Unfinished Object

Among the chores awaiting my return was making a reservation for a cruise. A friend of ours closes his office a few days each year and treats his staff to one to the Bahamas. He extends the invite to his friends as well and since we’ve never been on a cruise we decided to tag along this year. Our theory is that it’s a good way to try a cruise without a huge investment (hooray for group rates!) and taking it with about 20 other people you know – or at least have met – will make it that much more fun.

It’s not until September but the cruise line seems to want our money as soon as they can get it so I jumped on the phone and tied up the loose ends. Among the instructions I was given to finalize the reservation was to go to the company’s web site and provide our passport information as well as a credit card number to set up our ‘easy to use’ shipboard account. I shuddered involuntarily when I typed that as I can only imagine what the total on that piece of paper will be when they slip it under the door on the last day…providing of course that it will fit under the door. Once that was done I was instructed to print both the Ticket Contract and the ‘Welcome Aboard’ brochure.

The Ticket Contract is fifteen pages that can be summed up in one sentence, “We’ve got your money now, and you ain’t getting it back”. It additionally informs you that your luggage is worth $50, period. If its lost, drowned, burned or otherwise destroyed you’re getting $50 and you are by-gawd gonna be happy with that, unless you’d like to give them more money, an itemized list of the contents and the value of your favorite undies. The Welcome Aboard brochure is forty-freakin-eight pages of helpful information like: if you are cruising to Alaska you may want to bring a coat. I fully expect that one of the onboard comedy shows will be the reading of these documents...at least we are guaranteed to be entertained.

The one thing made perfectly clear in all that paper is that they would be perfectly happy to take some more of our money. In fact they’d be happy to get some of our friend’s and family’s money by way of their convenient ‘Bon Voyage’ boutique which allows your loved ones to log in and send you a flower arrangement for your cabin, a bottle of champagne or … ohhh how can you stand it … t-shirts and tote bags emblazoned with the cruise company’s logo. I nearly wet myself in excitement. The only thing they missed was postcards for me to mail to all my friends to advise them of this terrific service because I’m sure you are all chompin at the bit to prepay my bar tab (yes – this is an option) and buy D a photo session that includes an 8x10 glossy of the ship. I’m sure he’ll swoon from pure delight

I won’t lie and say I hadn’t considered treating the cruise like our honeymoon. I even checked into getting married shipboard; the best they can do is perform the ceremony in port…for $800 bucks…I’m in only if Captain Morgan officiates. I say that as a joke, but I bet if I asked and backed it up with the right amount of cash they could arrange it, based on the forty-freakin-eight page brochure practically anything can be had at a price. I’ve decided that this is why they want you to book seven months in advance. Not so you can save up for the big trip, but so you have time to get the disgust out of your system and accept that you’ll be needing a prosthetic limb or two when you disembark...available in the duty free shop of course.

Posted by Shan on 03/27 at 02:49 PM
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Unfinished Object

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