Growing Older ... and not wiser. Cruising for a Bruising

[Seebs]

Took a week off to take a cruise from Houston to Cozumel and back again.

Day 1: Monday
My lovely wife and I awaken Sunday morning and get chauffeured to the airport by my grizzled and unwashed father. Arrive at the airport it 2.5 hours before the flight to ease my wife’s need to be places early and sit uncomfortably for no apparent reason.
Flight delayed 90 minutes for weather in Dallas. I beg the question; why are we not on a direct flight from Little Rock to Houston? Its one of the few places LR goes directly to. The Answer is that Delta and Carnival are in cahoots and the travel agent scheduled it this way. Fine .. so we wait.

Finally get on the plane and arrive in a soggy Dallas. Hundreds of people displaced and things are not looking up. We make it to our connecting gate and its delayed, then delayed more, then delayed to the point that it takes off at 2:40 … our ship disembarks at 4PM. Good God!
I speak with other airlines, no avail, Dallas planes don’t take off when it’s rainy. What? Are the planes made of Paper Mache? Is this like Icarus and if the planes fly too close to the Sun the wax will melt and we’ll crash to Earth?

We are going to miss our Cruise. I spend 3 hours on the phone with Carnival and they inform me that this is an ‘Act of God’ and that ‘God is Bad.’ They won’t wait and they won’t refund our money. Sorry Charlie, you are s.o.l. and there is nothing you can do about it. Have a nice day.

I contact a supervisor for Delta and explain my plight. He actually acted interested and took us under his wing. At one point we were booked on four flights simultaneously. Dallas to Little Rock (if we wanted to quit), Dallas to Atlanta to Houston to Cozumel, Dallas to Houston and Dallas to Houston to Cozumel. Delta was sending us to Cozumel; we would leave in the morning and needed to stay in a hotel in the mean time. Delta would pay.
Now all we needed was our luggage that this nice supervisor had pulled and head to the hotel. So we wait and baggage Carousel 31 … and wait at baggage carousel 31, We are at Baggage Carousel 31. Yep, still there. Where are we? Yep, Baggage carousel 31. I speak with the baggage folks, the red coats, the supervisor; our bags are on the way to Houston. Here is a nice overnight bag with a toothbrush. Adios!

We arrive at the Dallas Crowne Royal. This is the largest hotel in America without a vending machine or a restaurant. There were six total people in the hotel. Spooky. The bellman was so bored he took my wife and Mother-in-law to Chic-fil-a and a place to buy underwear. Nifty.

I sleep on a pull out bed. Left my kidney in room 331 for the next couple staying there.


Day 2: Tuesday
Wake and head to Dallas Airport. Board the plane to Houston and realize we are not connecting with a Continental Flight. Our bags are lying in state with Delta. Need to depend on Delta to get the bags to Continental.
Arrive in Houston and need to check in at the Continental counter. They want to see our passports. We have no passports. Speak to another agent that realizes that our birth certificates are good enough. Blood Pressure rising, hate growing.
Get our tickets and continue the quest for baggage. Find another Red Coat and she personally pulls our bags from Delta. We board the flight to Cozumel where our Travel Agent assures us we won’t have to pay for the all-inclusive resort she is putting us up in.

Arrive in Cozumel and they want to see our passports. Folks, we have no passports. They agree that we are who we say we are and we head out to the Fiesta Americana, a diving resort. We don’t dive, but man to we eat.

The pool is under repair so we hang out in the wading pool. Things are decent, not great and the bed is comprised of slabs of granite. I leave my other kidney in this room 626 of the Fiesta Americana for organ harvesters. Got 40 minutes of sleep total, most of which we spent dreaming of being on a med-evil rack.

Day 3: Wednesday
Check out of the hotel and want to meet our boat at the pier. There is no bill. Its all taken care of and we cannot even get a receipt. Fine, we’ll get in the taxi and head to where the Concierge said our ship would be. The four of us get into a Corolla sized taxi and our bags are dangling out of the trunk like a drunk frat boy on a college hayride.
The taxi takes us down to the pier where we meet up with the SS Elation! Fantastic, except we are on the SS Celebration. I understand there is a language barrier but he understood my tone. We drove through three sink holes, kept our luggage from falling out of the empty trunk and made it to Pier three where the Celebration is docked.
I remove my knees from my chest and chin, unfold myself from the car and help the little man take out our 50 pounds bags. Pay him and make our way to the boat.
There is a checkpoint manned by four guys with full automatic weapons and gold teeth. I’m suddenly in a James Bond movie. I keep looking for the Asian man with the flying Derby that Frisbees a cutting death. He is nowhere to be found. Neither are our records of being on the ship (even though our bags all have Carnival Celebration tags on them).
The first man asks for our passports. We have no passports, but you already knew that.
We wait with the nice men with the nice guns until someone from Carnival saunters by. We stop him, he walkie-talkies someone on the boat and we eventually get onboard.

The bed is soft, nice. We are directly next door to the in-laws and can hear every word of their hush-toned conversations. I inform them that I can hear them before they insult me any further and they giggle.
Steph sneezes and is blessed from the other cabin. Yes, the walls are that thin. We go to shower and there is no curtain, the room has been pieced out in our absence. Welcome Aboard!!

