Colorado Springs, CO.  Red Carpet Cruises, Cruise Vacation Specialists.

Pics: http://gallery.me.com/ric.rooney/100038

Panama Canal Cruise

Day 1, Beware Land Torpedoes!

Well, it was an interesting beginning to our cruise this time and let’s just say it was not quite as smooth as our last 10-minute embarkation process on Celebrity’s Solstice back in February that I bragged about in a prior blog.  We arrived at the port at noon and were promptly told to turn around and come back in one hour.  Evidently there was a ‘security’ incident of some type that was going on down at the dock involving injuries.

You can imagine what started running through our heads, what with the world being the way it is today.  But we came back in an hour and were waived through to our ship.  It turns out the ‘security’ incident involved an elderly passenger disembarking from a docked cruise ship. 

The passenger was evidently in a wheelchair with oxygen tanks attached.  We’re still not sure how it happened but one of the oxygen tanks valves ruptured.  These tanks are normally bullet proof and ultra safe but are under hundreds of pounds of pressure.

And Murphy’s Law states that if something can happen, it eventually will, and so it did, right there on the peer!  The tank ruptured, turning it into an instant land torpedo!  It took off, right into a crowd of people, waiting to board another cruise ship and evidently mowed down a handful of them. 

Unfortunately some of them needed to be taken to the hospital but none from what we heard were seriously injured and hopefully they’ll have a whopper of a tale to tell their friends when they’re sense of humor returns!

So now the embarkation process is nearly two hours behind schedule. That should have been an omen for us, as once we finally got to our ship and began the embarkation process, Celebrity’s computer system promptly crashed!  And there we stood, all 2,000 of us crammed into a boarding room, for the next hour. 

It was very embarrassing for Celebrity, a premium cruise line that prides itself on outstanding customer service.  I was speaking to a Celebrity rep on the floor and he said he had never seen their computer system go down before.

So we stood around and wondered where the cocktails were (we were offered water instead), and they finally got their computer act together and got us all on board.  We wound up only sailing an hour late, an amount of time they can easily make up in transit to our first port stop, Montego Bay.

So that was our embarkation day and now I’ve had some time to explore the ship.  And I have a LOT to talk about in my next segment.  But first I need to go take a few pics and get them up to the website.  Talk to you soon.

Day 2, At Sea

I got my first good look at the Infinity today.  This ship is about 2/3 the size of the Solstice and eight years old.  Under any other circumstance this would be a very nice ship.  That other circumstance being that Crystal and I had previously sailed on Celebrity’s new flagship, the Solstice in February.  It’s just not a fair comparison in my opinion, although I have spoken to people on the ship that prefers the Infinity’s mid-size (90,000 tonnes), to the Solstice’s mega size (122,000 tonnes).

So the hardware on the Infinity isn’t up to current standards but what is up to expectations so far is the quality of the Celebrity service and their people.  They bend over backwards to please you in a hundred small ways that make you feel like a million bucks.


Day 3, Montego Bay, Jamaica

First port stop today, Montego Bay, Jamaica.  This is a new port of call for Crystal and me and as you can see by the pics, it’s a beautiful island.  We could have opted for a day on the beautiful beaches…or a day of shopping and sightseeing.  We decided on shopping and sightseeing.  Our advice?  Take the beautiful beaches.

This is my pet peeve about the Caribbean port of calls I’ve visited so far.  The moment you step off the ship, it begins; the relentless sales pitch for every, and any, thing.  You cannot find five minutes of peace it seems.   We made the mistake of taking a shuttle into town to the ‘shopping district.’  Somehow our $10.00 ride turned into $20.00 (“I’ll be here to pick you up, mon! So you can pay me for that now”). 

Once we were dropped off in town and were on our own, we had no chance. It was just one sales pitch after another.  After 20 minutes, I was so frustrated that we finally gave in to one guy who offered to take us on an hour tour of the island for $35.00.  If we had done that in the first place we would have saved ourselves some money.

Once we got out of the sales district we actually wound up having an OK time and our driver turned out to be a good guy.  He worked hard to earn his $35.00, of which he had to pay for gas, which is horrendously expensive (around $6.00/gallon according to him) on the island.

