Changing Character of the Ship

I mentioned before that about 3/4th of the passengers left the world cruise on Sat in Dover. We were off the ship in Normandy at the time. When we got back onto the ship, there were many new passengers who were on for a 10-day Baltic cruise only.

In some ways this change is great. In other ways it is less different than I had anticipated.

The changes are that the bars are more full and the casino is more full. The specialty restaurants are also more full. This all makes sense. You can do a lot of special eating, a lot of drinking and lot of gambling for one week. However, if you have 17 weeks, you are not going to hold that pace for 17 weeks in a row.

We do notice that the “sea of background people” is new and unknown to us. However, what surprised me is that even though there are only about 20% of the passengers who remain, when we do see one of them, we and they are happy and stop to talk. So we probably talk to them more, and the net effect is not so much different from we experienced before Dover.

The other strange effect is the different relationship the long-cruisers have with the staff compared to the relationship that the “newbees” have with the staff. We and the staff feel like a family because we have lived together for 4 months. Kathleen and I got some hugs from some staff when we got back on from Normandy because that staff person was happy to see another recognizable friend.

We heard one new passenger yelling at a staff at the Passenger Services desk. I was tempted to intervene and tell the person to stop being an a**h***. I did not (or at least I did so quietly enough that he did not hear me.) It is like we have had a family established over the 4 months, and now these new people are invading our family, and it is not right if and when they misbehave with one of our family.