Wow this SUCKS!
The Carnival Splendor was 200 miles (310km) south of San Diego when the blaze broke out on Monday morning, said owners Carnival Cruise Lines….The fire in the engine room cut off most power supplies. Toilets and cold running water were restored on Monday night, but air conditioning, hot food service and telephones are not working.
I have no idea how those big boats are set up, but I’d think they’d have a redundant gen-set just to make sure something like this wouldn’t happen. Way to ruin a vacation, huh? BTW with no Air conditioning imagine how bad those cramped halls and staterooms must smell? Unless you have a balcony your cabin and hall is 100% dependent on forced air for ventilation.
Passengers will get a full refund…Drinks, cold food and entertainment were being provided to passengers, the cruise company said on Tuesday.
I would be SO drunk right now just to keep myself passed out until the floating turd makes landfall.
Now I shipped out in some rust-buckets. I’ve experienced the joy of counting waves over the pilot house so I could make a run to fill a bucket to shit in on a open deck in February. I once saw a guy smoke the contents of a teabag in a Magazine page because we had run out of cigarettes 3 days prior, and I’ve seen some damn nasty weather where I wasn’t too sure I’d see my wife ever again.
But that shit I was being PAID for, not the other way around!
I’m going to bet the emergency generator is set up for keeping the nav, comms and emergency lighting alive, and that’s about it. Awful as it is for the passengers, none of ’em are dead.
But yeah, Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife asked me if I would take her on a cruise. I said that I would, when someone pays me to go aboard.
I worked as chief mate on a small cruise ship 3 years ago. It was… pleasant at best.
I’ve went on two with the wife. Discovered that
#1 that “Floating Alcatraz” feel doesn’t really go away even when you add a casino, bars, and good food.
#2. The wife apparently can get seasick in a bathtub
So the 2nd will be our last. If we want that sort of thing, we’ll go all-inclusive resort, and see how that flies.
As you know I’ll take a drink under extreme social pressure, but I tend to only have 1-2 drinks the whole cruise just because I’m a cheap bastard. I hear the all-inclusive include your drinks too!
The one thing that never went out on either ship I served on was the chill water for the A/C units. Never. I have no idea what kind of incantations, rituals, or sacrifices were necessary to accomplish that, but they did.
And, let me just say, the few times we went to full NBC shutdown of the air handling system, I can understand why they went to the extents they did. Ships are big floating tin cans, and heat up like you would not believe.
That said, all-inclusive resorts are awesome. You do not have to worry about the stupid things for a while, and can pretty much kick back and rock out. I recommend Sans Souci down in Jamaica, but we went before they got bought out by Couples.