But these people sell like their life depended on it.  Then I realized driving around the island and looking at the poverty, that for many of these people, it does.

Day 4, At Sea.  My eyes, my eyes!

We’ve had some mildly rough seas so far on this cruise with winds of 25-35 knots and seas of five to seven feet.  Not perfect cruising weather by any means but like the old fishing axiom that the worst day of fishing still beats the best day of work, it’s the same with cruising.

You can’t really get a perspective on five to seven foot ocean swells from the vantage point of ten stories up on huge cruise ship.  However this afternoon at the pool it was a different story. 

The pool is six and a half feet deep at the deep end.  So imagine a five to seven foot wave going back and forth in that pool!  That is just what was happening today and it was hysterical watching the people in the pool when the pool water synced up with the waves the ship was plowing through.  This huge wall of water nearly emptied out one end of the pool and sent it all crashing into the wall at the opposite end, sending a geyser of water twenty to thirty feet up into the air, dousing everyone in a fifteen-foot radius!

Everyone was already wearing a bathing suit and was getting a kick out of watching the show.  However, one or two unsuspecting, clueless souls that weren’t paying attention decided to go for a leisurely dip in the pool walked into the shallow end of the pool at exactly the wrong moment and got creamed by about 1,000 gallons of water and went ass over tea kettle into the wall, then got sucked back into the deep end as the wave rolled back out. 

It was really funny but wouldn’t you know it, I didn’t have my camera with me to record it. Fortunately no one got hurt and the people that got creamed were good sports and wound up laughing once they stopped coughing and pulling their bathing suits back into the appropriate places. 

Don’t get too excited at that visual though.  Celebrity is definitely a 55+ demographic and the bodies at poolside were not exactly heavenly, more like asteroids wearing bad fitting bathing suits.  And when those two got creamed by the waves and almost wound up wearing their bra tops like do-rags, I could have sworn I heard someone screaming, “my eyes, my eyes!”

And speaking of things that people should know better; there are a lot of Europeans on this cruise.  What is it with European dudes and Speedo’s?  My God, man!  Talk about visuals that can really do some long-term psychological damage!

But I digress and it’s getting late, so let’s get back on topic. I’ve had a chance now to get a good look and feel for the ship. I was disappointed at first look as you could tell, but after a day or two now, the ship is starting to grow on me.  Infinity is an elegant cruise ship. You just have to accept that she is a different experience then the Solstice. 

This ship is just eight years old and was the former flagship for Celebrity, yet the advances in ship design and technology when you compare it to the Solstice today is just amazing.

The ship does have wireless capability but unlike the Solstice, which had wireless throughout the entire ship, on the Infinity you only have four designated areas that you have to go to in order to pick up a signal.

The food so far has been very good and would be top rated to any other cruise line I’ve been on.  The only ship it takes a second ranking to in the cuisine category is…the Solstice.  The Infinity has one specialty restaurant (SS United States) compared to the Solstice’s four.  Crystal and I are having dinner there in a few days and I’ll let you know the results but so far from what I’ve heard from others who have already eaten there, it’s top notch.

Our balcony stateroom is nice but at eight years old, shows its age in design, styling and technology and is no match for comparable Solstice accommodations.  The stateroom and balcony are smaller; it has an archaic 20-inch regular TV as opposed to the swivel, wall mounted 32” flat screen, computer controlled TV set up on the Solstice.

The bathroom is nowhere near as nice as the comparable Solstice accommodations.  Now don’t get me wrong, these are quality accommodations.  It’s just eight-year-old designs and technology, that’s all.

I’m warming up for our upcoming fitness cruise in January on the Solstice so I’m trying out the gym facilities a few days each week during the cruise and taking advantage of the special Aqua Spa dining option, which is specially prepared, high quality, healthy menu items. 

Crystal and I are having breakfast and lunch there most days and then dinner in the main dining area at our assigned table.  The Aqua Spa meals so far have been delicious, which shows that you can eat healthy and actually enjoy your food at the same time.


That’s it for now.  Tomorrow we make our first port stop in South America!

