Eddie Wilson

Did you happen to see the Switched On Band? They were on our cruise last Feb and were one of the best nightly music bands. Eddie

Way too early to predict, but I seem to recall, as one hurricane was approaching Miami on a Sunday they actually kept the ships due to arrive that morning safe at sea, a couple of hundred miles away. Think about it, not only the safety of the ship itself, but with the airports closed, no sense in debarking thousands of passengers only to have them try to find somewhere to sit out a hurricane. On that occasion, I believe they docked the next morning, and sailed exactly one day late. Of course, there is an issue for the next arriving guests, hopefully they can get to the port on time. Another issue is, how much room is there at the port, as other ships may have there scheduled return on Monday. They may need a traffic cop. That is all hearsay evidence, as my wife and I were on a cruise about a month later, and someone on board told us that.

If I remember correctly, they ask you to circle a time frame, and the times are 30 minute blocks. So 6:00 -6:30. 6:30 - 7:00. And so on. We ordered simple coffee, tea, fruit, toast, etc on mornings we had early shore excursions. We ordered once for the 6 to 6:30 AM, and a couple of times for 7 to 7:30 AM. They were always on time, that is within that 30 minute window.

Our first cruise was when Empress of the Seas was recently christened Nordic Empress. A 1990 faux pas by RCCL as the name was not consistent. But other things were not consistent with today’s cruising. Such as....I shot skeet off the side of the ship. Could you imagine them handing a patron a gun? Another was “flaming babalu” served as a desert, with dozens of waiters parading into the main dinning room. One could feel the heat. I guess that may be deemed a fire hazard today. In the vein of safety, I don’t miss either of those items. I also remember the farewell show“If I were not upon the sea, what me?” Seen it several times and laughed at it each time. For something that has not changed in my 29 year tenure with RCCL, is the friendly, professional, and well trained wait staff and room stewards. On our last cruise, I mentioned to the main dinning room head, “How is it that RCCL knows that in each of our cruises, they assign to our table the number 1 wait staff and room stewards on ship?” Looking forward to putting that last quote to the test on many more RCCL cruises in the years to come.