There's been additional evidence that Carnival Cruises is taking serious and expensive steps to refit its older ships with back-up electrical generators. But because the first ship to have that makeover has a totally new name, the fact that it is one of the elderly vessels has been obscured from public view.
It was announced this week that the Carnival Sunshine (a name never before seen in cruising) would not embark on a risky trans-Atlantic sailing to the Mediterranean, but would stay in drydock for several weeks to have this additional safety equipment installed. That announcement made it look like the newer ships in the Carnival fleet were in need of redundancy safeguards.
The fact is that the Carnival Sunshine is not a new ship, but one that was launched in 1996--seventeen years ago--as the "Carnival Destiny". It was undoubtedly a ship with only one set of electrical generators. And although it had already been in drydock for various cosmetic improvements that would see it emerge as the "Carnival Sunshine", the Destiny was undoubtedly designed in the former--and now discredited--fashion as far as safety features were concerned.
Carnival has now realized, apparently, that it is too risky to send such a ship on a trans-Atlantic sailing. Suppose it lost electrical power in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean?
So there you have it. Faced with the possibility that another tragedy (like the four that Carnival has encountered in the last three years) would have a devastating impact on the willingness of the public to hazard a cruise on a Carnival ship, Carnival has cancelled the immediate trans-Atlantic crossing of the Sunshine (née Destiny) in order to bring it into the modern world of safety.
In a blog of several days ago, I said it was "ironic" that Carnival may now become the safest cruiseship line, because of the grave problems it has recently had. We are still only hearing a total silence on the subject from other cruiselines. Is Royal Caribbean outfitting its older ships with a second set of generators? No one, as far a I know, is aware of what it is doing. How about MSC cruises? Though their fleet is relatively modern, does it possess redundancy in terms of generating electrical power? Not a word, apparently, from them. How about Celebrity Cruises, a subsidiary of Royal Caribbean? Though several of its ships are very new, and thus presumably have back-up generators, how about the older vessels of Celebrity Cruises? Don't they owe us a statement?
I believe passengers about to sail aboard Royal Caribbean, Celebrity and MSC ships should be told what those lines are planning, in terms of a shutdown of electrical power while the ship is afloat. Meanwhile, until they open up, it appears that a Carnival cruise may be the safe way to go.
Though you'll be reading about this latest problem with cruise ship electrical systems for many days to come, I thought I'd provide a very brief advance reference to it. Another giant Carnival ship, the Dream, carrying 4,000 passengers plus heaven-knows how many in crew, is currently experiencing a sharp reduction in its electrical power, causing toilets and elevators to stop working. But this time, luckily, all this has occurred not while the ship was at sea but safely docked in Philipsburg, St. Maarten.
After a single day of experiencing these outages, passengers have been advised they will now be flown back to the States by specially-chartered airplanes or on scheduled flights. It is not known how long they will have to wait for a flight home. And obviously, during high season, the hotel resorts of St. Maarten are unable to accommodate these 4,000-some-odd guests. So a great many Carnival passengers will be stranded in great discomfort until given the notice that a plane awaits them at the airport of St. Maarten.
Passengers will be given a refund for three days of cruising, and a 50% discount off a future Carnival sailing.
What's to conclude from all this? It's obvious that in the same way that Boeing executives failed to think through all the problems that might afflect electrical batteries placed aboard their latest aircraft, it should now be crystal clear that cruise ship executives have been rushing to complete one 4,000-passenger gigantic cruise ship after another without thinking through the need for full-scale alternative sources of power if something should happen to the main generators.
A cruise ship is like a self-contained city. Its thousands of guests are wholly dependent on the proper working of an electrical generating system. And since such systems are not always capable of working 100%, there obviously should be back-up systems in place. It is simply a mystery of how a cruiseline could take on the responsibility for 4,000 passengers, without being absolutely certain that working toilets would always be available for them. The current problem is the third such episode to be experienced by Carnival. And that's something that would-be passengers should think about.