Day 5, Cartagena, Columbia

This was our second port stop and my first time visiting Columbia.  The first impression from the ship looking at the skyline is a city that looks more like a modern metropolis then one of the oldest cities in the world. This time we signed up on the ship for a four-hour tour of the city.  I’ve posted some pics for you.  Outside of 85-degree temps and 94% humidity, I really enjoyed this tour. 

Our guide took us through the city and the fortress that you see in the pics.  The Spanish started construction of the fortress in 1586.  It took nearly two hundred years to complete the fortress and walls surrounding the city!  It all looks as sturdy today as the day the work began.  We got the whole history of how and why the fortress was built to defend against invaders, and how the Cartagena became ‘the walled city.’

They have street vendors here just like in Jamaica but a much more laid back, polite group.  If you said ‘no thank you’ to them, for the most part they would move on. 

We stopped for a couple of minutes to watch one street artist (sitting down pic) creating artwork on glass using only his fingers and a toothpick!  He did beautiful work and I actually wound up buying the piece he was working on in the pic you see.

We stopped at a church that serves as the final resting place for San Pedro Claver, officially canonized a saint by the Vatican for his lifelong work in trying to improve the lives of the African slaves brought to Cartagena to build the fortress and walls around the city.  I’m not sure how well you can see in that yellow box, but those are his actual remains.

Day 6, Panama Canal locks

Well, here’s what we all came for!  We’re going through the locks as I write.  I’m writing on our balcony right now, having just come through the first set of locks this morning starting at 7:15 AM. 

We thought we’d get a prime spot at the bow of the ship this morning by getting up at 6 AM to beat the crowd.  Rookie mistake, as the pros (multiple Panama Canal crossings) were staking out the best locations at 4:30 AM!  We’ll know for next time.

The locks are just amazing.  The locks work without any power source, it’s all done by gravity if you can believe that.  We went from Caribbean sea level, to 85 feet above sea level in the course of the first three locks.  We’re now heading for the Pacific side of the canal where we have two more sets of locks to go through to drop back down 85 feet before we’re cruising in the Pacific ocean.

At the moment, we’re going through the man made lake between the Caribbean and Pacific side.  And ‘lake’ is so much of an understatement. I’ve got some great pics and video clips that I hope convey how enormous this lake really is.  This is the majority of the transit though Panama to get you from one side of the continent to the other.  I’m not sure I’ll be able to upload the videos to the website with the bandwidth I have on the ship, but I think you’ll find them really interesting and I’ll get them up as soon as I can.

We hit the second set of locks about 1:30 this afternoon and then the third set shortly after words.  All told it will take most to the day to complete our Panama Canal journey through the jungle.

As a little side note, the Captain (who was narrating our passage through the first set of locks over the ships communications system) told us this morning that the fee Celebrity had to pay for this passage through the Panama Canal was a whopping, $282,000.00!

And here’s a little known fact that you can save for a trivia game one day; The smallest passage fee ever paid to cross the Panama Canal was $.36 (yes, thirty six cents) back in the 1920’s by an adventurer who wanted to be the first person to swim through the canal! 

Evidently, no one at the time could come up with a legal reason not to let him pass, so he was weighed and measured (that’s how passage fees are determined), forked over his 36 cents and was allowed to swim though the locks and the lake! 

That must have been a pretty funny sight, as the lock doors are seven stories tall and there’s this one lonely guy out there treading water waiting for them to open and close. It took him ten days but he successfully completed his swim and here I am talking about him nearly 90 years later.

All in all this was a fantastic experience and one I’ll always remember.  I think a couple of the videos I shot will give you a sense of just how amazing this man made wonder still is today nearly 90 years after it was completed.  This is a bucket list experience that should be on everyone’s list and being on a cruise ship is the only way you can experience it.  See you tomorrow.

Day 7 At Sea

Today was a day at sea as we cruise to our next port stop, Puntarenas, Costa Rica.  We started things off as usual with our morning breakfast at the Aqua Spa Café.  I’m really pleased with how this test run for our upcoming fitness cruise is going so far. Crystal and I are having breakfast and lunch most days at the Aqua Spa café, the special café featuring very high quality, healthy food choices.

So far we’ve loved the quality of these food choices as well as the taste.  This is by far the best I’ve eaten on a cruise and I don’t feel a bit deprived.  It’s wonderful tasting food prepared by very skilled chefs and once you’re full and don’t really have a craving for all the delicious but not quite so good for you foods that are so plentiful on a cruise ship!