Exhausted, my 6 month pregnant wife unpacks and we take a nap Just before rem sleep we hear the nerve-racking sound of what had to be a herd of Clydesdales dragging an anvil over broken glass. This awful noise was occurring directly over our room. We are under the galley and Horizon Dining room and they are changing tables and chairs. This noise continues for 45 minutes.
I bolt to the pursers desks and inform them that this is unacceptable and need to be moved. The desk explains that this noise will only occur from Breakfast to lunch to dinner to the midnight buffet … other that that it would be quite.
They offer an inner cabin but no refund for the extra we paid for the window. This is not going to fly. I press Darnay the desk clerk and we finally get a room away from the noise on another floor in the front of the ship. She may not like me so much.

We repack and a bellman from Belarus shows up to show us our room. We are bestowed with a free bottle of Champagne for our trouble, that bottle of bubbly is what I tip the Baltic dude. I also offer cologne as we smelled like herring.

We unpack for the third time of the day and nap. Get up, do some shopping and the ship is ready top head out to Playa del Carmen. I promptly lose my shirt at the casino, eat a huge meal and head to bed. Finally, time to relax.

Day 4: Thursday
We arrive at Playa and I confuse the port with the hole dug at Granite Mountain. All excursions include a 60 minute bus ride and no way can Stephie make these trips without at least three pit stops. We explore the ship instead and ask the purser how they are going to augment our bill for the 2.5 days missed on the cruise. They give me a bundle of books as a gift, some chocolates and two day reimbursement for a future cruise. Fine we’ll take it, but we aren’t going on another cruise until our child is at least three. The offer expires in 18 months.

We eat our meals, meet some folks, have a decent time and I lose more in the casino. All this as the cruise heads straight into Tropical Storm Matthew.

Day 5: Friday
After of night of almost being bucked from the bed by high seas, high winds and dreams of being locked in a dryer, we head to breakfast. Its rainy, cold and bumpy. The ship is listing 20 degrees each way. The Pit boss in the casino exclaims ‘Oh My God’ on one of the tilting spells. Wait a second, this is just like a flight attendant saying ‘Oh my God’ during turbulence on a plane. It just isn’t done. My mother in law is sick and several older folks on the cruise shatter hips. (Exaggeration for effect)
To better explain the ships bucking, at times I liken it to trying to stand up in a hammock. God help those that were drinking.

The pursers desk give Steph and myself $50 in credits that we must use in 5 hours. I blow mine in the casino, Steph gets a check.

Day 6: Saturday
Pack, leave the ship and sit on the bus that runs from Galveston to Houston Airport for 90 minutes. Driver finally gets the show on the road and we head to Houston International, yeah, that 90 minutes was just sitting at the dock, the other 60 minutes was the drive there.

Check in at the counter and the attitude-filled, pen-chewing lady said we need to weigh our bags. One bag weighs 30 pounds, one bag 62 pounds. What? These are the same bags that were lost, found, transferred, bounced and gotten to this point, now need to be weighed. This lady, who undoubtedly will rot in Hell of eternity, made us switch 12 pounds from one bag to the other. I left one pair of soiled boxers on the ground on purpose and moved on.
My in-laws, who went to another, less freaky worthless ticker person were allowed to send off their 50+ pound bags. That Delta person will go to heaven.

We board the plane without further issue and head on to Dallas.
Seat Request is marked on our tickets and we check in, get our seats and await to board.
Flight is now under a maintenance delay, a delay of 45 minutes. That’s okay, we are heading home .. all is well.

Plane is boarding and they are asking for 7 volunteers to take another flight, they over booked this one. We laugh at the sheep that takes Delta up on the first offer (they always up the ante if there are no takers). They scan our tickets and ‘Not Cleared” shows up on the scanner. We are sent to the desk where the over-gelled Native American man says we have been bumped from the flight. Me, my expecting wife and two military personnel with orders to get to Little Rock ASAP.

I explode. Steph heads to the seats as she does not wish to witness her husband getting handcuffed. The little Indian man tells me he understands and I assure him that he doesn’t. I explain all that has occurred, the undue stress he’s putting on my wife and the fact that his little ass is not going to be able to keep me off the plane.
After yelling, pointing and exciting the entire gate, we are all allowed on the plane.
We land, get off, get our bags and come home. I have a touch of Montezuma’s Revenge that I won’t elaborate on, ( see past posts on liquid poopies) drink some Pepto and move on with my life.

All of Sunday is spent in bed or on the couch. Finally, one day of relaxation.

[noel]

I love you man!

I have been wondering where you've been. Your carefully crafted tales are the stuff of legend!

[Ransure]

Seebs you should write travel books....

[Ennia]

great story, what a wasted vacation though

[Ebumar]

Dude, I needed that. You always remind me that your life is so much more stressfull than mine. Maybe its because im only 20... but yeah.

Rock on~

[archeiron]

Seebs for president!

[Tenuvil]

OMG I laughed, I cried, I wet myself laughing and crying.

Seeber, this story was on a par with the legendary Ryan's Steakhouse story.

I hate to see things like this happen to anyone, but at least you can communicate the utter bullshit in a way that makes people laugh. You seriously should consider a career as a writer or hook up with a cartoonist and do some kickass web comix.

[Winnow]

Great stuff Seebs! That should be the Sequel script to Planes, Trains and Automobiles : )

Planes, Boats and Automobiles!

[Lalanae]

Was eventually going to take a cruise out of Houston with my parents this year or early next and we couldn't decide on Carnival or Royal Carribean......I think we'll try Royal Carribean. Thanks

[Marbus]

Excellent! I love ya Seebs We need to get together and talk about baby stuff soon

Marb

[Izna Marcos]

lol, seebs...
I don't know how you didn't blow up on day one...

That was great...

[Sionistic]

You should write a newspaper column