Ever heard of Coco Cay in the Bahamas? You probably haven't, because that little strip of land is scarcely inhabited and belongs -- lock, stock and barrel -- to Royal Caribbean Cruiseline, which operates bars, cafes, and shops alongside its beaches. Royal Caribbean has now entered into an agreement with Carnival permitting Carnival to dump passengers from two of its cruise ships for a full day on Coco Cay (aka Little Stirrup Cay), instead of sending those passengers for that day to Key West, Florida. Instead of enjoying an authentic experience of a celebrated and rather eccentric U.S. city, Carnival's passengers will now spend that day on a private beach of a private island.
Instead of going to Nassau, Freeport, and Key West, passengers on five-day cruises will go to Nassau, Freeport, and "Coco Cay."
All sorts of explanations of the change have been offered by Carnival. But the real reason is undoubtedly money. Coco Cay is only 50 miles from Nassau, the preceding stop. Key West is some 260 miles from Nassau. Carnival will be spared the expense of sailing some 200 miles.
I believe I may be the only writer who has railed and shouted about this use of private islands as the "foreign destinations" for many cruise passengers. The policy transforms a travel experience into something wholly trivial. The rest of us should be absolutely firm against ever booking a cruise that substitutes a phony travel experience for a real one.
The weird outcome of last weekend's Italian election -- major vote totals for the outrageous Silvio Berlusconi and the equally-nutty Beppe Grillo -- has at least created positive news for American travelers. It has so unnerved the business interests of Europe that the value of the euro has now fallen to $1.30, with the British pound selling for $1.51. Those rates -- which might even go lower -- have markedly cheapened the cost of a European vacation for us dollar-possessing travelers.
And the Japanese yen remains at a remarkable 90 to the dollar, lowering the cost of a stay in Japan. Provided only that you can find an inexpensive airfare for an overseas vacation (try hipmunk.com, do-hop.com, or momondo.com), the prospects look good for ambitious summer vacationers.
But you'll need to make wise decisions in the choice of destinations. There's an awful lot of misleading information out there, as I discovered in responding to callers on this weekend's Travel Show (Sunday, noon to two E.S.T., at wor710.com).
One listener phoned the show to point out that she was flying in June with her fiancee to Rome, where they hoped to get married in a Presbyterian church (are there any in Rome?) on days one or two, and then to embark on a train trip to Florence and Venice. Her specific question: How can she arrange to ship her sumptuous wedding gown back home, as she did not want to cart it along for the remainder of her Italian trip?
I had the unenviable task of pointing out that as far as marriages are concerned, Rome is not Las Vegas. Unlike Las Vegas, where you can obtain a marriage license and get hitched within a half hour after your arrival, all European countries have severe residency requirements for permitting people to have weddings on their soil. I told her that she had to contact the nearest Italian consulate to learn how many months she would first have to reside in Italy before she could be married there. I could almost hear a groan of dismay from the caller.
Another caller explained that she was planning to go on a Baltic cruise this summer, ending up in St. Petersburg, Russia, where she hoped to make her own hotel reservations for two days of sightseeing in that fabled city. For such a short stay, she reasoned, she would not have to go through the difficult and expensive process of obtaining a Russian visa. I had to disappoint her by pointing out that her plan for bypassing a visa was just not do-able, that Russian requires a visa of any tourist, and that the only exception to that rule was for cruise passengers engaging in a group sightseeing tour arranged by the cruise ship, involving a day-long stay that returned at night to the cruise ship. Even a one-day overnight stay in Russia requires a visa.
Another listener, who had submitted his question by e-mail to the program, announced that he was anxious to cruise the coast of Alaska, but would do so only on a ship catering to young passengers. I had to respond that there was no such thing; that the audience for Alaskan cruises was heavily weighted to mature and elderly people. Was I wrong to be so pessimistic?
Is South Africa safe to visit, asked another caller? I responded that the general consensus is that Cape Town is acceptably safe (provided only that you take the precautions you would follow in any large city), while Johannesburg is iffy -- iffy because of the considerable poverty in that city, that is usually a generator of crime. Nevertheless, a great many tourists stay over in Johannesburg on their onward trip to Krueger National Park, and by taking reasonable precautions, they enjoy a stay without mishap.