I’ve gotten in four workouts in the first eight days, a little better then my normal training routine at home.  I just do a twenty-minute cardio warm up and then thirty to forty minutes of weight training, working just two body parts for a total of between 8-12 sets, depending on how I feel.

I’ve gotten a feel for the gym now and my third and fourth workouts have been for real.  The gym layout is pretty typical of the cruise ships I’ve been on.  It’s about 2/3-cardio equipment, the rest is resistance equipment that covers all the major body parts.  Finally there is a very small area for free weights, almost always just dumbbells and rarely over 60 pounds (must be a cruise ship thing).  The Infinity was no different.

What I do like however is that the equipment is all current generation Life Fitness machines, a high quality manufacturer. If I keep this training and eating regimen up for the rest of the cruise I guarantee you I’ll step off this ship leaner the day I got on.  Maybe I’ll get a pic at the end and we’ll see what I look like at the ripe old age of 55 (in another month).

We went on another ship tour today, this time a tour of the galley and food preparation machine that feeds over 2,000 people each day, and does it extremely efficiently.  The pics don’t really give you a good feel for how big this operation is, and this is considered just a mid-sized ship.

There are 122 chefs that prepare the meals and it’s all co-coordinated by computer, as the customer can customize each of those meals to his or her preferences.  The galley area was sparkling clean and to say these guys are obsessed with cleanliness is a huge understatement.

After our galley tour it was off to a wine/food pairings event in the main dining hall.  They’ve had to move this event into the big  dining area, as its hugely popular.  This was no exception, drawing close to 200 people.  That’s like 10% of cruisers on this ship! But it’s a great way to sample $100.00 bottles of wine for a few bucks and have the ship’s master sommelier explain wines, their characteristics and how they should be pared with different foods. 

I took an initial wine appreciation class on the Solstice in February and enjoyed it so much I signed up for the series of three wine events on this cruise;

-    wine walk around which is a relaxed sampling of red and white wines from 5 different countries.
-    wine appreciation which is more of an education on a specific set of wines being presented by the sommelier.
-    wine/food parings, which is a tasting of food and wine combinations, how food affects the flavor of wine and how to select certain wines to compliment the taste of the food you’re eating.

It’s a really enjoyable part of this cruise for me and something I’ve wanted to become a little more educated on for a long time.  It’s all available to me here on the Infinity for $10.00 - $15.00 per event.

Dinner at SS United States

We had dinner tonight at the Infinity’s one specialty restaurant, The SS United States.  This is a five star dining experience that would compete with the Solstice’s Murano restaurant that we had the chance to dine at back in February.  The cost for this six-course extravaganza is $30.00 per person.  If you want to do a special wine paring (four different premium wines pre-selected for different courses), it’s another $35.00 fee.

Everything we’ve heard from others on this cruise who had already dined at SS United States was a big thumbs up.  Our decision?  A very big thumbs up as well!  The food was superb and as is the case with a 5-star type of restaurant, it’s as much about the experience and presentation of the food as it is about the eating.  We were told to set aside 2 ½ hours for our dining that night and we used up every relaxed, thoroughly enjoyable minute of it.

What a Show!

To end our day we took in the show at the Infinity Theatre after dinner.  As a mid-sized ship the Infinity can’t put on the lavish Broadway caliber shows that the Solstice can.  So the entertainment is pretty much the standard variety show type of entertainment; song and dance, magicians, comedians, etc.

But the show tonight was hands down the best song and dance show I’ve seen on a cruise ship.  It was a ‘Tribute to Rock and Roll’ put on the Infinity show cast; fourteen in all, four singers, five male and five female dancers. 

The singers all had superb voices and every one of the dancers was in absolutely rockin’ shape!  They were supported by an eight piece live orchestra that matched them in musical talent every step of the way. Cruise entertainment has come a long, long way in twenty years.

The show started with the first song, which lasted the next 45 minutes!  They never took a single break, moving from one song to another and there wasn’t a bad song in the entire set.  We lost track of all the wardrobe changes at around 13 or 14.

