely concerned about that. Hopefully I can either get an interview this week before I leave, or first day after I return to work.

As today is my last weekend day before leaving, I am trying to finalize some lists and logistics while my head is not distracted with work. Speaking of which, that is another whole story as my company is going through a reorg and I am in the process of applying for new roles. There is a distinct possibility I will have an interview over Teams WHILE I AM ON THE SHIP! I am mostly okay with that, but I need to take a look at times that absolutely cannot work, i.e. while I am on my Skagway excursion, while I am disembarking back in Seattle on the morning of the 24th, etc. That is the kind of stuff I am adding to my planning lists to take care of this week. My 80 year old mom will be at home while we are gone with the 2 cats. I have a person coming in daily to take care of their food, water and litter, and mom will provide them with companionship. Our dog is going to a boarding facility. I feel bad about this as he has separation anxiety and this is the first time I am boarding him, but his prior owner tells me he has always been okay with it.