Generally speaking, the questions posed to us on The Travel Show are so wide-ranging, reflecting an intention by many listeners to visit the most remote corners of the world, that they prove the continued vitality of travel. In the course of a slow economic recovery, at a time when unemployment is still high, people are still traveling in huge numbers and not simply on weekend trips but to international destinations. One caller this past weekend extolled the pleasures of a trip to Ghana in Africa, which he portrayed as a stable country that recently achieved a peaceful transfer of power from one president to another. It is reached, he said, by non-stop flights, and your visit is among friendly people well disposed to America, in cities with modern hotels.
As someone who obviously doesn't have expertise in ship design or maritime safety, I felt somewhat hesitant in passing comment on the recent tragedy of the Carnival Triumph, whose electrical system -- knocked out by an engine room fire -- caused it to drift without power for five days in the Gulf of Mexico.
And yet it seemed obvious to me. A cruise ship is like a city at sea. Shouldn't it possess back-up generators if the main source of electricity is knocked out? Of course it should, as I proceeded to write in this blog. And if such an event happens during a time of stormy seas, or when the ship is hundreds of miles from land (as on a trans-Atlantic sailing), grave tragedies including loss of life could occur.
Would you believe that The New York Times has this morning published a well-researched article reaching the same conclusion? And it points out, amazingly enough, that the event on the Triumph is the third such instance to occur during the past three years. One such loss of power occurred, amazingly enough, on another ship of Carnival Cruise Lines, the Splendor, in 2012.
Because of an ambiguous situation of government regulation (all ships carry the flags of tiny countries like Liberia and therefore claim to be immune to supervision by the United States), no government has rushed to enforce comprehensive or effective rules for the installation of safety equipment aboard ships. Though various admonitions to create redundancies in the production of electric power have been issued, only 10-or-so modern cruise ships contain back-up generators located far from the main engine room. The other 100-plus cruise ships contain one such system, and if it is knocked out, then the boat and its passengers are out of luck.
Two years ago, the Splendor experienced an engine room fire that eliminated its electrical power, amid resulted in harrowing circumstances almost identical to what befell the Triumph. Yet Carnival did nothing. And passengers of the Splendor rubbed their eyes when they read about the identical later occurrence on the Triumph.
What is needed is strong action by Congress. Asserting its authority over any ship that docks at a U.S. port, or that is marketed primarily to a U.S. audience, Congress could demand that ships be re-fitted with back-up generators. Though this will require the ships to give up a fair number of passenger cabins in order to create the space for those second generators, it is a requirement that cries out to be enacted. Otherwise, we will soon see an even greater tragedy than the one that so affected the passengers aboard the Triumph.
I had thought, until recently, that $34 a day was the lowest price ever recorded for a cruise on a glamorous ship carrying 2,500 passengers. I was wrong. Avoya Travel of Miami (tel. 888/478-8479; www.avoyatravel.com) has just listed a rate of $29.99 per person per day for a repositioning cruise from San Juan to Lisbon, 10 nights in length, leaving the Puerto Rican port on April 13 and arriving in Lisbon on April 23.
Have you got $900 lying around? For that total sum, in my calculation, you can enjoy this particular wonder on Royal Caribbean's Brilliance of the Seas. Here's how:
You can fly one-way from Fort Lauderdale to San Juan for about $50. (Go to Momondo.com to see how.) You then board the Brilliance of the Seas for your $299, 10-night cruise to Lisbon (stopping at St. Maarten, and at Tenerife in the Canary Islands), en route to Lisbon (six nights are spent simply at sea, crossing the Atlantic.) Then, again by consulting that aggressive aggregator, Momondo.com, and clicking on one-way flights, you can find a return flight from Lisbon to New York for about $500. Add the three elements of the trip, and they still come to less than $900 (airfare included) for your 10-night re-positioning cruise. Has there ever been a cheaper vacation? I don't think so.
What's the world's lowest-cost, high-quality vacation? From the looks of those trips whose prices have thus far been announced, it's an eastbound, transatlantic re-positioning cruise in late March, April, and early May. I've just studied the rates announced for several dozens of these sailings (the transfer of cruiseships from American waters to European waters that takes place every spring), and can't remember seeing lower prices in earlier years. As surprising as it may seem, it's possible to book a transatlantic cruise of two weeks' duration. Departures are from New York, Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, New Orleans, or Galveston arriving at London, Barcelona, or Rome. The lowest price is as little as $34 a day per person. That's on a glamorous ship offering six meals a day, a fitness room, deckside chairs, and professional entertainment at night.