It was high intensity energy from start to finish and that’s as much as I’ve seen a cruise crowd get into a stage show, me included.  It was first class and so good that I just had to include it in my write up. 

There’s one pic with me and one of the dancers that we took right after the show (the whole ensemble greeted the guests as they left the theatre).  I had my arm around her back when we took the picture and she was soaked!  You would have been too after that workout on stage.

Day 8 Puntarenas. Costa Rica, Tarcoles River Tour and the Crocs!

Today is a prime example of why I decided to get into the cruise business with Crystal.  I’m finally getting out there and starting to see a little of this amazing world we live in. We’re in Costa Rica today, another first time experience for me, another chance to meet new people, see new sights, do new things.

But I got a little more then I bargained for today.  We signed up for a boat tour of the Tarcoles River, which runs through the tropical rain forest in this country.  Our tour guide told us we’d see exotic birds and animals like Iguana’s in their natural habitat as we slowly cruised down the river in a small observation boat.

Did I mention that it turns out the Tarcoles River is full of something else? Something a whole lot bigger then Iguanas?  Crocodiles!  Yeah, maybe they should have put that little factoid on the land excursion paperwork when we’re deciding what we want to do on shore during port stops!

I distinctly remember our paperwork saying, “Tarcoles River Eco Expedition’ where we would learn about the example Costa Rica is setting in preserving their unique ecological environment and becoming a truly Green economy that understands there’s more money to be made from a healthy rain forest, then there is in cutting it down to build a few new condo developments.

So that’s what I was expecting today, a nice, friendly, relaxed eco-tour.  I’ll see a tropical rain forest from the river’s perspective, shoot a couple of bird pics, maybe see an Iguana or two, and life’s good, you know?

It was about an hours drive from the dock to where we were headed to get on our boat and the first thing I noticed as we pulled into the staging area, is that I don’t see any pictures of beautiful birds (although as you’ll see from the pics, they were everywhere), I don’t see any pics of friendly Iguana’s.  What I do see is a painting of a Crocodile that seemed to be as long as the boats at the dock.

And our tour guide at that point happens to mention that the Tarcoles River is known for one other inhabitant; Crocodiles, and ‘maybe we get lucky today and see one.”

Now this is not a big boat folks, let’s call it an oversized rowboat with a canopy on the top if it starts to rain. The boat looks like it only sits about a foot above the waterline to begin with and after the twenty or so of us get in, we’re down another couple of inches.  And I’m thinking; big, ugly, hopefully not to hungry crocs, and about nine inches deciding whether we’re tourists…or lunch.

So off we go down the river and after fifteen minutes or so we are indeed seeing some beautiful birds that I’ve only seen in books or zoos.  Some Iguana’s pop out of their nesting holes on the riverbank as if on cue as we’re cruising by and I get my pics with my little zoom camera.

I’ve pretty much forgotten about crocodiles at that point because I’m distracted now taking pics, the guide hasn’t said a word about them, and it just doesn’t seem possible that you’d see a crocodile in this setting.

Crikey! It’s a Sheila!

It’s in that frame of mind that we cruise past this floating log on our sightseeing adventure.  And then the log does something strange; it turns around.  It turns around and it starts following us.  It turns around, starts following us, and is now quickly gaining on us! 

It was about at this point that a lady in the back of the boat says in a slightly strained voice, “I think we’re being followed by alligator (no alligators in Costa Rica, only their much bigger cousins, Crocodiles).

The driver turns around, sees the impending danger and quickly reaches down and picks up a canvas bag.  I’m very relieved because I know the driver being the professional that he is, must have been prepared for something like this and probably has a gun or a club or some kind of weapon in the bag.

So he reaches in and pulls out…a  raw, skinned, chicken leg! And I’m wondering if he really plans on defending the group with a dead chicken when he turns the boat into the shoreline and jumps in the river!  What a courageous man! Now I get it.  He’s probably going to use the chicken leg to lure the beast away from his passengers, then fling it in the opposite direction and make a beeline back to the boat and get us the hell out of there!

But wait…well, no, he’s not flinging the chicken leg away and OMG now the croc has him cut off from the boat.  This is horrible!  But as the cruise video journalist that I now am,  I must keep my video camera rolling to capture this confrontation between man and beast, whatever the grizzly outcome.

And then we go from asking each other, “is this guy crazy?” to “yup, he’s definitely a few cards short of a full deck” as he takes the chicken leg, puts it in his mouth standing at the shoreline and dares the croc to take it.  This eight foot croc closes to within a foot of him, raises out of the water and does just that as he drops the chicken out of his mouth into the open jaws of the croc!

Showman or not, I’m telling you as you’ll see in the footage, getting that close to a wild, crocodile in my book, no matter how much you think you know what you’re doing, is well within what I call the Oops! margin of error. And I’ve got it all on video!  I may not have it up by the time you read this, as the video file is too big to upload from the ship’s wireless system.  But I’ll have it up shortly after I get home on May 11.

So we’ve indeed seen a crocodile, lived to tell the tale, seen some beautiful wildlife in its natural habitat, got some great pictures and video footage. All in all, I’m satisfied and perfectly willing to call it a wrap. 

Not quite yet.  We’re heading downriver still when the guide spots some bubbles in the water, a tell tale sign a croc may be submerged.  So he steers the boat over towards the bubbles, gets right on top of them and stops to look around. And that folks is when we got to experience what happens to your body when your heartbeat doubles in two seconds flat!  Bubbles may tell you that a crocodile is below.  What bubbles don’t tell you is how BIG that crocodile below may be.  And what surfaced a few seconds later was for my money, the mother of all crocodiles.

Look at the Crikey15 pic.  This is what surfaced a few seconds later right next to the boat, the boat that’s only sitting about nine inches above the river.  And people, I  don’t mean that this thing surfaced a few feet away from us, it came up literally a few inches from the boat, on the left side.  I do believe a few people on that left side (Crystal and I were on the right side) were badly in need of laundry services for their shorts afterwards.

I don’t know if you can tell from the one still shot I got of his head in the water, of just how big this thing was, easily twice the size of the other croc.  It was enormous, estimated later by the guide at 15-18 feet.

So once we all got through screaming like little girls for a few seconds, everyone decided at about the same time to rush over to the left side of the boat to get a better look.  You can see where this is heading already, can’t you? 

Ten people on the left side of the boat, ten people on the right side of the boat, equals nice, even, nine-inch safety net above the water.  Twenty people now on the left side of the boat, no people on the right side of the boat and even the crazy boat driver is starting to freak out as the croc can pretty much have his choice for lunch in a few seconds after we tip over!

Fortunately, we quickly come to our senses as the boat started to tilt and got back to our assigned seats pronto because, it must be time now for the second crocodile feeding and photo opportunity to begin!

But crazy boat driver guy suddenly doesn’t seem real excited this time and just sits quietly in the boat.  A short ‘discussion’ ensues between tour guide and crazy boat driver in a language we can’t understand, hands are waving up and down, and I thought I caught something like “dish washer job in your future” or something like that, I can’t be sure.

But a few seconds later crazy boat driver guy steers the boat up to the shore line and with chicken carcass in hand, he gets out of the boat and starts to lightly slap the water (maybe the croc won’t hear?).

And sure enough here it comes.  When you see the video, look at how enormous this crocodile is as he comes out of the water.  More importantly, at around 45 seconds into this video I happened to focus in on crazy boat driver.  Look carefully at this man’s face now and tell me he isn’t thinking, “Maybe dishwasher isn’t such a bad job!”

This was some of the best footage I’ve gotten so far and the yells from our group as this croc snapped three times at our driver were genuine.  The croc got his chicken but what you can’t see because I didn’t get him in the video, was that this time there was no showboating, no chicken in the mouth thing.  This time it was, “please hurry and get your pictures so I can get hell out of here!”

What a day!

Day 9 (and now 10, 11 and 12)  At Sea

Four days at sea was not in the original game plan.  Unfortunately we were in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong itinerary.  Our last three port stops were all supposed to be in sunny Mexico (Huatulco, Puerto Vallarta and Cabo San Lucas). 

I was looking forward to adding three new port stops to my list but the swine flu outbreak put those plans on hold when Celebrity (and most of the other major cruise lines as well) temporarily cancelled travel  to all Mexican ports of call.