The website that presents these opportunities in the clearest possible fashion is www.vacationstogo.com. Access that site, click on "Atlantic," and you'll scan a logical list in chronological order of every big cruiseship making that transfer sailing -- with the number of nights of each cruise, the originally-announced price for the one-way trip, the discounted price, and the percentage of the discount as compared with the original rate. Some of the sailings are marked down by as much as eighty percent. On a 16-night cruise from Galveston to Barcelona, for instance, on a quality ship, you are often able to pick up a cabin for $549 per person.
Now why is that? It's because, apparently, the public doesn't like spending long periods of time at sea, crossing the Atlantic on a leisurely, south-Atlantic route (that avoids the high seas of the northern Atlantic), without the port stops that a normal cruise makes. What is to me the most desirable of vacations is regarded by most people as a big bore. So the cruiselines are forced virtually to give away their cabins.
And therefore, if you're the sort who enjoys the maritime experience, who likes having the time to read, reflect, and engage in long conversations with your fellow passengers, you will jump to book one of these extraordinary vacation bargains.
It's true that having accomplished such an eastbound voyage, you'll then have to fly back to the United States on a one-way flight. But even when you add the cost of such a return trip, the resulting total price is still a steal for a two-week interlude.
This has been a week of unusual travel offers. Perhaps the oddest -- but a spectacular bargain -- is the price of $1,199 for a one-way flight across the Atlantic to London, a night in a four-star London hotel, all transfers from airport to hotel and from hotel to Southampton, England, followed by a six-night crossing of the Atlantic from Southampton to New York City, aboard the brand-new Norwegian Breakaway, which will be going into service for the first time with that ocean crossing. When you consider the price of a normal one-way transatlantic flight, a night at a good London hotel, and the glamorous six-night crossing of the Atlantic, you realize what a remarkable bargain can now be considered.
The date of departure from Southampton? April 30, 2013, just slightly more than three months from now, a more-than-adequate time for doing your planning and anticipating a one-week, transatlantic adventure.
And what will the Norwegian Breakaway be like? Well, according to the hype, it will correct all the design flaws that made its sister ship, the Norwegian Epic (launched a couple of years ago), less of a total success a few years ago. Epic was the gigantic ship that nevertheless seemed crowded and confined by a great many passengers (including myself). Its cabin-layouts were especially unusual, and not for the better. Ships of its size and shape will now be corrected in design to seem spacious and leisurely in terms of crowd control and the like. And a great may people will be eyeing this new seagoing architecture very carefully.
After this initial transatlantic crossing, the Breakaway will be stationed in New York City, for sailings to Bermuda in the summer, and to Florida/Bahamas/Caribbean in the winter.
This $1,199 air-and-sea-crossing package is offered by Travel Themes and Dreams of Miami (tel. 877/870-7447; www.travelthemesanddreams.com).
As we enter the New Year, the single major trend in travel is the substitution (by cash-pressed tourists) of apartments and homes for hotel rooms. Americans have learned it is far better to visit fewer places and to allot a full week to each location, staying in cheaper and more spacious apartments and homes in place of hotels. Try Homeaway.com, EndlessVacationRentals.com, Rentalo.com, AirBnB.com, VRBO.com, FlipKey.com, and countless local real estate brokers, for such rental opportunities.
As compared with AirBnB.com or Rentalo.com (which rent short-term apartments and rooms in apartments) and Homeaway.com (which rents homes and apartments), the rental company called Flipkey.com specializes in the short-term rentals of second homes owned by individuals in resort areas that encourage the rental of vacation homes. Therefore, it doesn't confront you with the risk of violating local laws forbidding the rental of short-term residences. It simply doesn't face that problem.
The second major trend in travel for the year ahead? It's the considerable expansion of the cities served by cheap intercity buses, most prominently those by Bolt Bus and Megabus. Go to the websites maintained by these firms, and consult the maps of their current itineraries; you'll be surprised to see how widespread their network now is, affording you a substitute for more expensive forms of transportation.