So instead of three more glorious days in the tropical sun, we’re doing a 2,400 nautical mile sprint from Central America to the exotic port of…San Diego! And then on to that ultimate California island destination, yes, Catalina Island!  From there it’s on to our final stop and disembarkation point, San Francisco.

It’s particularly bad luck for a lot of passengers, since they come from California to begin with.  If you think about it that makes sense because for most of those Californians they only had to buy a one way ticket to Florida and then Celebrity would drop them off right at their home state at the end of the cruise.

But almost everyone is taking it well because they understand that Celebrity really had no choice in making their decision.  They simply couldn’t take the chance of exposing passengers to the potential danger in Mexico and if they had, there would have been a good chance our ship would have been quarantined once it hit American soil anyhow.  So it’s now kind of a short Trans-Pacific ocean experience and there’s plenty to do on the ship.

BOGO Day!

I started noticing something different with the women on board yesterday.  I couldn’t put my finger on it but they were acting sort of strange, almost predatory.  One day they’re relaxed, smiling and friendly and the next, their eyes are narrowed and focused, they’re suddenly moving slowly and deliberately, like big game cats on the prowl.  And then I discovered the reason why when we got back to our stateroom and read the ships itinerary for today: BOGO Day! 

For the guys reading this blog that are as clueless as I was about this, BOGO means “Buy One, Get One”  It’s a one hour, buy one get one free sale on the ship today!  Men, be afraid, be very afraid if you get caught in the estrogen laced stampede towards the shops on BOGO Day.

That was the situation I inadvertently found myself in today and the experience made the crocodile encounter seem tame in comparison.  Fortunately, I had my video camera with me and I quickly turned it on the raucous crowd so you can see the mayhem going on for yourself.  Watch the guy at about the 12 second mark of the video.  See the confused, hapless look on his face as he’s searching for a way back to the safety of his stateroom?

Now you will see some men in the video clip.  They are called ‘mules’ and their sole purpose is to carry the booty for their women, who must have their hands free to pick up and discard as many trinkets and articles of clothing as quickly as possible. 

Occasionally they will use their mules as mannequins to try on articles of clothing and pretend to ask their opinion, saying something like “Which do you like, the red one or the mauve?”  Regardless of the mule’s answer, the women will take the mauve colored item.

Women on a BOGO Day binge act very differently.  On a normal, no sale day, they tend to be solitary shopping creatures, hunting by themselves for something to purchase that they can bring back to the pack to be admired and coveted.  This gives her great status with the pack and she is regaled for her shopping prowess.

But on BOGO Day it’s very different.  On BOGO Day women hunt, ah, I mean shop, in packs.  They’re highly intelligent and cunning creatures and hunting in packs increases their chances that they’ll bring home more prized booty for all.

I was watching such a pack today and their co-ordination, strategy and speed of attack is impressive to say the least. I don’t have to explain anything about BOGO shopping techniques to the women reading this because you already know, it’s in your DNA. 

But for the men, I need to explain the beauty and skill of their teamwork in terms we are familiar with:  Football.  So here’s what happened today;

Think of a football huddle of women, calling a play; Mary is the shopping star of the pack. She wears only brand name clothes, has the latest designer hand bag hanging from her arm, smells of the finest perfume, wears Manolo Blahnik shoes as casual wear.  And she NEVER pays retail. 

Mary’s the big play girl, a future shopping Hall of Famer, the Jerry Rice of running sharp, precise, mall route patterns to hit the maximum number of stores in the least amount of time.  She’s the wide receiver.  Mary’s the one the opposing pack will double cover.  They know she’s shopping’s version of ‘money in the bank’ if she gets loose on a BOGO Day. 

Crystal is the wily, veteran quarterback for her pack.  She’s a three-time BOGO Day MVP and has that invaluable ‘big game’ experience on her side.  Crystal knows the strengths and shopping patterns of each member of not only her own pack but the pack that they’re shopping against today as well.  And she thinks she knows how to exploit a fatal shopping weakness in one member of the opposing pack today.

Crystal stands up, peering out from the huddle.  She’s surveying the shopping store layout of the Infinity and watching how the opposing pack is lining up and spreading out their defense.  She slowly takes a deep breadth, puts her head back down in the huddle, then calls the play:

“Mary, I want you to do a Z out pattern.  On the snap when I take the credit card, I want you to head downfield then do a two-step fake in towards the Swarovski store, that’s where they’ll assume we’re heading, since the new spring line of figurines has just arrived. 

But then I want you to cut back to the outside and do a slow fade to the new Coach Handbag store that just opened today.  Since you’re a Celebrity Cruise Platinum member, they’ll assume you must have gotten a private, Grand Opening special discount coupon.  Their deep safety will drop over to double cover you and demand a matching discount coupon from the store clerk.  When she does, it will open up the deep middle of the field. 

Beth,  you’ve been off your diet for a few months and have put on a few pounds, so I want you at fullback to block for Catherine, our speedy halfback.  On the snap, I’ll drop back, do a double pump and pretend to pass the credit card deep to Mary.  When their free safety moves over to double cover Mary when she breaks for the Coach Handbag store, I’ll pull the credit card back down and hand it off to Catherine going up the middle. 

Mary, I need you to open up a hole and take out their middle linebacker, who’s the weakest shopper in their pack.  Pull out something bright and shiny when you get to her, that should distract her long enough for Catherine to sprint by and make a dash straight up the middle for the real goal line, Tiffany’s, just two stores up from Swarovski.

The defense will have overrun the play trying to defend Swarovski.  Mary has the free safety out of position, taking her on the fake handbag shopping spree.  If we take out their middle linebacker, Catherine should be able to outrun the cornerbacks to Tiffany’s and be the first to spike the credit card into the cash register, which gets us BOGO on all one-of-a-kind designer jewelry items in the store!”

As any woman will tell you, getting BOGO on one of a kind, designer jewelry at Tiffany’s is tantamount to winning the Super Bowl . And that guys, is how it went at BOGO Day today on the Infinity.

Day 15, Time to Head Home

The last pics I’ve put up are the final two days of our wonderful cruise.  We had our new port stops at San Diego and Catalina Island before heading on to our disembarkation destination, San Francisco.

There was some grumbling, especially from the California contingent on the ship about port stops in their back yard.  But on the whole everyone took the disappointment of missing our Mexican port call like adults.  No one wanted to take a chance and wind up being wrong about the seriousness of the swine flu breakout.

I enjoyed the stop in San Diego as my brother lives there and we had an unexpected chance to have dinner together one night.  And although Crystal being a California native had been to Catalina Island many times, I never had and I had a good time even though we were only there for a few hours.

The last shore excursion of this cruise turned out to be very eerie; Alcatraz, also known as the rock.  The prison was just surreal and imaging how men lived for years in the tiny 7x9 foot cells was hard to fathom.

What made it even more eerie and disconcerting but very personal, was that we were each given individual iPod like devices that took us on our own personal tour of the prison at our own pace, as we could stop and start the recording as we wished.

What made the experience so real was that the recorded narration was not done by professional voice talent but actual men who were imprisoned at Alcatraz at one time, or the guards who stood watch over them.

I walked through the prison listening to my iPod.  At one point, following the directions of a guard who worked there during an attempted escape, he instructed me to stop at a specific spot and look down at the floor to see marks still there to this day from hand grenades that were dropped by police through a hole cut in the ceiling above.  You could not help letting your imagination take over knowing that this event really happened, exactly where I now stood.

I saw the actual dummies inmates made, in the actual cells, that guards discovered the morning after the only successful escape at Alcatraz, although successful is a subjective observation.  The three men who escaped from Alcatraz prison, only to be confronted by the frigid waters and strong currents of the San Francisco Bay were never seen or heard from again.  Having now stood at that waters edge and able to see firsthand the swirling currents leading out to the Pacific ocean only a couple of miles away, I agree with the consensus opinion that it would have been impossible to swim against those currents in frigid water temperatures to reach San Francisco. 

But that's what legends are made of isn’t it?  Just like DB Cooper, we’ll never know for sure, and perhaps that's the way it should be.

Until next time, happy cruising to you.  The world is nearly three quarters covered by water; explore it on a cruise ship.


Take care,

Ric Rooney/Red Carpet Cruises 

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