A third trend? It's the sudden and dramatic increase in tourism to Peru, all resulting from an amazingly-successful marketing program by that country's tourism officials. But underlying the hype are a number of undeniable lures: the recent discovery and unearthing of civilizations ante-dating the Incas by hundreds of years; the recognition of Peruvian cuisine by leading journals as the "hot culinary news of 2013." Peruvian restaurants featuring pisco sours and ceviche are springing up all over America and many more are catering to tourists in Lima and nearby.
Currently, two-thirds of the city of Venice, Italy, is under water, and tourists are wading waste deep to reach their hotels, carrying suitcases over their heads. It's a reminder that Venice really shouldn't be visited from about mid-November to mid-March, when the "aqua alta" (high waters) is an overly-frequent occurrence.
By announcing that it will now penalize customers who simply don't show up at the airport to use a seat they've reserved, Southwest Airlines is becoming more and more like the other airlines, no longer as forgiving of its passengers as it used to be. The recent purchase by Delta Airlines of a big chunk of Virgin Atlantic Airlines will have no immediate impact on passengers flying for vacation purposes, says Scott Mayerowitz of the Associated Press; but it will provide business passengers going to London with much more frequent service.
In an interview conducted on our recent Travel Show, Carolyn Spencer Brown of CruiseCritic.com was ecstatic about the new Celebrity Reflection cruiseship, bringing attention to the fact that you can now grill your own steak, outdoors, on the lawn covering part of the ship's upper deck. A prominent airline head recently declared that his company would begtin operating "airborne shopping malls" on board his planes, creating much-needed additional income from the display and sale of merchandise by flight attendants parading in the aisles. Thus, the airline industry is about to join the cruiselines in overly commercializing its product; already on many popularly-priced cruises, the passenger is bombarded endlessly by various loudspeaker announcements of special sales and auctions of clothing, bric-a-brac, artwork and the like. Even in the main dining rooms of ships, where everything was once free of extra charge, passengers are entreated to order extra-charge steaks and lobster, and waiters are given a mandatory extra gratuity on the sale of such items, an incentive to push passengers into ordering the special goodies. The day is fast coming when sensitive travelers will need to upgrade to higher-priced ships, in order to avoid these tawdry tactics.
I have been reminded by a number of readers that I failed to include U.S. Servas (www.usservas.org) among the organizations that enable travelers to stay for free in the homes or apartments of other generous people in America and around the world (those include Couchsurfing.org and GlobalFreeLoaders.com). Servas was founded in 1948 by two Danish peace activists who felt that these visits encouraged world peace. Because it is the oldest of the free-of-charge-overnight organizations, it tends to have an older clientele (middle-aged, in particular), whereas Couchsurfing and GlobalFreeLoaders tend to attract much younger types. You might very well want to consider using one of them for your next trip.
I have also been remiss in failing to list the names of those travel agencies that specialize in arranging voyages on passenger-carrying freighters, costing about $110 to $135 a day per person. These are booked mainly by middle-aged and elderly retired persons (because they are long, leisurely trips for people without definite work schedules), who discover the freighter opportunities through at least 15 organizations. The oldest of these in the United States is the well-regarded TravLTips.com (which also sells traditional cruises on ocean liners), while StrandTravel.co.uk is a major British organization selling freighter trips, and Freightervoyages.eu does the same for people on the continent (although it will deal with anyone resident anywhere).
Americans planning a foreign trip, and expecting to make use of ATM machines for their cash needs, should be sensitively aware that almost all those machines respond only to four-digit PIN codes. If your pin number has more than four, you will definitely need to have it changed to a four-digit version before you leave. It's surprising that so many embark on a trip without making that necessary change. And although most U.S. banks now automatically work only with four-digit numbers, some don't.
As long as we're dealing with the number four, you might also keep in mind the major savings you can usually enjoy on a cruise by arranging to sail in the company of three other persons who will make use of a four-passenger cabin. Almost all cruiselines have four-passenger cabins (utilizing two extra bunks that swing down from overhead) and the savings can be considerable for families or groups of four.
